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125 4 2006
Voyages with John
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Robert Kysar
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VOLUME 125, NO. 4
Bishlam’s Archival Search Report in Nehemiah’s Archive: Multiple Introductions and Reverse Chronological Order as Clues to the Origin of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4–6 Richard C. Steiner 641–685 Proverbs 8:22–31: Three Perspectives on Its Composition Alan Lenzi 687–714 Analogical Reasoning in Romans 7:2–4: A Woman and the Believers in Rome Peter Spitaler 715–747 Taming the Shrew, Shrike, and Shrimp: The Form and Function of Zoological Classification in Psalm 8 Richard Whitekettle 749–765 What Becomes of the Angel’s “Wives”? A Text-Critical Study of 1 Enoch 19:2 Kelley Coblentz Bautch 766–780 Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class Todd D. Still 781–795 Book Reviews
797–831
Annual Index
845–848 US ISSN:0021-9231
th anniversary issue
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JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE
SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE (Constituent Member of the American Council of Learned Societies) EDITORS OF THE JOURNAL General Editor: JAMES C. VANDERKAM, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 Book Review Editor: CHRISTINE ROY YODER, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 Associate Book Review Editor: TODD C. PENNER, Austin College, Sherman, TX 75090
EDITORIAL BOARD Term Expiring 2006: THOMAS B. DOZEMAN, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH 45406 PAUL B. DUFF, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 CAROLE R. FONTAINE, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 JUDITH LIEU, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom MARTTI NISSINEN, University of Helsinki, FIN-00014 Finland KATHLEEN M. O’CONNOR, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 EUNG CHUN PARK, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA 94960 TURID KARLSEN SEIM, University of Oslo, N-0315 Oslo, Norway BENJAMIN D. SOMMER, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60645 VINCENT L. WIMBUSH, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711 2007: MOSHE BERNSTEIN, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201 JOHN ENDRES, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94709 JO ANN HACKETT, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 MATTHIAS HENZE, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251 ROBERT KUGLER, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219 TIMOTHY LIM, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 2LX Scotland STEPHEN MOORE, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940 STEPHEN PATTERSON, Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO 63119 EMERSON POWERY, Lee University, Cleveland, TN 37312 ADELE REINHARTZ, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada RICHARD STEINER, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201 SZE-KAR WAN, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 2008: ELLEN B. AITKEN, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T5 Canada MICHAEL JOSEPH BROWN, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 TERENCE L. DONALDSON, Wycliffe College, Toronto, ON M5S 1H7 Canada STEVEN FRIESEN, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211 JENNIFER GLANCY, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York 13214 A. KATHERINE GRIEB, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA 22304 ARCHIE C. C. LEE, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin New Territories, Hong Kong SAR DANIEL MARGUERAT, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland RICHARD D. NELSON, Perkins School of Theology, So. Methodist Univ., Dallas, TX 75275 DAVID L. PETERSEN, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 YVONNE SHERWOOD, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK, University of Durham, Durham, England, DH1 3RS, United Kingdom PATRICIA K. TULL, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY 40205 Editorial Assistant: Monica Brady, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 President of the Society: Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304; Vice President: Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542; Chair, Research and Publications Committee: Benjamin G. Wright III, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015; Executive Director: Kent H. Richards, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329. The Journal of Biblical Literature (ISSN 0021–9231) is published quarterly. The annual subscription price is US$35.00 for members and US$150.00 for nonmembers. Institutional rates are also available. For information regarding subscriptions and membership, contact: Society of Biblical Literature, Customer Service Department, P.O. Box 133158, Atlanta, GA 30333. Phone: 866-727-9955 (toll free) or 404-727-9498. FAX: 404-727-2419.E-mail:
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JBL 125, no. 4 (2006): 641–685
Bishlam’s Archival Search Report in Nehemiah’s Archive: Multiple Introductions and Reverse Chronological Order as Clues to the Origin of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4–6 richard c. steiner
[email protected] Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033
)t%;#o;#$ax;t%ar:)a-l(a wtfw$nFk%; r)f#$;w% l)'b;+f tdFr:t;mi Mlf#$;b%i btak%f )t%f#o;#$ax;t%ar:)a ym'ybiw4:7 , p .tymirF)j Mg%fr:tum;w, tymirF)j bw,tk%f NwFt%;#$;n,Iha btfk;w, srFp%f K7leme )t%;#o;#$ax;t%ar:)al; Mle#$;w,ry:-l(a hdFxj hrFg,:)i w,btak%; )rFp;sf y#$am;#$iw: M('+;-l('b%; Mw,xr:8 .)mfn"k%; )k%fl;ma )y"lfp;r@ :+a )y"kft;sar:pa)jwA )y"nFyd%I NwOht;wFnFk%; r)f#$;w, )rFp;sf y#$am;#$iw: M('+;-l('b%; Mw,xr: NyIdA)9V .)y"mfl;(' ()whd) )y"hfd%E )y"kfn:#$aw,#$ )y"lfb;bf y"wFk%;r:)a )y"sfr:pf)j r)f#$;w, NyIrFm;#$f yd%I hyFr:qib%; w$m%hi bt'w$hw: )rFyq%iyAw: )b%frA rp@anAs;)f ylig;ha yd%I )y,Fm%a)u r)f#$;w10 , .tnE(ek;w, hrFhjnA-rba(j #$nF)V K7ydFb;(a )k%fl;ma )t%;#o;#$ax;t%ar:)a-l(a yhiw$l(j w,xla#$; yd%I )t%fr:g%A)i NgE#$erp : %a @ hnFd11 %: .tnE(ek;w, hrFhjnA-rba(j 4:7And
in the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam (together with) Mithredath, Tabeel and the rest of his colleagues wrote to Artaxerxes, king of Persia; the letter was written in Aramaic and translated into Aramaic:
This article is dedicated to the librarians of Yeshiva University, who have worked tirelessly to assist me in preparing it. They are truly worthy heirs of the ancient bibliophylakes discussed below. I am very grateful, as well, to Sara Japhet and Bezalel Porten for their many incisive comments on earlier versions of this article. They are not responsible for the mistakes that remain. Finally, I would like to thank Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Willy Clarysse, Barry L. Eichler, Menachem Jacobowitz, Janet H. Johnson, Aaron J. Koller, and S. Z. Leiman for their generous help.
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Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 4 (2006) 8Rehum the commissioner and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter about Jerusalem
to King Artaxerxes as follows: Rehum the commissioner and Shimshai the scribe and the rest of their colleagues, the Dinaites, the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Susanchites, the Dehavites, the Elamites,1 10and the other peoples whom the great and glorious Asenappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and the rest of Across-the-River—and now, 11this is a copy of the letter which they sent him: To King Artaxerxes (from) your servants, the men of Across-the-River. And now . . . 9Then
The first Aramaic section in Ezra (4:8–6:18), consisting of four letters (letters to and from Artaxerxes I together with letters to and from Darius I) plus narrative, presents several literary problems. One is the order: the Artaxerxes I correspondence is presented before the Darius I correspondence, even though Darius I is the earlier king. This “incorrect” (reverse chronological) order stands in striking contrast to the “correct” (chronological) order in 6:14: “by the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes.” What is the reason for this discrepancy? Another problem is the lack of coherence at the beginning of the section. From ancient times to the present day, exegetes have struggled to understand how the first four Aramaic verses, Ezra 4:8–11, relate to Ezra 4:7 and to each other. Kurt Galling called this “an old crux interpretum.”2 Loring W. Batten threw up his hands in despair: It would be difficult to find a more corrupt text than vv. 7–11. At first sight the case seems quite hopeless, for while there can be but a single letter, there are two sets of complainants, and there are three different introductions. The whole is so confused in MT. that we seem balked at every point.3
In this article, I shall argue that Ezra 4:7–11, with its “three different introductions,” preserves traces of four documentary strata—a quotation within a quotation within a quotation set within a Hebrew-Aramaic narrative framework. In other words, I hope to show that the appearance of multiple introductions is the telltale sign of a complex literary tell. Patient excavation of this tell (in reverse chronological order, of course!) will unearth two archives, one belonging to Nehemiah and the other belonging to Bishlam and his colleagues. Buried deep in these archives is a new solution to the aforementioned problems of Ezra 4:7–6:18, a solution that also makes good sense of two expressions labeled “senseless” by scholars: tymr) Mgrtmw tymr) bwtk Nwt#nh btkw in 4:7 and Nyd) in 4:9.
1 The
translation of 4:9b follows AV; see Appendix 1 below. Galling, “Kronzeugen des Artaxerxes? Eine Interpretation von Esra 4,9 f.,” ZAW 63
2 Kurt
(1951): 70. 3 Loring W. Batten, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1913), 166.
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I. Authenticity Before beginning our tale of two archives, it is necessary to say a word about the authenticity of the four Aramaic letters in Ezra 4–6, in view of the claim of some scholars that they are Hellenistic fabrications.4 A simmering debate over this issue came to a boil in 1896, when Eduard Meyer argued in Die Entstehung des Judentums that the Aramaic letters in Ezra are copies of official documents.5 Though sharply criticized by Julius Wellhausen, Charles C. Torrey, and others, Meyer lived to see the publication of a Babylonian cuneiform tablet from year 20 of Darius (502 B.C.E.) containing a reference to Tattannu pih…āt6 Ebir Nāri, clearly identical to txp yntt hrhn rb(, whose letter (Ezra 5:6–17) is from year 2 of Darius (520 B.C.E.).7 This tablet is far from the only subsequent discovery to support Meyer’s case. Ten years after his book appeared, Imperial Aramaic documents were discovered at Elephantine. Meyer hailed this discovery in a new book, asserting that the striking agreement in style and wording between the Elephantine documents and the Aramaic documents in Ezra made any further doubt about the authenticity of the latter impossible.8 Meyer could have added that the Elephantine papyri shed new light on some of the Aramaic phrases in Ezra 4–6 that he had discussed. Take, for example, the phrase hm# rcb##, “a man named Sheshbazzar,” in Tattenai’s letter (5:14). This phrase, whose literal meaning is “Sheshbazzar his name,” exhibits a distinctive idiomatic construction that “appears at the first mention of a proper name which is supposed to be unknown to the reader.”9 In other words, it has what we may call 4 See
also Appendix 2 below. For a similar debate concerning the Aramaic letter in Ezra 7, see Richard C. Steiner, “The Mbqr at Qumran, the Episkopos in the Athenian Empire, and the Meaning of lbqr< in Ezra 7:14: On the Relation of Ezra’s Mission to the Persian Legal Project,” JBL 120 (2001): 623–46; and Bezalel Porten, “Elephantine and the Bible,” in Semitic Papyrology in Context (ed. L. H. Schiffman; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 59–62. 5 Eduard Meyer, Die Entstehung des Judentums: Eine historische Untersuchung (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1896), 8–71; cf. Franz Rosenthal, Die aramaistische Forschung seit Th. Nöldeke’s Veröffentlichungen (Leiden: Brill, 1939), 63–71. 6 Better: pah…at. 7 The text was published already in 1907, but its significance was not pointed out until 1923, seven years before Meyer’s death. See Walther Schwenzner, “Gobryas,” Klio 18 (1923): 246; A. Ungnad, “Keilinschriftliche Beiträge zum Buch Esra und Ester,” ZAW 58 (1940): 240–41; A. T. Olmstead, “Tattenai, Governor of ‘Across the River,’” JNES 3 (1944): 46; Anson F. Rainey, yntt, in Encyclopedia Miqrait 8:962–64; Matthew W. Stolper, “The Governor of Babylon and Across-the-River in 486 B.C.,” JNES 48 (1989): 289, 292. 8 Eduard Meyer, Der Papyrusfund von Elephantine (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912), 4; cf. Porten, “Elephantine and the Bible,” 51. 9 E. Y. Kutscher, “New Aramaic Texts,” JAOS 74 (1954): 241, reprinted in idem, Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977), 45. The phrase “to the reader” deserves to be emphasized; the knowledge of the writer or speaker is irrelevant. One can use hm# after the name of one’s own
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a “de-definitizing” function, making proper names (which are inherently definite) indefinite or quasi-indefinite. Meyer compared hm# rcb## to Old Persian Vidarna nâma and Akkadian Umidarna šumšu, both appearing in Darius’s trilingual Behistun inscription. He conjectured that this construction was used in Imperial Aramaic as well and that it was therefore evidence for the antiquity and authenticity of the letter(s). This bold conjecture was confirmed through the publication of an Aramaic version of the Behistun inscription discovered at Elephantine. That text and others from Elephantine contained numerous examples of the hm# rcb## construction.10 However, that is not the end of the story. With time, it became clear to Aramaists that the construction had a short life span within Aramaic. In 1954, in discussing the possibility of a Persian origin for this construction, E. Y. Kutscher noted that “in Aramaic it is not known in the preceding periods . . . nor in the following ones.”11 In 1995, M. L. Folmer wrote that “this use of šmh is not known from other Aramaic dialects, be it earlier or later. . . .”12 (The last words of the sentence are “with the exception of the inscriptions of King Asoka”; however, the alleged exceptions are illusory, because they do not exhibit the same syntactic construction as hm# rcb##.)13 During the past ten years, child or father, and even after one’s own name; see M. L. Folmer, The Aramaic Language in the Achaemenid Period: A Study in Linguistic Variation (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 676–77 (child: (m#yhy yrb ,hm#), 678 (father: yb) ,hm# Nwmp), 679 (self: . . . hm# [hyr]mg rb hyndy Kydb(), and add Ah\iqar col. 2, line 18 (child: yrb ,hm# Ndn). For the view that indefiniteness in English implies unfamiliarity to the hearer rather than the speaker, see Christopher Lyons, Definiteness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 254. See also Jae-Il Yeom, A Presuppositional Analysis of Specific Indefinites (New York: Garland, 1998), 101: “When [the speaker] thinks that the audience does not know who the name refers to, he must use an indefinite. . . .” Kutscher’s use of the word “supposed” is also accurate; the use of the construction depends on what the writer/speaker believes about the addressee’s knowledge. Would the average reader in fifth-century Egypt have heard of Esarhaddon, who ruled Assyria for a decade more than two centuries earlier? In Ah\iqar col. 1, line 5, the word hm# did not originally appear after Esarhaddon’s name, but it was added later between the lines. (Ada Yardeni informs me that it was added by the scribe who wrote the rest of the text.) Is this correction a scribal emendation, indicating that Esarhaddon was no longer a household name in that time and place? 10 Eduard Sachau, Aramäische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer jüdischen Militär-Kolonie zu Elephantine (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1911), 31; 148 and 151 (Ah\iqar); 187 and 191 (Behistun). Batten (Ezra and Nehemiah, 140), unaware of these parallels, thought that the phrase was the product of dittography: “hm# hxp yd hm# can scarcely be right. . . . hm# may be an accidental anticipation of hm# . . . and its omission seems necessary.” 11 Kutscher, “New Aramaic Texts,” 241 = Hebrew and Aramaic Studies, 45. 12 Folmer, Aramaic Language, 683. See also Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions (ed. J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1157; Klaus Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984–94), 1:712. 13 Hans Bauer and Pontus Leander (Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramäischen [Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1927], 358) analyze hm# rcb## as a substantivized asyndetic relative clause, that is, as roughly equivalent to hm# rcb## yd rbg, “a man whose name was Sheshbazzar.” This fuller form has nearparallels in Zech 6:12; Dan 2:26; etc. Those parallels make it unlikely that hm# rcb## exhibits
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another example of the construction has turned up, in an Aramaic ostracon from Idumea. It too is from the Achaemenid period (first half of the fifth century B.C.E.).14 In short, it is still the case that the construction is unattested after the Achaemenid period.15 With more than a century of hindsight, we may say that Meyer’s argument from the phrase hm# rcb## has been confirmed beyond his wildest expectations. Even so, it is possible to take Meyer’s argument a step further. In Tattenai’s letter, hm# rcb## (5:14) is followed by Kd rcb##, “that Sheshbazzar” (5:16). Meyer pointed out that the anaphoric attributive use of Kd (“the aforementioned”) is unusually frequent in these letters, and he noted that this stylistic feature has a parallel in the Old Persian inscriptions.16 However, he did not point out the interesting relationship between hm# rcb## and Kd rcb##. Here we have “de-definitizing hm#” followed by a “re-definitizing Kd.” Even this detail is paralleled at Elephantine. For example, in TAD B3.9 Kraeling 8, a lad named Jedaniah b. Tah\wa is adopted by Uriah b. Mahseiah.17 In line 3, Jedaniah is introduced as )wxt rb ,hm# hyndy; subsequently, in lines 7 and 8, he is referred to as Kz hyndy. This parallel adds a new dimension to Meyer’s argument. Another phrase discussed by Meyer that subsequently turned up at Elephantine is M(+ l(b (Ezra 4:8–9). Meyer observed that this administrative term was sometimes transliterated by the Greek translators (e.g., 1 Esdr 2:12 Raoumo" kai; Beeltevemo", as if the Aramaic text had M(+l(bw Mwxr), indicating that it was no longer understood by them.18 Here again, a century of research makes it possible to go further. We now have evidence that this term was in use in the Achaemenid period, but no evidence that it was used later. It is attested in an Elephantine papyrus from 411 B.C.E. (TAD A6.2 Cowley 26 line 23) and (as bēl t\ēmu) in two
apposition, as more recent scholars believe; see Stanislav Segert, Altaramäische Grammatik (Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie, 1986), 413; Takamitsu Muraoka and Bezalel Porten, A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 252–53. Either way, it should be obvious that hm# rcb##, governed by the preposition -l, is a noun phrase—not a clause. However, if hm# ytwh) )rwt hnz means “this crag (or: mountain)—A:hwati: (is) its name” (with )rwt for )rw+), as Folmer (Aramaic Language, 684 n. 421) believes, then hm# ytwh) is not a noun phrase but a clause. Similarly, rmdt hmt hnz hm# probably means “that (place) there—Tadmor is its name.” Folmer has muddied the waters by defining the construction too loosely: “proper nouns . . . are sometimes followed by the word šmh” (Aramaic Language, 674). 14 Israel Eph>al and Joseph Naveh, Aramaic Ostraca of the Fourth Century BC from Idumaea (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996), 92 no. 201. 15 For a possible attestation before the Achaemenid period, in an unpublished tablet of the seventh century B.C.E., see É. Lipiński, “Araméen d’Empire,” in Le Langage dans l’Antiquité (ed. P. Swiggers and A. Wouters; Louvain: Peeters, 1990), 104. 16 Meyer, Entstehung, 29; cf. Porten, “Elephantine and the Bible,” 58–59. 17 Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986–99) (henceforth: TAD), B3.9 Kraeling 8. 18 Meyer, Entstehung, 33–34. 1 Esdras 2:13 has Raoumo" oJ ta; prospivptonta, and 2:19 has Raouvmw/ tw'/ gravfonti ta; prospivptonta kai; Beelteevmw/.
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Babylonian tablets, one from the time of Cyrus or Cambyses and the other from the time of Darius (486 B.C.E.).19 The absence of attestations after the fifth century can now be added to Meyer’s observation as evidence for the authenticity of Rehum’s letter. In the 1930s, two new defenses of the authenticity of the letters were presented by Hans Heinreich Schaeder and Roland de Vaux.20 After a thorough study of the Achaemenid Sitz im Leben of the term #rpm, “in translation,” Schaeder concluded that the occurrence of that term in Artaxerxes’ letter (4:18) dispels all doubt about the authenticity of that letter, thereby establishing the authenticity of the letter to which it replies (the letter of Rehum and Shimshai), as well.21 Some details of Schaeder’s treatment of #rpm have been challenged, but, in general, it has stood the test of time.22 De Vaux took up the arguments of the skeptics one by one, for example: “It is unlikely that the public treasury would have contributed to the restoration of the Temple (Ezr 6:4 and 8–9).” This is a claim that can be found in recent works as well: “Most suspect is the statement that the expenses of building are to come from imperial funds (6:8-10).”23 De Vaux responded by pointing to the temple restoration projects of Cyrus in Babylonia and Darius in Egypt.24 Darius’s patronage of Egyptian religion is even better known today: The Great King’s protection of Egyptian worship and its priesthood was . . . expressed in the building of a grandiose Temple to Amon-Ra in the Oasis of ElKhārga. Proof of Darius’ building activity in Egypt is given by the inscriptions in the caves at Wādī Hammāmāt; and blocks bearing his name have been found at El-Kāb in Upper Egypt and at Busiris in the Delta. A great number of stelae from the Serapeum can be dated to between the third and fourteenth year of Darius. A stela from Fayyūm is dedicated to Darius as the god Horus; and we know from the statue of Udjahorresne that Darius gave orders for the restoration of the “house of life” at Saïs.25 19 Stolper, “Governor,” 298–303; M. Heltzer, “A Recently Published Babylonian Tablet and the Province of Judah after 516 B.C.E.,” Transeuphratène 5 (1992): 57–61; Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 447. 20 Hans Heinreich Schaeder, Iranische Beiträge I (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1930); Roland de Vaux, “The Decrees of Cyrus and Darius on the Rebuilding of the Temple,” in The Bible and the Ancient Near East (trans. Damian McHugh; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 63–96; originally published in RB 46 (1937): 29–57. 21 Schaeder, Iranische Beiträge, 14. 22 See Jonas C. Greenfield and Joseph Naveh, “Hebrew and Aramaic in the Persian Period,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–), 1:116, and the literature cited there in n. 3. 23 Lester L. Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah (Routledge: London, 1998), 131–32. 24 De Vaux, Bible, 92–93. 25 E. Bresciani, “The Persian Occupation of Egypt,” in The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968–91), 2:508. See also I. Eph>al, “Syria-Palestine under Achaemenid Rule,” CAH 4:151.
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Another important defense of the letters was published in 1978–79 by Bezalel Porten.26 Porten showed that there are literally dozens of stylistic parallels between the Imperial Aramaic documents from Egypt and the Aramaic letters in Ezra. Some of these are so striking that had the papyri been discovered today they would surely have been branded forgeries! I shall mention only a few examples, drawn from letters in the archive of Jedaniah, head of the Jewish community at Elephantine. In TAD A4.7 Cowley 30 lines 28–29, we find the phrase N(dwh Nxl# hnz l(, “because of this we have sent (and) informed (you)”; it is virtually identical to the phrase )n(dwhw )nxl# hnd l( in the letter of Rehum and Shimshai (Ezra 4:14).27 In TAD A4.9 Cowley 32 lines 3–5, we have Nmdq Nm hwh hnb )tryb byb yz . . . )xbdm tyb yzwbnk Mdq, “the altar-house . . . which in Elephantine the fortress was standing [lit., built] formerly, before (the time of) Cambyses”; it closely resembles the phrase N)yg# Nyn# hnd tmdqm hnb )wh yd )tyb, “the house which was standing [lit., built] formerly, for many years” (or: “was standing many years ago”) in Tattenai’s letter (Ezra 5:11). Later in the same two letters, we have another pair of parallel phrases: hrt)b hynbml, “to rebuild it in its place” (TAD A4.9 line 8), and hrt) l( )nbty, “shall be rebuilt on its place” (Ezra 5:15).28 Finally, a general consideration. The Artaxerxes correspondence is highly unfavorable to the Jews. The letter of Rehum and Shimshai characterizes Jerusalem as a “rebellious and wicked city” (Ezra 4:12) which is “harmful to kings” and in which “sedition has been rife . . . from early times” (4:15). Artaxerxes replies that, from a search of the archives, “it has been found that this city has from earliest times risen against kings and that rebellion and sedition have been rife in it” (4:19). The claim that these letters are Jewish fabrications makes little sense. Why would Jews invent letters so prejudicial to their cause?
II. Archives If the Aramaic letters in Ezra are copies of official documents, it is reasonable to assume that they derive from government archives, and that is indeed what Meyer assumed.29 Today we know that there were royal and satrapal archives scattered throughout the Persian Empire.30 26 Bezalel Porten, “The Documents in the Book of Ezra and Ezra’s Mission” (in Hebrew), Shnaton 3 (1978–79): 174–96; see also idem, “Elephantine and the Bible,” 58–59. 27 Porten, “Documents,” 178. 28 Only this second parallel (or, rather, a similar one) is noted by Porten (“Documents,” 186). It is discussed by Baruch Halpern (“A Historiographic Commentary on Ezra 1-6: Achronological Narrative and Dual Chronology in Israelite Historiography,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters [ed. W. H. Propp et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 88). 29 Meyer, Entstehung, 26. So too A. van Selms, Ezra en Nehemia (Groningen: Wolters, 1935), 74. 30 Deniz Kaptan, The Daskyleion Bullae: Seal Images from the Western Achaemenid Empire (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2002), 17–23; Olof Pedersén, Archives and Libraries
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The book of Ezra itself, in the first Aramaic section, mentions chancery officials, archives, and archival records. Rehum’s title, M(+ l(b (Ezra 4:8–9), is a chancery term.31 The biblical author-historian’s introduction to Darius’s letter refers explicitly to a )yrps tyb, “house of documents,”32 at Babylon (Ezra 6:1) and hints at the existence of another archive at Ecbatana (6:2). In 2 Esdr 6:1, )yrps tyb is rendered by the term biblioqhvkh. The use of this term in Greco-Roman Egypt is discussed by Ernst Posner: A biblion, it should be remembered, signifies a roll of papyrus regardless of the content of the writing that appears on it; hence a bibliothêkê33 is a container for papyrus rolls and, in a wider sense, an institution or agency that preserves such rolls, whether of literary or business character. Thus a bibliothêkê may be a repository for books, that is, a library, or a repository for records. In our context it is the latter: a record office or archival agency.34
One type of biblioqhvkh has special relevance to our topic: A second bibliothēkē, the bibliothēkē dēmosia (“public registry office”), kept copies of all public documents, which were provided to it by the stratēgos and the royal scribe, the main officials of the nome. These were of many kinds: diaries of officials, official correspondence, census declarations and lists of taxpayers, tax returns, petitions, etc. Both officials and private persons could consult the archive and receive abstracts from it.35
2 Esdras 6:1 is not the only place in the Septuagint where the term biblioqhvkh appears. In the Greek version of Esth 2:23, we find it used of the archive where a
in the Ancient Near East 1500–300 B.C. (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 1998), 213–23, and passim; Briant, From Cyrus, 6, 66, 422–24, and passim. The entries for “archive, royal” and “archive, satrapal” in Briant’s index (p. 1180) contain dozens of references. See also André Lemaire, “Writing and Writing Materials,” ABD 6:1004–5. 31 See the references in n. 19 above. 32 Cf. Egyptian pr-md˜Ät, “house of book-rolls.” For differing views on whether the Egyptian term was used also of archives, libraries, or both, see Günter Burkard, “Bibliotheken im alten Ägypten,” Bibliothek 4 (1980): 85–87; Vilmos Wessetzky, “Bibliothek,” LÄ 1:783; and J. A. Black and W. J. Tait, “Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East,” CANE 4:2198. For similar terms in Sumerian and Akkadian, see Mogens Weitemeyer, Babylonske og assyriske arkiver og biblioteker (Copenhagen: Branner og Korch, 1955), 71; idem, “Archive and Library Technique in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Libri 6 (1956): 220; and M. A. Dandamayev, “The Neo-Babylonian Archives,” in Cuneiform Archives and Libraries (ed. K. R. Veenhof; Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1986), 276. 33 From this term, we get Mishnaic Hebrew rpsh qt%' (m. Šabb. 16:1, so vocalized in reliable manuscripts), “scroll container”—not to mention English discotheque! 34 Ernst Posner, Archives in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 141. 35 Willy Clarysse, “Tomoi Synkollēsimoi,” in Ancient Archives and Archival Traditions: Concepts of Record-Keeping in the Ancient World (ed. M. Brosius; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 347.
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memorandum concerning Mardochaios was stored. In the second Hanukkah letter at the beginning of 2 Maccabees (2:13), we find mention of a biblioqhvkh established by Nehemiah.36 There is certainly no reason to doubt that Nehemiah had an archive/library when he was governor of Judah; bullae from the archive of an earlier Persian governor of Judah named Elnathan have been published by N. Avigad.37 Nehemiah’s biblioqhvkh contained not only “the books about the kings and the prophets and the books/writings of David” (ta; peri; tw'n basilevwn bibliva kai; profhtw'n kai; ta; tou' Dauid) but also “letters of kings38 concerning votive offerings” (ejpistola;" basilevwn peri; ajnaqemavtwn).39 This last phrase is generally understood to be a reference to two royal letters, Darius’s letter to Tattenai and Artaxerxes’ letter to Ezra, both of which deal with votive offerings (Ezra 6:9 and 7:22).40 Clearly Meyer was not the first one to associate these letters with the archive of a Persian official in Jerusalem! As the source of his knowledge about Nehemiah’s biblioqhvkh, the author of the second Hanukkah letter41 cites “records and memoirs of the time of Nehemiah” (2 Macc 2:13), but he does not mention that they themselves were housed in the biblioqhvkh. This is a striking omission because at least some of those records and memoirs can be found today in Chronicles and, presumably, Ezra-Nehemiah.42 It makes the mention of “letters of kings concerning votive offerings” alongside of “the books about the kings and the prophets and the books/writings of David” all the more remarkable. One gets the impression that the letters were considered to have great legal and/or historical value and perhaps that they were (or were thought to have been) preserved for some time separate from the “memoirs of the time of Nehemiah.” We shall return to this point later.
36 See Jean Louis Ska, “‘Persian Imperial Authorization’: Some Question Marks,” in Persia and Torah (ed. J. W. Watts; SBLSymS 17; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 172–73. 37 Nahman Avigad, Bullae and Seals from a Post-Exilic Judean Archive (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976), 32–35. Avigad (pp. 6–7) assumes that Elnathan’s title, )wxp, is equivalent to hxp, “governor.” If )wxp refers to a lower official, as some have suggested, then the fact that Elnathan had an archive makes it even more likely that Nehemiah had one too. 38 Note indefinite “kings” (Persian) contrasting with “the kings” (Jewish) in the previous phrase. 39 For a sample of views on the meaning and historicity of the passage, see Sid Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1976), 28–29; Lemaire, “Writing,” 1005; Menahem Haran, “Archives, Libraries, and the Order of the Biblical Books,” JANES 22 (1993): 59; Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 87. 40 Jonathan A. Goldstein, II Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 41A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 156, 186–87. 41 The identity of the author is controversial. For a claim that it was Judas Maccabeus himself, see Thomas Fischer, “Maccabees, Books of; First and Second Maccabees,” ABD 4:444a. 42 The “records and memoirs of the time of Nehemiah” are said to contain an account of Solomon’s eight-day celebration “in honor of the dedication and completion of the Temple” (see 1 Chr 7:9) and of fire descending from heaven to consume Solomon’s sacrifice (see 1 Chr 7:1).
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III. Archival Searches and Search Reports Governments preserve documents in archives in order to be able to consult them at a later date. Thus, one of the main services provided by government archivists is reference service.43 They search the archives at the request of government officials, and they report their findings to those officials. Archival searches are well documented in fifth-century Athens: In addition to making copies, secretaries also consulted and conducted searches through their own records and those of their predecessors for a variety of reasons. . . . The frequency with which secretaries conducted such searches is difficult to gauge, but the attested cases need not be taken as isolated events; searching for, copying, and erasing uninscribed texts may have occupied much of a secretary’s time.44
Archival searches are known also from ancient Near Eastern texts. (1) In two instances mentioned in the Mari letters (eighteenth century B.C.E.), the king sends an emissary to retrieve specific baskets of tablets from a sealed storeroom.45 (2) In the Egyptian inscription of Mes (thirteenth century B.C.E.), one of the litigants describes an earlier lawsuit in which the judge was asked to bring registers from two archives: Then Nubnofret said to the Vizier: “Let there be brought to me the [two registers from the Treasury and likewise from the Department of the Granary(?). And the Vizier] said to her: “Very good is that which thou sayest.” Then they brought us(?) downstream to Per-Ramessu. And they entered into the Treasury of Pharaoh, and likewise into the Department of the Granary of Pharaoh, and they brought the two registers before the Vizier in the Great Qenbet.46
(3) In the Egyptian Report of Wenamun (eleventh century B.C.E.), Wenamun tells the prince of Byblos, “What your father did, what the father of your father did, you too will do it.”47 The prince of Byblos responds by having the “day-books of his ancestors” (cf. the “record-book[s] of your ancestors” in Ezra 4:15) brought and read aloud before Wenamun. (4) In a letter from the Seleucid king Antiochus I to his stratēgos, he orders him to make an inquiry that was “almost certainly conducted 43 Posner,
Archives, 84–85, 113, 141, 146, 176, 197. P. Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 80. 45 J. M. Sasson, “Some Comments on Archive Keeping at Mari,” Iraq 34 (1972): 55–67; Black and Tait, “Archives,” 2198. 46 Alan H. Gardiner, The Inscription of Mes: A Contribution to the Study of Egyptian Judicial Procedure (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905), 8–9. I have refrained from modernizing Gardiner’s transcriptions. 47 Miriam Lichtheim, “The Report of Wenamun,” COS 1:91; cf. ANET, 27; and Black and Tait, “Archives,” 2203. 44 James
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in the royal archives of Sardis (basilikai graphai . . .), comparable to the archives known in Achaemenid Babylonia. . . .”48 The archival search is a leitmotif of the Aramaic letters preserved in Ezra 4– 6. We find references to it in 4:15 (Kthb) yd )ynrkd rpsb rqby), 4:19 (wrqbw wxk#hw), 5:16 ()klm yd )yzng tybb rqbty), and 6:1 ()yrps tybb wrqbw)—one in each letter. In 4:15, officials in the time of Artaxerxes appear to be calling for a search of records going back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar.49 Similar archival searches were requested during the reign of Cambyses by a chief of temple slaves in Uruk in an attempt to prove the inadequacy of the temple administration’s current quota of supplies for his workers. In one cuneiform letter, he writes: “Consult the writing boards of Nebuchadnezzar, Neriglissar, and Nabonidus.”50 It appears that the Achaemenids viewed archival records as being of critical importance for good governance and consulted them on a regular basis (see Esth 6:1–2). Contemporary documents show that even minor decisions could require a review of past correspondence. A letter from Prince Arsames in 411 B.C.E. authorizing the repair of a boat at Elephantine (TAD A6.2 Cowley 26) begins with “detailed repetition of previous communication between all parties on the subject.”51 James M. Lindenberger writes: “The chancery scribes’ habit of giving an epitome of earlier correspondence allows us to see in this letter the operation of the Achaemenid bureaucracy at its most convoluted. Four levels of previous administrative action are summarized before getting down to the business at hand.”52 Pierre Briant’s description of the Achaemenid bureaucracy as a “paper-shuffling” system53 seems quite apt. In such a bureaucracy, informal oral reports were probably discouraged. Indeed, the distances involved often made oral reporting impossible. When a Persian king ordered a search of several archives in his far-flung empire, the only practical way of conveying the results was through a written report, delivered by the storied Persian postal system. This is especially true if he ordered the archivists to search for all records pertaining to a certain topic. The records that turned up would have been copied over onto a new roll and forwarded to him. 48 Briant,
From Cyrus, 414. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (WBC 16; Waco: Word Books, 1985), 63; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988), 114. 50 Grant Frame, “Nabonidus, Nabû-šarra-us\ur, and the Eanna Temple,” ZA 81 (1991): 64; Matthew W. Stolper, “‘No-one Has Exact Information Except for You’: Communication Between Babylon and Uruk in the First Achaemenid Reigns,” Achaemenid History 13 (2003): 277, 284–85. I am indebted to Paul-Alain Beaulieu for calling this passage to my attention and for providing the latter reference. 51 John David Whitehead, “Early Aramaic Epistolography: The Arsames Correspondence” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1974), 123. 52 James M. Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters (2nd ed.; SBLWAW 14; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 84. 53 Briant, From Cyrus, 8 and 424. 49 H.
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IV. Archival Headings In a well-run archive, records will have some sort of heading (or docket or endorsement) to make searches more efficient and to preserve information not found in the record itself. A heading is especially necessary for an archival record that is copied onto a new roll with other records. In Egypt, the copying of records onto rolls is attested already in the temple archive from Kahun (nineteenth century B.C.E.).54 For the Achaemenid period, we have a number of papyri from Elephantine that appear to be ledgers containing copies of individual records.55 The practice continued down to the Roman period, when “official correspondence was usually copied out on a new roll.”56 In the Bible, the Aramaic term )ynrkd rps, “book of records” (Ezra 4:15), and its Hebrew counterpart, twnrkzh rps (Esth 6:1),57 may indicate that each book or scroll contained many records.58 The scroll found at Ecbatana containing a hnwrkd from year 1 of Cyrus (Ezra 6:2–3) is generally believed to be just such a register roll.59 When a record is copied onto a new roll with other records, its heading becomes a subheading. In TAD C3.13 Cowley 61–62 lines 10–12, after a vacat, we find: ***] tn# Pp) xryb [***] hyrz( rb Mxnm [dyl] tbhy yz [***]x) yn)[m ]Nrkz [#]why[rd, “record of the [ve]ssels of Ah\[...] which she/I gave [into the hand of] Menahem son of Azariah [...] in the month of Epiph, year [x of Dar]iu[s].” TAD C3.28 Cowley 81 is an “account of sales, income, and inventory” arranged in columns. At the top of column 7, we read: yhb)l tntn[w] tbtk yz )rwb( Nb#x, 54 Wolfgang
Helck, “Archive,” LÄ 1:422–23.
55 See below. Cf. Alan Millard, “Aramaic Documents of the Assyrian and Achaemenid Periods,”
in Ancient Archives and Archival Traditions, ed. Brosius, 236: “It is easy to imagine a clerk collecting the ostraca in a basket at the end of a day or a week and transcribing the entries into a papyrus ledger, like those from Elephantine.” 56 Clarysse, “Tomoi,” 355. Less commonly, the original documents were pasted together to form a tomos synkollēsimos (ibid.). See Harold Idris Bell, “The Custody of Records in Roman Egypt,” Indian Archives 4 (1950): 119. For the Ptolemaic periods, see Clarysse, “Tomoi,” 356. 57 The full phrase is Mymyh yrbd twnrkzh rps, in which the old Hebrew term Mymyh yrbd stands in apposition to the new term twnrkzh, translated from )ynrkd. 58 Contrast Nwrkz rps (Mal 3:16), presumably referring to a document containing a single memorandum, such as TAD A4.9 Cowley 32, discussed below. However, Charles C. Torrey (Ezra Studies [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910], 188), followed by Bauer and Leander (Grammatik, 310) and Williamson (Ezra, 56), takes )ynrkd rps as a plural, that is, equivalent to yrps )ynrkd, “the books of records.” According to him, it is “virtually a compound word” and therefore takes the plural ending on the nomen rectum instead of the nomen regens. 59 See A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 140; Posner, Archives, 126; Jonas C. Greenfied, “Aspects of Archives in the Achaemenid Period,” in Cuneiform Archives and Libraries, ed. Veenhof, 290; Haran, “Archives,” 53 n. 7; Millard, “Aramaic Documents,” 238.
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“account of the grain which I wrote [and] gave to Ab(i)hi.” There is also a shorter type, without a classifying noun such as Nrkz, “record,” or Nb#x, “account.” Thus, at the top of column 8, we have hn)w Ntnwy dyb )yr+#, “documents in the possession of Jonathan and me,” instead of ***)yr+# Nrkz/Nb#x, “account/record of the documents. . . .” And in the Elephantine customs account (TAD C3.7 Ah\iqar Palimpsest), the subheadings have the form l( dyb(w (M)hnm ybg yz (Nrx)w) )r#(m/)tdnm (lk) )klm tyb, “(all) the tribute/tithe (et alia) which was collected from it/them and made over to the palace,” rather than ***)r#(m/)tdnm (lk) Nrkz/Nb#x, “account/ record of (all) the tribute/tithe. . . .” We shall shortly see evidence suggesting that, in headings lacking an explicit occurrence of a classifying noun, such a noun may have been understood. The form of the headings cited above is very familiar. Like modern headings, they consist solely of a noun phrase. The noun phrase contains some or all of the following components: (1) a noun specifying the document type (letter, memorandum, account); (2) a noun specifying the subject of the document; (3) a relative clause, syndetic or asyndetic, modifying one of the previous nouns.60 Occasionally, we find a slightly fuller type of heading. Instead of a mere noun phrase, it is a complete sentence in which the subject is a demonstrative pronoun (“this/these,” referring to the text that follows) and the predicate is a noun phrase like the headings described above. For example, in a collection account from Elephantine (TAD C3.15 Cowley 22), we have: )lyx thm# hnz 5 tn# Ptxnmpl 3-b ***Psk bhy yz )ydwhy. H. L. Ginsberg translates: “On the 3rd of Phamenoth, year 5. This is (sic!) the names of the Jewish garrison which (sic!) gave money. . . .”61 Ginsberg’s first “sic!” calls attention to the lack of agreement between singular hnz, “this,” and plural thm#, “names.” This lack of agreement would seem to be evidence that a noun is to be understood, e.g., Psk bhy yz )ydwhy )lyx thm# (Nrkz) hnz, “this is (a record of) the names of the Jewish garrison which gave money. . . .” Cowley’s translation is similar: “this is (a list of) the names of the Jewish garrison who gave money. . . .”62 We may also note that the formatting of this heading differs from that of the subheadings cited above; it stretches across the top of two columns of writing. Meyer argues that archival headings are preserved in Ezra. The clearest one is in Ezra 5:6: yd )yksrp) htwnkw ynzwb rt#w hrhn rb( txp yntt xl# yd )trg) Ng#rp )klm #wyrd l( hrhn rb(b, “copy of the letter that Tattenai, governor of Acrossthe-River, and Shethar-bozenai and his colleagues, the officials in Across-the-River, sent to King Darius.” In Meyer’s view, the presence of the Iranian loanword Ng#rp, “copy,” in this heading should be explained on the assumption that the latter is a same form is used in endorsements written on the back of contracts, e.g., yz qxrm rps ***hyndy btk, “document of withdrawal which Jedaniah wrote . . .” (TAD B2.10 Cowley 25), and ***hynn( btk yz wtn) rps, “document of wifehood which Ananiah wrote . . .” (TAD B3.8 Kraeling 60 The
15). 61 H. 62 A.
L. Ginsberg, “Aramaic Letters,” in ANET, 491. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), 71.
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chancery notation (Kanzleivermerk) borne by the letter already in the Jerusalem archive.63 He conjectures that the letter of Rehum and Shimshai originally bore a similar chancery notation, something like *** Mwxr xl# yd )nwt#n/)trg) Ng#rp* )klm ts#xtr) l(, but that its parts became detached and dislocated, leaving the passage in disarray.64 Good parallels for this type of archival heading have been found in Egypt. A Middle Kingdom tax assessor’s day-book has rubrics such as “copy of the document brought to him as a dispatch from the fortress of Elephantine” and “copy of the writing sent to [...].”65 A day-book of the King’s House of Sobekhotpe III contains a rubric that begins “copy of the document.”66 The inscription of Mes has a heading that begins with a date followed by “copy of the examination which . . . .”67 A Greek report from Tebtunis (115 C.E.) has four headings that begin with the words !Antivgrafon ejpistolh'", “copy of letter.”68 Also relevant here is the word hnwrkd, “memorandum,” at the end of Ezra 6:2.69 It is usually understood as the heading of the document that follows, copied from the royal archive at Ecbatana. So too at Elephantine, one papyrus of the Jedaniah archive (TAD A4.9 Cowley 32) begins with the heading yl wrm) hyldw yhwgb yz Nrkz, “memorandum of what Bagohi and Delaiah said to me.” We shall return to these documents below. Meyer’s archive theory has been almost completely ignored in recent scholarship. It is telling that, even though H. G. M. Williamson views the letter of Rehum and Shimshai as deriving from an “unedited collection of official documents,”70 he does not mention the possibility that Ezra 4:9–10 is based on an archival heading. Instead he writes: it is known from numerous contemporary examples that Aramaic letters could include subscripts, summaries of contents and addresses, all separate from the main text of the letter. It seems probable that our author may have used this material too in his compilation (e.g., in vv 9–10). . . .71 63 Meyer,
Entstehung, 22, 26. 26–28. 65 Donald B. Redford, Pharaonic King-lists, Annals and Day-books (Mississauga, ON: Benben, 1986), 104–6. 66 Ibid., 107. 67 See below. 68 See below. 69 For a discussion of the term, see Willy Schottroff, ‘Gedenken’ im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament: Die Wurzel zākar im semitischen Sprachkreis (WMANT 15; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1964), 300–302 and passim. 70 Williamson, Ezra, 59. 71 Ibid. The idea was proposed two years earlier in Bezalel Porten, “The Address Formulae in Aramaic Letters: A New Collation of Cowley 17,” RB 90 (1983): 400: “We thus wish to suggest that the apparent interpolation that is Ezra 4:9-10 is in fact based upon the expansive external address of the letter whereas 4:11b preserves the essence of the conventional terse internal address.” 64 Ibid.,
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The only recent article to mention Meyer’s archive theory is by Porten. Porten cites Meyer’s view that the headings of the letters in Ezra come from chancery notations, but he gives the idea short shrift, since the notations on the Elephantine papyri do not contain words like Ng#rp, “copy,” and Nwt#n, “letter.”72 Accordingly, Porten prefers to seek the origin of Ezra 4:9–10 in an external address.73 I submit that Porten’s view can and should be reconciled with Meyer’s. If 4:9– 10 originates in an external address, it is not because the biblical author copied it directly from the original letter (which he probably never saw), but because an archivist drew on it in preparing the archival heading for the copy in the archival register. In this matter, the Elephantine papyri are misleading, because they are original letters, and so naturally they do not have headings/notations containing the words for “copy” and “letter.” Such headings/notations are added when the letters are copied into official registers (day-books, letter-books, etc.), such as the ones cited above.
V. The Controversy Surrounding Ezra 4:7 Another question concerns 4:7 and its relationship to 4:8–16. Is 4:7 an introduction to what follows or does it speak of a separate letter? Is the Nwt#n of Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel (4:7) the same as the hrg) of Rehum and Shimshai (4:8) or different? Already in antiquity, there was no agreement on these questions. 1 Esdras (2:12) signals a one-letter interpretation by combining the names in Ezra 4:7 and 4:8 into a single list: Beslemo" kai; Miqradavth" kai; Tabellio" kai; Raoumo" kai; Beeltevemo" kai; Samsai'o" oJ grammateuv".74 The Peshitta, on the other hand, signals a two-letter interpretation by adding the conjunction w- at the beginning of Ezra 4:8. The same controversy exists in the Middle Ages. The commentaries attributed to R. Saadia Gaon (really R. Benjamin Anau) and to Rashi adopt a one-letter position, asserting that the letter of Rehum and Shimshai was written at the behest of and/or in the name of Mithredath-Tabeel.75 R. Isaiah of Trani, by contrast, adopts a two-letter position, commenting on )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr that “they too, for their part, wrote another letter, concerning Jerusalem.”76 72 Porten,
“Elephantine and the Bible,” 55. 56–57; see also the article cited in n. 71 above. 74 According to most scholars, this translation reflects not a different textual tradition but rather an attempt to solve the exegetical problem. 75 For the editions of the former commentary, see Menahem M. Kasher and Jacob B. Mandelbaum, Sarei Ha-Elef (Jerusalem: Beit Torah Shelemah, 1978), 1:154 (§§294 and 296). The latter commentary, in the Rabbinic Bible, has l)b+w tdrtm, but the waw cannot be correct, since this commentary, like other medieval commentaries, takes l)b+ tdrtm as the name of a single individual. 76 Isaiah b. Mali di Trani, Commentary on Prophets and Hagiographa (in Hebrew; ed. A. J. Wertheimer; Jerusalem: Ketab yad wasepher, 1965–78), 3:243. 73 Ibid.,
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In the nineteenth century, we find C. F. Keil still struggling with these two possibilities: This letter, too, of Bishlam and his companions seems to be omitted. There follows, indeed, in ver. 8, etc., a letter to King Artachshasta, of which a copy is given in vers. 11–16; but the names of the writers are different from those mentioned in ver. 7. The three names, Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel (ver. 7), cannot be identified with the two names Rehum and Shimshai (ver. 8). When we consider, however, that the writers named in ver. 8 were high officials of the Persian king, sending to the monarch a written accusation against the Jews in their own and their associates’ names, it requires but little stretch of the imagination to suppose that these personages were acting at the instance of the adversaries named in ver. 7, the Samaritans Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel. . . .77
Keil offers several arguments against the view that 4:7 is separate from 4:8: with regard to the letter of ver. 7, we should have not a notion of its purport in case it were not the same which is given in ver. 8, etc. Besides, the statement concerning the Aramæan composition of this letter would have been utterly purposeless if the Aramæan letter following in ver. 8 had been an entirely different one. The information concerning the language in which the letter was written has obviously no other motive than to introduce its transcription in the original Aramæan. This conjecture becomes a certainty through the fact that the Aramæan letter follows in ver. 8 without a copula of any kind. If any other had been intended, the w copulative would no more have been omitted here than in ver. 7. . . .78
These arguments against the two-letter theory have not received sufficient attention. Most proponents of that theory ignore them.79 Others respond by simply emending the text.80 It is therefore not superfluous to revisit Keil’s arguments. The problem in v. 7 becomes clearer when we compare it with v. 6: twklmbw Ml#wryw hdwhy yb#y l( hn+# wbtk wtwklm tlxtb #wrw#x), “and in the reign of 77 C.
F. Keil, The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (trans. S. Taylor; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1873), 63–64. 78 Ibid., 64. 79 E.g., Herbert Edward Ryle, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893), 54; Alfred Bertholet, Die Bücher Esra und Nehemia (Tübingen: Mohr, 1902), 13; P. Andrés Fernández, Comentario a los libros de Esdras y Nehemias (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 1950), 112; Jacob M. Myers, Ezra. Nehemiah: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 14; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 37; F. Charles Fensham, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 71; D. J. A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (NCB; London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1984), 77; Williamson, Ezra, 61; Blenkinsopp, Ezra, 111; and Joachim Becker, Esra/Nehemiah (NEchtB; Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1990), 30. 80 W. Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia (HAT 20; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1949), 34, 42; J. J. Koopmans, “Het eerste Aramese gedeelte in Ezra (4:7-6:19),” GTT 55 (1955): 153; Bernard Chapira, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the Period of the Return to Zion (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: KiryatSefer, 1955), 42.
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Ahasueras, at the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.” Here too the reference to a letter is very brief; even so, in this case there is enough information to convey the tenor of the letter. Verse 7, on the other hand, tells us nothing substantive about the letter to which it refers; it cannot possibly stand on its own. Some modern scholars argue that the biblical author was unable to say anything more about the letter because he did not have access to it. But if he could not even surmise its content, why did he bother to mention it? Why should this unknown letter be more noteworthy than hundreds of other unknown letters? In short, this interpretation creates a literary absurdity—a vacuous reference to an irrelevant document. No wonder that ancient and medieval exegetes (2 Esdras, Peshitta, “Rashi,” Benjamin Anau) turned the name Ml#b into a description of the content of the letter by taking it to mean “in peace”—even though that interpretation is linguistically anomalous in several respects and, in its simplest form, would seem to undermine the authors’ point about the hostility of the people of the land.81 Another literary absurdity created by this interpretation concerns the notice that the letter was written in Aramaic (Ezra 4:7b).82 If the author did not have access to the letter, how did he know what language it was written in?83 And why was the language significant? Why did the author mention it in 4:7 but not in 4:6? In other words, 4:7b is pointless unless it serves to introduce the next letter.84 It can hardly be a coincidence that the statement that the letter was in Aramaic is followed by a letter in Aramaic.
VI. Ezra 4:7: Introduction to an Archival Search Report from Nehemiah’s Time In my opinion, there is some truth in both the one-letter theory and the twoletter theory. The Nwt#n of 4:7 is neither identical to the hrg) of 4:8–16 nor completely distinct from it. There is a third possibility: the Nwt#n of 4:7 includes the letter of Rehum and Shimshai in 4:8-16, but it also includes the other three letters in chs. 4–6. 81 See
my article, forthcoming in JBL, on the origin of the name “Bishlam.” further below. 83 See already Ernst Bertheau, Die Bücher Esra, Nechemia und Ester (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1862), 7. 84 Scholars have rightly compared tymr) Mgrtmw tymr) bwtk Nwt#nh btkw (Ezra 4:7b) with tymr) Klml Myd#kh wrbdyw (Dan 2:4a). Both are literary devices designed to prepare the reader for the change of language. Some scholars put a period before tymr) in one or both of these passages, but, to my taste, this is an act of literary vandalism. In both places, it turns a smooth, elegant transition into an abrupt, awkward one, leaving a gaping hole before the period and an incongruous linguistic label after it. See further below. 82 See
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Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 4 (2006) The fourfold-Nwt#n theory is not new. Seventy-five years ago, Schaeder wrote: The fact that, contrary to what one would expect, the introduction to Tab<el’s letter—address and greeting formula—is not given, but instead there follows immediately a new document, the petition of the Samaritan officials, ought not lead to the view that the author has already moved on from Tab<el’s letter to another. The only admissible conclusion is rather that the petition of the two officials was included in Tab<el’s letter as an important component.85
Indeed, the same view is implicit in a nineteenth-century encyclopedia article by A. Klostermann.86 However, Klostermann and Schaeder combined it with a bold new theory, viz., that 4:8–6:18 is a response to the accusation of Rehum and Shimshai, an apology written by a Jew named Tabeel.87 The problems with the apology theory have been noted by many scholars and need not be rehearsed here. From our point of view, the only important point is that the fourfold-Nwt#n theory and the apology theory were treated as inseparable by scholars on both sides of the debate. Thus, when the apology theory was eventually discarded by scholars, the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. The fourfold-Nwt#n theory can and should be detached from the KlostermannSchaeder apology theory and joined instead to Meyer’s archive theory. The collection of Aramaic documents88 in chs. 4–6 constitutes not a partisan apology but a dispassionate report conveying the results of an archival search. The officials named in 4:7 were apparently the keepers of a major archive (or perhaps the keepers and their secretary) in Across-the-River or Babylon.89 They had been asked by Arta85 Schaeder,
Iranische Beiträge, 17. Klostermann, “Esra und Nehemia,” RE, 5:516–17. 87 Not Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel. According to them, l)b+ tdrtm Ml#b btk means “Tabeel wrote with the approval of Mithredath,” but this philologically problematic interpretation is quite unnecessary; see again my forthcoming article on the origin of the name “Bishlam.” 88 For the later connecting narrative, see below. 89 In Greco-Roman Egypt, district archives had two keepers (bibliofuvlake") and a secretary (grammateu;" bibliofulavkwn), who was the real administrator; see B. A. van Groningen, A FamilyArchive from Tebtunis (Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 6; Leiden: Brill, 1950), 106–7. For the bibliofuvlake", see also Briant, From Cyrus, 412; Posner, Archives, 134, 141, 147, 151, 154; and Erwin Seidl, Rechtsgeschichte Ägyptens als römischer Provinz (Sankt Augustin, Germany: H. Richarz, 1973), 73– 77. A more revealing title is given in Strabo’s Geography (2.1.6 §69). There we learn that Xenocles, the treasurer (gazofuvlax) of Alexander the Great made the latter’s description of India available to the Macedonian general Patrocles. It is generally accepted that Xenocles was the keeper of the royal archives in Babylon (PW, 1508, s.v. Xenokles; Posner, Archives, 128). The use of the term gazofuvlax for an archivist is explained by Ezra 5:17, 6:1, where we learn that at Babylon the royal archives were in the treasury ()yzng tyb = oi\ko" th'" gavzh" in 2 Esdras); cf. the treasury (gazofulavkion) of 1 Macc 14:48–49, where copies (ajntivgrafa) of a decree were deposited. Since gazofuvlax is just the Greek equivalent of rbzg (see 1 Esdr 2:8; 8:19 = Ezra 1:8; 7:21), it seems likely that the keeper of the Babylon archives who searched for Cyrus’s edict at the behest of Darius bore the title rbzg. It is possible that Bishlam had the same title, especially if he was in Babylon rather than Across-the-River. 86 A.
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xerxes to search their archive for records relating to the rebuilding of Jerusalem. I suggest that this was around the time when Nehemiah reopened the question of Jerusalem’s wall. The issue had been left hanging by Artaxerxes’ decree that the work on the wall be stopped—that is, suspended—“until I give the order.”90 Before issuing that decree, Artaxerxes had ordered a search of the archives (Ezra 4:19), and it seems reasonable to assume that a new search would be necessary before a new decree could be issued allowing the work to resume. In the course of their search, Bishlam and his colleagues found four relevant letters.91 They copied them onto a new roll, which they sent to the king.92 As noted above, each of the four letters contains a reference to the searching of archives (4:15; 4:19; 5:16; and 6:1), and so it is somewhat surprising that the collection of these letters has not previously been identified as an archival search report. One of the great virtues of our theory is that it (and only it) allows us to make sense of a very obscure clause: tymr) Mgrtmw tymr) bwtk Nwt#nh btkw. The problems are obvious: Nwt#nh btk seems to be a pleonasm, a genitive phrase composed of two near synonyms;93 tymr) Mgrtmw tymr) bwtk seems to be a tautology or an oxymoron. As a result, Meyer viewed the clause as “completely senseless” and corrupt, and he emended it to tymr) Mgrtmw tysrp bwtk Nwt#nhw.94
90 Cf. Blenkinsopp, Ezra, 115: “Unlike ‘the laws of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked’ (Dan. 6:8; cf. Esth. 1:19; 8:8), the decree allows for a future abrogation. . . .” 91 The earlier correspondence was, of course, less relevant insofar as it dealt with the rebuilding of the temple rather than the city wall. Nevertheless, even the rebuilding of the temple had strategic ramifications, for, in the words of Josephus, “the Temple lay as a fortress over the city” (War 5.5.8 §245). According to Olmstead (History, 139–40), Tattenai hinted at the danger by referring to “hewn stones” and “timbers . . . being set in the wall”: “This was an unusually strong construction; the temple mount could serve as a fortress in time of revolt. . . .” Thus, the decision of Cyrus and Darius to encourage the rebuilding of the temple was a valid precedent for Artaxerxes. Moreover, as Porten (“Documents,” 184, 195) has noted, both sets of correspondence deal with an important underlying issue: Why was Jerusalem—and its temple—destroyed in the first place (4:15 vs. 5:12)? In any event, the archivists undoubtedly preferred to err on the side of providing too much information rather than too little; judgments of relevance were best left to the king. 92 My first encounter with this type of document came when I was researching the history of papyrus Amherst 63 (the Aramaic text in Demotic script). One of the records in the archive of the Pierpont Morgan Library was a “copy of all correspondence found in Estate files, relating to the AMHERST PAPYRI” prepared by a secretary in 1922 at the behest of Belle da Costa Greene, the head of the Library. 93 Elsewhere in the Bible, this construction has a rhetorical function, expressing “poetic hyperbole”; see Yitzhak Avishur, Stylistic Studies of Word-Pairs in Biblical and Ancient Semitic Literatures (AOAT 210; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1984), 182. In our case, no rhetorical function is apparent. According to Meyer (Entstehung, 18), btk is an old gloss to the Persian word Nwt#n. Blenkinsopp (Ezra, 110), while agreeing with Meyer, confuses the issue by implying that btFk; can be a verb despite the vocalization with qames\: “MT reads, ‘and he wrote the letter written in Aramaic,’ which is impossible.” 94 Meyer, Entstehung, 18; idem, Papyrusfund, 18–19 n. 3.
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Meyer was unable to make sense of all this verbiage, because he assumed that 4:7 refers to a simple letter written in Aramaic. I suggest that the complexity of the verbiage is a reflection of the complexity of the document to which it refers. The Nwt#n, “letter,” of Bishlam and his colleagues contains a btk, “written document,” consisting of four letters. Of those four, the letter of Rehum and Shimshai was no doubt written (i.e., composed) in Aramaic from the outset, while the letters of Artaxerxes and Darius (and perhaps the letter of Tattenai as well) were translated into Aramaic from Old Persian. We can thus translate without doing any violence to the text: “The document (embedded) in the letter was (in part) written in Aramaic and (in part) translated into Aramaic.”95 It is no longer necessary to break up the clause or emend it or twist the meaning of its words. It is tempting to try to determine more precisely when Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel sent their report. Was it after Nehemiah spoke to the king (year 20) or before? And if the latter, was it after Nehemiah’s brother Hanani96 arrived with Jews from Jerusalem (Neh 1:2) or before? In this connection, we may mention Schaeder’s conjecture that Tabeel’s letter was delivered to Nehemiah by the Jews from Jerusalem before Nehemiah went in to see Artaxerxes.97 Whatever the precise sequence of events, it seems fair to say that the archival search report cleared the way for Nehemiah’s mission. The report made several things crystal clear: (1) the king had ordered a suspension of work on Jerusalem’s wall “until I give the order,” not a permanent cessation; (2) the sole reason for the suspension was an allegation that the Jews had been rebellious in the distant past and hence could not be trusted now; and (3) in the more recent past, the king’s ancestors had decided to trust the Jews to build a fortress-like98 temple, and yet the enemies of the Jews were unable to cite a single adverse consequence of that decision. In short, the report showed that the king’s former concerns had been baseless, and that it was safe to allow the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s wall to resume—especially if the work was supervised by a man like Nehemiah, whom the king knew and trusted.99 All of this raises further questions. What was Nehemiah’s role in the commis95 I found a similar heading on the Internet: “Manx hymns or songs for the use of temperance meetings, and several pieces of poetry suitable on other occasions. Partly composed originally in Manx and partly translated from the English language, by John Quirk, parish of Patrick.” 96 This name seems to have been very popular during the reign of Artaxerxes I. The Bible mentions three contemporaries of Ezra and Nehemiah named ynnx. There are twelve to thirteen individuals named H…a-(an-)na-ni-< in the Murašū archive from Nippur (Artaxerxes I–Darius II); see Michael David Coogan, West Semitic Personal Names in the Murašū Documents (HSM 7; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), 24–25; and Ran Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia in the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods in the Light of the Babylonian Sources (Tel-Aviv: Mifal Hashichpul, 1976), 11. 97 Schaeder, Iranische Beiträge, 19–20. 98 See n. 91 above. 99 It is telling that Artaxerxes did not stop the work again when Nehemiah’s enemies spread rumors that he was rebuilding the wall in order to rebel (Neh 6:6–7).
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sioning of the archival search? Did Nehemiah push for it, openly or behind the scenes, as part of a policy review? Did he send Hanani, his brother and right-hand man (cf. Neh 7:2), to get the report and/or a first-hand look at the situation on the ground? Did he bring a copy of the report with him to Jerusalem when he was sent there as governor? It is only to the last question that can we give an answer supported by evidence. As we have seen, the author of the second Hanukkah letter at the beginning of 2 Maccabees (2:13) makes the not unreasonable claim that Nehemiah had “letters of kings concerning votive offerings” in his biblioqhvkh.
VII. Reverse Chronological Ordering Scholars have long been puzzled by the internal arrangement of the first Aramaic section of Ezra, specifically the fact that the Darius correspondence comes after the Artaxerxes correspondence.100 It is clear that the Darius in question is Darius I,101 who preceded Artaxerxes I. If so, the documents are not in chronological order. Why not? According to Jacob Liver: One common explanation is that the writer did not understand his sources and did not know the chronology of the period whose history he was writing. . . . But even if we assume that . . . the author was not well versed in the history of the time, what reason did he have to change the order that he found in his sources?102
Porten answers this question by arguing that the biblical author arranged 4:8–7:26 thematically, proceeding from the least favorable (the letter of Rehum and Shimshai) to the most favorable (Ezra’s letter of appointment).103 However, he does not explain why the author decided to shift abruptly from chronological order to thematic order. Nor does he account for what is almost certainly a resumptive repetition in 4:24.104 The internal arrangement of Ezra 4–6 is a serious problem for the view that it is based on an Aramaic chronicle.105 It is not a problem for our proposal that Ezra 100 See, for example, the discussion in David A. Glatt, Chronological Displacement in Biblical and Related Literatures (SBLDS 139; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 125–31, and the references cited there. I am indebted to Barry L. Eichler for this reference. 101 See Jacob Liver, “On the Problem of the Order of the Persian Kings in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah” (in Hebrew), in Studies in Bible and Judean Desert Scrolls (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1971), 271; and the literature on Tattannu = Tattenai cited in n. 7 above. 102 Liver, “Problem,” 270. See also Hans H. Mallau, “The Redaction of Ezra 4–6: A Plea for a Theology of Scribes,” PRSt 15 (1988): 78: “it is . . . unlikely that the redactor would have changed the original chronological sequence of a collection of written documents.” 103 Porten, “Documents,” 194; idem, “Theme and Structure of Ezra 1–6: From Literature to History,” Transeuphratène 23 (2002): 36–37. 104 See below. 105 This is the view of Bertheau, Esra, 6–7 (“in chronologischer Ordnung”); Ryle, Ezra, 54; Chapira, Ezra, 42; and Clines, Ezra, 8.
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4–6 is based on an archival search report. Outside of chronicles and day-books, reverse chronological order is not as uncommon as one might think. Among the texts from Egypt dealing with archives, I have found several judicial reports containing documents arranged in that way. The inscription of Mes, inscribed on the walls of his tomb at Saqqara, is “the official verbatim report of a single lawsuit brought by Mes against a man named Khay.”106 This lawsuit, through which Mes won back his ancestral estates, took place in the time of Ramesses II (thirteenth century B.C.E.). Alan H. Gardiner believes that it was the fifth of a series of lawsuits stretching back to the reign of Horemhab (late fourteenth century B.C.E.).107 We have already seen that one section of the report contains a description of an archival search. The final section of the report, inscribed on the south wall of the tomb, consists of two documents, apparently submitted in evidence at the trial by Mes.108 According to Gardiner, the first of these documents is a “fragment of the procès verbal belonging to the third lawsuit,” while the second (which has a heading that parallels the heading in Ezra 4:9–11a)109 is a “report made by the commissioner Iniy to the Great Qenbet, relative to the second lawsuit.”110 Thus, the documents are presented in reverse chronological order. Three additional examples of reverse chronological order are found in a family archive from Greco-Roman Egypt (Tebtunis). One is a long Greek text from 115 C.E. labeled “copy of report with annexed documents” by its editor.111 This is a report ordered by a judge in a case about an archive and its keepers. As noted above, four of the appended documents have headings that begin with the words !Antivgrafon ejpistolh'", “copy of letter,” recalling )trg) Ng#rp in Ezra 5:6. Another has a heading that begins with the words !Antivgrafon uJpomnhmatismw'n, “copy of memorandum/record,” reminiscent of the heading )nwrkd in Ezra 6:2. The document is described by Willy Clarysse: How, then, was order kept in the archives of government offices in GraecoRoman Egypt? We get a vivid picture of state record-keeping because of a dispute which dragged on from AD 90 to 124 as a result of bad record-keeping in the Arsinoite nome. The situation is described as follows by the former keepers of the public archives (bibliofuvlake" th'" dhmosiva" biblioqhvkh"): “Of the acts some have been lost, being torn and worn by age, others have been partly damaged, and several have been eaten away at the top because the places are hot.” In AD 98 the prefect Junius Rufus ordered that the new keepers of the record office (biblioqhvkh) should accept the damaged rolls and have them pasted together at their predecessors’ expense. Finally, after a series of lawsuits, the cost of repairing the 106 Gardiner,
Inscription of Mes, 24. 32. 108 Ibid., 24. 109 See below. 110 Gardiner, Inscription of Mes, 31. 111 Groningen, Family-Archive, 46–61 text 15; cf. 97–106. 107 Ibid.,
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rolls was paid from the sequestrated property of the heirs of the record-keepers and their secretary.112
We may display the structure of the text as follows: 1. Report on the cost of repairing archival records. 115 C.E. “Here follow the copies of all the documents.” 2. Letter of Sulpicius Similis, prefect of Egypt. 108 C.E. “I have sent you a docketed petition.” 3. “And of the petition: To Servius Sulpicius Similis. . . .” [undated, but clearly earlier than 2 and later than 4]. “A copy of [a letter to Junius Rufus, prefect of Egypt] is subjoined. 4. “Copy of letter: To Junius Rufus . . .” 98 C.E. “We also subjoined for you a copy of a letter concerning a similar case.” 5. “Copy of a letter in a similar case.” 83 C.E. 6. “Copy of the letter written in answer to those above. Junius Rufus to . . .” 98 C.E. 7. “Copy of letter.” 103 C.E. 8. “Copy of record in the journal of Leonides . . .” 109 C.E. It will be noted that documents 1–5 appear in reverse chronological order. It is true that the order here is attributable to a structural feature that is not present in Ezra 4–6: each document is included in an appendix of the previous one.113 Even so, the text is quite important for us. Taken together with the inscription of Mes, it shows that reverse chronological order is at home in ancient reports containing multiple documents. The second example of reverse chronological order from the Tebtunis family archive is a petition to the nomarch containing three documents.114 The first document is dated 26-vii-182 C.E., the second 17-vii-182 C.E., and the third 26-xii-181 C.E. In this case, too, each document is included in an appendix of the previous one. The third example from the archive has two preserved documents, a “copy of petition” dated 10-xi-189 C.E. followed by a “copy of census-return” dated 188–189 C.E.115 In this example, the documents are independent of each other, as they are in Ezra 4–6. 112 Clarysse,
“Tomoi,” 344–45; cf. Bell, “Custody,” 122–23. other words, the ordering originates in a bureaucratic/legalistic habit: each writer felt the need to append a complete copy of an earlier letter, even if it itself had an appendix. Thus, the writer of 4 appended 5; then the writer of 3 appended 4-5; after that the writer of 2 appended 3-4-5, finally the writer of 1 appended 2-3-4-5. This is, therefore, an example of iterative literary embedding, for which see below. The structure of many e-mail messages today is similar, except that in them the appended letter is normally the one to which the writer is replying. 114 Groningen, Family-Archive, 145–49 text 43. 115 Ibid., 149–52 text 44. 113 In
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Reverse chronological order in an archival search report may reflect the order in which the search was carried out. One factor that may cause the archivist to search in reverse chronological order is accessibility. Old records are often less accessible than recent ones, either because they are at the bottom of a pile or because they have been moved to a remote storage facility for inactive files. If the search begins with the more accessible recent records, and the relevant records are copied onto a new scroll as they are found, the result will be reverse chronological order, as in the field notes from the excavation of a tell. Another factor that may cause the archivist to search in reverse chronological order is relevance. A search for documents relevant to the present naturally begins with recent records and works backwards. This is a commonsense principle familiar to the present-day heirs of the ancient archivists. A recent article by a reference librarian lists “Ten Skills Needed by Graduate Students Conducting Research in the Information Age,” including: “Work in Reverse Chronological Order, searching the newest information first.”116 The designers of the Harvard OnLine Library Information System (HOLLIS) evidently agree; in default mode, it displays the results of searches in reverse chronological order. It is impossible to know how common this order was in archival searches and search reports of the Persian period. I know of only one example from that period. According to Ezra 6:1–2, the search for Cyrus’s decree began in Babylon and concluded in Ecbatana, where Cyrus had stayed before his first official year.117 Clearly, this particular search proceeded in reverse chronological order. That order is not reflected in the report, since only one record was found. In our case, considerations of accessibility and relevance would have conspired to generate reverse chronological order. Certainly, Artaxerxes’ records would have been more accessible to Artaxerxes’ archivists than Darius’s records. They would also have been more relevant than Darius’s records. The archivists can hardly have been unaware of the fact that all of the events that led to the suspension had occurred during Artaxerxes’ reign, within the previous two decades.118 Indeed, they were probably instructed to look for Artaxerxes’ stop-work order plus any other documents that seemed relevant to them. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, in carrying out the new search, the archivists first looked for and found the Artaxerxes correspondence and that, after those letters were copied onto a leather or papyrus roll, the earlier correspondence involving Darius turned up and was copied onto the same roll. Even if they didn’t find the Artaxerxes correspondence first, they would still have had good reason to 116 Christy
A. Donaldson, “Information Literacy and the McKinsey Model: The McKinsey Strategic Problem-Solving Model Adapted to Teach Information Literacy to Graduate Business Students,” Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) 6, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 2. 117 Olmstead, History, 140. 118 For the view that the events occurred at the beginning of Artaxerxes’ reign, see Mordechai Zer-Kavod, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 1949), 47.
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put it first in their report. As we have noted, it was more relevant, inasmuch as it dealt with rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall rather than its temple. Either way, reverse chronological order is quite natural.
VIII. Multiple Introductions and Iterative Embedding It has often been noted that Ezra 4:9–11a does not continue from the point where v. 8 leaves off; these verses have the appearance of a second introduction that partially overlaps the first. D. J. A. Clines writes: “The letter is prefaced, rather awkwardly, by two introductions.”119 L. H. Brockington goes further: “there are virtually three introductions or prefaces to the letter.”120 A single introduction, conveying the same information, might have looked something like this:
)yktsrp)w )ynyd—Nwhtwnk r)#w )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr Nyd)* ylgh yd )ym) r)#w )yml( )whd )ykn#w# )ylbb ywkr) )ysrp) )ylpr+ wbtk—hrhn rb( r)#w Nyrm# yd hyrqb wmh btwhw )ryqyw )br rpns) wxl# yd )trg) Ng#rp hnd *)klm )t##xtr)l Ml#wry l( hdx hrg) *yhwl( It has not been noted that the redundant introductions of Rehum’s letter are paralleled at Elephantine, in a document of the Jedaniah archive mentioned above (TAD A4.9 Cowley 32). The document is a memorandum, believed to have been composed by the messenger who carried the letters of Jedaniah to Bagohi and Delaiah, governors of Judah and Samaria.121 It appears that Bagohi and Delaiah gave the messenger an oral reply, which he recorded in a memorandum. The document begins as follows:
wrm) hyldw yhwgb yz Nrkz1 rmml Nyrcmb Kl ywhy Ml Nrkz yl2 ****M#r) Mdq3 Porten translates: “Memorandum. What Bagavahya and Delaiah said to me. Memorandum. Saying, ‘Let it be for you in Egypt to say before Arsames. . . .’”122 The repetition of the word Nrkz, “memorandum,” shows that this is a double heading. Pierre 119 Clines,
Ezra, 78. H. Brockington, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (London: Nelson, 1969), 74. This sounds like the view of Batten quoted above, but, unlike Batten, Brockington begins counting with the introduction in v. 8! See also Blenkinsopp, Ezra, 112. 121 Pierre Grelot, Documents araméens d’Égypte (Paris: Cerf, 1972), 415. 122 Bezalel Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 148 = COS 3:130. 120 L.
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Grelot explains that the document “bears traces of alteration, notably the addition of a heading at the moment when the document was deposited in the archives.”123 In other words, the original heading written by the messenger in the field was simply “Memorandum”; subsequently, before depositing the document in the archive, he added a longer, more informative, heading: “Memorandum of what Bagohi and Delaiah said to me.”124 We see, then, that archival documents can have multiple headings, because archival headings are added to documents that may already have a heading. Now Ezra 4:7–11 is a much more complex case, since the archival record at its core has been incorporated into other documents. Nevertheless, I suggest that the same principle is at work there, together with a second, more general principle: multiple headings and introductions can be a by-product of iterative embedding. My contention is that the multiple introductions of Ezra 4:7–11 belong to documents embedded one within the other, that is, quotations within quotations. To clarify this point, let us first examine the literary structure of Gen 32:5: wcyw ht( d( rx)w ytrg Nbl M( bq(y Kdb( rm) hk w#(l ynd)l Nwrm)t hk rm)l Mt), “and he commanded them as follows, ‘Thus shall you say to my lord Esau, “Thus says your servant Jacob: ‘I have been staying with Laban, tarrying until now. . . .’”’” Here a single message has three introductions, as a by-product of iterative embedding.125 In this case, all of the embedded quotations end at the same point, as shown by the clustering of quotation marks at the end. We may display the levels of embedding as follows:
rm)l Mt) wcyw .I ynd)l Nwrm)t hk .II bq(y Kdb( rm) hk .III .ht( d( rx)w ytrg Nbl M( .IV 126w#(l
There are three verbs of speaking here (wcyw, Nwrm)t, and rm)), each introducing the speech that begins one level below. The verb wcyw on level I belongs to the narrator’s introduction; Nwrm)t on level II belongs to Jacob’s introduction; and rm) on level III belongs to the messengers’ introduction. Level IV is the message itself. A more instructive example of embedding is found in 2 Sam 11:25: dwd rm)yw whqzxw hsrhw ry(h l) Ktmxlm qzxh * * * b)wy l) rm)t hk K)lmh l). At first read123 Grelot,
Documents, 415. a fuller discussion of the literary history of this document, see Appendix 3 below. 125 We are discussing a literary phenomenon here, but it has a parallel in the syntactic constructions that generative grammarians classify as “left-branching,” for example, John’s friend’s uncle’s yacht. Here too an iterative process yields “multiple introductions.” In a generative literary theory, Gen 32:5 would be the output of a recursive rule like letter → introduction + letter. 126 Some translations and commentaries assign w#(l ynd)l to level III. This does not affect our point in any way. 124 For
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ing, one may be misled into translating: “David said to the messenger, ‘Thus shall you say to Joab: “. . . strengthen your attack against the city and destroy it and strengthen it.”’” In this reading, whqzxw, “and strengthen it,” seems either redundant (coming after Ktmxlm qzxh, “strengthen your attack”) or incoherent (coming after hsrh, “destroy it”)—not to mention ungrammatical (with its masculine suffixed pronoun referring to a feminine noun). The problems vanish once we become aware of the embedding:
K)lmh l) dwd rm)yw .I b)wy l) rm)t hk .II hsrhw ry(h l) Ktmxlm qzxh * * * .III .whqzxw .II As shown in the diagram, whqzxw belongs not to level III but to level II, where it continues b)wy l) rm)t hk and refers to the strengthening (i.e., encouraging)127 of Joab. In my view, the problems of Ezra 4:7–11—ostensible redundancy and lack of coherence—that have puzzled readers since ancient times have a similar origin. They are by-products of literary embedding—or, rather, of a failure to perceive this embedding. Once we activate our literary depth perception, four levels become visible:
l( wtwnk r)#w l)b+ tdrtm Ml#b btk )t##xtr) ymybw .I .tymr) Mgrtmw tymr) bwtk Nwt#nh btkw srp Klm )t##xtr) Ml#wry l( hdx hrg) wbtk )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr .II .)mnk )klm )t##xtr)l Nwhtwnk r)#w )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr Nyd) .III )ylbb ywkr) )ysrp) )ylpr+ )yktsrp)w )ynyd ylgh yd )ym) r)#w .)yml( ()whd) )yhd )ykn#w# r)#w Nyrm# yd hyrqb wmh btwhw )ryqyw )br rpns) . * * * hrhn rb( yhwl( wxl# yd )trg) Ng#rp hnd — yhwl( wxl# yd )trg) Ng#rp hnd .tn(kw .II rb( #n) Kydb( )klm )t##xtr) l( .IV .tn(kw hrhn Level I (v. 7) is the biblical author’s Hebrew introduction to the core of the Aramaic section that follows, viz., the archival search report sent by Bishlam, 127 Cf.
whqzxw in Deut 3:28.
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Mithredath, and Tabeel to Artaxerxes (without the added narrative). Level II (v. 8) is the introduction of Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel to the first document in their report, the letter of Rehum and Shimshai. Level III is the heading of the letter of Rehum and Shimshai in the archival register-roll. We shall argue below that that heading originally began with a date instead of Nyd). Moreover, it originally had the form of a casus pendens construction, encompassing vv. 9–11aα.128 However, Bishlam and his colleagues broke up that construction by inserting tn(kw, thereby detaching the words yhwl( wxl# yd )trg) Ng#rp hnd from the preceding noun phrase and, in effect, “bumping” them up to level II (as shown by the arrows in the diagram). Level IV is, of course, the letter itself, beginning with the address formula. To some extent, the literary complexity of our passage is a reflection of bureaucratic complexity, with the four levels corresponding to three layers of bureaucracy. Readers in the Achaemenid period would have had far less difficulty than modern scholars in perceiving the layered structure of Ezra 4:7–11, because they were accustomed to such structures. We can demonstrate this with two examples from that period. The first example is an Elamite letter from the royal archives at Persepolis: “Speak to Harrena, the chief of livestock: ‘Parnaka says: “King Darius has given me a command, saying: ‘Give Princess Irtashduna (Artystone) one hundred sheep from my house.’”’”129 As in Gen 32:5, the four quotation marks at the end of this translation correspond to four levels: I. Speak to Harrena, the chief of livestock: II. Parnaka says: III. King Darius has given me a command, saying: IV. Give Princess Irtashduna (Artystone) one hundred sheep from my house. Here too the four levels correspond to three layers of bureaucracy. 128 So Arnold B. Ehrlich, w+w#pk )rqm (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1899–1901), 2:408 lines 1–2. Keil’s view is similar: “The verb to NyId) A V is wanting; this follows in ver. 11, but as an anacoluthon, after an enumeration of the names in 9 and 10 with w,xlA#”$; (Ezra, 65). We may compare the casus pendens construction in 6:13: )klm #wyrd xl# yd lbql—Nwhtwnkw ynzwb rt# hrhn rb( txp yntt Nyd) wdb( )nrps) )mnk, “Then Tattenai, governor of Across-the-River, Shethar-bozenai and their colleagues—as King Darius wrote, so they did diligently.” If the original archival heading had the form of a casus pendens construction, tn(kw (v. 10) must have been added at a later stage. And if the original heading contained no referent for the pronoun of yhwl( (v. 11), that word must replace an original )klm )t##xtr) l(, as assumed in the diagram on p. 673 below. The second point is a minor detail which I have ignored in the diagram on p. 667 (with its accompanying discussion) in order to avoid unnecessary complications. 129 George G. Cameron, “Darius’ Daughter and the Persepolis Inscriptions,” JNES 1 (1942): 216; Briant, From Cyrus, 425–26, 446, 920, 939–40.
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The second example, Prince Arsames’s boat repair authorization,130 is more complex. John David Whitehead has argued that this order is part of a five-stage administrative process, with each stage involving three to four layers of bureaucracy.131 The structure of the first stage is somewhat controversial owing to a lacuna. Here is Porten’s translation: “From Arsames to Wah\premakhi. And now, ...[...] to us, saying ‘Mithradates the boatholder thus says: “Psamsinei[t ... and PN ... all (told) two, the boatholders of] the Carians, thus said: ‘The boat which we hold-inhereditary-lease—time has come its NEEDS to d[o].’”’”132 Here again, the four quotation marks at the end correspond to four levels: I. From Arsames to Wah\premakhi: And now, ...[...] to us, saying: II. Mithradates the boatholder thus says: III. Psamsinei[t ... and PN ... all (told) two, the boatholders of] the Carians, thus said: IV. The boat which we hold-in-hereditary-lease—time has come its NEEDS to d[o]. In level I, Arsames introduces the report of a subordinate whose name is lost;133 in level II, the subordinate introduces Mithradates’ report; in level III, Mithradates introduces the report of Psamsineit and another boatholder; in level IV, we finally get to the heart of the matter: the report of Psamsineit and his partner that their boat needs repair. These four levels correspond to four layers of bureaucracy in reporting the need for repair. The boatholders of the Carians (Psamsineit and partner) report the problem (the need for repair) to their superior (Mithradates, the chief boatholder), who informs his superior (name unknown), who reports to the satrap (Prince Arsames).134
IX. The Syntax of Dates and the Date-Substitute “Then” It has frequently been noted that the use of the adverb Nyd), “then,” at the beginning of 4:9 is highly problematic. Following Nyd) we expect a clause informing us what happened after Rehum and Shimshai wrote the letter mentioned in v. 8, but instead we find a long noun phrase extending from M(+ l(b Mwxr to rb( r)#w hrhn. The problem is not solved by taking that noun phrase as part of a casus pendens construction;135 Nyd) still seems out of place.136 130 See
also above. “Epistolography,” 124. 132 Porten, Elephantine Papyri in English, 115–16. 133 Whitehead (Epistolography, 130) believes that the name is Bel-<..., but see Porten, Elephantine Papyri in English, 116 nn. 3–4. 134 See Briant, From Cyrus, 449–50; and Whitehead, Epistolography, 124. 135 See at n. 128 above. 136 Contrast the Nyd) in 6:13. 131 Whitehead,
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As a result, the word Nyd) in this context has been labeled “senseless” (sinnlos) by many scholars, beginning with Meyer.137 Meyer conjectured that the verb btk had fallen out following Nyd).138 A few scholars have followed him in retaining Nyd). One scholar writes that Nyd) should not be changed because it is the lectio difficilior,139 and another believes that Nyd) differentiates the letter of 4:9–16 from the one of 4:8.140 However, these are distinctly minority views; most of the solutions that have been proposed for the problems of these verses involve emending Nyd), transferring it elsewhere, or simply deleting it. Williamson writes: The verse starts Nyd) “then,” after which we expect a verb. RV and RSV supply “wrote,” but this makes the passage into a doublet of v 8 for no apparent reason. Others tacitly omit the word (e.g., NEB, NIV), while Bertholet regards it as a confused doublet of )ynyd “judges,” and Rudolph emends it to Nwn) yd “they (the senders) were.” If it is right to regard this fuller list of names as originating from some part of the document separate from the main text, such as the address or summary . . . , then we do not expect Nyd) here or any amended form either. It may tentatively be suggested that, owing to the identical openings of the two verses, it came to be misplaced in the course of transmission from the start of v 8, where it fits naturally and where its loss has created a certain abruptness.141
At least one scholar bases his deletion of the word on the canonical Greek version (2 Esdras).142 However, the Greek does not omit Nyd), but rather takes it as an aphel of d-y-n in the perfect (i.e., NydI)j or Nyd")j instead of NyIdA)V),143 modified by )mnk: tavde e[krinen Raoum baaltam, “thus has judged Raoum (the) baaltam.”144 Apparently, the Greek translators, too, were expecting a verb in this verse! Our intuitive sense that the use of Nyd) in 4:9 is anomalous is confirmed by an examination of the other occurrences of Nyd) in Ezra and Daniel. All of them are part of a clause describing an event or state in the past or future. That is also the case in the Elephantine papyri; nevertheless, those papyri will provide an excellent parallel to the use of Nyd) in 4:9, once we have clarified the nature of that use. 137 Meyer, Entstehung, 27; Schaeder, Iranische Beiträge, 22; Wilhelm Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia (HAT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1949), 36; and Antonius H. J. Gunneweg, Esra (KAT 19/1; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1985), 84. 138 Meyer, Entstehung, 27 n. 1. 139 Galling, “Kronzeugen,” 70 n. 16. 140 Dieter Böhler, Die heilige Stadt in Esdras α und Esra-Nehemia: Zwei Konzeptionen der Wiederherstellung Israels (OBO 158; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 221, 225. 141 Williamson, Ezra, 54. Williamson’s solution was proposed earlier by Koopmans, “Het eerste Aramese gedeelte,” 153; and Chapira, Ezra, 42. 142 Frank Michaeli, Les livres des Chroniques, d’Esdras et de Néhémie (CAT 16; Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1967), 269 n. 5. 143 It is not impossible that such a form actually existed, alongside Nd%.F Some speakers of Aramaic may have reanalyzed the form NydIy:, a II-y qal imperfect whose perfect is Nd%F, as an aphel verb, whose perfect is NydI)j. There are many parallels in Hebrew. For example, the qal imperfect My#oiyF was reanalyzed as a hiphil, whose perfect is My#oih' (cf. Ezek 14:8 and Job 4:20). 144 See already Meyer, Entstehung, 27 n. 1.
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As is well known, Nyd) (< Old Aramaic yz)) is the Aramaic cognate of Hebrew z) (< archaic yz)).145 In 1934, James A. Montgomery argued that z) is “a widespread archival expression belonging to the cosmopolitan language of official scribes.”146 Tryggve N. D. Mettinger agreed that “archival material [in the Deuteronomistic Historical Work] is discernible not only through its special content but also through certain stylistic features like z) with the perfect. . . .”147 According to Hayim Tadmor and Mordechai Cogan, z) and )yhh t(b, “at that time,” are “formulae, which introduce quotations from earlier sources.”148 Montgomery added that z) is a “stylistic adverb [that] appears to replace some definite date or circumstance in the original record, as Ewald long ago suggested (= hoc anno). . . .”149 This view has been endorsed by Martin Noth and Menahem Haran.150 So too Tadmor and Cogan: “The author [of 2 Kgs 16:5–6] must have had at his disposal some archival material, i.e. original records from the royal chancellories of Israel and Judah, which he appropriated for his composition, but, for some reason, he preferred general formulae to the exact dates of his original sources.”151 Tadmor and Cogan, following Montgomery, note that “this phenomenon was common in the Assyrian and Babylonian historical literature.”152 As an example, they cite the phrase ina ūmīšūma, “at that time,” in the throne base inscription of Shalmaneser III, arguing that it introduces a quotation from a chronistic source: “At that time, Adad-idri, the Damascean, Irhulini from Hamath and 12 kings of the sea coast, trusted in their own strength and made war against me.”153 This is indeed similar to the use of z) in, say, hdklyw tg l( Mxlyw Mr) Klm l)zx hl(y z), “then King Hazael of Aram came up and attacked Gath and captured it” (2 Kgs 12:18), and hmxlml Ml#wry l)r#y Klm whylmr Nb xqpw Mr) Klm Nycr hl(y z), “then King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel came up to Jerusalem for battle” (2 Kgs 16:5). One could also point to the use of enūma, “then,” in Akkadian royal inscriptions down to the Neo-Babylonian period, e.g., enūma ekalla . . . ēpušma 145 Archaic yz) is vocalized yzA)' and yzA)i in the Babylonian reading tradition (I. Yeivin, The Hebrew Language Tradition as Reflected in the Babylonian Vocalization [in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1985], 903), bringing it even closer to NyIdA);V cf. also Arab.
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“then I built a palace” (Nebuchadnezzar).154 It appears that substitution of “then” for an original date was not uncommon when archival records were quoted in literary works. At first glance, this does not seem to help with our problem. In all of the above examples, “then” modifies the following clause—unlike Nyd) in 4:9. However, now that we know that Nyd) may be a substitute for a date,155 we can broaden our search for parallels. One close parallel to Ezra 4:9–11a is the heading of TAD C3.15 Cowley 22, the collection account from Elephantine discussed above: hnz .5 tn# Ptxnmpl 3-b * * * * Psk bhy yz )ydwhy )lyx thm#, “On the third of Phamenoth, year 5. This is (a record of) the names of the Jewish garrison which gave money. . . .” Here the date is a sentence fragment, like the dates on modern documents. Syntactically, it is a temporal adverbial, but it does not modify the following clause. If anything, it modifies an understood clause, such as hnz )nrkz bytk*, “this record was written.”156 Another close parallel to Ezra 4:9–11a is the heading of a court officer’s report, quoted in the inscription of Mes: “Year 59 under the Majesty of King Horemheb. Copy of the examination which the priest [of the litter], Iniy, who was a Qenbetofficer, [made of] the Hunpet of the overseer of vessels Neshi, [which is in] the Uahit of Neshi.”157 How do the headings of the collection account and the court officer’s report compare to Ezra 4:9–11a? In the biblical heading, we seem to have three main components: (1) a temporal adverbial: Nyd), “then”; (2) a noun phrase giving the names of the principal actors: `wgw Nwhtwnk r)#w )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr; (3) a sentence beginning “this is the . . .” which identifies the text that follows in relation to the principal actors: yhwl( wxl# yd )trg) Ng#rp hnd. Read together, (2) and (3) form a casus pendens construction, as we have already noted.158 Use of the casus pendens construction was a virtual necessity here owing to the unusual length and complexity of the subject of the relative clause modifying )trg).159 When we strip away the casus pendens construction, we are left with the following underlying sentence: 154 CAD
7:158–59, s.v. inūma.
155 In contracts from Elephantine, Nyd)
does not actually replace the date, but it does recapitulate it. In a dozen cases, Nyd) comes immediately after the opening date, acting as a kind of resumptive adverb, e.g., ynn( rm) Nyd) )klm #s#xtr) 4 tn# twxtl 12-b, “on the twelfth of Thoth, year 4 of King Artaxerxes, then said Anani . . .” (TAD B3.12 Kraeling 12, line 1). Such recapitulation is only one step away from total replacement. The redundancy of this construction was an invitation to later copyists to save time by deleting the date and leaving Nyd). (On abbreviation by copyists, see Appendix 2 below.) It is unclear whether the use of Nyd) in 4:9 is to be attributed to copyists or the biblical author. 156 See TAD A3.9 Kraeling 13, line 8: [)]z )trg) bytk Pp)l 5-b, “on the fifth of Epiph this letter was written.” 157 Gardiner, Inscription of Mes, 11. 158 See at n. 128 above. 159 In long register-rolls containing many documents, there is perhaps another reason for pre-
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)trg) Ng#rp hnd ,Nyd) Nwhtwnk r)#w )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr xl# yd )ylbb ywkr) )ysrp) )ylpr+ )yktsrp)w )ynyd )ym) r)#w )yml( )whd )ykn#w# hyrqb wmh btwhw )ryqyw )br rpns) ylgh yd hrhn rb( r)#w Nyrm# yd *)klm )t##xtr) l( Clearly, the underlying sentence is very clumsy and difficult to comprehend, and we can easily understand why it was transformed into a casus pendens construction. For our purposes, however, the underlying structure is superior because it is more easily compared with the headings of the collection account and the court officer’s report. Comparing the three headings, we find that “this is (a record of) the names of the Jewish garrison which . . .” and “copy of the examination which . . .” match “this is a copy of the letter which. . . .” Further, the dates “on the third of Phamenoth, year 5” and “year 59 under the Majesty of King Horemheb” correspond to “then”; the latter must have been substituted at some point for a date. If so, the use of Nyd) in 4:9 is no longer a problem. It does not modify the following clause, because it replaces a date that also did not modify the following clause.
X. The Origin of the Other Introductions and the Narrative Material Our analysis has focused mainly on the various introductions in Ezra 4:7–11, all of which precede the letter of Rehum and Shimshai. Before concluding, we must say a word about the origin of the other introductions and the narrative material. We begin with the introductions to the letters of Artaxerxes and Tattenai:
yd Nwhtwnk r)#w )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr l( )klm xl# )mgtp 4:17 .t(kw Ml# hrhn rb( r)#w Nyrm#b Nybty htwnkw ynzwb rt#w hrhn rb( txp yntt xl# yd )trg) Ng#rp 5:6–7 hndkw yhwl( wxl# )mgtp .)klm #wyrd l( hrhn rb(b yd )yksrp) .)lk )ml# )klm #wyrdl hwgb bytk ferring the casus pendens construction. In a collection of letters following Meyer’s format, every document would have a heading beginning xl# yd )trg) Ng#rp. An official searching for a specific letter would have to skip the first four words of every heading to find information helpful in locating the specific letter he was looking for. The casus pendens construction makes searches more efficient by extracting the subject of the relative clause and placing it at the beginning of the heading.
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Were these introductions written by Bishlam and his colleagues (level II in the diagram of 4:7–11 above) or do they go back to the original archival register-rolls (level III)? Much depends on how we account for the similarity between xl# )mgtp (4:17) and wxl# )mgtp (5:7). It is certainly possible to argue that this expression was used in archival headings in the time of Artaxerxes I as well as the time of Darius I, but it seems simpler to attribute it to a single group of writers. In other words, the phrase (w)xl# )mgtp, common to the two sets of correspondence, appears to originate with the officials who prepared the report for Artaxerxes. What of the Aramaic narrative material (4:23–5:5; 6:1–2, 13–18)? As noted by Williamson, much of that material probably comes from the biblical author.160 However, a different origin may be proposed for 4:23 (“Then, as soon as King Artaxerxes’ letter had been read to Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their colleagues, they hurried to Jerusalem, to the Jews, and stopped them by force”) and 6:13 (“Then Tattenai, governor of Across-the-River, Shethar-bozenai and their colleagues—as King Darius wrote, so they did diligently”). These verses have the appearance of brief “memoranda of action taken” stemming either from the archival register-rolls or from notations added to the royal letters themselves by the recipients. Before discussing 4:24, we need to give some background. The biblical author, as evidenced by 6:14 (“by the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes”),161 was fully aware of the correct order of the Persian kings and the reverse chronological ordering within his Aramaic source.162 He was consequently faced with an unusually difficult literary problem: how does one insert such a document into a chronologically ordered narrative? He hit upon a solution of extraordinary ingenuity. First, he created a digression about attempts to thwart Jewish plans for reconstruction. He began the digression in 4:4–5: “Thereupon, the people of the land weakened the resolve of the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors to thwart their plans all the days of King Cyrus of Persia and until the reign of King Darius of Persia.” In 4:6 he transformed the digression into a flashforward: “And in the reign of Xerxes, at the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the residents of Judah and Jerusalem.” In 4:7, he extended the flashforward into the reign of Artaxerxes by inserting a reference to the archival search report followed by the first half of the report itself, viz., the Artaxerxes correspondence.163 Then, in 4:24, he inserted a resumptive repetition to signal the end of the flashforward, thereby bringing us back to the events of Darius’s second year and the Darius correspondence.164 160 Williamson,
Ezra, 73–74. reference to Artaxerxes anticipates 7:20, 27. For the author’s use of the flashforward technique, see below. 162 Williamson, Ezra, 58; Glatt, Chronological Displacement, 125. 163 Williamson, Ezra, 57; Halpern, “Historiographic Commentary,” 108. 164 Keil, Ezra, 74–75; S. Talmon, “Ezra and Nehemiah (Books and Men),” IDBSup, 322; Williamson, Ezra, 57; Blenkinsopp, Ezra, 111, 115; Halpern, “Historiographic Commentary,” 110; Glatt, Chronological Displacement, 125. 161 The
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The author’s solution is a true tour de force, but it is impossible to appreciate without an understanding of the problem it was intended to solve. H. H. Rowley could see no logic in the placement of the Aramaic letters: “It is hard to see why the Chronicler should interrupt his account of the Temple to insert a long subsequent incident.”165 So too Lester L. Grabbe: “If these are archive sources used by the author of Ezra, why are they not inserted in the appropriate place in his Hebrew narrative?”166 In short, the technique employed by the biblical author proved too subtle for most subsequent readers,167 who made the natural assumption that the author believed he was giving the letters in chronological order. That assumption is implicit already in Josephus’s Antiquities (11.2.1 §21 and 11.2.2 §26, where Artaxerxes is transformed into Cambyses, Darius’s predecessor), and it is still far too common today.
XI. Conclusions Almost fifty years ago, Shemaryahu Talmon wrote: “At least some of these documents [in Ezra 4:8–6:12] must have come from the Persian state archives by ways which can no longer be ascertained.”168 I have tried to show that two of the most puzzling features of these documents—multiple introductions and reverse chronological order—are actually clues that can help us to trace the route by which they reached the biblical author-historian. The clues suggest that the source of the four Aramaic letters in Ezra 4–6 was a report sent to Artaxerxes I by Bishlam, Mithredath, and Tabeel giving the results of an archival search. Earlier in his reign, this king had decreed that the work on 165 H. H. Rowley, “Nehemiah’s Mission and Its Background,” BJRL 37 (1954–55): 541, reprinted in Rowley, Men of God: Studies in Old Testament History and Prophecy (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963), 222. Cf. Halpern, “Historiographic Commentary,” 108: “But why does the historian pursue relations with the neighbors down to Artaxerxes in 4:6–23, when the issue is obstruction in Darius’s time?” 166 Lester L. Grabbe, “Reconstructing History from the Book of Ezra,” in Second Temple Studies, vol. 1, Persian Period (ed. P. R. Davies; JSOTSup 117; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 101. See also Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah, 134: “But then comes the real jaw-dropper: the letter from Artaxerxes is used to stop the building of the temple in the time of Cyrus and to keep it halted until the reign of Darius! Artaxerxes was at least sixty years later. This is like reading that the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War was devastated by machine gun fire from aeroplanes. The author of the narrative clearly has not the faintest idea of the relationship of the Persian kings to one another, and has placed his documents to produce what in his opinion is the best argument without being aware that it makes nonsense of Persian history.” 167 This despite the fact that the use of resumptive repetition in the Bible has been recognized for at least a thousand years; see Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Presentation of Synchroneity and Simultaneity in Biblical Narrative,” ScrHier 27 (1978): 12–17; and Richard C. Steiner, “A Jewish Theory of Biblical Redaction from Byzantium: Its Rabbinic Roots, Its Diffusion and Its Encounter with the Muslim Doctrine of Falsification,” Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 2 (2003): 143–44. I am indebted to Barry L. Eichler for the former reference. 168 Talmon, “Ezra and Nehemiah,” 321.
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Jerusalem’s wall be suspended “until I give the order” (4:21). Before issuing that decree, he had ordered a search of the archives (4:19), and it appears that another search was necessary before a new decree could be issued allowing the work to resume under Nehemiah’s leadership. In carrying out the new search, Bishlam and his fellow archivists first looked for—and found—the Artaxerxes correspondence that had led to the suspension of the reconstruction project. After those letters were copied onto a scroll, the earlier, less-relevant, Darius correspondence turned up and was copied onto the same scroll, in reverse chronological order. The first of these extracts from the archival register-rolls already had a heading, but the archivists felt the need to add their own heading to it. Thus, the first extract wound up with two headings in the report sent to the king. The biblical author’s cryptic description of the archivists’ letter (Nwt#n) as containing a document (btk) “written in Aramaic and translated into Aramaic” turns out to be perfectly accurate: one of the four letters in the report was written (i.e., composed) in Aramaic from the outset, while at least two of the others were translated into Aramaic from Old Persian. The biblical author decided to retain the reverse chronological order of the report, even though it clashed with his chronologically ordered narrative. He attempted to resolve the clash by making the Artaxerxes correspondence part of a flashforward and inserting a resumptive repetition (plus narrative) before the Darius correspondence. However, his highly ingenious solution has proved to be too subtle for readers from Josephus to the present day. Although Nehemiah’s role in the commissioning of the archival search is unclear, it is likely that the report cleared the way for his mission. It seems that he brought a copy of the report with him to Jerusalem, for 2 Macc 2:13 tells us that he had a biblioqhvkh containing “letters of kings concerning votive offerings.” This is generally understood to be a reference to two royal letters, Darius’s letter to Tattenai and Artaxerxes’ letter to Ezra, both of which deal with votive offerings (Ezra 6:9 and 7:22). Avigad’s discovery of bullae from the archive of another governor of Judah makes it quite likely that Nehemiah, too, had an archive. Our theory, then, is that the Aramaic letters in Ezra 4–6 were part of an archival search report that originated in Bishlam’s archive and ended up in Nehemiah’s archive. The latter archive would also have contained Nehemiah’s official day-book, which probably formed the basis of his memoirs. Thus, our tale of two archives goes a long way toward explaining the origin of the book of EzraNehemiah.
APPENDIX 1 The Peoples Exiled by Ashurbanipal According to 2 Esdras and the Masoretic vocalization of )y"kft;sar:pa)jwA )y"nFyd=I )y"mfl;(' ()whd) )y"hfd=e )y"kfn:#$aw,#$ )y"lfb;bf y"wFk%;r:)a )y"sfr:pf)j )y"lfp;r@ :+a (Ezra 4:9), all of these
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terms are ethnonyms, presumably referring to the “peoples whom the great and glorious Asenappar169 deported and settled in the cities170 of Samaria and the rest of Across-the-River” (4:10). Asenappar has long been identified with Ashurbanipal, and many of the ethnonyms on the list can be identified with the inhabitants of countries and cities that rebelled against Ashurbanipal and were subdued by him. In this appendix, I wish to discuss only those ethnonyms; in AV they appear as Dinaites, Apharsites, Babylonians, Susanchites, Dehavites, and Elamites. Babylonians, Susanchites, Elamites We need not dwell on these names. It is well known that Elam assisted Babylonia in the great revolt against Ashurbanipal.171 In 648–645 Ashurbanipal reconquered Babylon after a long siege and decimated Elam and its capital, Susa.172 His annals say nothing about deportations to Samaria, but they do mention the deportation of Elamites from Kirbit to Egypt.173 Dinaites Most modern scholars take )ynyd to mean “judges” and emend the pointing accordingly. However, a better interpretation was suggested in 1882 by Friedrich Delitzsch: “Perhaps one may compare the city Dîn-šarru . . . near Susa.”174 This identification is virtually unknown today; even those few scholars who still take )ynyd as an ethnonym do not mention it.175 One reason for this unjustified neglect is that, even though Delitzsch correctly identified Asenappar with Ashurbanipal,176 he neglected to mention that he drew his information about Din-šarri from an inscription of that very king, the Rassam 169 For this transliteration of the name, note the ga>ya in rp%anAs;)\f found in the editions of Mordechai Breuer published by Mossad Harav Kook (Jerusalem, 1989) and Horev (Jerusalem, 1997?). Cf. Asennafar in 2 Esdras. 170 The word hyrq here is a determined mass noun (“collective”), like the Syriac word used to render it in the Peshitta and like #n); see the discussion in Torrey, Ezra Studies, 186, especially the reference to 2 Kgs 17:24, 26. 171 J. A. Brinkman, Prelude to Empire: Babylonian Society and Politics, 747–626 B.C. (Occasional Publications of the Babylonian Fund 7; Philadelphia: University Museum, 1984), 93–104. 172 Ibid., 99–103. 173 Bustenay Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1979), 28. 174 “Glossae Babylonicae Friderici Delitzschii” in S. Baer, Libri Danielis Ezrae et Nehemiae (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1882), X. 175 See Gunneweg, Esra, 82; see also p. 84; Dirk Schwiderski, Handbuch des nordwestsemitischen Briefformulars: Ein Beitrag zur Echtheitsfrage der aramäischen Briefe des Esrabuches (BZAW 295; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 348 n. 26: “The geographical association of the otherwise unattested word remains, however, problematic.” 176 “Glossae Babylonicae,” VII–IX.
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cylinder (V, 84–85).177 He also neglected to mention that captives from Din-šarri were brought to Ashurbanipal in the city of Ashur, an event considered important enough to be commemorated in a relief in his palace.178 It cannot be assumed that Ashur was their final destination, since “not all of the captives who were brought to the Assyrian capitals immediately after the campaign were settled there.”179 It is in no way surprising that the compound toponym Din-šarri would yield an Aramaic ethnonym like ynyd.180 Indeed, it is even possible that the toponym itself was abbreviated in Aramaic to )nyd*. The latter would be comparable to the toponym )rwd (in Dan 3:1 and elsewhere in Aramaic), which seems to be shortened from Dūr šarri, “fortress of the king,” or one of the many other Akkadian toponyms of the form Dūr RN/DN, “fortress of RN/DN.”181 Such an abbreviation of Din-šarri would have been favored by the fact that any x of the king is the x par excellence. Dehavites
f .E% Most modern scholars vocalize The form )whd is only a ketiv; the qere is )y"hd the ketiv as )w,hd%I following the rendering oi{ eijsin, “which are,” in Codex Vaticanus (2 Esdras). However, this interpretation is orthographically and grammatically problematic. There are no other examples in Biblical Aramaic of dī written without a yod,182 and singular )w,h does not agree with its alleged plural antecedent, )ykn#w#. It would be better to vocalize the ketiv as )'wFhjd%A (cf. y)'d%F#o;k%a) based on dauaioi in Codex Alexandrinus; this would point to an ethnonym of the form *Dahav-, *Dahev-, or the like. (AV’s Dehavites has e in the first syllable, but the segol in )y"hfd%E, 177 See Maximilian Streck, Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergange Niniveh’s (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 2:48–49. See also Eckhard Unger, “Din-Šarri,” RlA (1932–), 2:228; Walther Hinz and Heidemarie Koch, Elamisches Wörterbuch (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1987), 327; François Vallat, Les noms géographiques des sources suso-élamites (Repertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes 11; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1993), 57. In the Rassam cylinder, Din-šarri is mentioned immediately after Susa, while in the heading of Rehum’s letter, the Dinaites are separated from the Susanchites. The author of the heading had no reason to be aware of Elamite geography. 178 Streck, Assurbanipal, 2:318–21. 179 Oded, Mass Deportations, 28 n. 54. 180 Cf. Angeleno for a resident of Los Angeles and Arabic gentilics like baġawī < Baġšūr and
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like the one in MyrIhfhe, derives from *a.) Yonatan Miller, in a seminar paper written for me, suggests that the Dahavites are the people of Daeba. Daeba appears in the Rassam cylinder (V, 44) in a list of Elamite cities whose inhabitants Ashurbanipal deported initially to Assyria.183 This identification may well be correct, for the NeoAssyrian b-signs were sometimes used to represent native [w] and to render foreign (Iranian) [v].184 Apharsites The term )ysrp) is taken by some as referring to the Sipparites. Sippar was one of the four cities besieged by Ashurbanipal beginning in 650, along with Babylon, Borsippa, and Cutha.185 More commonly, the term is taken as referring to the Persians. The connection of the latter with Ashurbanipal has been clarified by A. Malamat: In two new passages from documents of Ashurbanipal, one published by Thompson and the other by Weidner, there is mention of Cyrus, King of Parsemash (whose inhabitants were Persians), and rulers from other lands; “Kings whose home is distant and who dwell on the far-off border of Elam.” The date of these documents and especially of the second passage, which tells that Cyrus I capitulated to the Assyrians after the final destruction of Elam, was justly fixed by the publishers in the year 640–639. In any case, the mention of the Persians in connection with the abortive revolt of Elam is an interesting fact per se. To the writer’s knowledge, its parallelism with the list of exiled nations in the time of Asenappar has yet to be pointed out.186
APPENDIX 2 Schwiderski’s Arguments against the Authenticity of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4–6 The debate over the Aramaic letters in Ezra 4–6 continues to the present day. The most recent major study to date them to the Hellenistic period is that of Dirk 183 Streck, Assurbanipal, 2:46–47. Dun-šarri, viewed by Streck as a variant of Din-šarri, also appears in this list. 184 See Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (Assyriological Studies 19; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 143 (cited by Miller); and Ran Zadok, The Ethnolinguistic Character of Northwestern Iran and Kurdistan in the Neo-Assyrian Period (Jaffa, Israel: Archaeological Center, 2002), 52–53 §4.12. For labial fricatives in Elamite, see Margaret Khačikjan, The Elamite Language (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 1998), 8. 185 Brinkman, Prelude, 97. 186 A. Malamat, “The Historical Background of the Assassination of Amon, King of Judah,” IEJ 3 (1953): 28–29
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Schwiderski.187 The evidence presented by Schwiderski is stylistic. In his view, the letters depart in various respects from the epistolographic conventions of the Achaemenid period. Most of these departures involve the omission of formulaic material at the beginning of the letter. In my view, such evidence cannot be used to date these letters. The epistolographic conventions of the Achaemenid period are known almost exclusively from original documents. The letters in Ezra, on the other hand, are “copies of copies of ancient sources”;188 they may well have been copied several times before they even reached the biblical author. Under such conditions, it would be rather surprising if all of the introductory formulae (names of sender and recipient, salutation, and the transition-marker tn(kw/N(kw/t(kw, “and now”) were preserved intact. In other words, it is precisely in the formulaic features studied by Schwiderski that comparison with original documents is least reliable. The letters in Ezra need to be compared with letters in Achaemenid archival registers or, better yet, with copies made from Achaemenid archival registers. Documents of this precise type have not yet been found, but we have something close. The Jedaniah archive from Elephantine contains several letters from Jedaniah, indicating that they are either drafts or copies. Either way they were kept in the archive for future reference. Two of them have all of the standard formulaic features, but one of them (TAD A4.10 Cowley 33) has no address on the outside, omits the name of the addressee in the praescriptio, and lacks a salutation. This shows that formulaic features could be omitted in archival copies. Further evidence may be adduced from Ras Shamra, where three Ugaritic letters addressed to the king of Egypt and one to the Hittite emperor have been found. According to Dennis Pardee, “the documents . . . are perforce drafts of some kind, whether for translation, for a final Ug. text, for a letter that was in fact never sent, or for an archival copy.”189 Concerning the letter to the Hittite emperor, Pardee writes: “This appears . . . to be—as expected—a draft in which the praescriptio was either omitted or abbreviated.”190 One of the three letters to the Egyptian king is a draft with two addresses, both abbreviated.191 Another “begins in medias res and is, therefore, either the second tablet of a longer letter or else the draft of a letter for which the opening formulae were considered unnecessary.”192 The claim that the Aramaic letters in Ezra 4–6 are abridged is far from new. Concerning Tattenai’s letter, Meyer writes: “Here, then, the letter’s introduction is abbreviated in the severest way possible. . . .”193 In discussing a more substantive 187 Schwiderski,
Handbuch, 375–82. “Aramaic Documents,” 237. 189 Dennis Pardee, “Outgoing Correspondence to Other Courts,” in COS 3:98 n. 77. 190 Ibid., 100 n. 92. 191 Ibid., 99 n. 85. 192 Ibid., 99 n. 87. 193 Meyer, Entstehung, 27. 188 Millard,
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omission in the letter, he suggests: “Perhaps it was viewed as irrelevant and omitted already by the copyist of the Jerusalem exemplar.”194 In the view of Aage Bentzen, “it can well be a copyist’s practice to omit all fixed formulas of epistolographic style.”195 More recent scholars have tended to attribute the omission to the biblical writer. According to P. S. Alexander, the way in which these letters are quoted often obscures their formal aspects: in some cases we cannot be sure if the letters are complete; in others it is impossible to tell what opening conventions they reflect, since part of their openings may have been absorbed into the narrative framework (see, e.g., Ezra iv. 17–22).196
Porten takes a similar approach: Incorporating official letters into a narrative, however, the editor-author of Ezra adapted them in at least one respect to the needs of storytelling—he abridged the opening address. In truth, he was more conservative in his treatment of the sources than his Hebrew forerunners. In every instance where the Hebrew narrator quoted a letter, he eliminated the address and salutation entirely. . . . Not even in the associated book of Nehemiah did the editor bother with the introductory formula when quoting from a letter (6:6f).197
So too Williamson: “A strict form-critical analysis of the two letters which have been at least partially transcribed (vv 8–16, 17–22) is hampered by the fact that we cannot now be sure to what extent the author may have introduced slight changes in order to work the letters into a more satisfactory narrative style.”198 De Vaux goes further, adducing such abbreviation as evidence of authenticity: Darius’ reply to the governor, Tattenai, would naturally have begun with the usual address and formulas, but they are omitted here, which is something a forger would have been careful not to do. The historian Josephus, who understood nothing of this section of Ezra and who confused the two edicts and inserted apocryphal letters of Cyrus and Darius, never failed to attach to his documents, whether true or invented, an introduction couched in appropriate terms.199
Despite the prevalence of such claims, Schwiderski fails to address them. Take, for example, the praescriptio of Rehum’s letter: #n) Kydb( )klm )t##xtr) l( hrhn rb(, “to King Artaxerxes, (from) your servants, the men of Across-the-River.” It has long been recognized that there are very close parallels in Official Aramaic letters, e.g., htwnkw hyndy Kydb( dwhy txp yhwgb N)rm l), “to our lord Bagohi gover194 Ibid.,
42. Bentzen, “De aramaiske Dokumenter i Ezra—nogle Bemærkninger,” Teologisk Tidsskrift for den Danske Folkekirke 4 (1923): 113. 196 P. S. Alexander, “Remarks on Aramaic Epistolography in the Persian Period,” JSS 23 (1978): 157. 197 Porten, “Address Formulae,” 396–97. 198 Williamson, Ezra, 59. 199 De Vaux, Bible, 93. 195 Aage
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nor of Judah, (from) your servants Jedaniah and his colleagues” (TAD A4.7 Cowley 30), and tnbkm Kdb( ymsp y)rm l(, “to my lord Psami, (from) your servant Makkibanit” (TAD A2.4 Bresciani-Kamil 3).200 Schwiderski concedes this similarity, as well as the similarity in the use of the transition-marker “and now.” However, for him this similarity is not decisive, even though he cites no counterparallels from the Hellenistic period. He chooses to focus instead on the absence of two elements: (1) the names of the senders and, more important, (2) the salutation. In his view, the absence of a salutation is conclusive proof that the letter is not genuine. Schwiderski makes no mention of Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s conclusion that “the initial greeting of an addressee was sometimes omitted in Aramaic letters, especially in those which had an official or quasi-official character.”201 Nor does he mention the possibility that, in the course of the transmission of the letter, a long-winded salutation was deleted because of its excessive length. Most important of all, in discussing the omission of the salutation in Rehum’s letter, he fails to compare the omission of the salutation in one of Jedaniah’s archival copies (TAD A4.10 Cowley 33).202 It is true that he views TAD A4.10 as a draft (Entwurf) rather than a copy,203 but, even if he is right, the fact remains that this was the only version of the letter preserved in the archive for future reference. Who is to say that the letter of Rehum and Shimshai in Ezra does not, likewise, go back to a draft deposited by them in the regional archive? Indeed, the Ugaritic evidence cited above suggests that it may have been standard practice in some places to keep drafts as archival copies. Similar considerations apply to Artaxerxes’ reply. According to Schwiderski, the letter begins: r)#w Nyrm#b Nybty yd Nwhtwnk r)#w )rps y#m#w M(+ l(b Mwxr l( t(kw Ml# hrhn rb(, “to Rehum the commissioner and Shimshai the scribe and the rest of their colleagues who dwell in Samaria and the rest of Across-the-River, (greetings of) welfare, and now.” Here again there are two unexpected features: the absence of the sender’s name and the use of the salutation Ml#. In Schwiderski’s view, the salutation Ml# is conclusive proof of lateness, for it “does not belong to the repertoire of Old and Imperial Aramaic letters, but rather is the standard salutation of epigraphic and literary texts of the Hellenistic-Roman period.”204 Schwiderski’s conclusion is difficult to reconcile with his recognition that oneword salutations appear already in the Achaemenid period on ostraca: ykml# in TAD D7.5 and Kml# in D7.6.205 It is true that these salutations, meaning “your wel200 Porten,
“Documents,” 177.
201 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Aramaic Epistolography,” in A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic
Essays (SBLMS 25; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979), 183–204, here 191; originally published as “Some Notes on Aramaic Epistolography,” JBL 93 (1974): 201–25, here 214. 202 See above. 203 Schwiderski, Handbuch, 113–14. 204 Ibid., 378. 205 Ibid., 123.
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fare,” appear to be abbreviations.206 After all, the scribe who wrote TAD D7.5 is believed to be the same scribe who wrote Nd( lkb l)#y t)bc hhy Kml#, “Your welfare may Yaho of hosts seek after at all times,” in other ostraca.207 However, it is equally true that King Artaxerxes’ Ml# appears to be an abbreviation of a salutation like the one often used by Prince Arsames (TAD A6.3 Driver 3, etc.): trr#w Ml# Kl tr#wh )yg#, “I send you abundant (greetings of) welfare and strength.”208 Since no Aramaic letters from the Persian kings have as yet been discovered, it is impossible to say whether the curt salutation of Artaxerxes’ reply reflects royal style or the abbreviation of a later copyist. The point is that if Achaemenid scribes could abbreviate a Ml#-salutation to a single word in composing letters on ostraca (owing to lack of space), they could do the same in composing royal letters (as a reflection of the addressee’s inferior status) or in copying letters (owing to lack of time or lack of interest).209 There is no need to posit the influence of the Greek salutation caivrein, as Schwiderski does. We conclude that Schwiderski’s methodology for dating the Aramaic letters in Ezra 4–6 is fatally flawed. The omission of formulaic material at the beginning of the letters is not a sign of lateness. As many scholars have seen, it is most naturally attributed to abridgment by scribes.
APPENDIX 3 The Literary History of TAD A4.9 Cowley 32 TAD A4.9 Cowley 32 is the product of a complex literary history. For one thing, the scribe who wrote it made several mistakes, which he subsequently corrected in various ways. Porten’s brief explanation of these corrections does not seem to fit his description of them.210 I would, therefore, like to offer a different explanation. The document begins as follows:
wrm) hyldw yhwgb yz Nrkz1 rmml Nyrcmb Kl ywhy Ml Nrkz yl2 206 Ibid. 207 See Paul-E. Dion, “La lettre araméenne passe-partout et ses sous-espèces,” RB 89 (1982): 535, and the references cited there. 208 See Porten, “Documents,” 177. 209 See Alexander, “Remarks,” 170: “the curt style of the ostraca may have sometimes been used in the papyri.” 210 Porten, Elephantine Papyri in English, 148 n. 4 (= COS 3:130 n. 7): “Proofing his text, the scribe realized that the words of Bagavahya and Delaiah were not being said directly to Arsames but were to be recited ‘before’ him by the Jewish leaders.” This would seem to imply a correction from “to Arsames about” to “before Arsames about.” However, what we actually find according to Porten (in his next footnote) is a correction from “to me about.”
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hl) yz )xbdm tyb l( M#r) Mdq3 hnb )tryb byb yz )ym#4 Porten translates: 1Memorandum.
What Bagohi and Delaiah said me. Memorandum: Saying, Let it be for you in Egypt to say (ERASURE: bef) 3(ERASURE: to me about) before Arsames about the Altar-house of the God of (ERASURE: Heav) 4Heaven which in Elephantine the fortress built211 2to
Grelot appears to follow Cowley in taking the first line of the text as a later addition.212 On the other hand, Porten argues, based on the spacing, that the second line is the later addition.213 I suggest the following reconstruction, according to which both views are correct. TAD A4.9 Cowley 32 is not the original memorandum written by the messenger in the field (and later expanded by him) but an archival copy. Before the expansion, the original memorandum began as follows:
M#r) Mdq rmml Nyrcmb Kl ywhy Ml Nrkz1.1 )tryb byb yz )ym# hl) yz )xbdm tyb l(1.2 The addition of an archival heading yielded:
yl wrm) hyldw yhwgb yz Nrkz2.1 M#r) Mdq rmml Nyrcmb Kl ywhy Ml Nrkz2.2 )tryb byb yz )ym# hl) yz )xbdm tyb l(2.3 From this expanded text, an archival copy was prepared with fewer words per line. The copyist initially made two mistakes: he omitted line 2.2 of the expanded original through an error of homoioarcton, and he inserted an extra l( in the following line through dittography:
wrm) hyldw yhwgb yz Nrkz3.1 hl) yz )xbdm tyb l( l( yl3.2 hnb )tryb byb yz )ym#3.3
211 Porten,
Elephantine Papyri in English, 148 = COS 3:130–31. Documents, 415. See above at n. 123. 213 Bezalel Porten, “The Archive of Jedaniah Son of Gemariah of Elephantine—The Structure and Style of the Letters” (in Hebrew), ErIsr 14 (1978): 173–74; and idem, “A New Look: Aramaic Papyri & Parchments,” BA 42 (1979): 99–100. 212 Grelot,
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Subsequently, the scribe attempted to insert the omitted line 2.2 (together with the last word of 2.1) between lines 3.1 and 3.2, but the last two words, M#r) Mdq, did not fit:
wrm) hyldw yhwgb yz Nrkz4.1 dq rmml Nyrcmb Kl ywhy Ml Nrkz yl4.2 hl) yz )xbdm tyb l( l( yl4.3 hnb )tryb byb yz )ym#4.4 He erased the letters dq at the end of line 4.2 and wrote Mdq in the right margin of line 4.3. He then erased the words l( yl and wrote M#r) over them. The result was our present text, as transcribed above.
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JBL 125, no. 4 (2006): 687–714
Proverbs 8:22–31: Three Perspectives on Its Composition alan lenzi [email protected] University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211
Proverbs 8:22–31 is one of those passages in the Hebrew Bible that has profoundly affected Western religious tradition. The development of Prov 8:22–31 in Sirach 24 with its identification of personified Wisdom as Torah, for example, and the role of Prov 8:22–31 in the early church’s christological controversies stand out as almost rites of passage in its ongoing postbiblical life.1 The purpose of this article is to step back in history to the nativity of this poem to offer (yet another) demonstration that it was from the beginning conceived in theological discourse, born into polemic, and nurtured in concerns of divine–human mediation. To achieve this goal I investigate and interpret several literary factors in the composition of Prov 8:22–31, presenting three complementary perspectives to show that the language of this poem weaves a rich tapestry of literary allusions and creates multivalent poetic possibilities in order to explain personified Wisdom’s origin and relationship to Yahweh, to polemicize against foreign gods of wisdom, and to pre-
This study was first presented as a paper at the Midwest and Central States regional meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature in the Spring of 2002. I wish particularly to thank Michael V. Fox for his interaction, encouragement, and generosity at the Midwest meeting. I also wish to thank Blane Conklin for his comments on a preconference draft of this paper and Robert Rezetko for his recent comments on the penultimate version. I am, of course, responsible for all errors that have persisted despite the assistance of these contemporary ummânū. 1 For this text and its role in the early christological controversies (probably starting with the prologue of John’s Gospel and the statements in Col 1:15–16), see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 173–210, esp. 191–97. An example of this pericope’s prominence in Jewish tradition is its use in the opening parashah of Genesis Rabbah (see J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary [in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965], 1–2; I owe this reference to David Bernat) and the appearance of part of Prov 8:22 in the frontispiece to the book of Proverbs in some editions of the twlwdg tw)rqm (e.g., New York: Pardes, 1951).
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sent personified Wisdom as Yahweh’s uniquely qualified, prophetlike messenger to humanity.
I. Framing the Discussion Because a particular stance on several critical introductory issues to the book of Proverbs and to chs. 1–9 in particular informs my interpretation of Prov 8:22– 31, I begin with a brief presentation of my working assumptions.
The Date of the Final Redaction of the Book of Proverbs Though the composition of the book of Proverbs has a long and complicated redactional history2 and assigning absolute dates to the various stages of this process is difficult if not impossible given the evidence at hand,3 I assume that the final redaction of the book took place in the early Second Temple period, that is, in Persian or early Hellenistic times.4
The Relative Chronological Position of Proverbs 1–9 in the Book It is widely held that chs. 1–9 constitute some of the latest material in the book of Proverbs.5 This is usually and rather precariously argued, as many commentators
2 Besides the discussions in the commentaries, see R. N. Whybray, The Composition of the Book of Proverbs (JSOTSup 168; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994) for a recent, if brief, discussion and theory of the book’s composition. For Proverbs 1–9 specifically, see now Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 18A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 322–30. For the Old Greek and its relation to the MT, see, e.g., William McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 33–47; Emanuel Tov, “Recensional Differences between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint of Proverbs,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins Presented to John Strugnell on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday (ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 43–56; and Johann Cook, The Septuagint of Proverbs: Jewish and/or Hellenistic Proverbs? Concerning the Hellenistic Colouring of LXX Proverbs (VTSup 69; Leiden: Brill, 1997). 3 See, e.g., Whybray, Composition, 157–65. 4 See Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 6, who dates the final redaction between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C.E. Others push the date into the Hellenistic period. So, e.g., Fox (Proverbs 1–9, 48–49), André Barucq (Le Livre de Proverbes [SB; Paris: Lecoffre, 1964], 17), and Arndt Meinhold (Die Sprüche, Teil 1, Sprüche Kapitel 1–15 [ZBK 16.1; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1991], 39–40). In any case, we know that the book was essentially in its final form by the beginning of the second century B.C.E., when Ben Sira used it for his work. See Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes (AB 39; New York: Doubleday, 1987), 43–45. 5 See Scott Harris, Proverbs 1–9: A Study in Inner-Biblical Interpretation (SBLDS 150; Atlanta:
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have noticed, on the basis of (1) the content/form/style of these chapters and their supposed reflection of a particular social setting, for example, exogamy, which is said to originate in a period later than chs. 10–29, the core of the book;6 (2) the fact that the chapters read like an introduction to chs. 10–29;7 and (3) the supposed late features of the language of these chapters.8 Another method for discovering relative dating of particular texts has emerged recently as scholars have begun making methodologically controlled and convincing cases that prove portions of Proverbs 1–9 allude to earlier biblical texts, for example, to Jeremiah in Proverbs 1.9 (I will argue for several other examples of allusion below.) The presence of this hermeneutical method in chs. 1–9 points to a religiocultural context later than that found in the core of the book, which, as far as I know, does not show signs of this activity.10 Therefore, this study will proceed under the assumption that chs. 1–9 were composed at a time later than the core of the book.
Scholars Press, 1995), 22 n. 64 for representative literature. See also more recently Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 48; and Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs (WBC 22; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), xix–xx. 6 It is generally recognized that the style, form, and tone of chs. 1–9 differ significantly from the remainder of the book (see, e.g., James L. Crenshaw’s textbook Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction [rev. and enl. ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998], 60). The difficulty lies in determining how to link that recognition securely to the issue of date. In terms of content and social setting, see, e.g., Clifford, Proverbs, 5–6; and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 48, for the literature relating to Proverbs’ supposed concern with exogamy (among other issues used to link content and date), which in fact misrepresents the issue of the “strange woman” (as they both recognize). 7 For the explicit idea that chs. 1–9 form an introduction that dates to a time later than the core of the book, see, e.g., recently Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 6, 48; and Murphy, Proverbs, xix–xx (noting the fact that such a view is likely, though impossible to prove). See Whybray, Composition, 159, for examples of the redactional propensity of adding material at the beginning and end of biblical books. 8 See Clifford, Proverbs, 4–5, for a brief review and critique of this method of dating with reference to Proverbs. Note also that the very idea of Late Biblical Hebrew has come under considerable methodological attack in recent studies of the history of the Hebrew language; see esp. Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. Ian Young; JSOTSup 369; London: T&T Clark International, 2003). 9 My words “controlled and convincing” are used deliberately to distance myself from the rather unconstrained display of intertextual findings by André Robert in his series of articles in Revue Biblique during 1934 and 1935 (“Les Attaches littéraires bibliques de Prov i–ix,” RB 43 [1934]: 42– 68, 172–204, 374–84; and 44 [1935]: 344–65, 502–25). See Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 287–88, for a critique of Robert’s method. The use of inner-biblical interpretation for confirming the relative dating of portions of Jeremiah is convincingly presented in Benjamin D. Sommer, “New Light on the Composition of Jeremiah,” CBQ 61 (1999): 646–66. 10 See Harris, Interpretation, throughout; and Michael Fishbane, “Torah and Tradition,” in Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament (ed. Douglas A. Knight; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 275– 300. See also Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 556; Childs notes that Prov 30:5–6, part of a late text in the book of Proverbs (just outside the book’s core), draws on 2 Sam 22:31 (// Ps 18:31) and Deut 4:2 for its formulation.
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The Compositional Character of Proverbs 1–9 and the Wisdom Poems There is a general consensus that chs. 1–9 are textually composite.11 Ten lectures or series of instructions form the core, which then accumulated various additions; most important among these are the poems spoken by or about personified wisdom, that is, Wisdom, in chs. 1, 8, and 9. Because these poems do not show signs of coming from one author, I agree with Fox that they are a series of reflections from several authors inserted into what is now chs. 1–9, probably at various times.12
The Tradition of Personified Wisdom Poems In light of this, one may speak of a developing tradition of personified Wisdom poems in the book of Proverbs. Scholars already recognize that such a tradition exists for personified Wisdom more broadly conceived. Witness, for example, Roland Murphy’s discussion of the development of Wisdom from an incipient notion in Job 28 to a mysterious personification in Proverbs to the identification with Torah in Ben Sira on to a highly developed and abstract universal principle in the Wisdom of Solomon.13 Given the existence of the tradition, it is reasonable to see in the book of Proverbs manifestations of various, even if smaller incremental developments of it. I would suggest, therefore, that the search for the single background that illuminates all the poems concerning the personification of wisdom in Proverbs is illfounded. There is no shortage of descriptions of the various proposals, so I shall not undertake one in this context.14 What I wish to underline is simply this: there is no reason to believe that each person who contributed a poem about or speech in the mouth of personified Wisdom had the same background image in mind. Once the 11 See, e.g., Whybray, Composition, 11–61; idem, Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 23–30; McKane, Proverbs, 7–10; Barucq, Le Livre, 17; and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 322–30. 12 Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 326–29. 13 See his chapter “Lady Wisdom” in The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1990); and his “The Personification of Wisdom,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honor of J. A. Emerton (ed. John Day, Robert P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 222–33. 14 See Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 331–45 for a recent extensive review of suggestions and the relevant literature, including many of the recent feminist interpretations. More briefly, see, e.g., John Day, “Foreign Semitic Influence of the Wisdom of Israel and Its Appropriation in the Book of Proverbs,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel, 68–70; and Clifford’s appraisal, especially emphasizing the Mesopotamian background (Proverbs, 23–28). Tikva Frymer-Kensky addresses the more general question of why Wisdom is presented as a woman (In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth [New York: Free Press, 1992], 179–83).
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personification became a literary reality, the shaping of that tradition probably would have or at least could have operated independently of the original background that first gave expression to the personification. Thus, there may be a discernible original background for or cause of the first creation of the personification, but this need not steer the interpretation of the figure in all relevant passages. As the tradition grew, in my view, so would have grown the complexity of Wisdom as a figure.15
Approaching Proverbs 8:22–31 The final working assumption is the recognition that Prov 8:22–31 is a separate poem from the rest of ch. 8.16 Content is a very significant factor in this decision: Wisdom describes herself in 8:22–31 in a manner completely unexpected or unanticipated both by what comes before in ch. 8 and by what follows.17 Indeed, ch. 8 reads quite smoothly without the poem in vv. 22–31.18 A look at the LXX supports the argument from content. Apparently an early reader also felt the rather abrupt transition to v. 22 and added a phrase to smooth it out.19 Therefore, although there 15 Fox comments: “Most likely, features of several models are fused in this complex literary figure” (Proverbs 1–9, 333); “Components of her portrayal must come from known types of person (real or mythological), but these need not coalesce into a single human type to create a unity” (p. 341); and more specifically about the growth of the figure and the integration of Wisdom poems with the earlier material in Proverbs 1–9, “Given the diverse authorship of at least some of the interludes” (which for Fox includes the Wisdom poems), “along with the resonances of the lectures in the interludes, we can picture the process of growth as a series of insertions by scribes learning from and building on the lectures rather than as a compilation and reorganization of unrelated texts by a redactor. The connections among the Wisdom interludes can be explained not from having a single author but from a process of organic growth, with each successive author reading the earlier text and elaborating on it” (pp. 328–29). 16 This is the view of many commentators. For example, Whybray, Proverbs, 120–21; McKane, Proverbs, 351–52; Berend Gemser, Sprüche Salomos (Tübingen: Mohr, 1937), 37; and Crawford H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (ICC; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 171, who calls the passage “(a) section distinct from, but allied to, the preceding.” 17 McKane goes so far as to say that the far-reaching primeval claims made for Wisdom in vv. 22–31 are logically out of order with the chapter’s earlier, earthly claims of her royal influence (v. 15). “Wisdom’s dwelling with God before the world and men were created would have lent perspective and sanction to her claim to dwell with shrewdness and to dominate politics and practical affairs in a this-worldly context” (Proverbs, 343). 18 See the similar comment by Whybray, Wisdom in Proverbs: The Concept of Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9 (London: SCM, 1965), 74, about all of his “group 2” texts. Important to this observation in Proverbs 8 is the renewed “teacher” language in 8:32–36 (see Bernhard Lang, Frau Weisheit: Deutung einer biblischen Gestalt [Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1975], 60–66). 19 The text reads: eja;n ajnaggeivlw uJmi'n ta; kaq! hJmevran ginovmena mnhmoneuvsw ta; ejx aiJw'no" ajriqmh'sai, “If I proclaim to you the things occurring daily, I will remember to account the things
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is some dissent,20 it is reasonable to treat Prov 8:22–31 as a distinct poem with a separate genesis from the rest the chapter. In light of these general considerations, I now turn to examine three literary factors in the composition of Prov 8:22–31 and to interpret how these have shaped the poem. The text of the poem reads as follows:
.z)fm' wylf(fp;mi MdEqe wOk@r:d@A ty#i$)r" ynI nFqf hwFhy: 22 .CrE)f-ym'd:qa@mi #$)rom' yti@k;s@anI MlfwO(m' 23 MyImf-21yk'b;nI twOnyF(;ma Ny)'b@; yt@il;lfwOx twOmhot@;-Ny)'b@; 24 .yt@il;lfwOx twO(bfg: yn" p;li w%(b@f+;hf MyrIhf MrE+eb@; 25 .lb't%'@ twOrp;(f #$)row: twOcw%xw: CrE)e h#f&(f )lo -d(a 26 .MwOht; yn"p%;-l(a gw%x wOqw%xb@; ynI)f M#f$ MyIma#f$ wOnykihjba@ 27 .MwOht@; twOny(i 22wOzz@:(ab;@ l(amf@mi Myqixf#$; wOcm@;)ab@; 28 wypi-w%rb;(ayA )lo MyImaw% wOq@xu My,Fla wOmw%#&b;@ 29 23Nm@f)f wOlc;)e hyEh;)ewF 30 .CrE)f yd"s;wOm 24wOqw%xb; .t('-lkfb@; wynfpfl; tqexe#&am; MwOy MwOy My(i#$u(j#a$ hyEh;)ewF .Mdf)f yn"b@;-t)e y(a#$u(j#$aw: wOcr:)a lb't'b@; tqexe#&am; 31 22 Yahweh acquired me at the beginning of his ways, the earliest of his acts, from of old. 23 From ancient times I was poured out, from the first, from the primeval times of the earth. 24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no springs, the sources of the waters. 25 Before the mountains were sunk, before the hills, I was brought forth, 26 When he had not yet made the earth and open fields or the world’s first clods of dirt.
from of old.” See Cook, Septuagint of Proverbs, 206–7. McKane calls this addition an “editorial bridge” that may indicate that “vv. 22f. were discontinuous with what preceded them” (Proverbs, 351). 20 See, e.g., Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 292; and Patrick W. Skehan, “Structures in Poems on Wisdom: Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24,” CBQ 41 (1979): 373. 21 I am following here the oft-cited emendation of yd% "b%Ak;n,I “abounding (?)” (see BDB, 457), to yk'b;nI, “sources of,” based on Job 28:11 and supported by Ugaritic nb/pk. See the commentaries; BHS, 1285 n. 24b; HALOT, 663 (s.v. *K7ben)" ; and, for the Ugaritic evidence, G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartín, eds., Diccionario de la Lengua Ugarítica (2 vols.; AuOrSup 7–8; Barcelona: Editorial AUSA, 2000), 316 (nb/pk, “fuente”). 22 I emend the MT’s zwOz(jb@A to wOzz@:(ab;@ with BHS, 1285 n. 28a and HALOT, 809. 23 The MT has NwOm)f. I defend my emendation below. 24 Perhaps read wOqz:@xab@;, “when he reinforced,” here instead of MT; see BHS, 1285 n. 29b and HALOT, 347.
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27 When he founded the heavens, there I was, when he inscribed the horizon upon the face of the depths, 28 When he fixed the clouds above, when he established the sources of the depths, 29 When he set the sea’s limit, so the waters would not transgress his order, when he carved out the foundations of the earth, 30 I was alongside him as a master. I was delight daily, playing before him all the time, 31 Playing in his habitable earth, and my delight is with humanity.
II. Composing Proverbs 8:22–31: A Clarification of the Personified Wisdom Tradition A Deficiency in the Tradition Chapter 8 (minus vv. 22–31) makes many claims about Wisdom, perhaps the greatest of them being in vv. 15–16, where Wisdom claims to be important to the rule of kings and princes. Chapter 1 similarly informs the reader about this figure. How could any postexilic reader have missed the prophetic tone of voice in her speech?25 Yet even considering both speeches of chs. 1 and 8, one does not learn of Wisdom’s origins nor of her relationship to Yahweh.26 Both of these notions, however, were already latent in the book of Proverbs in 3:19–20.
.hnFw%bt;b@i MyIma#$f Nn"wOk@ CrE)f-dsayF hmfk;xfb@; hwFhy: 19 .l+f-w%p(jr:yI Myqixf#$;w% w%(qfb;nI twOmwOht@; wOt@(;dAb@; 20 Yahweh founded the earth with wisdom, established the heavens with understanding. With his knowledge the depths burst open, and the clouds trickled dew.
25 I
am assuming, of course, that this poem was already in its present position in the book. 8:22–31 is part of Whybray’s “group 2” texts. These texts, he says, were composed and inserted into the book of Proverbs to identify the wisdom presented therein as explicitly belonging to Yahweh. Proverbs 8:22–31 is the only substantive passage among the group 2 texts that is part of the personified Wisdom tradition. See Whybray, Wisdom in Proverbs, 72–76. 26 Proverbs
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The Remedy: The Literary Connection of Proverbs 8:22–31 and 3:19–20 The conceptual proximity of Prov 8:22–31 to 3:1927 has been pointed out before, in fact, many times.28 The authors who offer substantive comment about this connection seem to explain it via tradition history. For example, Whybray writes: “Verses 22–31 are quite unparalleled unless—as is probable—they can be regarded as a kind of baroque development of the simple statement made in 3:19 that ‘the Lord by wisdom founded the earth.’”29 Lennart Boström’s comments are more explicit in this regard: In Proverbs 3:19–20 wisdom is referred to as a mere instrument of God without any hint regarding her independence. When wisdom is depicted separately from the Lord in Proverbs 8, there is no reason to assume that a thoroughly reworked concept of wisdom is being introduced. This argument becomes more convincing when we consider the structural similarities between these two passages. It seems reasonable to argue that similar concepts and thought patterns underlie the passages—that they belong to a common tradition.30
I have found evidence, however, that indicates a closer relationship, a relationship of literary dependence. In this section I will show that Prov 3:19–20 is one of the literary bases for the composition of 8:22–31. By looking to 3:19–20, Prov 8:22– 31, among other purposes, clarified the issue of Wisdom’s origins and specified her relationship to Yahweh.31 This suggestion of literary dependence builds on Fox’s 27 The
idea expressed in 3:19, that Yahweh founded the earth and established the heavens by his wisdom/understanding, is not unique in the Hebrew Bible. See especially Jer 10:12 and 51:15 (both of which have identical wording): Mym#$ h+n wtnwbtbw wtmkxb lbt Nykm wxkb Cr) h#&(, and Ps 104:24 for a similar idea. 28 See, e.g., Whybray, Proverbs, 121; and his The Book of Proverbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 50–51; Toy, Proverbs, 171 (mentioning both 3:19 and 20); and R. B. Y. Scott, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 18; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 70–71. Note in a broader context Luis J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World: A Philological and Literary Study (AnBib 39; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1970), 34. 29 Whybray, Proverbs, 121 (see also his comments on the relationship of these two passages in Wisdom in Proverbs, 75 and 98–99). 30 Lennart Böstrom, The God of the Sages: The Portrayal of God in the Book of Proverbs (ConBOT 29; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1990), 58. 31 The specification of Wisdom’s relationship to Yahweh in Prov 8:22–31 has attracted considerable discussion. See, e.g., Whybray, Proverbs, 27 and 121; McKane, Proverbs, 344, 352; and Gale Yee, “An Analysis of Prov 8:22–31 According to Style and Structure,” ZAW 94 (1982): 66. Note also Stadelmann: “Wisdom literature, on the other hand, widened the historical perspective by presenting ‘wisdom’ within a cosmic background. It was she who would know about the secrets of creation, since she was present at the construction of the world, she herself being anterior to it, and having stood at the side of Yahweh during his creative work. It is not surprising therefore that ‘wisdom’ claims to satisfy the intellectual need in man in his endeavor to apprehend the revealed truth which is unattainable by natural knowledge” (Hebrew Conception of the World, 36).
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idea that “(t)he connections among the Wisdom interludes,” which I am calling Wisdom poems, “can be explained not from having a single author but from a process of organic growth, with each successive author reading the earlier text and elaborating on it” (my emphasis).32 One important point for establishing literary dependence is the dependent text’s use of the same or similar vocabulary as found in the source text.33 Proverbs 8:22–31 and 3:19–21 share the following items: hwhy, Cr), Mym#$, twmwht, Myqx#$, and both use the verb Nwk. A fainter similarity may be seen in the use of Cr)-dsy in 3:19 and Cr) ydswm in 8:29. In addition, there are sound plays between w%(qfb;nI in 3:20 and yk'b;nI in 8:24 and between Myqixf#$; in 3:20 and tqexe#a&m; in 8:30 and 31. Many of these items, of course, are quite general. And because of a conceptual similarity between the two texts—that is, both texts deal with creation—these items alone cannot prove literary dependence.34 The following evidence, however, combined with the similar vocabulary noted above, does establish a close literary dependence between the two texts. I present these factors in the order of their importance, working from the lesser to the greater. First, hwhy is the first word in each text. Second, both texts use the verb Nwk to describe the activity of creating the heavens. This use of the verb is unique to these two contexts in the Hebrew Bible. Third, and most important, Prov 8:24 uses twny(m and twmwht in a poetic parallelism that is unprecedented in the Hebrew Bible.35 In order to explain this unique parallelism, I suggest that the author of 8:22–31 was in fact looking at 3:19–20 in its present literary context. Proverbs 3:19–20 comprises four cola, two to each verse. The word twmwht occurs as the middle term of the third colon (i.e., the first colon of v. 20). In the first colon of the immediately following verse (3:21) one finds the word Kyny(m.
.l+f-w%p(jr:yI Myqixf#$;w% w%(qfb;nI twmwht wOt@(;dAb@; 20 .hmf@zIm;w% hy,F#$it@u rcon: Kyny(m w%zluyF-l)a ynI b@; 21 With his knowledge the depths burst open, and the clouds trickled dew. My son, they shall not escape from your eyes, guard sound wisdom and discretion. 32 Fox,
Proverbs 1–9, 328–29. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 285, for an explicit statement on the importance of “lexical linkages” in establishing literary dependence. Similar attention to lexical linkage may be seen in the work of Benjamin D. Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); and Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 34 For this caution, see Sommer, Prophet Reads Scripture, 32. 35 Outside of Prov 8:24, twny(m and twmwht occur in proximity to each other only in Gen 7:11 and 8:2, where they form a construct chain, Mwht tny(m (“springs of the deep”)—but note the singular form of Mwht. 33 See
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For an author using the context as source material for a composition, Kyny(m, by way of its first four consonants,36 could easily have suggested the poetic parallelism of twny(m and twmwht.37 Given this explanation of the otherwise unprecedented poetic parallelism, the peculiar use of Nwk for the creation of the heavens, the same first word of each text, and the general similarities in vocabulary, there is reasonable evidence to see a literary dependence between 3:19–20 and 8:22–31, with the latter text dependent on the former. This dependence, as I will show now, resulted not simply in the inspiration for a new poem but in the explication of a new idea.
Proverbs 8:22–31 as Interpretation To understand this new idea, we must understand the several ways our poem utilized its source and accommodated the material to the new context of ch. 8. The difference of voice in the two texts is an obvious accommodation of the source text to its new context. The change of the third person description in 3:19– 20 to the first person report in 8:22–31 can be explained by the fact that the earlier material in ch. 8, written in the first person, dictated the voice that had to be used in the new addition (8:22–31). The antecedents of the first person references throughout 8:22–31 are found in 8:1. Interestingly, these antecedents correspond to the names for wisdom in 3:19 exactly, hnwbt and hmkx. In both 8:22–31 and 3:19–20 Yahweh is the agent of creation. Indeed, Yahweh is the focus (at least at first in 8:22–31), marked out by the fact that his name appears as the first word in each text. Because of its interest in the origins of Wisdom, 8:22 immediately moves on to elaborate on the second word in 3:19, hmkxb. In 3:19 this word denotes the instrument of God’s creative activity, whereas in 8:22 it identifies the object of God’s activity: Yahweh acquired me, that is, Wisdom.38 This statement probably reflects a logical step back behind the statement in 3:19. Proverbs 8:21, in essence, speculates, “if God used wisdom in the creation process as is asserted in 3:19, then there must have been a time when God acquired wisdom.”39 Thus, the 36 Perhaps we could say that the first five consonants activated the idea, since handwritten waw and yod often look similar in ancient Hebrew manuscripts (e.g., in the Dead Sea Scrolls). 37 My argument is not actually dependent on the vertical alignment of the two cola (as presented in the Hebrew above). 38 Whatever other connotations the use of hnq in 8:22 conveys, one can be sure that the word was used here to connect the poem with the rest of Proverbs 1–9, where we read about acquiring wisdom with some frequency. Yahweh, therefore, is the prototype of what a human is supposed to do: acquire wisdom (see 4:5 and 4:7 [note hmkx hnq hmkx ty#$)r]; and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 280). Such connections would have been impossible with the more technical words )rb and rcy. See below for another allusive advantage of using hnq. 39 Judith M. Hadley posits a similar thought process in “Wisdom and the Goddess,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel, 238.
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assertion is made in 8:22 that Yahweh acquired wisdom. This acquisition, the text continues in the rest of v. 22, is to be understood as the first, prerequisite (?) step, apparently, to God’s other creative activity (wyl(pm Mdq wkrd ty#$)r).40 In addition to this relative priority to the other deeds of Yahweh, the text also emphasizes in vv. 22–23 the absolute chronological priority of God’s acquisition of wisdom using the terms z)m, Mlw(m, Cr)-ymdqm #$)rm. This absolute chronological priority may be seen also as a logical extension of 3:19; that is, the text conjectures that if Yahweh were to have acquired wisdom before creation to use during creation, and this was to be understood as his first act, then the acquisition must have occurred in the very remote past. (I will suggest yet another facet to understanding this unparalleled pile of chronological lexemes below.) The text continues its explication of 3:19–20 by describing the process of creation in vv. 24–30a. Whereas 3:19–20 does this in a rather straightforward and simple fashion, 8:22–31 adopts a quite different and complicated style that better suits its purpose. If Wisdom is indeed “of old” as was asserted, then the description of creation must be a negative one in which none of the expected elements of the cosmos was in place when Wisdom was brought forth.41 Such a description was not a difficult task to conceive by any means since such negative descriptions were very frequently incorporated into creation accounts in the ancient Near East.42 The text creates its negative account via the use of the words Ny)b, Mr+b, and )l-d( at the head of several phrases in vv. 24–26. In concert, these verses show that wisdom came into being before anything else had. 40 wyl(pm Mdq is a unique phrase in the Hebrew Bible. wkrd ty#$)r only occurs here and in Job
40:19. See Fox’s discussion of the meaning of these two phrases (Proverbs 1–9, 280). He sees both of these phrases functioning adverbially, “at the beginning of . . . .” Whybray sees them in apposition to the object of hnq, “me” (Proverbs, 131). Thus, the two phrases are names of Wisdom herself. Either way, the result is ultimately the same: she was acquired by Yahweh as his first activity in the process of creation. 41 So, e.g., Bernhard Lang, Wisdom and the Book of Proverbs: A Hebrew Goddess Redefined (New York: Pilgrim, 1986), 77. 42 See Richard J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (CBQMS 26; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994), 36–38, 62–64. The parade example for this is the opening lines of the Enuma Elish. The “negative creation” statements here and in ancient Near Eastern creation accounts in general have caused some interpreters to posit a kind of creation hymn tradition behind these verses (see, e.g., Helmer Ringgren, Word and Wisdom: Studies in the Hypostatization of Divine Qualities and Functions in the Ancient Near East [Lund: Håkan Ohlssons Boktryckeri, 1947], 102; and Gemser, Sprüche Salomos, 38–39). I do not think we need to go this far. But, on the other hand, I do not think similarities that exist with many of the ancient Near Eastern creation texts are simply coincidental (contra R. N. Whybray, “Proverbs VIII 22–31 and Its Supposed Prototypes,” VT 15 [1965]: 504–14, whose focus on the function of negative temporal clauses in creation accounts causes him to overlook the many similar cosmological images and concepts in the very texts he considers). Rather, each account draws upon a stock of traditional images, vocabulary, and grammatical locutions to describe the formation of the created order. Thus, the similarities exist at the level of tradition, but I do not think they should be limited to a specific hymnic tradition.
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Then, as if to pick up on the notion that Yahweh did indeed create hmkxb as stated in 3:19, the poem uses a series of infinitive constructs with prefixed preposition -b (“when he . . .”) in vv. 27–30a43 to present a positive, well-ordered description of the process of creation.44 hmkxb in Prov 3:19 clearly indicates wisdom’s instrumentality in creation.45 Is Wisdom’s instrumentality in view in Prov 8:22– 31? The text does not contradict Prov 3:19–20 on this point; rather, I suggest that it assumes and interprets it. Wisdom is a personality in Prov 8:22–31—a “me” in v. 22. As such, she cannot be an intellectual tool or abstract instrument with which God can manufacture the universe. Thus, in the positive account of creation in Prov 8:27–30 the text transforms what was presented in 3:19–20 as wisdom’s nonsentient instrumentality in the process of creation into Wisdom’s personal presence at creation. This is accomplished through two brief phrases: first, in v. 27a, yn) M#$$, and then, most emphatically, in v. 30a with Nm) wlc) hyh)w. These two laconic statements form an inclusio around the positive description of the activity of creation.46 In this way Prov 8:22–31 explains hmkxb in 3:19 not as an instrument but as a personal presence alongside Yahweh during the genesis of the cosmos. I shall return to this below. We have seen, then, that Prov 8:22–31 uses 3:19–20 as a basis for explaining the origin of Wisdom. To rephrase that statement, 8:22–31 turns to an earlier, perhaps authoritative47 portion of the book of Proverbs as a source text for determining an understanding of Wisdom’s origin and relationship to Yahweh. In so doing, it is obvious that the text explicates Wisdom’s relationship to Yahweh, in agreement with 3:19–20, as one of subordination. And though her precise role in the process of creation is still to be determined here, it is clear that whatever that role may be, it is in fact Yahweh who is the active agent in the process of creation, not Wisdom. In this, again, 3:19–20 and 8:22–31 agree. Furthermore, the interpretation of Prov 3:19–20 in 8:22–31 has allowed us to see the text reason backwards via a logical inference to an understanding of Wisdom as something Yahweh acquired at the beginning of his works, the timing of which is located in the remote past. As mentioned above, this latter point may be seen also as a kind of secondary inference
43 Job 38:7–9 is this presentation’s closest biblical parallel, yet there does not appear to be any convincing evidence of a literary dependence between the two texts. 44 Noting the order of the text’s presentation of creation, Fox comments, “This systematic movement . . . impresses on the reader creation as a coherent panorama rather than just an assemblage of phenomena” (Proverbs 1–9, 281–82). 45 See, e.g., Whybray, Proverbs, 127. 46 For a detailed structural analysis of this passage see, e.g., Yee, “Analysis of Prov 8:22–31,” 58–66, who interacts with Jean-Noël Aletti, “Proverbes 8,22–31: Étude de structure,” Bib 57 (1976): 25–37. 47 The authority of this passage may have been underscored by the fact that it was in agreement with earlier prophetic texts (Jer 10:12 and 51:15).
Lenzi: Proverbs 8:22–31
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from 3:19. However, I think there may be another, perhaps stronger motivation for the insistence—for that is how the text reads—on Wisdom’s absolute chronological priority to all things.
III. Composing Proverbs 8:22–31: A Polemic against Mesopotamian Wisdom: Background Proverbs 8:22–31 is full of words within the semantic domain of “water.” Note the following attestations: Mym-ykbn, twny(m, twmht (v. 24); Mwht ynp-l( (v. 27); Mwht twny( (v. 28); Mym, My, and finally Cr) ydswm48 (v. 29). The most striking of all these “water words” is the triple invocation of Mwht. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible does the word occur so frequently in such a short span of text. In the texts in which one might expect it to occur with some frequency, for example, Genesis 1 and the flood accounts, it occurs only once (Gen 1:2) and twice (Gen 7:11 and 8:2), respectively. The birth language in vv. 22–25 is another conspicuous element in this passage. Although the meanings of hnq and Ksn are disputed,49 the very clear meaning of the verb lyx points to the fact that Wisdom came into being via birth. It is this verb in this context that may have caused the readers of the poem to reevaluate their prima facie understanding of hnq, “to acquire” (which is in line with the verb’s previous use in Prov 4:5, 7), and to consider it in terms of its association with birth, as in Gen 4:1, and the process of creaturely creation, as in Ps 139:13.50 There is no need to limit the sense of this verb to one meaning or the other, for, as I will argue, 48 I
understand these as a subterranean feature of the ancient Near Eastern cosmos, and thus related to water. 49 hnq is variously rendered “created,” “begat,” or “acquired” by the commentators and various English versions. I follow Fox (Proverbs 1–9, 279) and Whybray (Proverbs, 130) in seeing “acquire” as the primary meaning of the verb, for in this way the beginning of the passage ties in with the idea of humans acquiring wisdom in Proverbs 1–9 (see n. 38 above). In saying this, however, I also think that the verb activates the language of creation, if only secondarily, especially in light of the use of ytksn in the next line (see immediately above). Clifford presents a brief summary of the Semitic evidence for understanding hnq to mean “create” (Proverbs, 96) and an overview of the versions (ibid., 96 n. 6; but note Fox’s contrasting explanation [Proverbs 1–9, 280]). As for ytksn, the Mesopotamian text that I think 8:22–31 is working with may help in understanding its sense. To anticipate the discussion, I do not think the MT need be altered. 50 See Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, “Nursling, Advisor, Architect? Nwm) and the Role of Wisdom in Proverbs 8,22–31,” Bib 80 (1999): 391–400, here 394. Whybray’s caution about reading too much into “acquiring” in terms of a mythological background can be applied to the notion of “acquiring by birth” as well, and to the entire passage for that matter (Proverbs, 130). Contrast Hurowitz, “Role of Wisdom,” 395.
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multivalence and the creation of a web of textual associations through its choice of language are distinguishing features of this composition.51 Of further interest in light of the “water words” mentioned above is the fact that the disputed verb in Prov 8:23, yt@ki s ; na@ I , sounds very much like a common epithet for Ea, the Mesopotamian god of water and wisdom, namely, naššīki (usually spelled niššīki), “the prince.”52 Victor Avigdor Hurowitz has also noticed this similarity. And although he determines the connection to be of only secondary significance, he writes, “This point becomes even more interesting because the next verse [that is, v. 24] mentions the subterranean waters that are Ea’s domain.” Hurowitz then provocatively asks, “Could the image of the Mesopotamian god be alluded to in this pericope?”53 I suggest that this is in fact the case. Water and birth are very commonly associated images. But, if one also figures Ea into this association, the complex is quite different. There is only one text to my knowledge that contains all three of these elements: Enuma Elish tablet 1, lines 79– 108. I believe this passage informed Prov 8:22–31 in its presentation of Wisdom’s origin as a birth and provided a motivation to emphasize Wisdom’s absolute chronological priority to everything.54 51 See
the similar comments in Hurowitz, “Role of Wisdom,” 398. Hannes D. Galter, Der Gott Ea/Enki in der akkadischen Überlieferung: Eine Bestandsaufnahme des vorhandenen Materials (Dissertationen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz 58; Graz: Verlag für die Technische Universität Graz, 1983), 41, for attestations of this epithet in Akkadian texts. See also the note in W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-h…asīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969; repr., Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 148–49, who suggest a possible link between the epithet and Biblical Hebrew Kysn (“leader, chief ”). 53 Hurowitz mentions the fact that on this line of interpretation Nwm) would need to mean “advisor” (see below for more on this meaning), and to support this association, which is but secondary to him, he cites many terms in ch. 8 that might connote royal imagery (see “Role of Wisdom,” esp. 398–99). Although language suggestive of royalty may be present in 8:22–31, I agree with Hurowitz that it plays a secondary role, if that, in the meaning of the poem. The royal connotations of Prov 8:22–31 have been mentioned by others. See, e.g., Dexter E. Callender, Jr., Adam in Myth and History: Ancient Israelite Perspectives on the Primal Human (HSS 48; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 191–200, who ties the whole poem in 8:22–31 to a “primal human” tradition with royal connotations and associates Wisdom with other culture-bearer figures like Mesopotamia’s Adapa. Yet even for Callender the language of 8:22–31 suggests only a vestigial allusion, at best, to such a tradition. I suspect, however, that the points of contact that he sees with the “primal human” tradition may in fact be similarities due to the creation language and the points of contact I will suggest that the text has with Ea, Adapa’s patron deity, and Marduk. Other scholars have pointed to Ea and Mesopotamian wisdom in association with this passage, but they either did not develop the idea (as, e.g., W. O. E. Oesterley, The Book of Proverbs [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1929], 63), ruled it out (so Ringgren, Word and Wisdom, 141), or overinterpreted it (see Clifford, Proverbs, 24–28, and n. 77 below). 54 Concerning the possibility that an Israelite text is literarily dependent on a Mesopotamian one, David M. Carr has recently presented the case for a “two-track” educational system for Israelite scribes that covered Hebrew texts as well as some of the major texts from foreign lands—he especially notes Sumero-Akkadian materials. “This sort of two-track system,” he claims, “is the most plausible 52 See
Lenzi: Proverbs 8:22–31
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The text of EE I 79–108 reads as follows:55 80
85
90
95
100
ina kiss\ i\ šīmāti atman us ̣urāti lē
context suggested up to this point for influence of non-Israelite texts on Israelite literature” (Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 157). With regard to the Enuma Elish particularly and its mobility throughout the ancient world, it is worth noting that many classicists believe that the Mesopotamian myth had some influence on Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem roughly contemporary with Homer’s epics (see Fritz Graf, Greek Mythology: An Introduction [trans. Thomas Marier; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993], 90–95). (See n. 88 below for Mesopotamian influence more generally throughout the ancient world during the Persian and Hellenistic periods.) 55 The Akkadian text and line numbering follow W. G. Lambert, ed., Enuma Eliš: The Babylonian Epic of Creation: The Cuneiform Text, copied out by Simon B. Parker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 4–5. This is only a study edition (as is Philippe Talon, ed., The Standard Babylonian Creation Myth Enūma Eliš [SAA Cuneiform Texts 4; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2005], which was not available to me at the time of this writing). Unfortunately, an up-to-date, full critical edition of the text has yet to appear. My transcription follows the method of John Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian (HSM 45; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). For another translation of these lines see, e.g., Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 235–36.
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105
80
85
90
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105
labiš melammī ešret ilī šaqiš ītpur pulh…ātu h…amšāssina56 elīšu kamrā ibni-ma šār erbetta u
56 The edition has h…a-KUR-si-na (h…aššāssina; see CAD K, 113). The above transcription follows a variant, h…a-am-šat-si-na, noted in AHw, 318. Both readings mean “their fifty.”
Lenzi: Proverbs 8:22–31
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He formed dust; he caused the meh…û-storm to carry it. He caused the marsh/waves to be present; he stirred up Tiamat.
The Literary Relationship of Proverbs 8:22–31 and Enuma Elish I 79–10857 After Ea defeats Apsu, he and his wife, Damkina, repose in their cella. Then, beginning in line 79 of tablet 1, the myth describes the birth of the divine couple’s son, Marduk. In lines 80–84, that is, in the very opening lines of this section, there is a series of verbs that describe the birth of Marduk. He is sired (reh…û) and created (banû, used three times), and his mother goes into labor to give birth to him (harāšu). I believe each of these has a counterpart in Prov 8:22–31.58 The Akkadian verb banû usually means “to build” but has the meaning “to create” or “to engender” in contexts of human (pro)creation. For example, Esarhaddon calls his father “my bānûya,” that is, “my creator, progenitor,” in his annals.59 I suggest that this verb roughly corresponds to the use of hnq in Prov 8:22–31, not as an exact semantic parallel, but rather in the general sense of a verb denoting a procreational process (hnq, “acquire via birth,” “to create”; banû, “to engender,” “to create”).60 H… arāšu corresponds to Hebrew lyx, generally, in that both deal with the mother’s labor in the process of birth.61 And rehû, I submit, corresponds to Ksn in that both mean “to 57 In considering this passage in relation to Prov 8:22–31 I have heeded the methodological cautions of John S. Kloppenborg in his study of the influence of the Egyptian goddess Isis on the portrayal of Sophia in Wisdom of Solomon. Kloppenborg rejects “various scattered epithets and functions” as determinative for detecting a direct connection between Wisdom of Solomon and a mythical text. Instead, he sees the necessity of finding “a consistent pattern of attributes of Sophia which bears a significant correlation to the major foci and patterns of the theologies of Isis” before claiming direct influence. See his “Isis and Sophia in the Book of Wisdom,” HTR 75 (1982): 57–84. Unfortunately, because Prov 8:22–31 is a much shorter text than Wisdom 6–10 (the textual basis of his study), the direct influence of EE I 79–108 on Prov 8:22–31 will have to be secured on a smaller basis. 58 I should note that in lines 85 and 86 Marduk is nursed (enēqu) and reared (tarû), but these are not represented in Proverbs 8. 59 For banû meaning “to create, engender,” see CAD B, 87–88; for Esarhaddon and other similar references, see the citation in CAD B, 94 (s.v. bānû). 60 Of course Hebrew has a cognate of the Akkadian banû (i.e., hnb), and this verb does occasionally mean “to build a house” (by means of children) (qal) or “to obtain a child” (niphal) (see HALOT, 139). But this meaning does not correspond exactly to Akkadian banû and would not have served the needs of the poem in 8:22–31: hnb would not have allowed the kind of connections hnq creates with the larger context of Proverbs 1–9. Thus, the fact that the author of Prov 8:22–31 did not use the Hebrew cognate is ultimately irrelevant to the establishment of dependence. 61 lyx (qal) means “to be in labor”; (polal): “to be brought forth through labor pains” (see HALOT, 310–11). The Akkadian h…arāšu (G stem) is similar: “to be in labor”; (D stem): “bring to birth, deliver” (see Jeremy Black, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate, eds., A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian [Santag 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999], 107, for this meaning, which is based on AHw, 324 [with listed attestations]. In 1956, CAD H… did not fully recognize this meaning).
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pour out/over” in their concrete sense62 but may also denote “insemination.”63 By using yt@ik;sa@n,i Prov 8:22–31 simply adopted a Hebrew word semantically similar to what was found in the source text in order to convey the source text’s idea. The common scholarly practice of deriving yt@ik;sa@ni from Kks, “to be woven, manufactured,” should be seen not as an expediency to obtain a better sense in the passage but as another poetic possibility latent in the ambiguous grapheme ytksn.64 This secondary sense is underlined by the fact that the G stem of Kks occurs in parallel to hnq in Ps 139:13. Finally, as mentioned above, the fact that yt@ik;sa@ni plays on an epithet of Ea (though one not present in our text) may have contributed to the choice of this verb as well (or it may have simply been a felicitous, unintended result). In any case, this wordplay should remain a background association, as Hurowitz maintains (see above). Besides several “birthing” verbs at the opening of the account, there are other non–birth-related similarities that point to a connection between Prov 8:22–31 and EE I 79–108. For example, Marduk’s emergence is said to be “of old” (ultu ulla), which, of course, recalls the numerous chronological terms in Prov 8:22–23. Marduk also causes his grandfather, Anu, to rejoice (rašû), to be happy or radiant (namāru), and his heart to be full of joy (h…idūti). These correspond to the use of My(#$(#$ in Prov 8:30, in which Wisdom says, literally, “I was delights everyday.” The LXX locates this delight in Yahweh,65 which probably has correctly filled out what is already latent in the Hebrew. Thus, in both texts, a senior god takes pleasure in the birth being described. Another point of similarity may be seen in the use of a word for “play” in both texts (Hebrew tqx#&m and Akkadian mēlulu). Although it is Wisdom herself who plays in Prov 8:22–31 (in contrast to Marduk’s charge to let the winds play), the connection is still suggestive. Finally, there is a broad similarity at the mythic level. Although not directly mentioned in our lines, Marduk’s mythological function in Enuma Elish is that of 62 See, e.g., Barucq, Le Livre, 92, “«J’ai été coulée», comme une statue,” and similarly Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 133. 63 For Ksn, see HALOT, 703 (s.v. Ksn I, qal ). HALOT does not recognize the passive (niphal) meaning required for our passage, but it is clear that “to be poured out” is the proper sense of the verb in this stem. For Ksn meaning “insemination,” see Hurowitz, “Role of Wisdom,” 394, who cites the similar Ktn in Job 10:10 as support. For rehû, see CAD R, 252–54. 64 This derivation, however, is often accompanied by a repointing of the verb to ytiks o@ na .: See, e.g., Gemser, Sprüche Salomos, 38; BHS, 1285 n. 23b; Murphy, Proverbs, 48; and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 264– 65, among many others. HALOT, 754, recognizes both possibilities (with repointing and without) under the root Kks II. HALOT, 703, also records Ksn II, a by-form of Kks II, based only on our disputed verb (which does not require repointing of the MT). However one wishes to resolve the etymological problem, the unpointed verb in the original Hebrew composition of the poem would have presented the semantic ambiguity discussed above. 65 ejgw; h[mhn h|/ prosevcairen, “I was the one in whom he rejoiced.” See Cook, Septuagint of Proverbs, 229, 232; and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 287, 415.
Lenzi: Proverbs 8:22–31
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the hero who slays Tiamat, the personification of the chaotic, primeval sea.66 With her carcass, Marduk creates the heavens and the earth. Moreover, Marduk will also have a hand in creating humanity in Enuma Elish VI (though there is some ambiguity on whether he himself actually did the creating). Marduk’s role as creator god may have been a contributing factor in the use of the Enuma Elish in Prov 8:22–31. Just as Ea gives birth to Marduk, who goes on to create the cosmos, so Yahweh gives birth to Wisdom, through which (3:19–20) and with whom (8:27–30) he creates the world.
Wisdom as N(w)m) As stated above, I think Prov 8:22–31 interprets hmkxb in 3:19 by means of the two statements yn) M#$ and Nm) wlc) hyh)w. Again as stated above, the poem assumes Wisdom’s role in creation based on Prov 3:19–20 and interprets this role as a personal presence. But how does Wisdom’s personal presence actually demonstrate Yahweh’s creating hmkxb? The key to understanding this is the term N(w)m). This term has been subject to an enormous amount of scholarly attention.67 Without going into every detail here I think the two best understandings (and most common among commentators) are “nursling” and “artisan/advisor” (see Jer 52:15).68 Fox has recently refined the former view so that Nwm) is taken to be an 66 The many instances of Hebrew Mwht in the poem suggests an echo, possibly, of the mythological sea of the Enuma Elish. A technical etymological discussion of the relationship of the Hebrew and Akkadian terms is not necessary to establish the relationship. It seems to me reasonable to believe that an informed person in the ancient context could have made the connection via a folk etymology. 67 See the review of the most important options for the meaning of this word in Michael Fox, “ām, ‘the people’)” (Jeremiah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 21; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965], 364 note e–e). If this is the textual solution adopted for Jer 52:15, then Prov 8:30 is the lone attestation of the grapheme Nwm) in the Hebrew Bible.
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infinitive absolute functioning as an adverbial complement. He translates the phrase “I was near him, growing up.”69 The latter meaning, “artisan/advisor,” is usually connected to the Akkadian ummânu, which is best rendered for our purposes here in its most general meaning, “master” (of any art, both manual and learned).70 These two interpretive options in 8:30 need not be mutually exclusive. So, on the one hand, I would allow the multivalence of the text to play itself out in the poem (and it has, as the ancient and modern history of interpretation demonstrates). On the other hand, however, given the literary dependence of Prov 8:22–31 on 3:19– 20 and therefore an assumed role for Wisdom in creation, and the use of EE I 79– 108 in Prov. 8:22–31 as argued here, I think strong consideration should be given to the meaning “artisan/advisor” or, as I prefer to translate, “master,” as the primary sense of the word.71 In support of this, one may note that even before the description of his birth, Marduk is called the sage (Akkadian apkallu) of the gods in EE I 80. Besides its function as an epithet for several of the gods associated with wisdom,72 this term also denotes mythical, antediluvian sages linked to the god Ea (father of Marduk in the Enuma Elish).73 After the flood the role of the mythical apkallū is transferred to humans who are designated ummânū, “masters” of specifically learned arts (therefore often dubbed “scholars”).74 They are the bearers of the learned traditions,
69 This view was first set forth in Fox, “
Paul V. Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew (HSS; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 33–34, who puts a question mark next to the attestation in Prov 8:30 (and does not even mention Jer 52:15); and AHw, 1415–16 (s.v. ummiānu, i.e., with uncontracted vowels). 71 In contrast, see Hurowitz, “Role of Wisdom,” 399. 72 See Knut Tallqvist, Akkadische Götterepitheta: Mit einem Götterverzeichnis und einer Liste der prädikativen Elemente der sumerischen Götternamen (StudOr 7; Helsinki: Societas Orientalis Fennica, 1938), 28–29; and CAD A2, 171–72. 73 For an introduction to the ideas surrounding the mythical apkallū and their human, postflood counterparts, the ummânū, see J. Greenfield, “Apkallu,” DDD, 72–74, and his discussion in relation to Prov 9:1 in “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Prov. 9:1)—A Mistranslation,” JQR 76 (1985): 13–20. The most recent, detailed treatment of the apkallū of which I am aware is that of Helge Kvanvig in his Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man (WMANT 61; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988), 159–213, a chapter simply entitled “Mesopotamian Antediluvian Traditions.” The apkallu’s apotropaic role and the identification of the apkallū with specific forms of figurines in Mesopotamia are treated by F. A. M. Wiggermann, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts (Cuneiform Monographs 1; Groningen: Styx & PP, 1992), throughout, but esp. 41–103. 74 The text that makes this link explicit, dating to about 165 B.C.E., is W. 20030, 7, published by J. van Dijk, “Die Inschriftenfunde,” Vorläufiger Bericht über die . . . Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka 18 (1962): 44–52 and plate 27. The copy of the cuneiform tablet appeared again some time later in Jan van Dijk and Werner R. Mayer, Texte aus dem Rēš-Heiligtum in Uruk-Warka (Bagdader Mitteilungen Beiheft 2; Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1980), Tafel 89. An English translation is conveniently offered in Clifford, Proverbs, 26. See the introduction in Simo Parpola, ed., Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (SAA 10; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1993) for the “succession interpretation” of this
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often called nēmequ, “wisdom,”75 that have come down to humanity through scribal channels from time immemorial.76 Aware of this tradition and cognizant of the epithet given to Marduk in EE I 80, I suggest that Prov 8:22–31 gave to Wisdom a title that was the Hebrew equivalent of an apkallu’s human counterpart. Thus, the Hebrew term Nm@f)f as a designation of Wisdom corresponds to the Akkadian ummânu, “master, scholar.” Following this interpretation, the word in the original Hebrew text of our poem would have been written without the waw, thereby creating the ambiguity that has its reflex in the various renderings of the grapheme Nm) in the versions (among which I include the MT). On the one hand, by not using Marduk’s actual epithet, apkallu, the poem avoided a term that would indicate an explicit deification of Wisdom. On the other, by applying the Hebrew equivalent of the apkallu’s human counterpart, an ummânu, the text created a field of associations that enhances Wisdom’s status and explains her participation in creation: she is “master,” “craftsman,” “scholar,” “mediator of knowledge,” etc.77 This idea is corroborated by the interpretation of this word in Wis 7:21 and 8:6 (rendering the word with tecni'ti", “craftswoman, artisan”78) and possibly in some of the other early versions.79 It is in this capacity that Wisdom’s presence at creation interprets Yahweh’s creating hmkxb, “with wisdom.” I should at this point return to the notion of play in the two texts under comparison, first, to point out some of the differences we see between the two and offer reasons why such differences exist, and, second, to understand its role in Prov 8:30– 31 more adequately, especially in light of my decision to emend NwOm)f to Nm@f).f Why is it that Wisdom plays whereas in Enuma Elish it is Marduk who lets the winds play? To invoke a principle from the methods of inner-biblical interpretation, the text (specifically, XVII–XVIII) and a brief introduction to the ummânū and Mesopotamian scholarship in general (with references there to Parpola’s earlier, more technical editions of and commentaries on the scholarly correspondence in Akkadian). 75 The root of the substantive is cognate to Hebrew and Aramaic qm(. See Dan 2:22; Job 12:22; and Qoh 7:24 for cognate substantives that also provide a close semantic parallel. 76 Tracing this mechanism in Akkadian texts and traditions is the subject of chapter 2 of my dissertation, “The ‘Secret of the Gods’ and Society: Studies in the Origins, Guarding, and Disclosure of Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel” (Brandeis University, 2006). 77 Clifford uses the apkallu–ummânu traditions as the one and only background that provides the best explanation for the origins of Wisdom’s personification in the book of Proverbs (see Proverbs, 24–28). I think this requires too broad a generalization of Wisdom’s description throughout chs. 1– 9. My approach revolves around Prov 8:22–31 and the literary relationship it has with EE I 79–108. Wisdom’s role as a master is a response to Marduk’s apkallu epithet and the apkallu–ummânu tradition that it activates. 78 See J. Lust, E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2 vols.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1996), 2:474, for this meaning and the possibility that the word is a “neo-logism.” See also its use in Wis 14:2. 79 See Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 286, 414, for the evidence from and interpretation of several of the main versions. See also Gen. Rab. 1.1.2 ()~d), where MT’s Nwm) is interpreted as Nmw), “workman,” among other options (see Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 2).
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lexical similarities between a source text and the interpreting text are often reorganized or reinterpreted to yield a different configuration.80 The reconfiguration in this case is in keeping with the wholesale rejection in Prov 8:22–31 of providing a parallel for the fierce and terrible—and detailed—description of Marduk. The author’s rejection of this may be related to the possible theological implications such detail could evoke. But perhaps more importantly, creating a parallel for the awesome description of Marduk would work against the broader goal of Proverbs 1–9: to depict Wisdom as desirable, not something that terrifies. Instead of the mythological descriptive details, Prov 8:22–31 has filled out its poem with an expanded creation account (based on 3:19–20) and two lines about the joyful relationship between her progenitor, Yahweh, and herself, which is perhaps the textual reflex in Proverbs of Anu’s rejoicing over Marduk. Concerning the notion of play in Prov 8:30–31 in relation to Wisdom’s role as an Nm@f),f the specific word choice in these verses, My(#$(#$ and tqx#&m, would seem to associate Wisdom with childlike behavior, although the terms do have attestations without reference to children.81 One does not expect a dignified “master” to frolic about as Wisdom does in vv. 30–31. This behavior, however, need not speak against the decision to emend NwOm)f to Nmf@)f. There are two related responses that show why. First, we must dissociate ourselves from the notion that such behavior is unfit for someone of high social standing like an Nmf@)f or ummânu in the ancient Near East. In other words, our problem with vv. 30–31 in relation to a person of standing is rooted in our modern Western notions of dignified behavior. An ancient Near Eastern example from the Enuma Elish will set such behavior in better perspective. When Mummu (a vizier) and his lord, Apsu, decide on a plan of action to rid themselves of the noisy gods, the text says: “Apsu was pleased with him, his face lit up at the evil he was planning for the gods, his sons. (Vizier) Mummu hugged him, sat on his lap and kissed him rapturously” (EE I 51–54).82 “Lap” translates the Akkadian birkāšu, literally, “his knees.” There is no sexual connotation in this word choice. Rather, birku is simply one of the locations for holding a child,83 though Mummu, of course, is no child. In light of this, there probably need not be any objection to Wisdom’s behavior in vv. 30–31, even if she were a full-grown adult. Second, we can recognize the childlike character of My(#$(#$ and tqx#&m for what it is and try to understand how it plays itself out in the text. Thus, Wisdom’s display of the carefree exuberance of a child frolicking about underlines the deity’s joy with 80 See
Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 285.
81 E.g., Isa 5:7, wy(w#$(#$ (+n hdwhy #$y)w l)r#&y tyb tw)bc hwhy Mrk yk, “For the house of Israel
is Yahweh Sabaoth’s vineyard, and the people of Judah the planting of his delights.” See Hurowitz, “Role of Wisdom,” 396–97; and Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 287, for a discussion of these terms (as descriptive of children as well as others). 82 The translation is from Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 234. The line numbering again follows Lambert, Enuma Eliš, 3. 83 See CAD B, 256.
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her, and it underlines her own accessibility and goodness (which are in stark contrast to Marduk’s ferocity). The play of Wisdom in vv. 30–31 has another aspect to it, however, that touches on the interpretation of NwOm)f. If the original text was written Nm), as I have suggested, with the primary meaning “master” (which is, admittedly, an obscure loanword into Hebrew), the grapheme would have presented plenty of ambiguity, opportunity for reinterpretation, or simply confusion, especially given the unique context of our poem.84 Now it should be noted there has been no mention of Wisdom’s nativity or terms related to growing up (on my view) in vv. 27–29, that is, throughout the entire cosmic creation account. Furthermore, we know nothing about Wisdom’s age when she was present at the time of creation—though one would presume that she was old enough to remember the experience since she is recounting it with such detail. Yet the nativity account at the beginning of the poem and the childlike behavior of Wisdom at its closing, it seems, influenced v. 30 forcefully. Under this understandable contextual pressure and in light of the obscure Nm), the MT resolved the ambiguity inherent in Nm) and codified its interpretation by clarifying Nm) with NwOm)f. Under these circumstances, I agree with Fox that the MT presents an infinitive absolute, adverbial complement with the meaning “growing up.” But as I have said above, this is not the only nor the primary reading. It is, however, an interesting interpretation and a wonderful testament to the way this poem exercised its early readers.
Wisdom, Prior to Everything The critical interaction and reworking of the Enuma Elish material in Prov 8:22–31 have one more facet, to which I have alluded a couple of times: the insistence on Wisdom’s absolute chronological priority to all things, especially to the Mwht, the primeval sea. In the Enuma Elish Marduk’s birth occurred in the Apsu at a time when Tiamat was already alive. Given the events in the myth, Marduk’s birth must be seen as the mythical response to the preexistent nemesis. That is, the myth creates a divine hero to resolve the cosmic problem posed by Tiamat. Such a relatively late origin for Wisdom will not do for Prov 8:22–31. Rather, Wisdom and her progenitor, Yahweh, are both absolutely prior to all created entities, including the Mwht. Proverbs 8:22–31, using a well-known ploy in ancient Near Eastern religions, subverts the authority of Marduk and Ea by simply asserting Wisdom’s greater antiquity. The same theological ploy was used in the very passage of Enuma Elish that we have been considering. Thorkild Jacobsen has reasonably argued that the birth narrative described in EE I 79–108 was originally Enlil’s, the Mesopotamian 84 A
look at all the versions will attest to this clearly.
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god of the air and winds and the longtime supreme god of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The substitution of Marduk for Enlil in this birth account is probably to be seen as the Babylonian theologians’ attempt to raise the authority of Marduk over that of Enlil.85 One more example, again related to the Enuma Elish, must suffice to illustrate this point. The god of the people of the city of Ashur, whose name was also Ashur, was probably a personification of the city itself. Given this origin, he had no genealogical line. At some point during the Sargonid period (eighth–seventh century B.C.E.), however, scribes assigned him one that would preempt both Enlil and Marduk by giving him a greater antiquity than they. This was not achieved by rewriting the Enuma Elish (as would happen eventually); rather, it was done merely by writing the god Ashur’s name as AN.ŠAR, one of the very first gods to emerge from Tiamat (see EE I 12). In this way, the scribes gave Ashur a genealogical line (actually making him an ancestor of Enlil/Marduk), established his greater antiquity, and thereby enhanced his authority.86 A similar motivation is at work in Prov 8:22–31. A chronological subversion for theological reasons probably accounts for the insistent (even grammatically awkward) phrasing of Wisdom’s absolute priority to everything in 8:22–23. It is precisely because of this extreme antiquity that she is unique and uniquely qualified. The gods of Mesopotamian wisdom, Ea and his son Marduk, are latecomers in comparison to Israel’s figure of Wisdom. As such, their wisdom can in no way compare to Wisdom herself, for she existed before the very element (Mwht/tiāmtu) that gave rise to Ea and Marduk. From this we may infer that Prov 8:22–31 is a literary effect rooted in a concern about Yahweh’s wisdom in comparison to the older and more sophisticated (on some ancient people’s view, no doubt) knowledge and wisdom of the Babylonian scribes.87 This concern did not die with the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Persians in 539 B.C.E. In fact, it was during the Persian and especially Hellenistic periods that the Babylonians became fabled throughout the world for their wisdom.88 Thus, in this poem describing Wisdom’s origin and relationship to Yahweh, 85 See The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (ed. H. Frankfort; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 169. 86 See A. Livingstone, “Assur,” DDD, 108–9, for this example. 87 See the same concern in, e.g., Isa 47:8–15 and 44:24–26a. 88 Despite the loss of native kingship, the Mesopotamian scribal centers and temples flourished during this period. One need only survey the vast number of learned, ritual, and literary tablets that have come out of late-period Uruk/Warka to see this (many of these have been published and edited in a series of volumes entitled Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk, by Hermann Hunger and Egbert von Weiher [Berlin: Mann, 1976–]). Note, especially, that it was in the early third century B.C.E. (ca. 281) that Berossus wrote his Babyloniaca, a book that presented many of the Mesopotamian traditions, including a version of the apkallu–ummânu tradition and the creation story, to a Greek-speaking audience. See Stanley Mayer Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus (Sources and Monographs: Studies from the Ancient Near East 1.5; Malibu: Undena, 1978), for an introduction to and translation of his work. See also the more recent treatment in Gerald Verbrugghe and John Wickersham, Berossos and
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Prov 8:22–31 uses a well-known account involving two patron deities of Babylonian wisdom and knowledge to subvert those gods and exalt Yahweh’s embodiment of wisdom, Wisdom herself, over them.
IV. The Composition of Proverbs 8:22–31: A Prophetic Authorization for Wisdom We have seen both earlier material from the book of Proverbs used in the construction of Prov 8:22–31 and also foreign material. Are there any other resonances in this poem that could inform our understanding of how it conceived of Wisdom? Although there have been several suggestions,89 I focus on two phrases, wlc) hyh)w Nm) and yn) M#$, that allude to earlier biblical texts in order to assert Wisdom’s prophetlike sending from God to humanity.
Proverbs 8:22–31 and Exodus 3:14 Roland Murphy has suggested that the word hyh)w, appearing twice in Prov 8:30, alludes to the narrative in Exod 3:14. He writes: Even the very beginning is marked twice by a solemn hyh) (“I am”), which recalls the mysterious revelation of Exod 3:14, where “I am Who I am” occurs twice and “I am” once more. However, the mysterious aura surrounding these verbs is to be understood, there can be hardly any doubt that v 30 alludes to that passage. This is worthy of note in view of the general tendency in Proverbs to avoid the verb “to be” in favor of juxtaposition or simple comparison.90
Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 13–91. The role of Mesopotamian tradition in the book of Daniel and 1 Enoch in this period hardly need be noted. Surprisingly, the long arm of Mesopotamian influence extended even to the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which one finds mention of Gilgamesh in the Book of Giants. See 4Q531, frag. 22, line 12, #∑ ymg∑ l[g and 4Q530 frags. 2 ii + 6–12, line 2, s∑ ymglg, in Émile Puech, Qumrân Grotte 4 XXII: Textes Araméens, Première Partie: 4Q529–549 (DJD 31; Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 28, 74. For a survey of the spread of Mesopotamian traditions during the Hellenistic period, see Stephanie Dalley and A. T. Reyes, “Mesopotamian Contact and Influence in the Greek World: 2. Persia, Alexander, and Rome,” in The Legacy of Mesopotamia (ed. Stephanie Dalley et al.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 107–16; and, with reference to astronomy and astrology, David Pingree, “Legacies in Astronomy and Celestial Omens,” in ibid.,132–37. 89 Some scholars have pointed to similarities of phrasing in our text and Job 28; 38; and Genesis 1. On the latter, see Donn F. Morgan, Wisdom in the Old Testament Traditions (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), 112–13; and Callender, Adam in Myth and History, 198 n. 393. 90 Murphy, Proverbs, 53; see also Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 147, who calls the allusion to Exod 3:14 “eine beredte Anspielung.”
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According to Benjamin D. Sommer’s work on allusion in Deutero-Isaiah, an allusion activates the context alluded to in order to affect the alluding text’s meaning.91 If Murphy’s identification of this allusion to Exod 3:14 is correct, then what is its purpose in Prov 8:22–31? Before answering, I think there is more here to consider than Murphy has allowed, for at the end of Exod 3:14 is this comment: ynxl#$ hyh) Mkyl), “‘I Am’ has sent me to you.” The significance of this will be clear after we consider the words yn) M#$.
Proverbs 8:22–31 and Isaiah 48:16 The two words yn) M#$ from Prov 8:27 occur together in only one other place in the Hebrew Bible—Isa 48:16. The larger context of the Isaian verse is a speech by Yahweh in the first person. In this speech Yahweh asserts his eternality in 48:12 (Nwrx) yn) P) Nw#$)r yn) )wh-yn), “I am he, I am the first, I am also the last”), his creative powers in v. 13 (Mym#$ hxp+ ynymyw Cr) hdsy ydy-P), “Indeed my hand founded the earth, my right hand spread forth the heavens”), his knowledge in v. 14 (Mhb ym hl)-t) dygh, “who among them has proclaimed these things?”), and the effectiveness of his speech in v. 15. Then in 48:16 Yahweh says: t)z-w(m#$ yl) wbrq, “come near to me; hear this.” The imperative “hear” is evocative of the instructional form and even of Wisdom’s words throughout Proverbs 1–9. Then, having got the audiences attention, Yahweh—at least that is whom one expects to be the speaker— continues in 48:16 rather cryptically:
htf@(aw: ynI)f M#$f h@tfwOyhv t('m' yt@ir:b@ad%I rtes%'b%a #$)rom' )l& wOxw%rw: ynIxalf#$; hwIhy: ynFdo)j I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. From the time of its coming into being I was there. And now Lord Yahweh has sent me, even his spirit.
What the reader may have expected to be words of Yahweh must be reprocessed by the end of the verse as someone else’s speech. And thus the enigmatic statement leaves the reader with several questions. Among these are: Who is speaking? Who is active #$)rm and htwyh t(m? And finally, Who is being sent? The answers to these questions in the Deutero-Isaian context are not our concern here.92 The important point is simply to recognize the fact that the passage leaves the reader with questions. 91 See
Sommer, Prophet Reads Scripture, 10–13. Note his technical distinction between “echo” and “allusion.” With an allusion, “the meaning of an alluding text is affected by the content of the source text, while echoes do not suggest any altered understanding of the passage in which they appear” (pp. 30–31). 92 See, e.g., the recent comments on this passage by Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40–55 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 293–96, who identifies the speaker of v. 16b as the “servant” and sees the passage, quite interestingly, as “a carefully crafted reflection of Exodus 3, especially 3:13–15.”
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The Purpose of Allusion and Wisdom’s Cosmic Mediation Returning to Prov 8:22–31 with all of this in mind, I submit that the two phrases framing the positive account of creation in Prov 8:27–30a and denoting Wisdom’s presence at creation (Nm) wlc) hyh)w and yn) M#$) evoke two texts related to the sending of messengers: Exod 3:14 and Isa 48:16, both of which contain the word ynxl#$ in the immediate context. The purpose of these allusions is to show that not only was Wisdom present with Yahweh at creation (obvious from the phrases themselves in the poem) and therefore uniquely knowledgeable about the structure of the universe, but also—assuming that the contexts of the allusions are indeed activated in their appropriating text’s context—that Wisdom is implicitly a messenger sent by Yahweh to humanity and therefore can communicate to mortals her unique cosmological knowledge. I grant that the allusion is subtle and the idea is not obvious on the surface of the text, but the personified Wisdom tradition has already hinted at this mediatorial role for Wisdom by giving her speech in ch. 1 a prophetic tone. More to the point for the present poem, vv. 30 and 31 provide support for Wisdom’s prophetic sending because these two verses explain the idea further. Verses 30 and 31, which, as Fox says, convey the idea that “as God delights in Wisdom, so Wisdom delights in mankind,”93 describe the heavenly and then earthly reality of Wisdom’s presence. First, 8:30bc, -lkb wynpl tqx#&m Mwy Mwy My(#$(#$ hyh)w t(, “I was delight daily, playing before him all the time,” characterizes the time Wisdom spent in the presence of God. Thus, these phrases fill out the depiction of creation presented in 8:27–30a by specifically explaining what is meant on the surface of the words yn) M#$ and Nm) wlc) hyh)w: in childlike exuberance, Wisdom as master brought delight to God during the process of creation. Then v. 31, tqx#&m Md) ynb-t) y(#$(#$w wcr) lbtb, “playing in his habitable earth, and my delight is with humanity,” describes what is only implicit in the words yn) M#$ and wlc) hyh)w Nm) by drawing on the allusions to Exod 3:14 and Isa 48:16 that these words convey: Wisdom dwells among humanity as a uniquely qualified prophetlike messenger from God bearing his wisdom to them; in this activity, she finds delight in humanity. Although this mediatorial role is suggested by the Mesopotamian background of the term Nmf) @ ,f it is presented here again in the poem by drawing on earlier Israelite texts dealing with prophetic sending. Once again, it seems, the poem revels in creating multivalence. In any case, Wisdom’s prophetlike character in this poem creates a mechanism for authenticating the sayings recorded in the book of Proverbs as deriving from the heavenly realm. As 8:31 does not restrict the movements of Wisdom among humanity, it can be assumed that she is free to proclaim her heavenly authorized knowledge to one and all. In this manner she is similar to the Israelite
93 See Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 288, and his defense that it is Wisdom who is feeling the delight, not humanity.
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prophets, though apparently with a more universal scope. Conversely, this open communication makes her distinct from the Mesopotamian tradition of scholarly wisdom, which was maintained as strictly secret and always limited to a select group of learned individuals.94
V. Conclusion Proverbs 8:22–31 is an allusive web of literary connections. Through this multilayered tapestry, it specifically accounts for the origin of Wisdom and her relationship to Yahweh by means of an interpretation of Prov 3:19–20. The poem asserts Wisdom’s ultimate and absolute chronological priority to all things through her birth in the ages past, for which it found in Marduk’s birth account in the Enuma Elish both a model nativity and a means to polemicize against Babylonian wisdom. Finally, the poem proves that Wisdom’s presence at creation as a “master” (again under the influence of the Enuma Elish) uniquely authorizes her to be the embodiment of Yahweh’s wisdom. Present with Yahweh from ages past, she took part in creation alongside him; sent by him as a prophetlike messenger of wisdom, implicit in the allusions to Exod 3:14 and Isa 48:16, she found her delight among humanity. With a heritage in such textual richness, there should be no wonder at this text’s expansive and colorful history of interpretation. 94 This topic is treated in ch. 3 of my dissertation (see “‘Secret of the Gods’ and Society”). It should be noted that Prov 8:22–31 is not unique in drawing on the prophetic tradition to provide a nonprophetic subject with a heavenly connection. The Priestly document, a document concerned with ritual and cult, does the very same thing at Sinai (see ibid., 397–415).
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Analogical Reasoning in Romans 7:2–4: A Woman and the Believers in Rome peter spitaler [email protected] Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085
At the beginning of Romans 7, Paul narrates a brief story about a man who, by his death, liberates a woman from the law that had governed his life. Paul uses this story to illustrate his claim that believers, through the death of Jesus, are dead to the Mosaic law that had governed Jesus’s life. Origen calls the narrative an example, Clement of Alexandria an allegory, and Augustine a similitude.1 Most contemporary exegetes identify the passage as some kind of comparison. Although the labels differ, interpretations generally follow the tradition begun with Augustine’s dictum: animadvertendum est istam similitudinem in hoc differre ab ea re propter quam adhibita est, “it is noteworthy how this similitude differs from the very subject for which it is employed” (Exp. prop. Rom. 1.36). By relating a woman who is free from the law because of a man’s death to Christ-believers’ dying to the Mosaic law, Paul apparently produced an asymmetrical figure of speech.2 If indeed this is what 1 Origen, Comm. Rom. 35.4 (ed. A. Ramsbotham, “The Commentary of Origen on the Epistle to the Romans,” JTS 13 [1912]: 210–24, 357–68; 14 [1912]: 10–22); Clement, Strom. 3.12.80 (Clemens Alexandrinus [ed. Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel, and Ursula Treu; GCS 52/17; Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1970] 3:3–102); Augustine, Exp. prop. Rom. 1.36 (PL 35). Ambrosiaster sees an exemplum humanae legis, “example of human law” (In epistolam ad Romanos 7.1 [PL 17]), and Chrysostom a paravdeigma ajnqrwvpinon, “human example” (Hom. Rom. 496.33–34 [PG 60]). David Hellholm classifies Rom 7:2–3 as similitudo ex iure, “legal similitude” (“Die Argumentative Funktion von Römer 7.1–6,” NTS 43 [1997]: 385–411, here 402). 2 Most exegetes believe that vv. 2–4 are marred by a major imbalance because Paul compares believers who are dead to the law with a woman who is free from the law as a result of her husband’s death, which is the logical opposite of a man’s freedom from the law brought about by his own death (see Hellholm, “Argumentative Funktion,” 403; Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Romans,” in Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2, A Feminist Commentary [ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza; New York: Crossroad, 1994], 272–300, here 283). Werner G. Kümmel diagnoses this “imbalance” as “Schwäche des Apostels im Umgang mit Vergleichsbildern” (Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1929], 38); C. H. Dodd, as a lack of the “gift for sustained illustration of ideas through concrete images” (The Epistle of Paul to the Romans [MNTC; New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932], 130); Heikki
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Paul has done, then exegetes have no choice except to find methods of analysis that account for the disparity.3 Räisänen as “eloquent proof for the failure of Paul’s picture” (Paul and the Law [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983], 62 n. 93); Lloyd Gaston, as evidence that analogies are “a mode of rhetoric not the most successful in Paul’s hands” (“Israel’s Misstep in the Eyes of Paul,” in The Romans Debate, Revised and Expanded Edition [ed. Karl P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995], 309–26, here 320); Douglas J. Moo, as Paul’s intention for “us” not “to find significance in the details of vv. 2–3” (The Epistle to the Romans [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996], 413); and Andrzej Gieniusz as unavoidable “because of the absolute and paradoxical novelty of the Christian experience which contradicts any comparison and escapes any illustration” (“Rom 7,1–6: Lack of Imagination? Function of the Passage in the Argumentation of Rom 6,1–7,6,” Bib 74 [1993]: 389–400, here 400). 3 To this end, the ancients generally interpret the passage as allegory. Origen, for instance, equates the man mentioned in vv. 2–3 with the law (oJ novmo" ejsti;n oJ ajnhvr, “the law is the man”) and argues that the man—the letter of the law—has died so that one’s soul could marry another man, the law according to the spirit (Comm. Jo. 13.8.44.1–3; 13.8.47.1–3 [ed. Erwin Preuschen, GCS 10; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903), 298–480). John Chrysostom also identifies the law with the man who dies. Relating the woman to believers, he argues that the goal of Paul’s argument is the believer’s twofold freedom from the law (Hom. Rom. 497.5–7: kai; tivqhsin ejn tavxei me;n tou' ajndro;" to;n novmon, ejn tavxei de; th'" gunaiko;" tou;" pisteuvsanta" a{panta", “and in place of the man he puts the law, in place of the woman all believers”). That is, both the man/law and the woman are dead (Hom. Rom. 496.38– 40). Augustine suggests a triple allegory, associating the woman with the soul, the man with sinful passions, and the law with the law of the man (Exp. prop. Rom. 1.36). Following the footsteps of the ancients, some contemporary scholars pursue a similar line of allegorical reasoning. William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam relate the wife to the true self, the first husband to the old state of humans, the law of the first husband to the law condemning the old state of sinful human condition, the new marriage to union with the risen Christ, Christ’s crucifixion to the death of the first husband, and Christ’s resurrection to remarriage (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC; 5th ed.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1902), 172, 174). Norbert Baumert revives Origen’s reading of Rom 7:1, arguing that the phrase ejf! o{son crovnon zh/' (“as long as he/she/it lives”) refers to the life span of the law (cf. Origen, Comm. Jo. 13.8.43.5–8: tiv" dh; zh/'_ ajpo; koinou' lambanovntwn hJmw'n to;n novmon, oJ novmo"). Baumert modifies Origen’s death-of-the-law interpretation, stating that the death of the law occurs within the believer whose soul joins with Christ in a second marriage (“Sexualgemeinschaft—Symbol und Verkehrung,” in Antifeminismus bei Paulus? Einzelstudien [FzB 68; Würzburg: Echter, 1992], 165–75, here 166–68, 170, 172). Christoph Burchard compares believers in Christ who, in the past, existed as “Doppelmenschen” to both the woman (the inner human being [7:22]) and the man (the old human being [6:6]; the body of death [7:24]) (“Röm 7,2–3 im Kontext,” in Antikes Judentum und Frühes Christentum: Festschrift für Hartmut Stegemann zum 65. Geburtstag [ed. Bernd Kollmann, Wolfgang Reinbold, and Annette Steudel; BZNW 97; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999], 443–56, here 454). John D. Earnshaw also describes several of his ten points of comparison between vv. 2–3 and v. 4 as allegorical relationships (“Reconsidering Paul’s Marriage Analogy in Romans 7.1– 4,” NTS 40 [1994]: 68–88, here 72). Searching for an explanation of the asymmetry, other contemporary scholars offer nonallegorical interpretations and explain the disparity with the help of a general principle that is said to underlie the passage’s argument (Earnshaw [“Reconsidering,” 68–70] and Burchard [“Kontext,” 445–46] survey recent approaches to the passage). For instance, Joyce A. Little interprets the passage to demonstrate the changing relationship of believers to the law; that is, the law played a necessary role prior to Christ, but death to the law enables believers to serve in the spirit (“Paul’s Use of Analogy: A Structural Analysis of Romans 7:1–6,” CBQ 46 [1984]: 82–90, here 90). David Instone-Brewer
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In this article, I suggest an alternative interpretation: Paul’s reasoning is symmetrical. The keys that unlock its symmetry are hidden within the ambiguous syntax of the clause tw/' zw'nti ajndri; devdetai novmw/ (v. 2a) and the grammar of the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" (v. 2b). If the first phrase is understood as “bound to the law by way of the man who is alive” and the second as “the law that governs the man,” then vv. 2ab are the core of Paul’s argument and clarify the logic of its movement from contrasting statement (v. 1), via analogy (vv. 2–4), to conclusion (vv. 4– 6). I will trace this trajectory from beginning to end with a brief discussion of the various functions of Rom 7:1, an examination of the analogy, and a short analysis of the concluding verses.
I. Contrast and Anticipation (Romans 7:1) Throughout Romans 6, Paul’s correspondence has characteristics of a lively discussion between himself and the recipients of his letter. At times he even addresses them directly (6:1–3, 15, 16). In 7:1, he continues this conversational style, crafting a bidirectional appeal to the hearer’s understanding:4 “Are you ignorant, brethren—for I speak to persons who know the law—that the law rules a person as long as she/he lives?” Simultaneously confronting the Roman communities with a question (“Are you ignorant of the law?”) and an assertion (“You know the law!”), Paul contrasts ignorance with knowledge about a specific concept: the law rules a person as long as she/he lives. Although the concept is general enough to understands the passage as an illustration of a person’s transition from marriage to the law to marriage to Christ (Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 210). For Andrzej Gieniusz, this passage illustrates the baptismal experience of “the transition from one bond to another,” the inability of the law “to be helpful for a moral life,” and the “irreversibility of the Christian situation” (“Lack of Imagination,” 398–99). David Hellholm (“Argumentative Funktion,” 405) and Douglas J. Moo (Romans, 411) suggest a double tertium comparationis: death dissolves an old relationship, which offers the possibility of a new relationship. James D. G. Dunn (Romans [2 vols.; WBC 38; Dallas: Word Books, 1988], 1:369) and Joseph A. Fitzmyer (Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 33; New York: Doubleday, 1993], 455) similarly state that death liberates believers from the law because the law’s dominion is restricted to life. Elizabeth A. Castelli sees an analogy of hierarchical relationships: a person relates to the law (i.e., existence under the law) as a wife relates to her husband (“Romans,” 283). Luiza Sutter Rehmann perceives that the woman is indicted but not prosecuted for adultery because her husband is dead. Rehmann develops a freedom analogy: as God frees the woman from a legal situation dominated by the rule of sin by taking away her husband, God frees believers from accusations of wrongdoings under the rule of sin by raising the dead in Christ (“The Doorway into Freedom: The Case of the ‘Suspected Wife’ in Romans 7.1–6,” JSNT 79 [2000]: 91–104, here 100–104). 4 See Burchard (“Kontext,” 447) and Hellholm (“Argumentative Funktion,” 401) for similar observations. In his letter to the Romans, Paul frequently evokes mutual knowledge via the hyponyms ginwvskw and oi\da (“know,” 2:2; 3:19; 5:3; 6:6, 9, 16; 7:14; 8:22, 26, 28; 11:2; 13:11) or the verb ajgnoevw (“not know,” 1:13; 2:4; 6:3; 7:1; 11:25). For Hellholm, such appeals to knowledge function as “Erinnerungssignal” for the recipients of the letter (“Argumentative Funktion,” 388).
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encompass the gamut of familiar legislative systems in his day,5 Paul does not presume that his hearers have specific legal knowledge.6 Rather, he writes immediately and specifically what he wants his audience to know about the “law”; that is, novmo" has supreme governing power over the domain of life.7 It is not surprising, then, that Paul reveals neither the ethnicity of the law-knowers he is addressing (i.e., Jews or non-Jews) nor the specific law under discussion.8 He addresses the members of the Roman communities as law-knowing persons with the purpose of inviting them to follow—and understand—his argument.9 Paul places his attempt to compel his hearers to agree with his argument’s conclusion strategically. His statement that “the law rules living persons” reinforces the relationship between novmo" and the Roman believers, a relationship he had already declared moot (6:14–15: “you are not under the law”). In form, this contrast echoes Paul’s bidirectional appeal to his hearer’s knowledge; in function, it anticipates the 5 See Frederick F. Bruce, Romans (TNTC 6; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 138; Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 270; Moo, Romans, 411; Hellholm, “Argumentative Funktion,” 401. For references to rabbinic literature, see Fitzmyer, Romans, 457. Burchard classifies v. 1 as “hermeneutische Regel” (“Kontext,” 447). 6 After hearing v. 1, anyone, whether or not previously acquainted with the law to which Paul refers, can legitimately call her/himself knowledgeable with respect to this aspect of novmo" and infer that novmo" has no jurisdiction over the dead; cf. Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. 496.53–54. 7 A quotation from Pausanias transmitted by Plutarch (tou;" novmou" . . . tw'n ajndrw'n, ouj tou;" a[ndra" tw'n novmwn kurivou" ei\nai dei', “laws must be lords of men, not men lords of the laws”) indicates that Paul was not the first to use a metaphor of “governance” with respect to the law (Apophthegmata Laconica 230.F; ed. W. Nachstädt, Plutarchi moralia, vol. 2.1 [Leipzig: Teubner, 1935]). In v. 1, this notion of the law’s governance has no negative meaning. However, Dunn portrays the rule of the law as plight (Romans, 362); Norbert Baumert (Woman and Man in Paul: Overcoming a Misunderstanding [trans. Patrick Madigan and Linda M. Maloney; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996], 22) and Fitzmyer (Romans, 457) speak of the law’s tyranny. 8 However, the immediate literary context suggests a reference to Mosaic law. (1) Romans 7:1 echoes the concept “under the law [of Moses]” that Paul expresses in 6:14–15. (2) In addition to Jews, other likely members of the Roman communities (e.g., God-fearers) were also conversant with the Mosaic law; that is, they were “persons who know the law”; see Dunn, Romans, 359; Fitzmyer, Romans, 457; Moo, Romans, 411–12; Robert Stuhlmacher, Der Brief an die Römer (14th ed.; NTD; Neues Göttinger Bibelwerk 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 95. In contrast, Roland Bergmeier suggests that the phrase “you know the law” indicates address exclusively to Jewish Christbelievers (“Das Gesetz im Römerbrief,” in Das Gesetz im Römerbrief und andere Studien zum Neuen Testament [WUNT 121; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000], 31–90, here 66–67). (3) Verses 2–3 refer to a woman’s legal bond in a marital relationship; there is no reference to a woman’s option to divorce. From the various legal systems known to the Roman communities—presumably Latin, Greek, and/or Jewish—only the Mosaic law failed to empower women to divorce their husbands. (4) Romans 7:4 clarifies the believers’ relation to the law of Moses. Indeed, most commentators (e.g., Dunn, Romans, 359; Fitzmyer, Romans, 456–57; Stuhlmacher, Brief an die Römer, 95; Moo, Romans, 411–12) assume a primary reference to the Mosaic law. Fitzmyer (Romans, 455) and Burchard (“Kontext,” 443 n. 2) list scholars with differing opinions. 9 See Morris, Romans, 270.
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progressive rationale of his thoughts. He continues with an analogy that features contrasting assertions regarding the authority of novmo" over life and proceeds to explain why the Mosaic law does not rule believers.
II. A Symmetrical Narrative (Romans 7:2–3) Comparing the Christ-believers in Rome with a woman who is under the authority of a living man, Paul creates an analogy. Table 1: The Analogy for the |woman| |under [the authority of] a man| is |bound to narrative [A] the law| by way of the |man who is alive|; v. 2 scenario 1 but if |the man dies|, she is |discharged from| the |law that [B] governs the man|. Source So then, she will, |while the man is alive|, be declared |adul1 [A ] teress| should she become |another man’s partner|; v. 3 narrative but if |the man dies|, she is |free from the law|, so that she is scenario 2 [B1] |not an adulteress| becoming |another man’s partner|. v. 4 Target
Therefore, |you, my brothers|, have also been put to |death to the law| |through the body of the Christ| in order to become |another one’s partner|, |the one risen from the dead|, to bear |fruit for God|.
Traditional assessments of Paul’s analogy as being unbalanced or asymmetrical are rooted in the translation and interpretation of three words/phrases: u{pandro" (“under [the authority of] a man”); oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" (“the law that governs the man”); and tw/' zw'nti ajndri; devdetai novmw/ (“bound to the law by way of the man who is alive”). I will analyze the function of these Greek expressions within the literary context of vv. 2–3, explain my own translation choices, and show how they allow one to see symmetry in the analogy. Because vv. 2–3 contain a story about a man who dies and a woman who, by virtue of his death, is liberated from the law that had governed his life, I will classify vv. 2–3 as narrative; and, within the context of vv. 2–4, I will define this narrative’s function as the source of Paul’s analogy.10
10 An “analogy,” as understood in this article, consists of two parts: “source” (vv. 2–3) and “target” (v. 4). The components of source and target are called “analogs.” These terms will be detailed in section III. In table 1, vertical bars mark the source and target analogs. Marking them at this juncture prevents the printing of an additional table later in the article.
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The Source—Structural Aspects The source of the analogy portrays different degrees of boundedness to the law by means of a short, third person singular narrative that progresses in two steps (v. 2; v. 3), each of which contains subsets of narrative information ([A][B]; [A1][B1]). With the first step (v. 2), Paul establishes the fundamental narrative facts: an initially alive man dies; a woman is first bound to the law then discharged from it. In the second step (v. 3), Paul uses selected elements of the first (i.e., a man is alive, then dead), then expands the narrative to include “adultery” and “becoming another man’s partner.” He marks the transition from the first to the second step with the consecutive conjunctions a[ra ou\n (“so then”) and interconnects the contents of both steps with references to the man’s life ([A][A1]) or death ([B][B1]) and, correspondingly, to the woman’s bondage to ([A][A1]), or freedom from, the law ([B][B1]). Hence, the sequence of statements displays a distinctive literary pattern [A]–[B]– [A1]–[B1] pattern.11
The Source—Narrative Aspects With the narrative, Paul introduces two literary characters—one lives and dies (the man), the other continues to live (the woman)—and, therewith, a genderspecific unfolding of the concept “the law rules living persons” (v. 1).12 The man’s main narrative functions are to die and, by dying, to bring about the discharge of the woman from the law. His death accomplishes what the woman herself cannot achieve, or, put another way, what the life of the man establishes his death eradicates: the bond between the woman and the law. Thus, his death, not his life, is significant for the woman’s legal freedom.13 Conversely, the woman in the source narrative does not die. As a living person, she remains, in principle, under the law’s auspices (cf. 7:1). Therefore, the woman of the narrative is under two authorities: “under” a man and “under” the rule of novmo". Paul develops the narrative in such a way that the woman embodies the theoretical possibility that a person can be alive and, at the same time, not governed by the law (cf. 7:1). This fact, vital to the 11 The series of conjunctions—eja;n dev, a[ra ou\n, eja;n dev (“but if,” “so then,” “but if ”)—both demarcates and links these statements together; each builds on the preceding. Because the narrative and v. 1 are connected via one more conjunction gavr (“for”), this progression of statements originates with Paul’s initial appeal to knowledge. Burchard identifies vv. 2–3 as “antithetically paired syllogism.” In his analysis, [A] and [B] are double premises; [A1] and [B1] double conclusions (“Kontext,” 448). 12 See also Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 81. With respect to the concept “the law rules living persons,” Chrysostom (Hom. Rom. 496.50–52) was apparently the first to acknowledge that the term a[nqrwpo" (“person”) embraces both women and men: oujk ei\pe, tou' ajndro;", oujde; th'" gunaiko;", ajlla;, tou' ajnqrwvpou, o{per ejsti; koino;n eJkatevrou tou' zwvou o[noma, “he does not say ‘the man’ and not ‘the woman,’ but ‘the human being,’ which is the name common to each living being.” 13 Hearers must infer that death withdraws the male a[nqrwpo" from the law’s authority.
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analogy, promotes her as the central character of vv. 2–3; she is the heart of the narrative tension.14 Two interwoven narrative scenarios emerge. In scenario 1 ([A][A1]), a man and a woman are alive. Because she is a woman under the man’s authority, she is under the jurisdiction of the law that governs his life. His law decrees that she is an adulteress should she, while he is alive, become another man’s partner. In scenario 2 ([B][B1]), the man is dead and the woman alive. The link between the woman and the law, that is, the living man, has vanished. This means that the woman is both free from the constraints—and protected by the provisions—of the man’s law; that is, once the man is dead, she is not an adulteress should she become another man’s partner. Both scenarios focus on how the law’s rule affects the woman and her life, not the man and his life.
The Source—Grammatical Observations 1. u{pandro" (“under [the authority of] a man”). The participle zw'n (v. 2) characterizes the man as a “living person” who, according to v. 1, lives under his law’s authority although a specific explanation of the law’s authority over the man is missing. The adjective u{pandro" (“under [the authority of] a man”) relates the woman to the man and portrays the woman’s status in their relationship from her perspective: existence under the authority of a man. Modern translations often render u{pandro" as “married,” determining this translation through the lens of v. 3, in which the noun “adulteress” establishes the woman and the man as wife and husband living under the authority of Mosaic law.15 Whereas the literary context of the narrative (vv. 2–3) indeed justifies the translation of u{pandro" gunhv as “married woman,” without further explanation this translation for all intents and purposes conceals several details within the analogy that are central to Paul’s use of this particular expression. First, the translation “married woman” flattens the literary crescendo Paul builds into his narrative. Verse 2 neither specifies the exact social nature of the relationship nor explains how the woman came to be under the man’s authority. The rarely used adjective u{pandro"16 designates persons and possessions under the guiding rule and protection of the head of a household, usually a man. Without 14 The woman’s placement as grammatical subject of the independent clauses in vv. 2–3, together with her position at the beginning of v. 2, reflects her central function in the evolving analogy (see Burchard, “Kontext,” 449). Chrysostom also posits that Paul designed vv. 2–3 with the woman in mind, albeit to demonstrate that she, who stands for all believers, was, like her husband, dead (Hom. Rom. 496.56–57). 15 The legal charge of adultery did not apply to an unmarried woman; see Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative (JSOTSup 310; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 117. 16 A search of the TLG (CD E) shows that its most frequent occurrence is in patristic quotations of Rom 7:2 (release date: February 4, 2000).
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reading ahead in the text, the woman introduced in v. 2 could be a wife, an unmarried or divorced female member of her father’s household, or a female slave in a household. Second, translating u{pandro" as “married” blurs the fact that u{pandro" gunhv does not reflect standard Pauline language for “wife and husband,” nor is it a typical Jewish expression for marriage. Despite the fact that the Genesis story (see 3:16) encodes a hierarchical relationship between man and woman, u{pandro" appears only in Rom 7:2 in NT literature. Compared with the several hundred instances of the expressions hJ gunh; aujtou'/sou/mou (“his/your/my wife”) or oJ ajnh;r aujth'"/sou/mou (“her/your/my husband”) in the LXX, the adjective u{pandro" and the prepositional phrase uJp! ajndrov" occur only seven times, are limited to three texts, and—with the exception of Sir 9:9; 41:23—are restricted to specific literary contexts (Num 5:19, 20, 29; Prov 6:24, 29). Third, u{pandro" indicates a woman’s social and legal status within a marital relationship as determined by hierarchical and patriarchal societal norms in antiquity.17 Fourth, in this text, u{pandro" is part of a conceptual network that exploits certain characteristics of a first-century marital relationship that are relevant to the formulation of Paul’s analogy.18 Fifth, the compound word u{pandro" echoes other hierarchical relationships in its literary context.19 Sixth, u{pandro" gives the woman–man relationship in the narrative particular features mandated by the analogy; specifically, they also characterize the believer–Christ relationship mentioned in v. 4. To emphasize these six interrelated aspects of Paul’s use of u{pandro", I will use the literal translation “under [the authority of] a man” to describe the woman’s sociocultural position in the marital relationship as portrayed in the narrative.20 17 See Fuchs, who provides further literature (Sexual Politics, 130, 136). Castelli argues that “Paul is here able to make his point about the law through reference to a socially constituted hierarchical relation” (“Romans,” 283). 18 Paul uses only those aspects of a marital relationship that are relevant to, and supportive of, his analogy: marriage is legal and lifelong (at least for the woman), constitutes a bond, submits a woman to a man, is set apart from both adultery and “becoming another man’s partner,” and dissolves in death. 19 Cf. expressions like uJpakohv (“obedience” [6:16]), uJpakouvw (“obey” [6:12, 16, 17]), uJpo; novmon/cavrin (“under law/grace” [6:14, 15]), and uJpo; th;n aJmartivan (“under sin” [7:14]). Catherine A. Grieb understands u{pandro" as reflecting “that the situation of a married woman is comparable to that of slaves” (The Story of Romans: A Narrative Defense of God’s Righteousness [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002], 69). For a differing opinion (with references) that u{pandro" ought to be translated “married,” see Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 73–77. Baumert’s interpretation of u{pandro" as “engagement” is not convincing (Woman and Man, 23). 20 Some scholars view vv. 2–3 as foundational to Pauline teaching on marriage (and divorce). However, the narrative does not offer a marriage analogy nor is “marriage” the core of the narrative. Whereas vv. 2–3 incorporate an argument about the law and a marital union within the boundaries of this law, the narrative lacks a holistic portrait of Paul’s understanding of marriage (and divorce) and fails to represent adequately the legal complexities of marriage in the Greco-Roman-Jewish cultural environment of Paul’s time; see Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage; Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood
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2. oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" (“the law that governs the man”). By qualifying the woman’s relationship to the man as u{pandro", Paul relates the woman also to the specific novmo" tou' ajndrov" (“the law that governs the man” [v. 2b]). With this phrase, Paul refers to the law that is normative for the man in the narrative, who functions grammatically as a genitive attribute to novmo".21 Because I pursue an interpretation that recognizes symmetry both in the narrative (vv. 2–3) and in Paul’s analogy (vv. 2–4), I exclude three grammatical possibilities for rendering oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov": (1) that the genitive tou' ajndrov" identifies the legislator whose law becomes normative for subordinates—the law is decreed by the man; (2) that the genitive tou' ajndrov" functions as appositive—the law is the man; and (3) that the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" refers to a specific legislative genre, lex matrimonialis. Whereas the first possibility has ample grammatical precedent,22 it does not make sense within the narrative context of vv. 2–3.23 The second option originates with early Greek interpreters (e.g., Origen and Chrysostom) who render the genitive tou' ajndrov" and the dative novmw/ (v. 2) as appositives to the noun oJ novmo" and the phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv for the purpose of supporting their theological argument that the law is as dead as the man in the narrative.24 However, this particular reading of oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" has no support in Paul’s letter to the Romans; it is theologically incompatible with other Pauline statements (cf. 3:31) and misrepresents both the development of the source narrative and a central—often obscured—aspect of v. 4: the Christ-believers’ “death to the law” neither means nor implies the death of the law.25 (London: Routledge, 2002); Gilian Clark, “Roman Women,” in Women in Antiquity (ed. Ian McAuslan and Peter Walcot; Greece and Rome Studies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 36–55. Beverly Roberts Gaventa points out that “to use this passage to construct an understanding of marriage is to misperceive its function in the letter” (“Romans,” in Women’s Bible Commentary: Expanded Edition with Apocrypha [ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998], 403–10, here 408). Romans 7:1–6 has been interpreted from patristic times as a Pauline teaching on marriage: Tertullian “proved” that Paul nullified the law permitting remarriage (Mon. 13 [PL 2]). In contrast, Theodoret used the passage to advocate remarriage (Haereticarum fabularum compendium 541.37–50 [PG 83]). 21 Cf. Esth 3:8: oiJ novmoi aujtw'n (“their laws”); 2 Macc 6:1; 7:37: oiJ novmoi tw'n patrivwn (“the laws of the fathers”); Acts 25:8: novmo" tw'n !Ioudaivwn (“the law of the Jews”). 22 Cf. 2 Kgs 10:31 et al.: novmo" kurivou (“the law of the Lord”; also Luke 2:24, 39); Josh 24:26 et al.: novmo" tou' qeou' (“the law of God”; also Rom 7:25); Ezra 7:26; Esth 3:8: novmo" tou' basilevw" (“the law of the king”); Prov 6:20: novmoi patrov" sou (“the laws of your father”); Sir 9:15 et al.: novmo" uJyivstou (“the law of the most high”); cf. the expression oJ novmo" tou' stovmatov" sou (“the law of your mouth” [Ps 118:72 (MT 119:72)]) and Paul’s use of novmo" tou' Cristou' (“the law of Christ”) in Gal 6:2. Other cases are ambiguous: 1 Kgs 2:3 et al.; 1 Cor 9:9; Luke 2:22 et al.: oJ novmo" Mwu>sevw" (“the law of Moses”); Prov 13:14: novmo" sofou' (“the law of the wise person”). 23 See Burchard, “Kontext,” 451 n. 47. 24 See the brief discussion of Origen’s and Chrysostom’s interpretation in the introductory section of this article. 25 Even if it were correct that the law was “the man,” the narrative still would progress from the
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The third possibility, that oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" refers to lex matrimonialis, demands a more thorough review. From a lexical perspective, the popular interpretation that Paul relates a woman (who is free from Mosaic marriage law in particular [vv. 2–3]) to believers (who are free from the Mosaic law in general [v. 4])26 is built on the premise that the noun ajnhvr (“man”) has the dual meaning “husband” (all occurrences of ajnhvr in vv. 2–3 except the one in the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov") and “a husband’s duties and privileges in a marriage” (in the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov"). However, the lack of requisite linguistic markers in Rom 7:1–6 and the absence of comparable lexical evidence make this understanding of ajnhvr weak.27 From a narrative perspective, translating oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" as “marriage woman’s release from one man/law to bondage to another man/law, for which movement a deathto-the-law interpretation cannot account. 26 See Burchard, “Kontext,” 453; Dunn, Romans, 156; Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 72–73; Fitzmyer, Romans, 458; Gieniusz, “Lack of Imagination,” 398. 27 Although phrases such as novmo" tou' gavmou (“law of marriage”), kata; tou;" gavmou" novmimon (“lawful with respect to marriages”), or oiJ peri; gavmwn novmoi (“the laws of marriage”) occur in extrabiblical Greek (see Dionysius of Halicarnassus [Rhetorica] 2.3.7 [ed. H. Usener and L. Radermacher, Dionysii Halicarnasei quae exstant (Leipzig: Teubner, 1929; repr. Stuttgart, 1965), 6:255–92, 295– 387]; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 5.18.1 [ed. Friedrich Vogel, Diodori bibliotheca historica (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890)]; Josephus, C. Ap. 2.25 §199), these phrases are not parallel to Paul’s expression oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" and do not clarify its meaning because they unambiguously denote “marriage law(s)” or “laws concerning husband and wife” (this is also the case with the spurious fragment novmoi ajndro;" kai; gameth'", which William Arndt et al. attribute to Aristotle [BAGD, s.v. novmo", 3). The construct “novmo" plus genitive” occurs also in the LXX. Its authors use this construct to translate “law concerning a specific topic” in passages in which “topic” appears in the genitive (e.g., oJ novmo" tou' pavsca) and refers to Passover, various offerings, contaminated clothes, disease, bodily discharge, animals, childbirth, jealousy, or vows (see Exod 12:43; Lev 6:2 [MT 6:9], 7 [MT 6:14], 18 [MT 6:25]; 7:1, 11 [cf. 7:37]; 14:57; 15:3; Num 5:29; 9:12, 14). By this means, the authors refer to ordinances that specify how to perform a particular ritual or what one should do with regard to a particular “topic.” In all biblical cases, “novmo" plus genitive” translates ordinances concerning specific “topics” (e.g., Passover), not larger legal subdivisions (e.g., feasts); and the authors use this construct only in reference to ordinances where the “topic” itself identifies the law under discussion. In addition, LXX authors use either adjectives rank-shifted to nouns and descriptive of the specific law at hand, or employ participles rank-shifted to nouns to articulate cases of a “law concerning an individual” (Lev 12:7: oJ novmo" th'" tiktouvsh" a[rsen h] qh'lu, “the law concerning the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl”; 14:2: oJ novmo" tou' leprou', “the law concerning the leper”; 15:32: oJ novmo" tou' gonorruou'", “the law concerning one who suffers spermatorrhoea”; Num 6:13, 21: oJ novmo" tou' eujxamevnou, “the law concerning one who makes a vow”). These observations are significant for two reasons. First, only a superficial survey of LXX usage suggests that Paul’s phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" refers to a specific ordinance concerning the man, or—supported by the fact that the LXX refers to “husband” either with the noun ajnhvr or the phrases oJ ajnh;r aujth'"/sou/mou—to a specific ordinance concerning the husband. Daniel Boyarin understands this ordinance to be the law of adultery (A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994], 165); Rehmann, the law of jealousy mentioned in Num 5:29 (“Doorway,” 100–102); C. E. B. Cranfield (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1977], 1:333) and Dunn (Romans, 1:360), a law insofar as it places husbands in authority over wives; and Burchard, a law insofar as it binds women to men (“Kontext,” 451 n. 47). However, these
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law” leaves no legal basis for the particular circumstance (“should the woman become another man’s partner” [v. 3]) that Paul writes into the narrative. Does Paul envision some sort of temporary legal vacuum that results from a woman’s freedom from marriage law—a freedom until she remarries? This understanding would introduce substantial incompatibilities both within the narrative of vv. 2–3 and between the narrative and the analogy’s target (v. 4). If the woman is free from marriage law, she is only partially free from the law and free from marriage law only until she remarries, whereas Christ-believers are permanently free from the Mosaic law.28 interpretations do not appropriately reflect LXX usage because they, contrary to LXX usage, (1) encode one specific law (concerning divorce/jealousy/adultery/authority/bondage) with terminology referring to another legal entity (man/husband); (2) use terminology (man/husband) that encrypts the ordinance at hand; (3) include different ordinances (concerning divorce/jealousy/etc.) under one larger corpus of laws (marriage law); and (4) coin a new legal category (oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov") without explanation of what this specific ordinance entails. Consequently, LXX texts are of little help in clarifying Paul’s expression. Paul’s writing does not reflect standard LXX usage; his expression is not supported by LXX conventions Besides instances where the genitive marks specific statutes (see the references in the preceding paragraph of this note), other occurrences of “novmo" plus genitive” in the LXX are difficult to classify. The translators of Malachi (2:6: novmo" ajlhqeiva", “the law of truth”) and the authors of Sirach (17:11: novmo" zwh'", “the law of life”; 45:5: novmo" ejpisthvmh", “the law of knowledge”) and Wisdom (2:11: novmo" th'" dikaiosuvnh", “the law of righteousness”) employ expressions qualitatively similar to (and equally ambiguous) Paul’s novmo" tw'n e[rgwn (“the law of deeds”) and novmo" pivstew" (“the law of faith” [Rom 3:27]), novmo" tou' noov" mou (“the law of my mind” [7:23]), novmo" th'" aJmartiva" (“the law of sin” [7:23, 25; 8:2]), novmo" tou' pneuvmato" th'" zwh'"/novmo" tou' qanavtou (“the law of the spirit of life/the law of death” [8:2]), and novmo" dikaiosuvnh" (“the law of righteousness” [9:31]). 2 Samuel 7:19 (kuvriev mou kuvrie, kai; ejlavlhsa" uJpe;r tou' oi[kou tou' douvlou sou eij" makravn, ou|to" de; oJ novmo" tou' ajnqrwvpou, kuvriev mou kuvrie, “Lord my Lord, you have spoken in behalf of the house of your servant for a long time; but this is the law of the human being, Lord my Lord”) uses the expression “law of the person” (oJ novmo" tou' ajnqrwvpou), whose meaning is not clear. A comparison with v. 25 (kai; nu'n, kuvriev mou kuvrie, to; rJhm ' a, o} ejlavlhsa" peri; tou' douvlou sou kai; tou' oi[kou aujtou', pivstwson e{w" aijw'no", “and now, Lord my Lord, the word you have spoken in behalf of your servant and his house, be forever trustworthy”) reveals semantic and syntactic parallels between vv. 19 and 25. In both verses, the phrase kuvriev mou kuvrie (“Lord, my Lord”), is followed (or preceded) by a reference to God speaking about God’s servant and the servant’s house, which reference, in turn, is either followed (or preceded) by the phrase ou|to" de; oJ novmo" tou' ajnqrwvpou (“this is the law of the human being” [v. 19]) or the imperative pivstwson e{w" aijw'no" (“be forever trustworthy” [v. 25]). In his prayer, David appears to commit God to God’s word; that is, what God speaks becomes “law for/of humans,” and humans hold God accountable to the standard(s) God establishes. Second, in 1 Corinthians, where Paul indeed discusses issues related to marital relationships and refers to “husbands,” he uses the verb gamevw (“marry”: 1 Cor 7:9[2x], 10, 28[2x], 33, 34, 36, 39) in the form of participles rank-shifted to nouns: oiJ gegamhkovte" (“married persons” [7:10]); oJ gamhvsa" (“the married man” [7:33]); and hJ gamhvsasa (“the married woman” [7:34]). In Romans 7, however, Paul does not use the phrases novmo" tou' gamhvsanto" (“law concerning the married person”) or novmo" tou' gavmou (“law of marriage”), which would be the expected lexical choices based on LXX conventions, extrabiblical usage, and normative Pauline vocabulary. 28 Burchard, too, recognizes these incompatibilities (“Kontext,” 444, 453).
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In my opinion, the logic of the source narrative (vv. 2–3) depends on the woman’s transition from one male authority to another and, consequently, from one legal system to the next:29 the entire narrative is built on the continuing relevance of law, including—but not exclusive to—marriage law. Paul presents a case study of “becoming another man’s partner” from two perspectives, during a man’s life (scenario 1 in table 1) and after his death (scenario 2); he explicates his brief study within the legal parameters of old and new marital relationships. As long as the man lives, “becoming another man’s partner” leads to the woman’s death because his law classifies her action as adultery (scenario 1). That man’s death affects the woman in four interrelated ways (scenario 2). First, his law’s authority over her ends with his death. Second, despite the fact that the man is dead, his law nevertheless continues to protect the woman, who “becomes another man’s partner,” from others charging her with adultery. Third, his death is the basis that justifies her legally “becoming another man’s partner.” Fourth, discharge from the man’s law affords the woman the possibility of becoming, upon remarriage, subject to another partner’s law. Thus, all cases of “becoming another man’s partner” are governed by law: the law of the man to whom a woman is already married, the law of the man whose partner she might become, and either man’s laws that define adultery and regulate (re)marriage or widowhood. In this way, the source narrative (vv. 2–3) voices a cultural paradigm—an analogy of legal hierarchical relationships: as a man lives under his law’s authority, so a woman, once (re)married, enters oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov", the legal sphere that governs her husband’s life.30 Paul precedes vv. 2–3 with an invocation of this particular legal-cultural knowledge (v. 1).31 3. tw/' zw'nti ajndri; devdetai novmw/ (“bound to the law by way of the man who is alive”). According to vv. 2–3, the nature of the woman’s relationship to novmo" is contingent upon the life status of the man: as long as he is alive, the woman is bound to his law. If he is dead, the nature of her affiliation with his law shifts from bondage 29 The conjunctions a[ra ou\n (“therefore then”), in v. 3 indicate that Paul infers—from his portrayal of the relations between man, woman, and law in v. 2—that this transition from one man’s law to the next is viable and essential to his narrative. Gieniusz acknowledges the inferential force of a[ra followed by ou\n, albeit to posit that Paul infers that the woman is charged with adultery (“Lack of Imagination,” 393–94). 30 Referring to Israel’s history, Carol Meyers writes that marriages were generally virilocal involving “female mobility” and “male stability” and requiring women to adopt the cultural values and household practices of the families into which they married (Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context [New York: Oxford University Press, 1988], 183–88). The term u{pandro" reflects the legal position of women as defined by the laws of the men of Paul’s time. Clark writes that the legal power of Roman men (patria potestas; tutela) was especially strong in the capital, where the recipients of Paul’s letter resided (“Roman Women,” 37). 31 Whereas Hellholm suggests that Paul’s initial appeal to an understanding of “law,” although formulated in broad terms, may actually have indicated specific legal knowledge (“Argumentative Funktion,” 405), I propose that Paul appealed to an understanding of the cultural embeddedness of “law.”
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to discharge and freedom. However, the syntax of v. 2a obscures the argument’s development. Paul places the dative noun novmw/ (“to law”) after—and the phrase in the dative tw/' zw'nti ajndriv (“to the living man”) before—the verb devdetai (“she is bound”).32 Although this syntax suggests that one dative marks the goal of the state of “being bound” and the other dative the means or circumstance causing this state, in the Greek Vorlage the clause tw/' zw'nti ajndri; devdetai novmw/ is ambiguous and can be translated in various ways: (1) the woman is by law bound to the living man; (2) the woman is bound to the law for the living man; (3) insofar as the living man is concerned the woman is bound to the law; and (4) the woman is bound to the law by way of the man who is alive.33
32 The clause tw'/ zw'nti ajndri; devdetai novmw/ differs from sentences in which Paul uses two prepositional phrases that modify the verb (see Gal 3:19: diatagei;" di! ajggevlwn ejn ceiri; mesivtou, “arranged through angels by the hand of a mediator”), or in which Paul, in addition to the dative, also uses a prepositional phrase to clarify grammatical relations and avoid the potentially confusing syntax a double dative might cause (see Rom 3:24: dikaiouvmenoi th/' cavriti dia; th'" ajpolutrwvsew", “justified through grace through redemption”; 5:17: tw'/ paraptwvmati ejbasivleusen dia; tou' eJnov", “through the transgression death reigned through the one”; 2 Cor 10:11: ejsmen tw'/ lovgw/ di! ejpistolw'n ajpovnte", “we are in word by letters when absent”; Gal 5:5: pneuvmati ejk pivstew" ajpekdecovmeqa, “by the spirit from faith we await”). In Rom 7:4 (ejqanatwvqhte tw'/ novmw/ dia; tou' swvmato", “you have been put to death to the law”), the phrase dia; tou' swvmato" (“through the body”) signals that the hearer should not interpret the dative tw'/ novmw/ (“to the law”) as an agent of death. However, the passive construct B (direct object) is bound to C (indirect object) by way of A (agent) in Rom 7:2a— in the NT a hapax syntacticon involving the verb devw, “to bind”—conceals both the goal of the binding action (the law? the living man?) and the identity of the binding agent (the living man? the law?). Outside of Rom 7:2, the verb devw occurs forty-two times in the NT. Because syntax varies considerably, evidence gained from a comparison of word order is inconclusive. NT authors use the active verb in constructs as follows: agent A binds object B (Matt 12:29//Mark 3:27; Matt 14:3; 22:13; 27:2; Mark 5:3; 6:17; 15:1; John 18:12; Acts 8:14; 21:11; 22:29); A binds B into object C (Matt 13:30); A binds B in place C (Matt 16:19; 18:18); A binds B for time C (Luke 13:16; Rev 20:2); and A binds B with object C (John 19:40). In the passive voice, authors use devomai in constructs as follows: B is bound (Matt 21:1//Mark 11:2//Luke 19:30; Mark 15:7; John 18:24; Acts 9:2, 21; 21:13; 24:27; Col 4:3; 2 Tim 2:9); B is bound in place C (Mark 11:4; Acts 22:5; Rev 9:14); B is bound for time C (1 Cor 7:39); and, B is bound with/by/to object C (Mark 5:4; John 11:44; Acts 12:6; 20:22; 21:33; 1 Cor 7:27). A LXX search shows the same range of usage. 33 Ambiguous syntax abounds in Paul’s letter to the Romans. In 1:17, for example, the prepositional phrase ejk pivstew" (“from faith”) may modify either the preceding expression oJ divkaio" (“the righteous person”) or the following verb zhvsetai (“will live”). The dative toi'" poihvmasin ( “to the deeds”) in 1:20 may be dependent on either the participle noouvmena (“perceiving”) or the verb kaqora'tai (“comprehend”). In 3:19 the phrase toi'" ejn tw'/ novmw/ (“to those in the law”) may modify the preceding verb levgei (“to speak”) or the following lalei' (“to talk”). Likewise, in 8:2 the prepositional phrase ejn Cristw'/ !Ihsou' (“in Christ Jesus”) may modify one of the preceding elements (oJ novmo" or hJ zwh', “law/life”) or the following statement hjleuqevrwsevn se (“he set you free”). The datives fuvsei (“by nature”) and eJautoi'" (“by themselves”) are ambiguous in 2:14, as are the datives th/' pivstei (“to faith” [4:19; 14:1]), th/' aJmartiva/ (“to sin” [6:10]), and [tw'/] kurivw/ (“to the Lord” [14:6, 8]); cf. the placements of ejn kurivw/ (“in the Lord” [1 Cor 1:31]), ajkatakaluvptw/ th/' kefalh/' (“with uncovered head” [11:5]), and ajnqrwvpoi" (“to persons” [14:3]).
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The dative phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv could express the goal of the binding action, as in the first translation; however, this rendering contributes to the traditional asymmetrical assessment of Paul’s argument.34 It necessitates that the dative novmw/ be understood to function either as an appositive to ajndriv or as a legal qualifier “by law.” In the first case, the narrative is based on a death-of-the-law interpretation that has—as discussed previously—no support in Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the second case, Paul’s narrative juxtaposes two authorities with mutually exclusive legal powers, the law (binding a woman “to a man”) and death (discharging a woman “from the law”) and, therefore, asymmetrically illustrates that a woman is “freed from” the law “by a man’s death” but “bound to” a living man “by law.”35 However, the phrases “discharged from the law” and “free from the law” are not antonymically equivalent to the legal principle “bound by law” (insofar as one assumes this legal principle’s existence). A woman “freed by law” is a true antonymic expression of “bound by law,” but this is not the phrase that appears in the source narrative (vv. 2–3). Thus, in this reading of tw/' zw'nti ajndriv, the narrative lacks symmetry: it does not move from the woman’s bondage to a man to her freedom from the man. The dative could identify the man as the person affected by the binding action, as in the second alternative translation: the woman’s bond to the law would be to his advantage. However, this reading shifts the focus from the woman’s bondage to the man’s benefit and, thus, skews the narrative by amplifying the androcentrism inherent in the narrative. Likewise, the dative could relate the binding action to the man, as in the third translation. In this case, the narrative introduces a woman’s bond to the law as matter that concerns the living man. This alternative falls short because it also shifts the central narrative focus from the woman to the man, which is without support in the narrative itself. With the fourth translation, the dative phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv stresses the means of the binding action, and within the dative phrase, the participle zw'nti qualifies the noun ajndriv with circumstantial information, “when/insofar as the man is alive.” In this case, Paul’s construct shows that the man is the causal link between the woman and the law, and the added participle zw'nti limits the binding action to the specific circumstance that the man is alive. The complete phrase fore34 See Earnshaw’s analysis of grammar and syntax, which represents the common approach to this clause (“Reconsidering,” 76). 35 Nonetheless, scholars commonly blur semantic and narrative differences. For instance, Hellholm (“Argumentative Funktion,” 405) and Moo (Romans, 422) translate devdetai novmw/ as “bound by law.” However, their opinion that vv. 4–6 presents the literary transformation of a believer’s “bondage to the law” to the believer’s “freedom from the law” indicates a silent rereading of devdetai novmw/ as “(no longer) bound to the law.” In this way, Hellholm and Moo cover the structural differences between source narrative and the target of the analogy that their traditional interpretation of novmw/ requires.
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shadows the line of reasoning that will address the event of the man’s death: Paul’s argument will center on the woman’s relationship to the law when the binding link, the man, is missing. The following ten points support my reading of Paul’s grammar and syntax. 1. Although ambiguous expressions seldom encode their precise meaning on the sentence level, Paul appears to have inscribed his understanding of the relations between “woman,” “man,” and “law” with the use of the adjective u{pandro". One recognizes the redundancy in the traditional rendering of v. 2a, “a woman under the authority of a man is bound to the living man,” when one realizes that the phrase hJ u{pandro" gunhv can only be meaningful if both the woman and the man are alive, and that the word u{pandro" expresses that the woman is de facto bound to the man (though the exact nature of the bond is not expressed). With the fourth alternative translation, Paul’s use of u{pandro" can be interpreted to illuminate the ambivalence caused by his choice of syntax. u{pandro" functions as a lexical marker that removes redundancy from the narrative because this adjective specifies that a woman who is under a man’s authority is also bound to the law that governs his life.36 2. The two perfect-tense verbs in the narrative, devdetai (“she is bound”) and kathvrghtai (“she is discharged”), are antonyms used in close proximity to each other and joined by the contrasting conjunction eja;n dev (“but if ”). By correlating the woman’s “bondage” and “discharge” with the man’s “life” and “death,” Paul establishes a carefully crafted balance of opposites. The man’s life causes the woman to be bound to the law; his death causes her to be discharged from his law. 3. Paul frames the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" with two general references to novmo". Discharge from the man’s novmo", the event at the center of the narrative’s literary movement, changes the woman’s state from “bound to novmo"” to “free from novmo".” The trajectory novmo"–novmo" tou' ajndrov"–novmo" reveals a cause-and-effect relationship between the phrases “discharged from the man’s law” (v. 2b) and “freedom from the law” (v. 3b). It identifies the parameters of a woman’s relationship to the law to be “bound to” and “free from”; and it defines the semantic quality of novmo" to be the same at both ends of this literary movement. 4. Paul places the term novmo" after the verb in all phrases describing the relationship of the woman (or her analogical equivalent, the believers) to the law.37 Thus, word order in the passage consistently suggests that the noun novmo" (which always follows the verb) functions as direct object of the verb devdetai. 5. As dictionary entries indicate, novmw/ can indeed be narrowly defined “by custom/law” or “conventionally.”38 However, context determines which meaning is 36
For a defense of the traditional interpretation, see Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 76. Romans 7:2: devdetai novmw/ (“she is bound to the law”); kathvrghtai ajpo; tou' novmou tou' ajndrov" (“she is discharged from the law that governs the man”); 7:3: ejleuqevra ejsti;n ajpo; tou' novmou (“she is free from the law”); 7:4: ejqanatwvqhte tw'/ novmw/ (“you have been put to death to the law”); 7:6: kathrghvqhmen ajpo; tou' novmou (“we are discharged from the law”). 38 See LSJ. 37
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appropriate.39 Paul’s use of the anarthrous dative novmw/ can be explained on contextual grounds.40 He begins by stating that his audience is knowledgeable about the law (v. 1; novmo" without article; a nonspecific reference to novmo"). Paul continues with the assertion that the law rules living humans (v. 1: novmo" with article; Paul specifies the content of legal knowledge referring to a law known to himself and to the Roman believers, presumably the Mosaic law). He proceeds, stating that a woman “under the authority of a man” is “bound to law” (v. 2: novmo" without article; Paul defines the meaning of u{pandro" gunhv by employing a nonspecific reference to novmo" that has not yet been defined specifically as “the law of the man,” but is generally applicable to the cultural/legal setting of Paul’s time). All other instances of the noun novmo" in vv. 1–6, with the exception of v. 4, are preceded by a preposition and occur with an article.41 6. The participle zw'nti is, from a narrative perspective, surplus content; that is, the man’s qualification as “living person” does not contribute new or even essential information to the narrative itself. It appears to have been added to clarify the particular situation under which the bond between “woman” and “law” is sustained. Whereas zw'nti is an attributive participle,42 it is grammatically possible—and from the perspective of the literary structure of vv. 1–3, likely—that it both qualifies the man as a living person and also carries circumstantial information.43 In vv. 1–3, Paul refers to a man’s life in three different, yet related ways: ejf! o{son crovnon zh/' (“as long as he/she lives” [v. 1]); tw/' zw'nti ajndriv (“by way of the man who is alive” [v. 2]); and zw'nto" tou' ajndrov" (“while the man is alive” [v. 3]). Given that the phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv is flanked by a relative clause (v. 1) and a participial phrase (v. 3)—both of which articulate the specific circumstances under which the actions kurieuvw (“rule”) and crhmativzw (“declare”) take place—it is probable that the participle zw'nti (v. 2) also articulates a specific circumstance, “when/insofar as the man is alive.” 7. Paul uses a syntactical and grammatical parallel to tw/' zw'nti ajndriv in Rom 7:21, that is, an attributive participle in the dative: tw/' qevlonti ejmoiv.44 This construct also denotes a specific circumstance (“when I want to do what is good”) that is related to the last clause of v. 21 (“evil is nearby”).45 One can legitimately make the 39 For instance, it is unlikely that one would translate the clause eij ejpanapauvh/ novmw/ in Rom 2:17 “if you rest lawfully.” 40 See anarthrous novmo" in the immediate context (6:14, 15; 7:1, 25). 41 See Fitzmyer’s discussion of anarthrous novmo" (Romans, 456–57). 42 See BDF §§411–25. 43 In some instances attributive participles carry circumstantial information; see Norbert Baumert, Täglich Sterben und Auferstehen: Der Literalsinn von 2Kor 4,12–5,10 (SANT 34; Munich: Kösel, 1973), 401–9. The phrase pa'" oJ krivnwn in Rom 2:1, e.g., refers to any person “insofar as/when he or she judges,” and oJ speivrwn in Gal 6:8 refers to any person “insofar as/when he or she sows.” 44 The meaning of this expression is problematic, as is the syntax of the whole verse. For a discussion, see Moo, Romans, 460. 45 See NRSV; Moo, Romans, 460.
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case that the dative phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv functions in a similar fashion, that is, as a reference to the particular circumstance “when/insofar as the man is alive,” and translate the complete phrase as a dative of circumstance, not as a dative of means. 8. Other passages show that Paul sometimes uses participial constructions as a variant of conditional expressions; in these cases the participle also expresses circumstance.46 Because Rom 7:2–3 also shows a pattern of alternately intertwined participial and conditional phrases (tw/' zw'nti ajndriv / eja;n de; ajpoqavnh/ oJ ajnhvr / zw'nto" tou' ajndrov" / eja;n de; ajpoqavnh/ oJ ajnhvr, “when the man is alive / if the man dies / while the man is alive / if the man dies”), the structure of these verses supports a rendering of the participle zw'nti as circumstantial reference, “when/insofar as the man is alive.” 9. In 1 Cor 7:39 (gunh; devdetai ejf! o{son crovnon zh/' oJ ajnh;r aujth'": eja;n de; koimhqh/' oJ ajnhvr, ejleuqevra ejsti;n w/| qevlei gamhqh'nai, “a wife is bound as long as her husband is alive; but if the man dies, she is free to become married to whomever she wishes”), Paul discusses remarriage of a woman and uses expressions he employs also in Rom 7:1 (ejf! o{son crovnon zh/', “as long as he/she lives”), 7:2 (gunh; devdetai, “a woman is bound”), and 7:3 (eja;n de; ajpoqavnh//koimhqh/' oJ ajnhvr, ejleuqevra ejstivn, “but if the man dies/falls asleep, she is free”). An examination of the similarities and differences between Paul’s arguments in 1 Cor 7:39 and Rom 7:1–3 reveals several details relevant to our discussion. First, in 1 Cor 7:39 Paul formulates the conditions of a woman’s bondage and freedom in two relative clauses, “as long as her husband lives” and “if the man dies.” This syntax suggests a symmetrical argument guided by the premise “as life binds, death frees,” that is, the agent of a woman’s bondage is the life of a man, the agent of her freedom his death. Second, Paul does not mention the goals of the binding and releasing actions (bound to, and free from, the law or the man), but identifies the goal of a woman’s liberated state as “free for”; that is, a woman is free as soon as her husband dies to be bound again as long as her new husband lives. Third, the relative clause ejf! o{son crovnon zh/' provides circumstantial information regarding a wife’s bondage (as long as the man lives). In contrast, in Rom 7:2–3, Paul identifies the goal of the releasing action (free from the law), the condition of the woman’s freedom (as soon as the man dies), and the goal of a woman’s liberated state (to be a non-adulteress upon becoming another man’s partner). The syntax of Rom 7:2, however, conceals the goal of the binding action (whether she is bound to the law or the man) and, thus, also conceals 46 See Rom 2:26–27: eja;n hJ ajkrobustiva fulavssh/ . . . hJ ajkrobustiva telou'sa (“if foreskin guards . . . foreskin insofar as/when it fulfills”); 7:3: eja;n gevnhtai ajndri; eJtevrw/ . . . genomevnhn ajndri; eJtevrw/ (“if she becomes another man’s partner . . . insofar as/when she becomes another man’s partner”); Gal 5:2–3: ejan; peritevmnhsqe . . . panti; ajnqrwvpw/ peritemnomevnw/ (“if you become circumcised . . . to every man insofar as/when he becomes circumcised”); 6:7–8: eja;n speivrh/ a[nqrwpo" . . . oJ speivrwn (“if a person sows . . . the one insofar as/when he or she sows”).
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whether Paul formulates a symmetrical (a woman is bound to, and freed from, the law) or an asymmetrical argument (a woman is bound by law to a man, but freed by death from the law). In addition, the clause ejf! o{son crovnon zh/', with which Paul, in 1 Cor 7:39, describes the duration of the woman’s bondage in a marital relationship, expresses in Rom 7:1 the duration of the law’s dominion over a person (“as long as a person lives”). To describe the circumstance, goal, or means of the woman’s bondage in a marital relationship (a man, while he is alive), Paul in Rom 7:2 uses the structurally ambiguous clause tw/' zw'nti ajndri; devdetai novmw/. Comparing the arguments in 1 Cor 7:39 and Rom 7:1–3 allows an additional observation: whereas the clause ejf! o{son crovnon zh/' is not necessarily synonymous with the dative construct tw/' zw'nti ajndriv, both express similar realities—in all three instances (1 Cor 7:39; Rom 7:1, 2), “a person’s life” marks the duration of bondage or dominion. 1 Corinthians 7:39 may illuminate the function of the phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv in Rom 7:2, but not, I think, in the traditionally rendered manner.47 It is plausible 47 The exegetical tradition—beginning with the earliest interpreters of Paul—of using 1 Cor 7:39 (“a wife is bound to her husband”) as a template for the interpretation of Rom 7:2 (“a woman is bound to a man”) is problematic. It assumes that the clearly symmetrical syntax in 1 Cor 7:39 (a woman is bound by the “life” of her husband and freed by his “death”) illuminates the asymmetrical syntax of Rom 7:2 (a woman is bound by “law” but freed by “death”). A brief examination of 1 Cor 7:27 reveals similar issues. In this verse, Paul also uses language similar to Rom 7:2: devdesai gunaikiv, mh; zhvtei luvsin: levlusai ajpo; gunaikov", mh; zhvtei gunai'ka (“are you bound to a wife? Do not seek release. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife”). Paul mentions the case of a man who is either bound to, or released from, a woman. Thus, the verse discloses the respective goals of the binding and releasing actions (the woman). In contrast, Rom 7:2 reveals the goal of the releasing action (the law) but conceals the goal of the binding action (the law or the living man). Whereas 1 Cor 7:27 has no reference to either the binding or releasing agent(s), Rom 7:2 reveals the releasing agent (death of a man) but conceals the binding agent (the law or the living man). Moreover, in 1 Cor 7:27, Paul maintains consistent word order—the expressions qualifying the passives devomai/luvomai (“being bound/being released”) follow the verbs—and articulates a symmetrical argument: a person is bound to and released from a woman. In Rom 7:2, the expression qualifying katargevomai (“being discharged”) also follows the verb; however, Paul’s syntax conceals whether or not the expression qualifying devomai follows or precedes the verb. Likewise, his syntax hides whether he articulates a symmetrical (bound to the law and discharged from the law) or an asymmetrical argument (bound to a man and free from the law). It is problematic to use 1 Cor 7:27 as a matrix for the interpretation of Rom 7:2 because it simultaneously (1) allows the observation of Paul’s syntax in 1 Cor 7:27—the goal of the action follows a verb (devomai)—and disallows the possibility that the goal of devomai also follows a verb (devomai) in Rom 7:2; and (2) it allows the consideration of a balanced statement in 1 Cor 7:27, but disallows the articulation of a balanced argument in Rom 7:2–3. Most significant, the traditionally established links between 1 Cor 7:27, 39 and Rom 7:2 disallow the possibility that Paul might, in his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians, discuss different facets of a marital relationship, employed for the sake of different arguments and located within different literary settings, that is, a woman’s bondage to, and release from, the law in Rom 7:2, but a man’s/woman’s bondage to, and release from, a woman/man in 1 Cor 7:27, 39.
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to argue that tw/' zw'nti ajndriv substitutes for the relative clause ejf! o{son crovnon zh/' with which Paul, in 7:1, refers to the duration of the rule of the law.48 10. Datives expressing the means of verbal action occur frequently in Paul’s texts. They either precede or follow the verb, probably for stylistic reasons.49 The following two characteristics of Paul’s use of datives support an understanding of tw/' zw'nti ajndriv as the means of the binding action. First, Paul uses datives to denote personal agent—a deviation from his usual choice of a prepositional phrase.50 Philippians 4:13 (pavnta ijscuvw ejn tw/' ejndunamou'nti me, “I prevail in everything through the one who gives me strength”) is a good example of Paul’s regular use of grammar. Romans 7:10 (euJrevqh moi hJ ejntolhv, “the commandment was found by me”;51 cf. 2 Cor 12:20: euJreqw' uJmi'n, “I may be found by you”) and Gal 2:8 (oJ ejnerghvsa" Pevtrw//ejnhvrghsen ejmoiv, “the one who worked through Peter/he worked through me”) are examples of exceptions.52 A plausible grammatical case may be made that the phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv denotes the means of the binding action. Second, Paul uses syntax similar to Rom 7:2a in Gal 6:11; Phil 1:27; and Rom 7:25, that is, a verb flanked by datives. In Gal 6:11 (phlivkoi" uJmi'n gravmmasin e[graya th/' ejmh/' ceiriv, “with how large letters I wrote to you with my hand”), the grammatical relationships between the verb and the three datives are clear. How48 Early Latin interpreters provide interesting insights into their understanding of the dative phrase tw'/ zw'nti ajndriv, which they render as an ablative construction, vivente viro. Their rendering of the dative novmw/ as dative legi, however, creates further confusion. The Latin equivalent of novmw/ is the ablative lege, if novmw/ was understood to mean “by law” (see Cicero, Pro Cluentio 56.154 [LCL]: sed ne nova lege adligarentur laborabant, “but they were anxious not to be bound by any new law”). Although the grammatical function of the dative legi remains unclear, the phrase vivente viro is generally read as an indicator of the duration of time in which a woman is obliged to remain married or refrain from remarriage, that is, as long as her husband lives, whether or not she is divorced (see Augustine, De coniugiis adulterinis 2.4 [PL 40]) or Chrysostom’s commentary on 1 Cor 7:39 (De libello repudii 218.45–50 [PG 51]). The Latin theologians do not explain their understanding of the perfect devdetai—variously translated as astricta (Hieronymus, Epistola 55.3 [PL 22]), juncta (Augustine, Conj. adult. 21.27), or alligata est (Vulgate)—nor, for that matter, do they clarify their choice of a Latin equivalent. Their interpretation was driven by a method that uses the syntax, grammar, and content of 1 Cor 7:39 to interpret Rom 7:2. They thought that 1 Cor 7:39 meant that a wife was bound to remain married as long as her husband lived—not that the woman was bound to the husband himself. 49 See the arrangement of Rom 10:9–10, which also reveals the interplay between datives and prepositional expressions: oJmologhvsh/" ejn tw'/ stovmati/pisteuvsh/" ejn th/' kardiva/ . . . kardiva/ pisteuvetai/stovmati oJmologei'tai (“if you agree with your mouth/if you believe with your heart . . . one believes with the heart/one agrees with the mouth”). 50 BDF, however, maintains that a personal agent cannot be expressed by a dative (§195). 51 Cf. the quotation in 10:20: euJrevqhn [ejn] toi'" ejme; mh; zhtou'sin (“I was found by those who did not seek me”). 52 The clause in 2 Cor 10:4 (ta; o{pla dunata; tw'/ qew'/, “the weapons are mighty in/through God”) is also worthy of consideration because the dative identifies God as the source of strength.
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ever, Phil 1:27 (mia/' yuch/' sunaqlou'nte" th/' pivstei, “with one soul together struggling for faith”) and Rom 7:25 (tw/' noi` douleuvw novmw/ qeou', “with the mind I am enslaved to the law of God”) are parallel to Rom 7:2a in structure and, thus, like v. 2a, are structurally ambiguous.53 Philippians 1:27 and Rom 7:25 highlight three aspects that support the reading of the dative tw/' zw'nti ajndriv as the means of the binding action: (1) context determines the meaning of ambiguously structured clauses; (2) an article itself does not conclusively identify a dative as means or goal; and (3) in the rare cases of a double dative surrounding a verb in Pauline literature, the preceding dative appears to function as means of the verbal action. With this revised understanding of the function of v. 2a in its narrative context and the dative phrase tw/' zw'nti ajndriv in the clause, I suggest the translation “a woman under [the authority of] a man bound to the law by way of the man who is alive,” and therewith an interpretation of the source narrative that matches the target of the analogy. Jesus’s death did not affect the believer’s state of boundedness “by” law, rather “to” the law. Bondage “to” the law provides a matching analog to the legal state of believers in Christ mentioned in v. 4; bondage “by” law does not.54
III. A Structured Comparison (Romans 7:2–4) I use terminological and conceptual conventions advocated by cognitive scientists since the 1980s to define, describe, and analyze Paul’s analogy as structured 53 The syntax of Phil 1:27—A strives together by way of C for D (Paul does not mention B, i.e., the dative dependent on the verb sunaqlevw, “struggle together”)—shows that one of the two datives functions as the means, and the other as the goal, of the action “struggle together.” Although the larger context of Paul’s theology supports the reading “with one soul together striving for the faith of the gospel” (i.e., “faith of the gospel” is the goal of “struggling”), the concern for unity that Paul voices in his letter to the Philippians—together with the immediately preceding clause sthvkete ejn eJni; pneuvmati (“you stand in one spirit”)—also permits the reading “you stand in one spirit, together striving for one soul through/in faith of the gospel.” With this interpretation, “one soul” is the goal of the Philippians’ struggle, and the community’s standing united in one spirit and one soul without fear, empowered by the spirit and by the faith of the gospel, functions as a dual sign: destruction for the opponents and salvation for the Philippians (cf. 1:28). Nevertheless, Paul’s syntax remains structurally ambiguous and lacks the grammatical clarity of 4:3 (ai{tine" ejn tw'/ eujaggelivw/ sunhvqlhsavn moi, “who have struggled together with me in the gospel”). Romans 7:25 is of interest because the meaning of the verb douleuvw (“being a slave”), as the context of 7:1–6 suggests, is related to the meaning of the verb devomai (“being bound” [v. 2a]). In addition, in both v. 25 and v. 2a, datives surround the verb: the first expresses the means by which verbal action is achieved, and the last its goal. In both clauses, the dative preceding the verb has the article, and the dative following the verb is anarthrous (Phil 1:27 is in reverse order). However, it is the verses leading up to Rom 7:25 that determine the reading “with the mind I am enslaved to the law of God.” 54 Early English and German translations of the NT provide precedent for my rendering of the phrase devdetai novmw/. Martin Luther translates the phrase “bound to the law” in Rom 7:2 and,
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comparison. The analogy is made up of vv. 2–4.55 Verses 2–3 may be called the source; v. 4, the target of the analogy (see table 1); the individual components of the analogy, analogs;56 and the analogy itself, a structured comparison of higher-order relationships shared between source and target analogs.57 In other words, vv. 2–4 can be called analogy because its individual parts, that is, source and target analogs, can be aligned into pairs (analog mapping) that share similar relations (relational mapping), and higher-order (causal or functional) relations between those relations (system mapping).58 These mappings reveal a structural consistency between source and target that is the basis for inferences about the target. Because source and target analogs share similar relations, they do not need to share attributes, that is, specific lexical resemblance.59 The distinctive structural design of vv. 2–4 may be represented as follows:
based on a textual variant (i.e., the editorial addition of the dative novmw/ after the verb devdetai), also in 1 Cor 7:39. William Tyndale translates “bound by law” in Rom 7:2, but “bound to the law” in 1 Cor 7:39. Other early English translations, for example, John Wycliffe or Douay-Rheims, are rendered from the Latin and therefore read “bound to the law” in Rom 7:2. The most recent edition of a NT that reads “bound to the law” in Rom 7:2 appears to be Peter Ketter, Das Neue Testament: Stuttgarter Kepplerbibel (Stuttgart: Kepplerhaus, 1955). Early Greek interpreters (e.g., Origen and Chrysostom) render the dative novmw/ as an appositive to the phrase tw'/ zw'nti ajndriv, that is, a woman is bound to the husband as to a law. Thus, they too see novmw/ as the goal of the binding action, albeit for various reasons already mentioned. 55 To limit the classification “analogy” to vv. 2–4 avoids the problems endemic in other proposals that extend the analogy into vv. 5–6. Gieniusz, for example, dismisses the notion of analogy in his assessment of Rom 7:1–6 because the content of vv. 4–6 “surpasses the data of the image.” Instead, he opts for the rhetorical figure exemplum and sees vv. 2–3 and 4–6 linked insofar as the former illustrate the content of the latter with the help of a familiar image (“Lack of Imagination,” 397). 56 See table 1 for the marking (vertical bars) of analogs in vv. 2–4. 57 For an introduction to “analogy” as “structured comparison,” and additional literature, see Shelly Cameron, Multiple Analogies in Science and Philosophie (Human Cognitive Processing 11; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003), 6–8, 14–19, 149–51; Dedre Gentner, Keith J. Holyoak, and Boicho N. Kokinov, “Introduction: The Place of Analogy in Cognition,” in The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (ed. Dedre Gentner, Keith J. Holyoak, and Boicho N. Kokinov; Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 1–19, here 8–9. 58 Dedre Gentner first proposed these steps of structural alignment; see “Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework,” Cognitive Science 7, no. 2 (1983): 155–70; eadem, “The Mechanism of Analogical Learning,” in Similarity and Analogical Reasoning (ed. S. Vosniadou and A. Ortony; London: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 199–241; Gentner et al., “Metaphor Is Like Analogy,” in Analogical Mind, ed. Gentner et al., 199–253, here 200–201. 59 Thus, I do not treat Paul’s analogy as an inductive argument. Traditional inductive analyses of the passage, that is, movement from a particular case (vv. 2–3) to a general principle (see the various forms of a tertium comparationis mentioned in the introductory section of this article) that, in turn, supports a second case (vv. 4–6), do not solve the issue of asymmetry in this passage because they assume that the asymmetry is a feature built into the analogy. For a critique of the understanding of analogy as induction, see Cameron, Multiple Analogies, 4–6, 145–49.
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Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 4 (2006) Table 2: Representation of Paul’s Analogy Source
[I]
under the authority of a man bound to the law adulteress law that governs the man woman not an adulteress man who is alive • while the man is alive • discharged from the law • • free from the law • the man dies • • another man’s partner •
Target
• you, my brothers • fruit for God • the risen one • death to the law • the body of the Christ • another one’s partners
[II] man dies (woman; free from law) another man’s partner (woman; not adulteress) discharged and free from law (woman; another man’s partner) [III] cause (man dies; woman; discharged and free from law) so that not (woman; another man’s partner; adulteress) cause (discharged and free from law; another man’s partner; not adulteress)
body of Christ (you, my brothers; death to law) the risen one’s partners (you, my brothers; fruit for God) death to law (you, my brothers; the risen one’s partners) cause (body of Christ; you, my brothers; death to law) in order to (you, my brothers; the risen one’s partners; fruit for God) cause (death to law; the risen one’s partners; fruit for God)
Table 2 displays the complex structure of Paul’s analogy emphasizing its various degrees of abstractness: analog mapping [I]; relational mapping [II] that corresponds to the analog mapping; and system mapping [III] that corresponds to the relational mapping. In section [I] of table 2, I have rearranged source analogs to show that some have corresponding target analogs and others do not, which observation explains the shortness of the target relative to the source. This reorganization reveals that in Paul’s analogy (1) the source analog “woman” maps to the target analog “you, my brothers,” and the analog “not an adulteress” to “fruit for God”; (2) the twice-repeated source analogs “the man dies” and “another man’s partner” map respectively to the single target analogs “the body of the Christ” and “another one’s partners”; and (3) two source analogs, “discharged from the law” and “free from the law,” map to one target analog death to the law. Likewise, the two source analogs “man who is alive” and “while the man is alive” map to one target analog, “the risen one.”
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Section II shows that relationships among source analogs correspond to the relationships that exist among target analogs. Paul relates the man’s death to the woman’s freedom from the law (in the source), just as he relates “the body of the Christ” to the brothers’ death to the law (in the target). Likewise, Paul relates the woman’s “becoming another man’s partner” to her not being an adulteress (in the source), just as he relates the brothers’ “becoming the risen one’s partners” to their bearing fruit for God (in the target). He also relates discharge and freedom from the law to a woman “becoming another man’s partner” (in the source), just as he relates death to the law to the brothers “becoming the risen one’s partners” (in the target). Adding strength to the analogy, the system mapping in section III shows that each source analog functions in a manner similar to its corresponding target analog; that is, existing higher-order relationships between source analogs (cause-andeffect: tou' mhv, “so that not” [v. 3]) match corresponding causal relationships between target analogs (cause-and-effect: eij" tov, “in order to” [v. 4]). In the source, the man’s death causes the woman to be discharged and free from the law, which, in turn, affects her relationship with another man (“so that not”); that is, she is not an adulteress. Thus, the woman’s discharge and freedom from the law cause her partnership with another man not to be adultery. Likewise, in the target, the body of the Christ causes the addressees of Paul’s letter (“you, my brothers”) to be dead to the law, which, in turn, affects their partnership with the risen one (“in order to”); that is, they bear fruit for God. Thus, the addressees’ death to the law causes their partnership with the risen one to bear fruit for God.
Concluding Observations Regarding Paul’s Analogy Placed at the beginning of v. 4, the conjunction w{ste (“therefore”), together with the personal pronoun uJmei'" (“you”) and another conjunction kaiv (“also”), marks the transition from one part of Paul’s argument to the next, indicating that the rationale underlying v. 4 has been established in the preceding text.60 Thus, the phrase w{ste kai; uJmei'" (“therefore, you also”) emphasizes the dependence of v. 4 on the content and logic of vv. 2–3 and, at the same time, stresses that the information contained in these verses affects the Roman communities. This structural design justifies labeling the first part “source” and the second part “target” of the analogy.61 60 See Dunn, Romans, 361; Hellholm, “Argumentative Funktion,” 399, 403. In contrast, C. E. B. Cranfield (Romans, 1:335) and Gieniusz (“Lack of Imagination,” 397) note that the absence of a word expressing comparison (e.g. ou{tw", “in this manner”) complicates the classification of Rom 7:2–4 as analogy. 61 Sanday and Headlam agree that the conjunction kaiv (in the phrase w{ste kai; uJmei'") has enough strength to provide the link between v. 4 and vv. 2–3 and to sustain what they call allegory (Romans, 173; see also Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 70).
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1. The narrative flow between source and target. In formulating his analogy, Paul establishes a free flow of narrative information across the boundary between source and target that is marked by (1) the move from third person narrative to second person address; (2) the shift in focus from “life” to “death”; (3) the enrichment of the sociocultural, legal, and hierarchical setting of the source narrative with the theological, metaphysical, and spiritual dimensions of the target statement; (4) the substitution of the “man is alive—man is dead—woman is free from law” progression of the source narrative, with a “believers are dead to law—body of Christ—Christ is risen” reasoning in the target statement; and (5) the emphasis on “becoming partner of someone else” (givnomai eJtevrw/, vv. 3, 4). The first feature embeds the source in a dialogue between Paul and the members of the Roman communities; the second reverses the sequential “life–death” pattern of the source to emphasize the significance of “death” for each believer’s “life”; the third transforms the source narrative into a statement that addresses the theological situation of the recipients of Paul’s letter; and the fourth, similar to the second feature, adds a vibrancy to the analogy, sustaining it with parallel inverted reasoning. The fifth feature creates lexical and thematic links with the “other man” in the source (v. 3) and, thus, facilitates (1) the target’s continuation where the source narrative ends—with a reference to a legal relationship; and (2) the mapping between literary (in the source) and metaphorical (in the target) marriages. Like a woman who marries another living man, believers join “another one, the one risen from the dead”; that is, believers enter a marital relationship with the risen Christ.62 In the target (v. 4), the expression givnomai eJtevrw/ (“becoming another one’s partner”) stresses the close relationship between believers and the “risen one,” amplifies the benefit believers have in partaking in Christ’s life, and resumes the metaphoric language of the literary context.63 In addition, the reference to eJtevrw/ (“another one”) 62 The marriage metaphor that traditionally describes the relationship between God and Israel (see Isa 62:5; Jer 3:6ff.; Ezekiel 23), reappears in various forms throughout NT literature; see Mark 2:19; Matt 22:1–14; 25:1–13; John 3:29; Rom 7:4; 1 Cor 6:17; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:20; Rev 19:7; 21:2, 9; 22:17. Although he does not include a discussion of Rom 7:4, Ruben Zimmermann provides a detailed discussion of the prominence of this metaphor in ancient Jewish and Christian texts (Geschlechtermetaphorik und Gottesverhältnis: Traditionsgeschichte und Theologie eines Blickfeldes im Urchristentum und antiker Umwelt [WUNT 122; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001]). Burchard finds the comparison Christ/husband troublesome because “no human being ever had a sinless sw'ma”; for this reason, he attributes the believer’s “body of sin” to the husband (“Kontext,” 454 n. 67). Hellholm, too, disputes the Christ/husband comparison, arguing that the man—woman contrast in vv. 2–3 is without parallel in v. 4 because “Christ is ‘neither man nor woman’ (Gal 3.28)” (“Argumentative Funktion,” 405). In my opinion, Hellholm’s observation is limited by a narrow definition of analogy—that is, the search for identical lexical analogs—and Burchard introduces a concept foreign to the analogy. 63 Note the concepts “co-burying” (sunetavfhmen aujtw'/ [6:4]), “united with the likeness of his death and resurrection” (suvmfutoi gegovnamen tw'/ oJmoiwvmati tou' qanavtou aujtou' [6:5]), “cocrucifixion” (sunestaurwvqh [6:6]), “co-dying” and “co-living” (ajpeqavnomen su;n Cristw'/ suzhvsomen aujtw'/ [6:8]), and the parallel phrases gevnhtai/genomevnhn ajndri; eJtevrw/, “becoming another man’s partner,” repeatedly used in Rom 7:3–4.
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creates a contrast to the immediately preceding phrase to; sw'ma tou' Cristou' (“the body of the Christ”) and signals that believers enter a partnership with “another one” who is neither sw'ma (“body”) nor dead; that is, they are partners with none other than “the risen one.” Thus, the dative eJtevrw/ does not imply that the Roman believers were once partners of someone else.64 2. The lexical (dis)agreement between source and target analogs. Table 2 shows that, with the exception of references to “another partner,” Paul does not build his comparison upon lexical agreement between source and target analogs. Parallel cause and effect, not parallel words, sustain the analogy. Paul describes the Roman believers’ religious existence with the target phrase ejqanatwvqhte tw/' novmw/ (“having been put to death to [Jesus’] law”), which captures the essence of source scenario 2 (see table 1) and maps to two clauses: “she is discharged from the law” and “she is free from the law.”65 Likewise, Paul’s reference to the physically dead body of the historical Jesus as the means of the believers’ death to the law maps to the dying of the man (in the source).66 Both the verb qanatovw (“put to death”) and the phrase to; sw'ma tou' Cristou' (“the body of the Christ”) point to the freedom from the law’s authority over believers (effect) that resulted from the execution of Jesus (cause). In the same manner, a husband’s death (cause) discharges his wife from his law’s authority over her and frees her from the law that governed him while he was alive (effect).67 64 My interpretation agrees with Earnshaw’s that the dative eJtevrw/ “refers specifically to the incarnate Christ in his risen mode of existence” (“Reconsidering,” 87). However, I do not agree with Earnshaw’s conclusion that believers were once “married” to someone else (see Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 86). He suggests that Paul offered his audience a theological reinterpretation of the movement from marriage (union with Christ in his death) to remarriage (union with Christ in his resurrection) (pp. 82–88). Because the target does not repeat the believer’s transition from “married” to “widowed” then “remarried,” I think Earnshaw’s interpretation stretches the analogy by dissociating the source from the target. 65 See Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 85, for a similar observation. 66 For Burchard, too, the usage of sw'ma tou' Cristou' indicates that the woman herself does not die, but is discharged from the law through the death of someone else (“Kontext,” 452; cf. Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 85). Based on insights gained from the source–target mapping, the phrase dia; tou' swvmato" tou' Cristou' (“through the body of the Christ”) refers to the physical body of Jesus. Fitzmyer renders the phrase “through the crucified body of the Jesus of history” (Romans, 458; cf. Dunn, Romans, 1:362; Bergmeier, “Gesetz,” 67). 67 From my perspective, in the source of the analogy, the death of the man affects the woman’s boundedness to his law. Specifically, the woman does not have to die to be legally discharged from the man’s law. Likewise, in the target, Jesus’ dead body alone affects Christ-believers’ boundedness to the law; that is, Paul does not state that believers themselves have to die to be discharged from the Mosaic law. Consistent with the content of the source narrative, the passive ejqanatwvqhte (“you have been put to death”) in the target indicates that “death to the law” happens to the believers in Rome: they do not bring about “death to the law” themselves; “Christ’s body” accomplishes it for them. Some exegetes, however, agree with John of Damascus that a believer’s “death to the law” occurs in baptism (Eij de; teqnhvkate kai; uJmei'", suntafevnte" tw/' Cristw/' dia; tou' baptivsmato", oujkevti
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Paul also uses different phrases to express the results of the man’s and Jesus’s deaths: the source analog “not an adulteress” has its functional equivalent in the target analog “fruit for God”; in their respective contexts they function in a similar fashion.68 By shaping the movement from source to target (vv. 3–4) as a structurally parallel, thematically interconnected, doubly inverted argument (E–f–g–h–f1–E1– h1–g1), Paul transforms the negative statement into its positive opposite: not being an adulteress (cause) implies bearing fruit for God (effect); bearing fruit for God precludes bearing “fruit for death,” the legal consequence of adultery (cf. v. 5). Table 3 (see next page) diagrams the movement of Paul’s argument.69 3. The completion of the analog mapping. The source contains words and phrases (mostly from narrative scenario 1; see table 1) that have no corresponding target analogs and, as a consequence, no corresponding higher-order relationships (see table 2). All noncorresponding material describes the effect of the man’s life on kurieuvei uJmw'n oJ novmo", “but if you are also dead, co-buried with the Christ through baptism, the law lost its rule over you”; Commentarii in Epistulas Pauli 489.27–29 [PG 95]; cf. Burchard, “Kontext,” 453–54; Earnshaw, “Reconsidering,” 83–85; Fitzmyer, Romans, 458; Moo, Romans, 411). John of Damascus’s exegesis is characterized by three principles: (1) the reference to “life” in Rom 7:1 has metaphorical meaning; (2) the man’s death (in the source) is likened to the believers’ death to the law (in the target); and (3) the phrase ajpeqavnomen th/' aJmartiva/ (“we died to sin”) in Rom 6:2 serves as interpretive matrix for the passive aorist ejqanatwvqhte (“you have been put to death”) in 7:4 (cf. Moo, who maintains that there is no difference between the verbs qanatovw and ajpoqnh/vskw [Romans, 414 n. 31]). John of Damascus reasons from the perspective that the man (source) is the model for a Christ-believer’s freedom from the law. That is, believers die to the law in baptism as the man in the narrative dies a physical death. Thus, he contributes to the traditional, asymmetrical interpretation of Rom 7:1–6. Based on the inference that a dead man is no longer under the rule of the law, believers are said to be free from the law because they die spiritually with Christ in baptism. However, a careful investigation of the function of the verbs qanatovw (“to put to death” [7:4]) and ajpoqnh/vskw (“to die” [6:2]) in their respective literary contexts allows a more nuanced interpretation of the analogy’s target. Although the verbs are semantically related, the passive expression “believers are put to death” (7:4) is not synonymous with the active clause, “believers die” (6:2) (see Morris, Romans, 272). What the latter implies, the former excludes, namely, that the spiritual dying of believers would bring about freedom from the law. Paul supports his discussions of “death to sin” (ch. 6) and “death to law” (7:1–6) with different metaphors, “co-dying with Christ” and “marriage with Christ.” Correspondingly, he limits lexical references to “sin” and “law” to their respective contexts: “sin” features prominently in ch. 6, “law” in 7:1–6. This distinctive sequential presentation of the topics “death to sin” and “death to law” discourages a confluence of the metaphors “co-dying” and “marriage” and the Pauline arguments they support. Believers are dead to sin because of the spiritual death they die with Christ (ch. 6); they “have been put to death to the law” because the partner to whom they are spiritually married is himself not under the rule of the law (ch. 7). The metaphors are not interchangeable, but the conclusions of the arguments they support complement each other: alive for God (6:11) and bearing fruit for God (7:4). 68 See also Burchard, “Kontext,” 455. 69 The marker of negative result tou' mhv (“so that not” [v. 3]), corresponds to the marker of positive result eij" tov (“in order to” [v. 4]). Their mapping (see table 2, section III) is a sign of structural strength in Paul’s comparison.
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Table 3: The Argument’s Movement from Source to Target V. 3, source → but if the man dies the woman is free from the law so that she is not an adulteress becoming another man’s partner.
V. 4, target • to bear fruit for God. • H1 in order to become somebody else’s partner, the one risen from the dead G• • E1 through the body of the Christ H• • F1 you have been put to death to the law Therefore, E F
• •
G1
the woman and her relationship to his law. Although essential to the narrative— without it, narrative scenario 2 (see table 1) would be inconclusive—the absence of target analogs matching this information is noteworthy. Reasons for their absence can be found in the target’s functions: reinforcement of one particular source theme (information contained in scenario 2) and allusions to the other (information contained in scenario 1). Still, the narrative information in scenario 1 (in particular, that a woman who is “under a man’s authority” and “bound to his law” is, in certain circumstances, called an “adulteress”) is vital to the target because it allows the hearer to fill the void and complete the source–target mapping with characteristics of a Christ-believer’s religious existence.70 “Under the authority of a man.” The omission of a target analog that matches u{pandro" (“under the authority of a man”) in the source allows Paul to subtly introduce a new authority for Christ-believers. Because “marrying” the Christ incorporates them—analogous to the story of the woman—into the sphere of their partner’s authority, the adjective u{pandro" is as important to Paul’s analogy as his deliberate introduction of a female character in Romans 7. Specifically, for an audience residing within the legal and cultural environment of the Roman Empire and familiar with the conventions of the Mosaic law (v. 1), Paul’s lexical choice in the source foreshadows the fact that believers “under the authority of Christ” have qualities that only a woman can represent analogically; that is, in a marital relationship, only the woman is under a partner’s authority and only a woman can be charged with adultery. A woman is—in the sociocultural context of Paul’s time—the appropriate analog for the Roman believers whom Paul, with his analogy, portrays as brides of Christ. “Bound to the law that governs the man.” In the source narrative, the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" has an explanatory function; it clarifies that the law to which a woman is bound, and from which she is released, is “the law that governs the man” 70 The inferential completion of analog mapping is justified on two grounds: (1) the existing, explicit alignment of source analogs with corresponding target analogs (see table 2) creates a strong inferential bond that sustains the analogy; and (2) the hearer-supplied target analogs correspond to source analogs.
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who dies. Based on the assumption that a meaningful relationship exists between source and target in Paul’s analogy, one can reasonably infer that the equivalent to the “law that governs the man” who dies is the “law that governed the Christ” who died. With the woman’s discharge from “the man’s law,” Paul draws attention to the effect of Jesus’ death on the Roman Christ-believers’ life. He challenges the authority of the law of Jesus’s ancestors over believers who, by virtue of their “marriage” to the risen Christ, do not live under its jurisdiction. Like a woman who is not under the authority of a dead man and not bound to a dead man’s law, believers are not under the authority of the historical Christ and not bound to “the Christ’s law,” the Mosaic law that governed him.71 Paul excludes the possibility that Christ-believers are spiritual partners of “the body of the Christ,” that is, the historical Jesus, and subject to his Mosaic law.72 71 Parallel in significance to the death of the man in the narrative, Paul does not explicitly mention that the law lost its authority over the historical Jesus after his death (v. 4). Here also, the hearer is led to infer that his death withdrew the ajnhvr Jesus from the reign of his ancestors’ law (see n. 13 above). Earnshaw points to Gal 4:4—Jesus himself was “born under the law”—and states that the death of the Christ ended the law’s authority over him (“Reconsidering,” 72, 82–85). 72 The structure of Rom 7:1–6 and the function of Paul’s analogy within these verses discourage the hearer from inferring that an analogical equivalent to oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" is “the law of the risen one.” (1) In the source, Paul omits that a woman, upon “becoming another man’s partner,” becomes again bound to this partner’s law. However, the narrative is, in essence, designed as literary perpetuum mobile. The reader can jump back from the end of v. 3 to the beginning of v. 2 with relative ease and continue moving around the narrative circle of marriage/bound to law–widowhood/free from law– marriage/bound to law–etc. Thus, the inference that believers are bound to the “law of the risen one” is structurally not required; that is, this particular inference does not complete the analog mapping because the equivalent source analog is absent. (2) Based on the interpretation of the phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" advanced in this article (i.e., “the law that governs the man”), a target analog “law of the risen one” understood as “law that governs the risen one” contradicts other Pauline statements. A law that was kuvrio" (“lord”) over Christ was not a theological option for Paul because Christ himself had become law; see Rom 8:2: oJ novmo" tou' pneuvmato" th'" zwh'" ejn Cristw'/ !Ihsou', “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus”; 1 Cor 9:21: w]n e[nnomo" Cristou', “being in-the-law of Christ”; Gal 6:2: novmo" tou' Cristou', “the law of Christ.” (3) Whereas an interpretation of oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" understood as “the law given by the risen one” has support in the grammar of oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" (see the analysis above under The Source—Grammatical Observations), such a completion of analog mapping disrupts the analogy’s symmetry because it presupposes different readings of the ambiguous phrase. In the source, oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov" is read as “the law governing the man,” but, from the perspective of the target, this phrase is reread as “the law given by the man.” (4) By omitting an analogical equivalent to the source phrase oJ novmo" tou' ajndrov", Paul may actually avoid ambiguity and clarify that the phrase, indeed, means “the law that governs the man.” Most important, however, (5) the overarching design of vv. 1–6 prevents the assumption that either inference (“the law governing the risen one” or “the law given by the risen one”) might be the goal of the argument. Specifically, in Rom 7:1–6, Paul does not advance the idea that believers under the authority of their partner, the Christ, also live under the authority of “his law” (he does so elsewhere; see above in this note). Rather, by framing his analogy with conceptually inverted terminology—the argument moves from “being master” (v. 1) to “being slave” (v. 6), transforms the identity of the master from “law” to “spirit,” and shifts the perspective from the “rule of the law” to “slavery in the spirit”—Paul subtly, but significantly, transforms the meaning of his opening statement (“the
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“Called adulteress.” The thematic prominence of “(non)adultery” in the source, and its complete absence from the target, allow the hearer (a believing law-knower; see 7:1) to complete the source target mapping for him- or herself.73 Just as a woman is under the authority of a living man, Christ-believers are under the authority of “the risen one”; just as a woman commits adultery should she join another man, a believer’s union with someone other than Christ constitutes “adultery.”74 The larger context (vv. 1–6) supports the inferential completion. First, “adultery,” as metaphor for a broken relationship, is implicitly incorporated into the broader category “sufferings of sins” (ta; paqhvmata tw'n aJmartiw'n), that Paul mentions outside of the analogy (v. 5).75 Second, the target references only the positive law rules living persons” [v. 1]). Just as the law rules living persons, “spirit” rules living, Roman Christ-believers (v. 6; cf. also Rom 8:2). Paul substitutes the bond to the law with “slavery in the newness of the spirit.” Specifically, in a time marked off from the past (o{te gavr—nuni; dev, “for once—but now” [vv. 5–6]), the “spirit” is what the “letter” is no longer, kuvrio". 73 The removal of the concept “adultery” from the target begins when the source narrative does not end with an adultery scenario. Gieniusz writes the opposite: “actually the wife has relations with another man” (“Lack of Imagination,” 399). 74 Given its use and meaning in prophetic literature and Paul’s choice to describe a believer’s relationship with Christ in terms of “marriage,” one should not be surprised that “adultery” also functions as a metaphor for the breaking of one’s “marital” relationship with the Christ (Zimmermann traces the usage of “adultery” as metaphor in the prophets and in the NT [see Geschlechtermetaphorik, 137–42, 396–438]). Paul appears to use “adultery” also for the sake of presenting a sound legal argument (albeit with one caveat: in the target, the Mosaic law functions as a powerful witness to the event it protects—that is, marriage to “the risen one”—but no longer regulates). In both source and target, the charge of “adultery” is excluded on legal grounds. In the same way a woman (who remarries after the death of her husband) is not an adulteress, believers (whose “marriage” to “the risen one,” by definition, follows Jesus’ death) do not commit “adultery.” Being joined to “the one risen from the dead” is not a sin that leads to death; the relationship is lawful and leads to life. As Burchard suggests, Paul may in this way also answer his own question from Rom 6:15 (“Kontext,” 456). 75 Consonant with Pauline usage (1 Cor 5:3, 17; Gal 1:4; 1 Thess 2:16), the plural noun aJmartivai can be translated “sinful deeds” (see Bergmeier, “Gesetz,” 69). The plural noun paqhvmata (Rom 8:18; 2 Cor 1:5, 6, 7; Gal 5:24; Phil 3:10) can be translated “sufferings” either endured or caused (see Baumert, “Sexualgemeinschaft,” 173–74). Based on Gal 5:16–25, it is plausible to argue that Paul viewed adultery as pavqhma, a “suffering,” or, more precisely, a “deed that flesh suffers.” Similar to Rom 7:4–6 and in a context that (1) juxtaposes life according to “spirit” and life according to “flesh,” (2) discusses the subject matter “not being under law” (Gal 5:18), and (3) identifies “the fruit of the spirit” (5:22), Paul lists fifteen “deeds of the flesh” (ta; e[rga th'" sarkov" [5:19–21]). Beginning with porneiva (“fornication”) and ajkaqarsiva (“uncleanness”) Paul ends his list with the statement that the list is by no means complete (kai; ta; o{moia touvtoi", “and things like these” [5:21]). Even though moiceiva itself is not listed, “adultery” likely belongs among “things like these.” When Paul continues with a summary of what followers of Christ experience—having crucified the “flesh with the sufferings and desires” they live in the spirit (5:24–25)—he does not repeat the expression ta; e[rga th'" sarkov" (“deeds of the flesh”) used at the beginning of the passage. Instead, he uses the phrase su;n toi'" paqhvmasin kai; tai'" ejpiqumivai" (“flesh with the sufferings and the desires”). Because the literary design of the whole passage reveals a “flesh–spirit–flesh–spirit” pattern (5:19, 22, 24, 25), Paul appears not to have considered paqhvmata as “deeds of the flesh,” but as belonging to a broader category: Christ-believers have crucified “what flesh suffers and desires,” the deeds of the flesh. For a different
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aspect of a believer’s relationship with Christ (i.e., “becoming the risen one’s partners”); the negative aspect of the believer–Christ relationship that corresponds to “adultery” in the source is again placed outside of the analogy, “bearing fruit for death,” which is the result of “sufferings of sins” (v. 5). Thus, the two phrases that correspond to “adultery” in the source narrative (“sufferings of sins,” “bearing fruit for death”) are located outside of the analogy (v. 5). Third, “bearing fruit for death” (v. 5) also functions as the antithetical parallel to “bearing fruit for God” (v. 4) in the target of the analogy. Whereas the target phrase “bearing fruit for God” (v. 4) corresponds to “non-adultery” in the source of the analogy (vv. 2–3), “bearing fruit for death” (v. 5) is related to its two logical opposites: one (“adultery”) is located within the analogy, the other (“sufferings of sins”) is outside the analogy. This particular structural design element highlights the link between the analogy and its literary context. It suggests a similarity of cause and effect expressed with the statements “becoming another man’s partner declares a woman adulteress” (v. 3) and “sufferings of sins bear fruit for death” (v. 5). In the same way “becoming another man’s partner” (cause) results in adultery (effect), “sufferings of sins” (cause) lead to “fruit for death” (effect). In other words, in the same way that a lawful marriage designates a woman’s relationship with a man other than her living husband “adultery,” a believer’s relationship with “the risen one” makes any attempt to break that relationship an instance of “adultery,” that is, an occasion of “sufferings of sins.”76 In conclusion, the overt absence of target analogs that match elements originating in narrative threads of scenario 1 allows the completion of analog, relational, and system mappings that function as nexuses between the analogy and the following verses. My analysis shows the analogy to be the argument’s pulsating core. The omission of matching analogs alerts the hearer: the argument begun by the analogy is not yet finished.
IV. Synthesis and Transition (Romans 7:5–6) In my discussion of the analog mappings, I have exposed the content of vv. 5– 6 to be inextricably interwoven (thematically and lexically) with the analogy (vv. 2– 4). In vv. 5–6, Paul uses the expressions “slavery in the newness of the spirit” and “sufferings of sins” to echo the concepts “bondage to the law” and “adultery” introassessment of the meaning of paqhvmata in Gal 5:24, see Dunn, Romans, 1:364; Fitzmyer, Romans, 459; Moo, Romans, 419 n. 52. 76 Gieniusz approaches the text differently. He understands vv. 2–3 as illustrating that it is impossible for a woman to break the marriage bond because her husband is alive. In like manner, a Christ-believer’s situation is irreversible because the risen Christ will never die (“Lack of Imagination,” 399). However, both the source narrative and vv. 5–6 show that breaking the marriage bond with the living man/Christ is possible (even if theoretically outlawed) but results in death—for the woman because she commits adultery, for believers because they embrace the “sufferings of sins.”
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duced in the analogy’s source. He also repeats the terms “law” and “discharge,” uses expressions related to “law” (i.e., “oldness of the letter”) and “bondage” (i.e., “hold captive”), and emphasizes the concept of “death” (i.e., “bear fruit for death”; “die“). 7:5 For when we were in the flesh the sufferings of sins—sufferings of sins through the law—were at work in our limbs to bear fruit for death; 7:6 but now we have been discharged from the law, dying to what held us captive, therefore being slaves in the newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Upon closer inspection, vv. 5–6 also contain information that relates to a discussion that transcends the analogy’s borders. They are lexically and conceptually interwoven with those segments of ch. 6 that lead Paul to claim that the Roman believers are not “under the law” (vv. 14–15). This narrative network displays several characteristics.77 First, in v. 5, Paul completes the shift from second person plural address, which frames the analogy, to first person plural speech. In so doing, he broadens the perspective of his discourse and the viability of his argument. Second, vv. 5–6 reintroduce vocabulary Paul uses in ch. 6 but not in the analogy.78 Third, the section 6:1–7:6 is characterized by lexical and thematic coherence.79 Fourth, in 7:1–6, Paul presents a thematically inverted discussion of his earlier argument regarding the 77 For other synopses of the relationship between Rom 7:1–6 and chs. 6–7, see Dunn, Romans, 1:358; Gieniusz, “Lack of Imagination,” 390–92; Hellholm, “Argumentative Funktion,” 386–98, 407– 8. Charles D. Meyers, Jr., recognizes Rom 6:15–7:6 as part of a larger chiastic inversion: A (5:20a)– B (5:20b)–C1 (6:1–14)–C (6:15c)–D (6:15d) –D1 (6:16–23)–C1 (7:1–6)–A1 (7:7–25) (“Chiastic Inversion in the Argument of Romans 3–8,” NovT 35, no. 1 [1993]: 30–47, here 40–41). 78 For example, aJmartiva (“sin”), douleuvw (“serve”), kainovth" (“newness”), palaiovth" (“oldness”), savrc (“flesh”), and mevlh (“limbs”); see the next footnote for references. 79 At the beginning of ch. 7, the hearer has already been introduced to virtually all major parts of Paul’s continuing argument. He consistently employs the semantic oppositions (1) death (qavnato" [“death”]: 6:3, 4, 5, 9, 16, 21, 23; 7:5; ajpoqnh/s v kw [“die”]: 6:2, 7, 8, 9, 10[2x]; 7:2, 3, 6; nekrov" [“dead”]: 6:4, 9, 11, 13; 7:4; qnhtov" [“mortal”]: 6:12; sunqavptw [“co-bury”]: 6:4; sustaurovw [“co-crucify”]: 6:6; qanatovw [“put to death”]: 7:4) and life (zavw [“live”]: 6:2, 10[2x], 11, 13; 7:1, 2, 3; suzavw [“co-live”]: 6:8; zwh/ [“life”]: 6:4, 22, 23); (2) oldness and newness (kainovth" zwh'" [“newness of life”]: 6:4; oJ palaio;" hJmw'n a[nqrwpo" [“our old person”]: 6:6; kainovth" pneuvmato" [“newness of the spirit”] and palaiovth" gravmmato" [“oldness of the letter”]: 7:6); (3) freedom (ejleuqerovw [“free”]: 6:18, 22; ejleuvqero" [“free”]: 6:20; 7:3; dikaiovw ajpov [“deem righteous away from”]: 6:7) and restraint (dou'lo" [“slave”]: 6:16, 17, 19[2x], 20; douleuvw [“serve”]: 6:6; 7:6; doulovw [“enslave”]: 6:18, 22; uJpakohv [“obedience”]: 6:16; uJpakouvw [“obey”]: 6:12, 16, 17; kuvrio" [“lord”]: 6:23; kurieuvw [“rule”]: 6:9, 14; 7:1; basileuvw [“reign”]: 6:12; devw [“bind”]: 7:2; katevcw [“restrain”]: 7:6). Paul also references sin (aJmartiva: 6:1, 2, 6[2x], 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23; 7:5), the risen Christ (ejgeivrw, 6:6, 9; 7:4), law (novmo", 6:14, 15; 7:1[2x], 2[2x], 3, 4, 5, 6), fruit (karpov", 6:21, 22; karpoforevw in 7:4), discharge (katargevw, 6:6; 7:2, 6), and corporal language (mevlo" [“limb”]: 6:13, 19; 7:5; sw'ma [“body”]: 6:6, 12; 7:4; savrc [flesh]: 6:19; 7:5).
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Roman believer’s relation to the law; that is, believers are not “under the law” but “under grace” (6:14–15). Parallel to the manner in which he articulates this assertion in the context of a discussion of “sin” and the believer’s freedom from it, Paul, in 7:1–6, embeds his remarks regarding “sins” (v. 5) and “sinning” (i.e., “to be an adulteress” [v. 3]; “to bear fruit for death” [v. 5]) within a discussion of the “law” and believer’s freedom from it. These observations may also explain the quantitative lexical imbalance in references to “sin” and “law” in Rom 6:1–7:6. Finally, Rom 7:6 presents the synthesis of Paul’s analogical focus (i.e., through their partnership with the “one risen from the dead,” Christ-believers are “discharged from the law”) and the theological core of ch. 6 (i.e., through their death with Christ, believers die to the detaining forces of “sin” and “flesh” and are “dead to that which held us captive”).80 Jesus’s death has transformed the lives of believers, essentially creating both a past “in the flesh” and a present “free from the law” (7:5–6). Supported by this lexical, structural, and thematic environment, the function of vv. 5–6 emerges from its larger context. Verses 2–4 support Paul’s claim that believers in Rome who are, in principle, governed by novmo" (v. 1) are not “under the law” (6:14–15). Consequently, Paul’s analogy serves as the literary tool that clarifies the rationale underlying his contrasting assertions and dissolves the tension created by them.81 In 7:5–6, Paul presents an enriched form of his argument from the pre80 The phrase “dead to that which held us captive” probably refers to both of Paul’s nemeses, “flesh” and “sin.” On the one hand, the structural and lexical parallels between 7:5–6 and 6:20–22 (o{te gavr . . . nuni; dev; dou'lo"; aJmartiva; karpov"; qavnato"; qeov"; see Jeffrey T. Reed, “Indicative and Imperative in Rom 6,21–22: The Rhetoric of Punctuation,” Bib 74 [1993]: 244–57, here 253; Hellholm, “Argumentative Funktion,” 407, 11) and the close link between “death/dying” and “sin” established in 6:2, 6, 7, 10, 18, 22 suggest “sin” as the detaining force (cf. Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. 498.49–52). On the other hand, Paul’s juxtaposition (in 7:5) of h\men ejn th/' sarkiv (“we were in the flesh”) and ajpoqanovnte" ejn w/| kateicovmeqa (“dying to that which held us captive”) supports an interpretation of “flesh” as prison (see Bergmeier, “Gesetz,” 67). In my opinion, the additional structural and lexical parallels between 7:5 and 6:6 (tou' mhkevti/w{ste douleuvein; katargevomai; sw'ma; aJmartiva) suggest either “flesh” or “flesh and sin” as agent(s) of imprisonment (cf. 6:12). My interpretation excludes the option that Paul might have referred to “captivity in the law,” an interpretation favored by, e.g., Dunn (Romans, 1:365), Fitzmyer (Romans, 459), Moo (Romans, 421), and Hellholm (“Argumentative Funktion,” 407). First, in the literary context of Rom 7:1–6, only the verb qanatovw (“put to death”) connotes the event “death to the law”; Paul never uses the verb ajpoqnh/s v kw (“die”) to describe this event. Second, if one does not postulate a negative captivity for non-Jews (i.e., held captive by being excluded from the legal boundaries of the law), non-Jews who were not “sojourners” (see Exod 12:19; 20:10; Lev 16:29; 20:2; 24:16) could not be held captive by a law that had no legal authority over them. 81 Scholars generally agree that Rom 6:14–15 and 7:1–6 are related, but disagree about supporting details. Both Cranfield (Romans, 332) and Moo (Romans, 411) stress the retrospective function of Rom 7:1 as pointer to 6:14. Reed recognizes Rom 6:16–23 as the first response and 7:1–6 as the second response to the question raised in 6:15 (“Indicative and Imperative,” 247). Hellholm, on the other hand, sees 6:23 as a concluding formula parallel to 5:21 (“through/in Jesus Christ our Lord”) that sets Romans 7 apart from the preceding text (“Argumentative Funktion,” 389, 401) although he observes a link between Rom 7:1 and 6:14b. Burchard, to the contrary, sees 6:14a, 15a as the anchor of Rom 7:1–6 (“Kontext,” 456).
Spitaler: Analogical Reasoning in Romans 7:2–4
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ceding chapter. He writes that sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ frees believers from a dual bondage: “flesh” that ties believers to sin (ch. 6), and “law” that ties believers to the past (7:1–6).82 Because the topics “sin” and “law” converge synergetically in 7:6, this verse provides the transition to Paul’s next question: Is the law sin (v. 7)? Table 4 outlines the structure of Rom 7:1–6 as presented in this article, assigning v. 4 the functions statement of result within a concluding passage.83 In the analogy, v. 4 is the goal of the literary movement from source to target. In the larger context (6:14–7:6), v. 4 delineates the beginning of Paul’s concluding remarks to an argument that extends beyond the boundaries of the analogy.84 Table 4: Structure of Romans 7:1-6 Verse 1 2 3 4 5 6
Function
Address
contrast & anticipation
you she/he
source analogy target
result conclusion
you → we we
synthesis & transition
82 The hearers of Rom 7:1–6 also learn that while Jesus’s death transformed the meaning of believers’ boundedness to Jesus’s law, it did not cause the death of the Mosaic law (see Fitzmyer, Romans, 457). According to Paul’s analogy, the Mosaic law continues to rule the domain of life, and freedom from the Mosaic law is a valid theological reality for Jewish and non-Jewish believers who become partners of “the risen one.” Persons who do not become Christ’s partners are not the focus of Paul’s analogy, nor is their law dead. 83 Other analyses of the structure of this passage have been proposed. Most approaches follow Ulrich Wilckens’s suggestion to organize Rom 7:1–6 as propositions (vv. 1b, 4) followed by their respective explications (Der Brief an die Römer [3rd ed.; EKKNT 6/2; Zurich: Benziger; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993], 63). Equally widespread is the classification of v. 4 as an inference that marks the beginning of the application (vv. 4–6) of the example in vv. 2–3; see Hellholm, “Argumentative Funktion,” 399, 403. I define the function of the analogy more narrowly than Gieniusz (“Lack of Imagination,” 395–96, 398). He understands all of Rom 7:1–6 as summary of, and a temporary conclusion to, the discussion Paul engages in ch. 6. 84 Three features reflect the verse’s dual function. Paul (1) shifts from a second person address to first person plural speech in v. 4; (2) repeats terminology and concepts introduced in ch. 6 but not used in the analogy (e.g., ejgeivrw; karpoforevw; sw'ma; see n. 79 above for references); and (3) establishes a structural link between v. 4 and vv. 5–6 (cf. the antithetical parallelism “to bear fruit for God” [v. 4], and “to bear fruit for death” [v. 5]).
N New and Recent T Titles i itles NEW NEW E CURRENTS CURRENTS THROUGH THROUGH JO JOHN HN AG Global lobal Perspective Francisco Fr rancisco Lozada Jr. Jrr. and Tom Toom Thatcher, Thhatcherr, editors
Neew Currents through John brings intoo focus the dramatic New changes ch hanges in method that have taken placee in Johannine studies stu udies in the past fifty years. Written Written r in light l of John A. T. T. Robinson’s Ro obinson’s analysis of the “New obinson New Look” Look in in the Johannine scholarship sc holarship of fifty years ago, each essayy in this volume engages ga ages a current issue in contemporary research. r Contributions tio ons from a diversity of voices and perspectives persppectives reflect the increasing globalization of theological dialogue. Highlighting thee work of emerging scholars against the thhe backdrop of traditional tra aditional perspectives, this volume alsoo forecasts trends in Johannine scholarship for the next several seeveral decades. he contributors are Armand Barus, Jaime Jaim me Clark-Soles, The Th Carsten Ca arsten Claussen, Mary L. Coloe, R. Alann Culpepper, Culpepperr, Brian Jr., D. Johnson, Matthew Kraus, Francisco Lozada L Jrr.., Beth M. Sheppard, Thatcher. Sh heppard Yak-hwee heppard, Yak-hwee ak a hwee TTan, an and TTom an, om Thatc cherr. Papper $29.95 1-58983-201-9 260 pages, 2006 Paper 20006 Code: 060354P R esources for Biblical Study 54 Hardback edition edittion www.brill.nl www w.brill.nl . Resources
TH THE HE R REALITY EEALITY OF AP APOCALYPSE OCALLYPSE Rhetoric R h hetoric and Politics in the Book of R Revelation evelation Da avid L. Barr, Barrr, editor David Byy offering a fresh window on the lively interplay between imagination im magination and history history,y, between words and worlds, this vol vol-um me will be indispensable for anyone seeking seeeking to understand ume current cu urrent scholarly analysis of the book off Revelation. The co ontributors are Gregory L. L Linton, Linton David Daviid E. E Aune, Aune David L. L contributors Barr, Ba arr, Greg Carey, Careyy, Paul Duff, Steven J. Fri Friesen, iesen, Jan Willem van Henten, He enten, Edith M. Humphrey, Humphreyy, Jean-Pierree Ruiz, and Elisabeth Sc chüssler Fiorenza. Schüssler Papper: $34.95 1-58983-218-3 320 pages, 2006 Paper: 20006 Code: 060739 Sym mposium Series 39 Hardback edition www w.b .brill.nl Symposium www.brill.nl
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JBL 125, no. 4 (2006): 749–795
Critical Notes Taming the Shrew, Shrike, and Shrimp: The Form and Function of Zoological Classification in Psalm 8
I. The Problem of Authority Psalm 8:7 (Eng. 6) states that God has given human beings the task of ruling over all things. Psalm 8:8–9 (Eng. 7–8) then mentions several types of animals, the implication being that they are among the things that human beings rule over. The notion that human beings have dominion over animals is found also in Gen 1:26–28; however, the passage in Genesis describes the moment when dominion begins (w%dr@ y: wI : [Gen 1:26]; w%drw% [Gen 1:28]), whereas Ps 8:7–9 (Eng. 6–8) indicates that dominion has been given to human beings in f a$ [Ps 8:7b (Eng. 6b)]).1 Thus, the assumption in Psalm 8 is that human beings the past (ht@# currently exercise dominion over animals and have done so for some time. This assumption encounters a problem when considered in light of the real world. Although it is true that human beings have a certain amount of control over some animals (e.g., goats and chickens), other animals (e.g., locusts and bears) seem not to be governed or controlled by human beings. The actual human governance of animals is, therefore, limited and problematic. The real-world character of the human–animal relationship is acknowledged in several strands of Israelite thought. First, according to Israel’s Primeval History (Genesis 1– 11), the amicable human–animal relationship that existed in the antediluvian world (e.g., Gen 2:19–20; 4:2, 20; 6:19–21; 7:8–9, 14–16) became antagonistic in the postdiluvian world (e.g., Gen 9:2–3; 10:9), making human dominion over animals “difficult to accomplish.”2 Second, in Israelite legal, narrative, and prophetic texts, animals are often recognized as being threats to human beings (e.g., Lev 26:22; Deut 28:26; 1 Kgs 13:24; 2 Kgs 2:24; Isa 18:6; Jer 15:3). Third, according to the Israelite wisdom tradition (e.g., Job 38:39– 41:26 [Eng. 41:34]; Prov 6:6–11), animals live according to their own plans and intentions, 1 On the verbal tenses in Ps 8:7 (Eng. 6), see Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50 (WBC 19; Waco: Word Books, 1983), 104–13. 2 Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26 (NAC 1a; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 400.
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uncontrolled and uninfluenced by human beings. In sum, the Israelites recognized that many, if not most, animals live and move and have their being largely or entirely beyond human control and authority. What, then, did the author(s) of Psalm 8 (hereafter the author) do to convince the Israelite reader or listener (hereafter the reader) that human beings do, in fact, have authority over all animals?
II. The Naming of Animals In his analysis of Psalm 8:7–9, Hans-Joachim Kraus notes that “[t]he shepherding and slaughtering of animals, the hunting and catching of wild game and fish is a sovereign right emanating from God by which the superiority of the human being over all created things . . . is revealed.”3 Although this may be true, and although the Israelites certainly may have thought this, these things are not mentioned in the text. The only thing found in the text that is related to the mandate to govern is the naming of six classes of animals: 8:8a
Mlk
Mypl)w (2)
8:8b 8:9a 8:9b
Myh ygdw (5)
hnc (1) yd#& twmhb (3) Mym#$ rwpc (4) Mymy twxr) rb( (6)
Mgw
Thus, if the author did anything to convince the reader that human beings have authority over animals, it is through the naming of animals. It is to the naming of animals then that we now turn.
III. The Animals That Are Named In listing six classes of animals, the author of Psalm 8 presented the reader with a simple classification system. To form a classification system, a society divides its entire plant or animal inventory into several primary-level taxa (e.g., animals → quadrupeds/fish/birds/insects). These primary-level taxa are then subdivided into several, more exclusive, secondary-level taxa (e.g., birds → waterfowl/perching birds/birds of prey), some or all of which are then subdivided into several, more exclusive, tertiary-level taxa (e.g., waterfowl → herons/ducks/gulls/kingfishers), and so forth. The process of subdivision ends in a terminal level of specificity beyond which categoric distinctions are no longer made (e.g., herons → great blue herons/green herons).4 3 Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1–59: A Commentary (trans. Hilton C. Oswald; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 183. 4 See Richard Whitekettle, “Bugs, Bunny, or Boar? Identifying the Zîz Animals of Psalms 50 and
Critical Notes
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With this in mind, one notes the following about the classification system in Psalm 8.5 The labels hnc (label 1) and Mypl) (label 2) refer to two secondary-level subclasses of domesticated land animals, which is a primary-level taxon. The use of the word Mlk indicates that together these two secondary-level taxa refer to all domesticated land animals (perhaps small [hnc] and large [Mypl)] domesticated land animals). The lexeme hmhb, which is used in label 3, is often used in the textual record to refer to domesticated land animals, while the lexeme hyx is often used to refer to wild land animals, each of which is a primary-level taxon. However, given the juxtaposition (Mgw [v. 8b]) of the taxon hmhb (label 3) in Psalm 8 to two domesticated land animal subclasses, and the fact that the habitat modifier yd#& is used in labels for wild land animals but not in labels for domesticated land animals, the label yd#& twmhb (label 3) must refer to wild land animals, an unusual deviation from the normal use of a hyx label to do so. The lexeme rwpc, which is used in label 4, is usually used in the textual record to refer to domestic/commensal aerial animals, a secondary-level subclass of aerial animals, a primary-level taxon, which is usually referred to with the lexeme Pw(.6 However, when the lexeme rwpc is used to refer to domestic/commensal aerial animals it is never used with the generic habitat modifier Mym#$, a frequent element in labels that refer to all aerial animals. Given this, the label Mym#$ rwpc (label 4) must refer to all aerial animals, an unusual deviation from the normal use of an Pw( label to do so. The labels Myh ygd (label 5) and Mymy twxr) rb( (label 6) refer to two secondary-level subclasses of aquatic animals, which is a primary-level taxon.7 Although there is no indi-
80,” CBQ 67 (2005): 250–64, here 250; Brent Berlin, Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 16; Ralph Bulmer, “Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg-Head?” in Échanges et communications, mélanges offerts à Claude Lévi-Strauss à l’occasion de son 60ème anniversaire (ed. J. Pouillon and P. Maranda; The Hague: Mouton, 1970), 1073–74. 5 For the data to support many of the following comments, see Richard Whitekettle, “All Creatures Great and Small: Intermediate Level Taxa in Israelite Zoological Thought” SJOT 16 (2002): 163–83; idem, “Where the Wild Things Are: Primary Level Taxa in Israelite Zoological Thought,” JSOT 93 (2001): 17–37. 6 The expression “domestic/commensal” is from Edwin Firmage, “Zoology,” ABD 6:1154. Commensal birds (e.g., sparrows) are those that, although not domesticated, have close, beneficial associations with human populations (p. 1114). 7 See Kraus, Psalms 1–59, 178, 184–85; Craigie, Psalms 1–50, 108–9; Julian Morgenstern, “Psalms 8 and 19A,” HUCA 19 (1945–46): 500; Charles Augustus Briggs and Emilie Grace Briggs, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms (ICC; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1906–7), 1:65. Note, however, that the label Mymy twxr) rb( contains a participle (rb(). Given the fact that this is unique among the animal labels in Psalm 8 (all the other labels use nouns), and that a noun was available (=Mynynt), it might be thought that the author of Psalm 8 intended this label to function differently from the other labels in the psalm. Thus, it might be argued that the labels ygd Myh and Mymy twxr) rb( do not refer to categories that are mutually exclusive, as is assumed here, but rather, that the label Mymy twxr) rb( is either (1) an appositional rephrasing of the Myh ygd label, or (2) a general rubric for all aquatic animals that includes and expands the taxon Myh ygd. In other words, it might be argued that the “fish of the sea” (Myh ygd) are also, or are among, the “travelers of
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cation of how these two subclasses were differentiated, it is plausible that, following the example of the size-differentiated aquatic animal subclasses found in Gen 1:21 and Ps 104:25, the label Mymy twxr) rb( refers to large aquatic animals and the label Myh ygd refers to small aquatic animals. Assuming this, these two secondary- level taxa together refer to all aquatic animals. In summary, Ps 8:8–9 mentions both primary- and secondary-level taxa that together form a comprehensive, fourfold primary-level division of the animal kingdom:8 1a.
1b. 1c. 1d.
Domesticated land animals 2a. Small domesticated land animals 2b. Large domesticated land animals Wild land animals Aerial animals Aquatic animals 2a. Small aquatic animals 2b. Large aquatic animals
hnc Mypl) yd#& twmhb Mym#$ rwpc Myh ygd Mymy twxr) rb(
Having established this, the question is, could a classification system have been used to demonstrate human authority over animals, and if so, did the classification system in Ps 8:8–9 function in this way?
IV. The Significance of the Naming Human beings have long used the related activities of naming, classifying, and listing as ways to bring order to the diverse plurality of things that are found in the world around them. Establishing and maintaining order are, of course, associated with governance. Not surprisingly, then, at various times and in various places, the naming, classifying, and list-
the paths of the seas” (Mymy twxr) rb(). See Craigie, Psalms 1–50, 108–9; Henning Graf Reventlow, “Der Psalm 8,” Poetica 1 (1967): 309, 331. Against this are several arguments: First, each of the labels used in the various classification schemas that are found throughout the textual record (including poetry) refers to distinct animal taxa and is never a rephrasing of another label in the schema. The same is presumably true of the labels in the classification schema found in Ps 8:8–9. Second, to be in apposition with the plural label Myh ygd, the participle rb( should also probably be in the plural (see Morgenstern, “Psalms 8 and 19A,” 500). Because it is not, the label Mymy twxr) rb( presumably refers to a different taxon. Third, participles are used to refer to distinct animal taxa elsewhere in the textual record and are sometimes used uniquely amid other nonparticipial animal labels (see Whitekettle, “Where the Wild Things Are,” 17–37; idem, “All Creatures Great and Small,” 163–83). Thus, the use of a participle in only one label in Ps 8:8–9 is not remarkable and does not, therefore, argue against its use as a label for a distinct and different animal taxon. In summary, it is reasonable to assume that the labels Myh ygd and Mymy twxr) rb( refer to two different secondary- level aquatic animal taxa. 8 A comprehensive schema is one in which any animal can be placed in one of the named taxa.
Critical Notes
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ing of things, especially plants and animals, have been seen as royal prerogatives, as skills or tools necessary for human beings to govern the world successfully, and as reflections or demonstrations of human power and authority over the world.9 The Israelites, too, understood that the naming, classifying, and listing of things could be acts of authority that established or reflected order and control over the world. This is seen, for example, in Gen 2:19–20, Leviticus 11, Deut 14:3–20, 1 Kgs 5:9–14 (Eng. 4:29–34), and Prov 30:15– 31.10 Thus, the classification system in Psalm 8 could have been used to demonstrate human authority over animals. But was it? Two arguments might be made against the idea. First, lists of things are often purely descriptive or enumerative (e.g., Num 7:18–23; 1 Chr 3:15). Thus, lists do not necessarily demonstrate the authority of the lister over the listed. It might be argued then that the animal classification system found in Psalm 8 is nothing more than an enumerative list of the things that human beings have authority over. Note, however, that both primary- and secondary-level taxa are used to create a comprehensive classification schema in Psalm 8. Throughout the Israelite textual record, when a comprehensive animal classification schema is mentioned, the taxa listed are either all at the primary taxonomic level (e.g., Ps 148:7–10), or all at the primary level with various subclasses listed as well (e.g., Lev 11:2– 9 For Western thought, see Carla Yanni, Nature’s Museum: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 14–15; Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1997), xii, 18–19, 38, 62–63; Christopher Looby, “The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy as Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram,” Early American Literature 22 (1987): 252; John Leonard, Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 17, 39, 47, 51, 231, 261–74. For Greco-Roman thought, see Philo of Alexandria, On The Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, by David T. Runia (Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 86 (§§148–50), 348– 53. For ancient Near Eastern thought, see Shlomo Izre’el, Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death (Mesopotamian Civilizations 10; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 107–49; A. Leo Oppenheim, “Man and Nature in Mesopotamian Civilization,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie; New York: Scribner, 1978), 15.1:634–36; Orly Goldwasser, Prophets, Lovers and Giraffes: Wor(l)d Classification in Ancient Egypt (Appendix by Matthias Müller; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002); Wolfram von Soden, “Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer Wissenschaft,” Die Welte als Geschichte 2 (1936): 411–64, 509–57 (repr. with supplements and corrections in B. Landsberger and W. von Soden, Die Eigenbegrifflichkeit der Babylonischen Welt: Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer Wissenschaft (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965); Mogens Trolle Larsen, “The Mesopotamian Lukewarm Mind: Reflections on Science, Divination and Literacy,“ in Language, Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner (ed. Francesca Rochberg-Halton; AOS, 67; New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1987), 208–11. 10 Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification in Judaism: From Priestly to Rabbinic Conceptions,” HR 26 (1987): 362, 372–74; Baruch Halpern, “The New Names of Isaiah 62:4: Jeremiah’s Reception in the Restoration and the Politics of ‘Third Isaiah,’” JBL 117 (1998): 627–28; W. Randall Garr, In His Own Image: Humanity, Divinity, and Monotheism (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 15; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 179–86, 233–39; W. W. Roth, Numerical Sayings in the Old Testament: A Form-Critical Study (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 2–3, 18–34, 95.
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23). The fact that Psalm 8 diverges from this norm and uses a mixture of both primaryand secondary-level taxa to create a comprehensive classification schema shows that the author did not merely list a bunch of animals, but instead was very deliberate about how animals should be presented to the reader. This suggests that the author of the psalm intended the classification system to be more than a mere catalogue. Second, scholars have long recognized that there is a close connection between Psalm 8 and Gen 1:26–28.11 It might be argued, then, that the classification system in Psalm 8 is merely an allusion to the animal classification system found in Gen 1:26–28. However, as seen below, the author of Psalm 8 used different primary-level taxa from those found in Gen 1:26–28:12 Ps 8:8–9
Gen 1:26 (MT)
Gen 1:26 (BHS)
Gen 1:28
Domesticated land Wild land
High-carriage land Low-carriage land
Land
Aerial Aquatic
Aerial Aquatic
Domesticated land High-carriage wild land Low-carriage wild land Aerial Aquatic
Aerial Aquatic
Thus, despite their otherwise close connection, the author of Psalm 8 intended the classification system to be something other than a simple allusion to Gen 1:26-28. In summary, there is no impediment to believing that the author of the psalm used the classification system to convey authority. But is there any positive evidence that it was? Three things support the idea. First, there are seven different primary-level, zoological taxonomic schemas found in the Israelite textual record.13 As seen in the following examples, the simplest is a threefold schema based on habitat distinctions (see, e.g., Gen 1:28); more complex fourfold and fivefold schemas divide one or two of the habitat-based taxa into two or more primary-level taxa on the basis of anatomy (see, e.g., Lev 11:2–23), means of locomotion (see, e.g., Gen 9:2), or, more rarely, human–animal relations (see, e.g., Gen 9:10 [note, however, that aquatic animals are not mentioned in Gen 9:10]).14
11 For example, both texts mention the mandate to govern plus a list of the animals governed. On the connections between Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, see Garr, In His Own Image and Likeness, 219– 22; Bernhard W. Anderson, From Creation to New Creation (OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 119– 31. 12 For the identification of the taxa here and throughout section IV, see Whitekettle, “Where the Wild Things Are,” 17–37. Low-carriage land animals have short legs/no legs, which causes the animal to move along the ground (e.g., rats, snakes); high-carriage land animals have longish legs, which causes the animal to move over the ground (e.g., hares, goats). See Richard Whitekettle, “Rats Are Like Snakes, and Hares Are Like Goats: A Study in Israelite Land Animal Taxonomy,” Bib 82 (2001): 345–62. 13 See Whitekettle, “Where the Wild Things Are,” 17–37. 14 Two-legged aerial animals are birds + bats; four-legged aerial animals are, essentially, flying insects, like bees and locusts. See Lev 11:13–23.
Critical Notes
Habitat Land Aerial Aquatic
Habitat and Anatomy Land Two-legged aerial Four-legged aerial Aquatic
755
Habitat and Locomotion High-carriage land Low-carriage land Aerial
Habitat and Human–Animal Relations Domesticated land Wild land Aerial
Aquatic
Aquatic
A schema that uses human–animal relations to differentiate taxa clearly sets forth the existence of direct human authority over a portion of the animal inventory (the domesticated land animals). The fact that the author of Psalm 8 employed this more rarely used attribute suggests an intention to use the classification system as a rhetorical vehicle to convey to the reader the idea that human beings have authority over animals. Second, of the seven primary-level taxonomic schemas found in the Israelite textual record, two use human–animal relations to differentiate taxa. One is found in Gen 1:26 (BHS), a truncated form of which (lacking aquatic animals) is found in Gen 7:14, 21; Pss 50:10–11; 148:10. The other, the one used in Psalm 8, is found nowhere else in the textual record in its full form (that is, containing all four taxa); however, a truncated form (lacking aquatic animals) is found in Gen 2:20: Schema 1: Gen 1:26 (BHS)
Schema 2: Gen 2:20
Ps 8:8–9
Domesticated land High-carriage wild land Low-carriage wild land Aerial Aquatic
Domesticated land Wild land
Domesticated land Wild land
Aerial Aquatic (assumed)
Aerial Aquatic
Gen 2:20 describes the naming of animals by the first human being, which is commonly understood to be an act of authority, akin to, or arising out of, the mandate to govern stated earlier in Gen 1:26–28 (if chs. 1 and 2–3 are read together).15 Given that schema 2 15 Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (trans. John J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 228–29; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis = Be-reshit: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 7–8, 22; Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (OBT 2; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 88–105; Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Biblical Understanding of Creation and the Human Commitment,” ExAud 3 (1987): 106–7; Beverly J. Stratton, Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2–3 (JSOTSup 208; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 37–39, 99–101, 109–12; Anderson, From Creation to New Creation, 12, 32. George W. Ramsey has argued that naming involves discernment, not domination, in Gen 2:4b–25 (“Is Name-Giving an Act of Domination in Genesis 2:23 and Elsewhere?” CBQ 50 [1988]: 24–35). David J. A. Clines has responded that discernment and domination are not mutually exclusive (“What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Irredeemably Androcentric Orientations in Genesis 1-3,” in What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the
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is unique to Psalm 8 and Genesis 2–3, and that scholars have noted other similarities between these two texts, it is likely that the author of Psalm 8 is making an allusion to Gen 2:20 or its thought world in the taxonomic schema.16 Third, Ps 8:2b–3 (Eng. 1b–2) associates the infant mouth with power. It has been argued that this passage identifies speech as the means by which human beings are able to exercise the authority bestowed on them in Ps 8:7.17 If so, it is possible that, after presenting the general idea of governing authority through language, the author of Psalm 8 then illustrated and demonstrated it by naming and classifying animals in Ps 8:8–9.18 Given the preceding discussion, it is reasonable to believe that the author of Psalm 8 used the animal classification system in vv. 8–9 to convey human authority over animals to the reader. Assuming this, the question is, having conveyed human authority over onequarter of the animal inventory through the mention of domesticated land animals, how did the author convey authority over the other three-quarters (wild land animals, aerial animals, and aquatic animals)?
V. The Construction of the Classification System It is possible that the author of Psalm 8, in the belief that the act of classification in itself would convey authority, did nothing to convey authority to the reader other than cre-
Old Testament [JSOTSup 94; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990], 39 n. 3). This debate is focused on the male–female relationship in the story in Genesis 2–3. Given the textual markers elsewhere in chs. 1– 11 that human beings have governing authority over animals (Gen 1:26–28; 4:2; 6:19–21; 9:1–3; 10:9), it is entirely reasonable to see the naming of animals in Gen 2:19–20 as an exercise of governing authority (discernment not being excluded), independent of the nature of the male/female relationship. 16 For example, the mode of creation in Ps 8:4 (Eng. 3) (with fingers) is akin to that in Gen 2:7, 19 (shaping) rather than Genesis 1 (command); furthermore, to refer to human governance and dominion, Ps 8:7 and Genesis 2–3 (3:16) both use the word l#$m rather than the words hdr and #$bk, which are used in Gen 1:26–28. On the connections between Psalm 8, Genesis 1, and Genesis 2–3, see Marvin E. Tate, “An Exposition of Psalm 8,” PRSt 28 (2001): 356–57; Briggs, Book of Psalms, 1:61–65; Samuel Terrien, The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 131; Konrad Schaefer, Psalms (Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 24; Phyllis A. Bird, “ ‘Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh,’ ” ThTo 50 (1994): 527 n 17. 17 Walter Harrelson, “Psalm 8 on the Power and Mystery of Speech,” in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg (ed. Mordechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and Jeffrey H. Tigay; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 69–72. On the relationship between the human mouth and power, especially as that relates to Psalm 8, see Øystein Lund, “From the Mouths of Babes and Infants You Have Established Strength,” SJOT 11 (1997): 78–99; Tate, “Exposition of Psalm 8,” 351–52; Briggs, Book of Psalms, 63; Stephen A. Geller, “Wisdom, Nature and Piety in Some Biblical Psalms,” in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen (ed. Tzvi Abusch; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 105–11. 18 Briggs makes a connection between the power of human speech in Ps 8:3 (Eng. 2) and the naming of animals in Gen 2:19–20 (Book of Psalms, 63).
Critical Notes
757
ate a classification system. Ethnobiologists and historians of science, however, have found that the way a zoological classification system is constructed (e.g., the attributes used to differentiate taxa; the number of subdivisions made; the amount of specificity accorded different sections of an animal inventory) reflects and shapes how the creators and users of that classification system relate to, think about, and understand animals.19 Thus, it is possible that, in order to convey to the reader that animals do, in fact, fall under the authority of human beings in the real world, the author of Psalm 8 constructed the classification system in some distinctive way that would accomplish this particular task. Thus, there are two unusual features of the classification system found in Psalm 8: (1) the use of both primary- and secondary-level taxa (see sections III and IV above); and (2) the use of unusual labels for wild land animals and aerial animals (see section III above). Because these two features worked against the Israelite reader’s expectations for how animals were normally listed in a text, the author presumably used them because they accomplished some specific purpose. And because the author needed to convince the reader of the reality of human authority over animals, that is presumably what they accomplished. Assuming this, how did these two features contribute to the goal of conveying to the Israelite reader human authority over animals?
The Use and Distribution of Primary- and Secondary-Level Taxa The primary and secondary level taxa found in Ps 8:8-9 are poetically distributed in the following manner:20 ACTUAL PATTERN 8:8a 8:8b 8:9a 8:9b 19 Brian
Sm dom land Wild land Aerial Lg aquatic
Lg dom land Sm aquatic
K. Smith, “Classifying Animals and Humans in Ancient India,” Man n.s. 26 (1991): 527–38; James S. Boster and Jeffrey C. Johnson, “Form or Function: A Comparison of Expert and Novice Judgments of Similarity among Fish,” American Anthropologist 91 (1989): 866–89; Cecil H. Brown, “Mode of Subsistence and Folk Biological Taxonomy,” Current Anthropology 26 (1985): 43– 64; Terence E. Hays, “Utilitarian/Adaptationist Explanations of Folk Biological Classification: Some Cautionary Notes,” Journal of Ethnobiology 2 (1982): 89–94; S. J. Tambiah, “Animals Are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit,” Ethnology 8 (1969): 423–59; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (London: Allen Lane, 1983), 51–91; Londa Schiebinger, “Why Mammals Are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural History,” AHR 98 (1993): 382–411; Adrian Desmond, Archetypes and Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850–1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 113–203; G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 7–57. 20 In this and subsequent charts, primary-level taxa are in italics and secondary-level taxa are in bold typeface.
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Note that the actual pattern consists of an alternating 2-1-2-1 poetic structure (looking at the number of elements in each half verse) and a chiastic 2-1-1-2 taxonomic structure (looking at the distribution of primary and secondary level taxa). As is apparent, the coexistence of these two structures results in an awkward distribution of the two aquatic animal subclasses. The fact that taxa were not distributed according to Pattern 1 (below), in which the poetic and taxonomic structures are coordinated according to a 2-1-1-2 structure, indicates that the author was committed to a 2-1-2-1 poetic structure.21 PATTERN 1 8:8a 8:8b 8:9a 8:9b
Sm dom land Wild land Aerial Sm aquatic
Lg dom land
Lg aquatic
But if so, then why did the author not create one of the following patterns in which the poetic and taxonomic structures were coordinated in a 2-1-2-1 structure? PATTERN 2 8:8a 8:8b 8:9a 8:9b
Sm dom land Wild land Two-legged aerial Aquatic
PATTERN 3 Lg dom land Four-legged aerial
Sm dom land Wild land Sm aquatic Aerial
Lg dom land Lg aquatic
The fact that pattern 2 was not used indicates a desire by the author to use secondarylevel taxa with domesticated land animals and aquatic animals rather than with domesticated land animals and aerial animals. The fact that pattern 3 was not used indicates a desire by the author to have aquatic animals at the end of the taxonomic sequence. The question is, what did this accomplish? Turning first to why the author of Psalm 8 would have wanted aquatic animals to be at the end of the sequence, note that the actual or underlying primary-level taxa used in the classification system of the psalm are placed in the following order: domesticated land → wild land → aerial → aquatic. There are two aspects of this order to consider: (1) the sequence land → aerial → aquatic; and (2) the sequence domesticated land → wild land. The sequence land → aerial → aquatic is found in several places in the textual record: Gen 1:20–25, 26 (MT), 26 (BHS), 28; Job 12:7–8; Ezek 38:20; Hos 4:3; Zeph 1:3. As seen in the following chart, in most of these texts, human beings are mentioned as part of the sequence:22 21 While it might be argued that there are metrical reasons for the creation of the actual pattern, it is assumed here that the author of Psalm 8 could have found labels to create patterns 1, 2, or 3 and still maintain metrical balance. 22 Human beings are not mentioned in Job 12:7–8. Nor are they mentioned in Gen 1:26 (MT or BHS) or Gen 1:28. However, these texts in Genesis 1 work from the overall narrative order of creation found in Gen 1:20–28, which ends with human beings. The mention of Gen 1:20-28 in the chart reflects that fact.
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Hos 4:3; Zeph 1:3 Human→Land→Aerial→Aquatic Gen 1:20–28; Ezek 38:20 Aquatic →Aerial →Land→Human The direction of the sequence is determined by the position of human beings, indicating that the sequence reflected a progression of some sort with human beings as the reference point.23 Because all of these texts deal with the creation, uncreation, or travail of the physical world, the progression would seem to deal with some aspect of the human–animal relationship (as that is experienced within the physical world), which is graduated. Consider then the following: land animals share the terrestrial habitat and landedness of human beings; aerial animals share the terrestrial habitat but not the landedness of human beings; aquatic animals share neither the terrestrial habitat nor the landedness of human beings. Thus, the sequence land→aerial→aquatic, when used elsewhere in the textual record, entails a progression from animals that have strong human associations (land), to animals that have moderate human associations (aerial), to animals that have minimal human associations (aquatic).24 Regarding the sequence domesticated land→wild land, the chart on the following page shows the order of these two taxa when they are mentioned together elsewhere in the textual record.25 Looking first at sequences 1–9, the sequence domesticated land→wild land is used in three texts (sequences 1–3), while the sequence wild land→domesticated land is used in six texts (sequences 4–9).26 Looking next at sequences 10–11, note that the overall order is aerial→land, not, as is the case in sequences 5, 8, and 9, land→aerial. But note too that human beings are placed next to a taxon of land animals in sequence 10 and in sequence 5. This fact, along with the similar evidence from the preceding chart strongly suggests that the Israelites thought of land animals as holding a preeminent conceptual position in any sequence of animal taxa, regardless of the actual textual order. Assuming this, when one reads sequences 10–11 in reverse textual order, the “conceptual” 23 Since
many of these texts seem to allude to the creation story of Genesis 1, it might be thought that the sequence is the result of the creational order. However, there is nothing about the activities of day 2 (Gen 1:6–8) that requires aquatic animals to be mentioned before aerial animals on day 5 (Gen 1:20–23). In fact, since the dome/sky is mentioned before the water in Gen 1:6–8, it is reasonable to think that aerial animals that fly across the dome/sky should be mentioned before aquatic animals in Gen 1:20–33. 24 This is reflected in the presence in the textual record of names for many kinds and varieties of land animals, names for fewer kinds and varieties of aerial animals, and no names for kinds and varieties of aquatic animals. See Firmage, “Zoology,” 6:1152–56. 25 “Wild land I” refers to high-carriage wild land animals; “Wild land II” refers to low-carriage wild land animals; and “HB” refers to human beings. Psalm 50:10–11 mentions a taxon of insects or bugs after aerial animals; this particular taxon is left out of the chart for space considerations. 26 Since “Wild land I” refers to high-carriage wild land animals and “Wild land II” refers to lowcarriage wild land animals, and since all domesticated land animals are high-carriage land animals, the separation of wild land I from wild land II in sequences 5–8 is presumably due to an interest on the part of the authors of those texts to position high-carriage land animals, both wild and domesticated, contiguously.
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order is wild land→domesticated land. Looking finally at sequence 12, the sequence of land animal taxa is, like sequences 1–3, domesticated land→wild land. However, the placement of aerial animals disrupts this.27 In summary, the sequence domesticated land→wild land is more rarely used in the textual record (three texts [sequences 1–3], excluding the exceptional sequence 12) than the sequence wild land→domesticated land (eight texts; sequences 4–11). 1 Dom land 2 Dom land 3 HB Dom land
Wild land II Wild land Wild land
Wild land I
4 Wild land I 5 HB Wild land I 6 Wild land 7 Wild land I 8 Wild land 9 Wild land I
Dom land Dom land Dom land Dom land Dom land Dom land
Wild land II Wild land II
Wild land II
Gen 1:25 Aerial Gen 7:14 Gen 8:1 Lev 5:2 Aerial Ps 50:10–11 Aerial Ps 148:10
Wild land I Wild land
Wild land II
HB
10 11
Aerial Aerial
Dom land Dom land
12
Dom land Aerial
Wild land II
Wild land
Gen 1:24 Gen 3:14 Lev 25:6–7
Gen 7:21 Gen 9:10 Gen 2:20
In light of the preceding analysis, two things are to be noted about Psalm 8. First, like the texts mentioned above, the broader sequence in the psalm is humans→land→aerial →aquatic (Ps 8:5–9 [Eng. 4–8]). It is plausible, then, that the author of Psalm 8 intended the sequence land→aerial→aquatic to be seen as a movement from animals with strong human associations to animals with minimal human associations. Second, since the sequence wild land→domesticated land was more common, and, in fact, used in two psalms, it is plausible that the author of the psalm used the rarer sequence domesticated land→wild land because it meshed with and extended the progression from strong to minimal human associations present in the sequence land→aerial→aquatic, a progression that the sequence wild land→domesticated land would have disrupted. Thus, the general sense conveyed by the sequence domesticated land→wild land→aerial→aquatic in Psalm 8 is of a progression from animals with strong human associations to animals with minimal human associations. Although this is the general sense of the sequence, in the context of a discussion of the human mastery of animals, an Israelite reader of Psalm 8 would have read the sequence with something more specific in mind: the ability of human beings to control different
27 The
reason for this will be taken up in some future work.
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761
types of animals. Correlated with the progression from strong to minimal human association is a progression from highly controllable animals (domesticated land), to moderately controllable animals (wild land and aerial), to minimally controllable animals (aquatic).28 In summary, the sequence of taxa in Psalm 8 represented a progression from highly controlled to minimally controlled animals for the Israelite reader: human beings → domesticated land → wild land → aerial → aquatic most controllable least controllable With this in mind, the question is, why did the author want to use secondary-level taxa with the most (domesticated land) and least (aquatic) controllable animals? There are two aspects of classification systems to keep in mind while answering this question. First, classification systems give a classifier cognitive mastery over the classified. That is to say, a classification system gives a classifier not mechanical control over what is classified but the ability to understand the classified and therefore to be in control of an encounter with it. For example, a classification of types of clouds does not give a person the ability to change the weather, but it does give a person the information necessary to decide whether to carry an umbrella. Thus, a classification of types of clouds gives a person the ability to be in control of an encounter with the weather. Similarly, a classification of animals does not give a person the ability to force an animal to do something, but it does give a person the information necessary to decide whether an animal is, for example, a threat. Thus, a classification of animals gives a person the ability to be in control of their approach to an animal. Second, the more specific the level of classification, the greater the cognitive mastery one has of what is classified, and therefore, the more control one has over an encounter with the classified. For example, being able to identify an animal as a (poisonous) viper snake (h(p)) would give a person a better idea of whether to remove it in a carefree manner from a cooking pot than only being able to identify it as a snake. Or, being able to identify an animal as a non-ruminant, cloven-hoofed, land animal (e.g., a boar) would have given an Israelite hunter who followed the dietary laws of Leviticus 11 a better idea of whether to kill and eat that animal than only being able to identify it as a land animal (e.g., a gazelle or a boar). Thus, secondary- level taxa reflect greater cognitive mastery than primary-level taxa; tertiary-level taxa more than secondary-level taxa; and so forth. The relationship, then, between cognitive mastery and controllability created by the distribution of primary- and secondary-level taxa in the actual pattern is as follows:
28 For
example, it would have been relatively easy for an Israelite to catch a cow or make it move from one field to another, more difficult to catch a hyrax or quail or make one of them move in some desired direction, and harder still to catch a sardine or make it do much of anything. Because wild land animals and aerial animals are similarly treated in Psalm 8 (both are represented by primary level taxa), they will both be designated hereafter as having moderate human associations.
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ACTUAL PATTERN
REAL WORLD
PRIMARY- AND
SECTIONS OF
SECONDARY-
LEVEL OF COGNITIVE
LEVEL OF
LEVEL TAXA
MASTERY DISPLAYED
CONTROLLABILITY INVENTORY
2a. Sm dom land Higher 2b. Lg dom land
THE ANIMAL
Higher
Dom land
1. Wild land
Lower
Moderate
Wild land
1. Aerial
Lower
Moderate
Aerial
Higher
Lower
Aquatic
2a. Sm aquatic 2b. Lg aquatic
A comparison of the chiastic arrangement of cognitive mastery found in the actual pattern with the linear progression of controllability found in the real world shows coordination between cognitive mastery and controllability through the first three members of the taxonomic sequence: domesticated land→wild land→aerial. The final member of the sequence (aquatic animals), however, breaks this coordinated movement by being treated with a higher level of cognitive mastery than moderately controllable animals and with the same level as highly controllable animals. The author conveys three things to the reader through this arrangement. First, aquatic animals are treated with a level of cognitive mastery higher than their level of controllability. This indicates that, although human beings cannot physically control aquatic animals, human beings nonetheless have the ability to master them cognitively. Second, a taxonomic equivalence is established between domesticated land animals and aquatic animals. This indicates that human beings have the ability to master cognitively the least controllable animals (aquatic) as well as they can cognitively master the most controllable animals (domesticated land). Third, the actual pattern forms a chiasm with secondarylevel taxa as the outer elements and primary-level taxa as the inner elements. Since secondary-level taxa convey a higher level of cognitive mastery than do primary-level taxa, and since secondary-level taxa are used with animals that lie at the extremes of human control, the author has framed the entire taxonomic schema with a sense of cognitive mastery, intimating that all animals, even those designated by primary-level taxa in the middle of the structure (wild land and aerial animals), fall under the cognitive control of human beings. In making these three points, the author directed the reader away from the notion that human beings are ignorant and passive objects of animal indifference or aggression (see section I), and toward the notion that human beings are intelligent and
Critical Notes
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active subjects who, as the divinely authorized governors of the world, bring order and organization to the world, even to the least controllable sectors of the world’s animal inventory. This then explains why the author of Psalm 8 used both primary- and secondarylevel taxa, and, being committed to a 2-1-2-1 poetic structure, created the actual pattern despite its awkward distribution of aquatic animal subclasses. Through the actual pattern, the author indicated that cognitive mastery could overcome or compensate for any deficits in the real-world ability of human beings to control animals.
The Use of Unusual Labels As indicated in section III, the use of a hmhb label in Psalm 8 to refer to wild land animals, rather than a hyx label, is unusual; and the use of a rwpc label to refer to aerial animals, rather than an Pw( label, is also unusual. Assuming that the use of these two unusual labels is part of the author’s effort to convince the reader that human beings have control of all animals, the question is, how do the unusual labels contribute to this goal? Wild land animals are referred to in Psalm 8 with the label yd#& twmhb. The only other places where this label is found are Joel 1:20 (which has hd#& rather than yd#&) and 2:22.29 Joel 1:17-20 contains a contrastive taxonomic set consisting of hmhb domesticated land animals and hd#& twmhb wild land animals. The focus in this passage is on the suffering of both of these groups of animals and their dependence on God following the devastation of the land. Joel 2:22 encourages yd#& twmhb wild land animals that things are or will be better. Given the common use of the lexeme hmhb in labels for both domesticated land animals and wild land animals (as opposed to the expected hmhb/hyx contrast), and the depiction of their common physical needs, it would appear that the label &twmhb yd#&/hd# minimizes the distance between domesticated and wild land animals in Joel, focusing instead on their common creatureliness. Assuming this, and the fact that the lexeme hmhb was usually used to refer to domesticated land animals or to all land animals in the textual record, the use of the label yd#& twmhb in Psalm 8 was intended to draw the reader away from thinking about wild land animals as relationally menacing and uncontrollable, and toward their physical creatureliness. In doing this, the problem that “wild” land animals posed for the exercise of human authority was intellectually minimized or ignored. Aerial animals are referred to in Psalm 8 with the label Mym#$ rwpc, a label that is used only here in the textual record. In general, rwpc aerial animals are characterized by some relationship they have with human beings in the textual record. For example, they can be made a pet (Job 40:29 [Eng. 41:5]); they fall into snares (Ps 124:7; Prov 6:5; 7:23; 29 The label hd#&h tmhb is found in 1 Sam 17:44. However, multiple manuscripts, the Targums, the Septuagint, and the Vulgate have or follow a reading of Cr)h tmhb, which calls the originality of hd#&h tmhb into question.
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Eccl 9:12; Amos 3:5), they serve as food for human beings (Deut 22:6–7; Neh 5:18); they live within the walls of the temple (Ps 84:4 [Eng. 3]); they are near enough to wake people up with their noise (Eccl 12:4); they build their nests near roads (Deut 22:6); and they sit on the roofs of buildings (Ps 102:8 [Eng. 7]). Thus, the lexeme rwpc carries connotations of nearness and familiarity. In creating a label for all aerial animals that contained this lexeme, the author of Psalm 8 drew the reader away from thinking of aerial animals as distant and indifferent and toward their nearness to and interaction with human beings. In doing this, the author intellectually minimized the distance between human beings and aerial animals. This, then, explains why the author of Psalm 8 used unusual labels for wild land animals and aerial animals. These labels carried connotations that would have led an Israelite to think of those animal classes not in terms of their menace or distance but in terms of their creatureliness and familiarity. This act of redefinition mitigated the perception that these animals posed a problem for the idea of human authority.
VI. Summary The author of Psalm 8 used a classification system to convey to the reader that human beings have authority over all animals. The author did a number of things with the system to accomplish this. First, the animal inventory was partitioned in such a way that a portion of it was specifically identified as falling under the authority of human beings (domesticated land animals). Second, through the use of secondary-level taxa, rather than the ordinarily expected primary-level taxa, human beings were shown to have cognitive mastery specifically over the least controllable animals (aquatic animals), and, more generally, over all animals, from the most (domesticated land) to the least (aquatic) controllable animals. Third, while portions of the animal inventory were given ordinary labels, other portions were given labels with connotations that mitigated the perception that these animals (wild land and aerial) pose a problem for human authority. By incorporating these three features into the classification system in Ps 8:8–9, every portion of the animal inventory was treated in some way that made it amenable to the concept of human authority (the different features are in capitals in the chart below): Partitioning of the animal inventory
Level of cognitive control displayed
Type of label used
DOMESTICATED LAND Wild land Aerial Aquatic
HIGHER Ordinary Ordinary HIGHER
Ordinary MITIGATING MITIGATING Ordinary
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In doing this, the author did nothing to illustrate how human beings actually physically overcome the problems that animals pose for human authority in the real world (e.g., hunting, fencing). Instead, the author of Psalm 8 used the ability of a classification system to shape how people think about animals. The particular techniques that the author used (e.g., the use of unusual labels) were, of course, crucial to accomplishing this. However, since the ability to comprehend the world and bring order to it was a skill essential to the exercise of the mandate to govern, perhaps just as important in conveying human authority over animals was the very act of classification itself. Richard Whitekettle [email protected] Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 49546
What Becomes of the Angels’ “Wives”? A Text-Critical Study of 1 Enoch 19:2
It has long been noted that the Enochic corpus preserves a distinctive story concerning the origin of evil, an account that is known only partially from Genesis 6.1 Enochic works tell the story of angels who forsake their heavenly dwelling in order to mate with women. The union of angels and mortals results in bloodthirsty giants who scar the earth and abuse its inhabitants. The angels, or watchers as they are called, also contribute to humanity’s decline by introducing all sorts of forbidden arts. Although these angels come to be imprisoned at the ends of the earth, their spirits continue to wreak havoc by inciting humans to commit idolatry (see 1 En. 19:1). Yet what of the women who associated with the watchers? As if an afterthought, 1 En. 19:2 briefly recounts the fate of these women as well. According to the Greek manuscript tradition, the wives of the angels who transgressed are to become sirens, mythological creatures often associated with seduction. The Ethiopic manuscripts preserve another reading, however: the wives of the angels are to become peaceful. Which of the readings that concern the women is preferable? A related matter is that since the Aramaic is no longer extant for 1 En. 19:2, one must also consider what the text in its language of composition featured in place of the Greek and Ge>ez variants. The task is a worthy one. We have the opportunity to take up a provocative textcritical issue, one that has not been addressed at length by contemporary exegetes, by examining the interpretative possibilities for the Greek and Ge>ez manuscript readings and their fit within the narrative. In this context we also explore a third possibility for the text of 1 En. 19:2, an Aramaic reading prior to both the Greek and Ge>ez that is now lost to us. Further, the study also calls attention to the depiction of female characters in the narrative, an aspect of the work that in turn might provide further information about the role I wish to thank Drs. Toni Craven and James VanderKam for reading and commenting on this paper; I alone bear responsibility for the judgments expressed herein. In coming to terms with issues in this paper I have benefited from the counsel of Drs. Takamitsu Muraoka, Bezalel Porten, and Eugene Ulrich as well, and am grateful to them for sharing their expertise with me. I also wish to recognize St. Edward’s University for its generosity in supporting research for this project through a Presidential Excellence Scholarly Research Grant. 1 Enochic works may, in fact, preserve and combine up to three stories concerning the origin of evil. For further discussion of these stories and their merger, see James C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS 16; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984), 122–25; and also George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, vol. 1, Chapters 1–36, 81–108 (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 171–72.
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of women or the status of women in the community that preserved such literature. It is of interest that the wives’ outcome has been curiously ignored in Second Temple and late antique works that do offer colorful expansions of Enochic texts and traditions, many of which concern the fate of the fallen watchers. What becomes of the watchers’ wives, and how does the matter affect our reading of the narrative and the view of women in this Enochic booklet? Discussion of these text-critical matters merits a review of the book’s history. Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars know that the work we refer to as the Book of the Watchers was originally produced in Aramaic.2 Indeed, based on the number of copies of this text and others from the Enochic corpus, the literature attributed to or associated with Enoch was apparently quite popular at Qumran.3 Although the Aramaic text is extant for much of the Book of the Watchers, nothing from 1 Enoch 19 has been recovered from Qumran.4 1 Enoch 19 was preserved, however, in Greek in a codex found in the grave of a Coptic monk; we refer to this manuscript tradition, from the fourth or fifth century, as Panopolitanus, after the codex’s provenance in Egypt.5 The consensus view is that the Greek of 1 Enoch is a translation of an Aramaic copy.6 The Book of the Watchers and the whole of the corpus commonly referred to as 1 Enoch are also preserved in Ge>ez. There are, in fact, several manuscript traditions in Ethiopic, primarily related to one of two families.7 Though there has been some robust dis2 See Erik W. Larson, who notes that while it is possible that Enochic literature once existed in Hebrew, the evidence at present indicates only an Aramaic Grundschrift (“The Translation of Enoch from Aramaic into Greek” [Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1995], 21–27). See also Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 9. 3 Eleven manuscripts of works familiar from the corpus known as 1 Enoch were recovered from Cave 4 at Qumran. On the fragmentary Enochic texts, see J. T. Milik with the collaboration of Matthew Black, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976); and Klaus Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer samt den Inschriften aus Palästina, dem Testament Levis aus der Kairoer Genisa, der Fastenrolle und den alten talmudischen Zitaten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 225–41. 4 From that same literary unit, however, portions of 1 En. 18:8–12 and 18:15 were recovered in Cave 4. Milik dates 4QEnc (for 18:8–12) from the Herodian period or the last third of the first century B.C.E. (Books of Enoch, 178). 4QEne (for 18:15), a fragment Milik is tentative in identifying, dates to the Hasmonean period, perhaps from the first half of the first century B.C.E. (ibid., 225, 228). 5 Larson, it would seem, favors a fourth- or fifth-century date, especially on the basis of paleographical comparison. See Erik W. Larson, “The Relation between the Greek and Aramaic Texts of Enoch,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery; Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (ed. Lawrence Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 434–44; esp. 437. Milik (Books of Enoch, 70) and Nickelsburg (1 Enoch, 12) date Codex Panopolitanus to the end of the fifth or sixth century. 6 Larson, “Relation between the Greek and Aramaic Texts of Enoch,” 439. This does not preclude, however, Panopolitanus in particular being a copy of a previously translated Greek text. Thus, Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 18. The Book of the Watchers has also been preserved in Greek in the form of excerpts in Syncellus’s work; 1 En. 19:1–2 was not among the selections represented by the Byzantine chronographer, however. 7 Both Johannes Flemming (Das Buch Henoch: Äthiopischer Text mit Einleitung und Commentar [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1902]) and R. H. Charles (The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch [Oxford: Clarendon,
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cussion as to whether the Ethiopic translators had access to Enochic literature in Aramaic, it is widely acknowledged that a Greek copy was the primary textual basis for the Ge>ez.8 Since the Aramaic for 1 En. 19:2 is not extant, I necessarily rely on Panopolitanus and various Ethiopic manuscript traditions. Inasmuch as the Greek version of the Book of the Watchers offers the earliest, most complete text, one might be inclined to prefer its readings.9 Yet Panopolitanus was not merely the product of scribes who went about the task of providing word-for-word correspondences for the Aramaic.10 As Erik Larson demonstrates, the translation of Panopolitanus often shows omissions and corruptions, as well as stylistic modifications and cultural adaptations.11 Hence, the tendencies of Panopolitanus’s scribes must also be considered in any discussion of text-critical matters. 1912]) sorted the Ethiopic manuscripts into two groups (1) an older recension based on a Greek version (which, following Flemming, we will refer to as Group I) and (2) a later recension of the Ethiopic (Group II). While textual traditions of Group I manuscripts are frequently, but not exclusively, favored (see Michael A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments [2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1978], 2:32, who bases his translation on Rylands Library Ethiopic MS 23, a Group II MS), contemporary Enochic scholars work from a broader base of manuscripts than Flemming or Charles. Tana 9 and unpublished manuscripts of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library collection, such as EMML 1768, EMML 2080, and EMML 6281 (all representative of Group I), are among the additional manuscripts that have come to light and are highly regarded; see Matthew Black, The Book of Enoch or I Enoch: A New English Edition with Commentary and Textual Notes (SVTP 7; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 6; and Ephraim Isaac, “New Light upon the Book of Enoch from Newly-Found Ethiopic Mss,” JAOS 103 (1983): 399–411, esp. 407. 8 See James C. VanderKam, “The Textual Base for the Ethiopic Translation of 1 Enoch,” in Working with No Data: Studies in Semitic and Egyptian Presented to Thomas O. Lambdin (ed. David M. Golomb; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987), 247–62; and Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 15. Though the Ethiopic agrees at times with the readings from Qumran against Panopolitanus, one need not assume that the Ethiopic translator(s) worked from an Aramaic text. One can make the argument that the translator(s) had access to a pristine Greek copy of the text, one not as defective or subject to as much revision as is observed in the case of Panopolitanus. Thus, Larson, “Relation between the Greek and Aramaic Texts of Enoch,” 440. 9 Nickelsburg notes that while he is aware of forty-nine pre-1900 manuscripts of Ethiopic 1 Enoch, only twelve of these can be dated to the seventeenth century or earlier (1 Enoch, 16). EMML 2080 may prove increasingly important to Enochic scholarship, since there is a claim that it is a twelfth- to thirteenth-century manuscript. See Getatchew Haile and William F. Macomber, A Catalogue of Ethiopian Manuscripts Microfilmed for the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library, Addis Ababa and for the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, Collegeville, vol. 6, Project Numbers 2001–2500 (Collegeville, MN: St. John’s Abbey and University, 1982), 147. 10 Codex Panopolitanus preserves the work of two scribes for the Enochic material who, Larson observes, are contemporaneous (“Translation of Enoch from Aramaic into Greek,” 67–68). It is the second of these two who is responsible for the extant Greek of 19:2, and thus our comments pertain primarily to this scribe alone. 11 Larson notes that some material in Panopolitanus was lost through homoioteleuton; while at least seven instances may emerge through comparison with the Ethiopic, three are confirmed by Aramaic manuscripts from Qumran. Thus, Larson adds: “The foregoing analysis of the text of GPan (the Greek text of Panopolitanus) reveals the judgment of Milik, who thought that the scribes who produced the manuscript performed their work ‘creditably,’ cannot stand. On the contrary, the manuscript has been shown to contain many misspellings, omissions, and corruptions” (“Translation of
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We return to the matter of the variants. Since the Book of the Watchers is often characterized as an apocalyptic text, one expects it to treat end-time punishments or the promises of a new era alongside its account of the origin of evil. After Enoch has been shown extraordinary sites (1 Enoch 17–18), he learns from the angel Uriel that one of the places will serve to detain the angels who mated with women. As if the forbidden union was not problematic enough in terms of the cosmic order, Uriel reveals that the spirits of the fallen angels will lead humankind astray so that they will sacrifice to demons.12 Though the fallen watchers appear to be subject to some sort of physical containment and punishment (see 1 En. 10:4–6, 12–14; 18:9–12; cf. 21:7–10), their spirits are allowed to afflict humanity until the day of great judgment by leading people to acts of idolatry (19:1).13 Uriel then communicates to Enoch information about the women who partnered with the angels. According to the Greek manuscript tradition Panopolitanus, Uriel reveals that the wives of the angels who transgressed will become sirens. Panopolitanus 19:2 reads: kai; aiJ gunai'ke" aujtw'n tw'n parabavntwn ajggevlwn eij" seirh'na" genhvsontai (“and the wives of the transgressing angels will become sirens”).14 Ethiopic manuscripts preserve another reading: the wives of the angels will become peaceful (wa-
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in the narrative context. Panopolitanus envisions the wives becoming sirens, an appellation that suggests to the modern ear “temptress,” or a woman who entices. From the perspective of the narrative, though, seduction or acts of fornication have already occurred between the angels and women. Moreover, the text makes clear that the women who associated with the angels will become sirens, employing genhvsontai, a verb in the future tense. The focus remains, therefore, on the pending status prescribed for the wives, suggesting that further examination of the connotation of “siren” in 1 En. 19:2, as well as in antiquity, is in order. Literary and archaeological sources from antiquity provide a rather incomplete portrait of the siren.16 Homer presents sirens as creatures that lure sailors to their death with captivating song.17 In this respect, one might think them seductresses of a sort who enticed and ensnared by means of music.18 These femmes fatales were frequently depicted as creatures with the heads and busts of women attached to the bodies of birds.19 The earliest extant literature describes them in groups of three or four and assigns to them particular names.20 Sirens appear in later works, however, in a more indiscriminate manner, where they are associated with mourning and with the singing of dirges for the dead; Euripides, for example, has Helen call upon the sirens to assist her in bereavement.21 As companions to Persephone, sirens also had a connection to the netherworld (Ovid, Metam. 5.551). Sirens may, in fact, come to symbolize the souls of the dead since they were depicted in popular funerary statues of ancient Greece.22 Which image of the siren does the translator of Panopolitanus, a hellenized Jew, have in mind?23 Are the women who mate with the angels supposed to evoke the frightening 16 For overviews on these enchantresses of antiquity, see Nicholas J. Richardson, “Sirens,” The Oxford Classical Dictionary (ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth; 3rd ed.; Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1413; and Johannes Zwicker, “Sirenen,” PW (1929) 2.3:288–307. 17 See Homer, Od. 12.39–54, 153–300; also Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. 4.893; Ovid, Metam. 14.88; Virgil, Aeneid 5.864. Both Odysseus and Orpheus outwit the sirens, which is said to have led to the creatures’ demise. Cf. Apollodorus, Library, “Epitome” 7.19. 18 Pausanias reports that people are wont to liken whatever is charming in poetry or prose to a siren (Description of Greece 1.21.1). 19 Images of the sirens as women with the bodies of birds are plentiful. Notable, for example, is the fresco of sirens preserved at Pompeii. 20 Names included Pisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepia, for example. Apollodorus, Library 1.7.10; “Epitome” 7.16, 18–19; Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. 4.893; Hyginus, Fabulae 125; and Strabo, Geog. 5.4.7; 6.1.1. 21 See Helen 165–69. On sirens as figures of lament, see George M. A. Hanfmann and John Richard Thornhill Pollard, “Sirens,” The Oxford Classical Dictionary (ed. M. Carey; Oxford: Clarendon, 1949), 993. 22 Richardson, “Sirens,” 1413. See New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (ed. Felix Guirand et al.; trans. Richard Aldington and Delano Ames; New York: Prometheus, 1973), 147, on sirens as funerary genii. 23 Though one cannot date with any certainty the translation of Panopolitanus, the translation process from the Aramaic resembles in many cases strategies evidenced in LXX Daniel and Tobit; this observation can assist us in making the argument that the translation occurred prior to the Christian era. See James Barr, “Aramaic-Greek Notes on the Book of Enoch (I-II),” JSS 23 (1978): 184–98; 24 (1979): 179–92, esp. 24:191. Yet, with regard to Panopolitanus, the hellenized nature of its translation is apparent through use of Greek words that are of a literary character and words atyp-
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creatures that seduce, entrap, or otherwise plague humankind, like the sirens of The Odyssey? Or are the women to become symbols of mourning like the funerary statues, eternally sorrowful for their participation in this illicit union? In fact, the narrative context of 1 En. 19:2 seemingly would lend itself to both images: sirens as deadly seductresses and as mourners. As for the former option (sirens as dangerous seductresses), one recalls that in the context of the narrative, the archangel Uriel has shared with Enoch the manner in which the fallen angels will be punished; he has also just explained to the seer that the spirits of the watchers will continue to trouble humankind until the day of judgment by enticing people to commit idolatry. The statement concerning the fate of the angels’ wives follows. The implication of the text could be that just as the watchers continue to vex humankind, so too could their wives in the guise of sirens. How exactly the sirens would still participate among the living—would they entice mortals to fornicate?—is not clear.24 Curiously, we do not read further of the wives as sirens in Jewish and Christian literature.25 The notion that the spirits of the angels lead people to sacrifice to demons—who are, in fact, the offspring of the angels—becomes a rather common trope, in contradistinction, recurring in literature ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies.26 One might expect in contexts that discuss the watchers’ sins, their punishment, and how they (or their offspring) continue to play a role in the affairs of this world, that the wives, if they too plague humankind, would be mentioned. Perhaps the author of 1 En. 19:2 had in mind, then, the other image of the siren, one equally familiar to ancient audiences: the siren as singer of dirges, a mourner, or one associated with death. Since Enoch and the reader have just been made privy to the place of punishment for the watchers, in this interpretation of 1 En. 19:2 one learns as well of the unfortunate outcome for their wives. The women are to become symbols of mourning and will henceforth be associated with the realm of the dead. This interpretation accords well with a second possible use of “siren” in the Enochic corpus.27 In the Ethiopic of 1 En.
ical of the LXX, e.g., oi[comai (see 1 En. 29:1; 30:1, 3; 32:2), tavrtaro" (1 En. 20:2), and tita'ne" (1 En. 9:9). Barr, “Aramaic-Greek Notes II,” 188; and Larson, “Relation between the Greek and Aramaic Texts of Enoch,” 440–44. 24 Nickelsburg favors this interpretation of the sirens in 1 En. 19:2; he observes: “Like their angel husbands, the daughters of men continue to have an evil influence.” He views them according to the Homeric template, as half-women, half-birds who will lure men to their destruction (1 Enoch, 288). 25 Though “sirens” are briefly mentioned in 2 Bar. 10:8 and in later rabbinic texts (see Sipra ynym# IV, 3), there is no connection made to the account of the angels’ descent or to their wives. 26 See, e.g., Songs of the Sagea-b (4Q510, 511); Justin Martyr, 2 Apol. 5; Athenagoros, Embassy 25–26; and Ps.-Clem. Hom. 8:15–20. For a thorough survey of early Christian literature that recalls the angels’ descent and the misfortunes that ensue, see James C. VanderKam, “1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (ed. James C. VanderKam and William Adler; CRINT 3.4 ; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 33– 101; esp. 60–88. 27 1 Enoch 96:2, Nickelsburg maintains, offers the other portrait of sirens: mythical creatures associated with mourning. Nickelsburg suggests that these sirens, as the mythical mourners of antiquity, will weep over the death of sinners and suggests that the sirens’ lament parallels Enoch’s lament
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96:2, we read that on the day of tribulation the righteous will soar and ascend like eagles, whereas the sinners will sigh and weep like sirens.28 Although this image of sirens appears more plausible, either image—creatures associated with seductive song or mourning and death—reflects an essentially negative view of the fate of the wives. The Ge>ez of 1 En. 19:2 preserves a very different understanding of what becomes of the angels’ wives. In this case the women are said to become peaceful. This interpretation offers a more positive outcome for the women, one intimating the women’s blamelessness in the union and perhaps even their victimization at the hands of the angels. The text would be suggesting, then, that after their involvement with the watchers, the aggrieved women finally acquire some repose.29 The strength of this particular interpretation is that other passages in 1 Enoch seem to exculpate the women. James VanderKam observes, in fact, that the author of 1 Enoch 6 accents the lustful nature of the angels and makes clear that the guilt for the sinful union lies with the angels alone and not the women.30 Scholarship in the last two centuries has tended to favor the reading offered by Panopolitanus: the women become sirens. Panopolitanus’s version is preferred principally because one can adduce a process by which the Greek was transformed into the Ethiopic. It is widely hypothesized that an Ethiopic translator mistook eij" seirh'na" for wJ" eijrhnai'ai and subsequently rendered the expression as the Ethiopic kama salāmāweyāt, which means “as peaceful.”31 Solely on the basis of text-critical principles (the hypothesis in this case is that the two words were misread), scholars have argued for the superiority in 1 En 95:1 (1 Enoch, 465). See Charles (Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, 238) and Nickelsburg (1 Enoch, 461, 465), who interpret the uncertain Ethiopic s\ēdanāt as “sirens” (so LXX for Isa 13:21; Jer 50:39; and Job 30:29); for alternative translations, see Knibb, Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 229; and Black, Book of Enoch or I Enoch, 298. It is important to note that 1 En. 19:2 and 96:2 do not derive from the same hand. 28 Following the translation of Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 146. Ephraim Isaac, working from Tana 9, translates 96:2 thus: “The sirens shall be blown over you, wailing like the buzzing of wild bees” (“1 [Ethiopic Apocalypse of] Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” OTP 1:5–89, esp. 76). 29 This is the interpretation suggested by Daniel Olson, who favors the reading in the Ge>ez manuscripts (Enoch: A New Translation: The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, or 1 Enoch, Translated with Annotations and Cross-References [North Richland Hills, TX: BIBAL, 2004], 268–69). 30 James C. VanderKam, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (Studies on Personalities of the Old Testament; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 32–33. The Book of the Watchers seems at times sympathetic or neutral in its depiction of women. Indeed, Nickelsburg, who accepts Panopolitanus’s “sirens” for 1 En. 19:2, sees in that reading “one of the few pejorative comments about these women in this book” (1 Enoch, 288). But see n. 15 on the variants for 8:1 and 19:2 that have the women leading the watchers astray. 31 See Flemming, Das Buch Henoch, 24–25; François Martin, Le Livre d’Hénoch (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1906), 53; Charles, Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, 43; Siegbert Uhlig, Das äthiopische Henochbuch (JSHRZ 5; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1984), 551; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 277. The Ethiopic states that the women will become “as” or “like” peaceful; Tana 9, one of the earliest extant Ethiopic manuscripts, omits kama. Some Ethiopic manuscripts of 1 En. 96:2 (Rylands Library Ethiopic MS 23; Berlin Orient and Abbadian 35) seem to have preserved a similar idiom: “as/like the sirens.” See Charles, Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, 238. In the context of 96:2, the expression, however, is not at all problematic.
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of Panopolitanus’s reading. Therefore, if one wants to suggest that the Ethiopic variant offers a better reading or is closer to the original text, one should attempt to explain how Panopolitanus’s scribe came upon the reading “sirens.” To explain the reading in Panopolitanus, let us entertain an alternative scenario. It is frequently assumed that it is the Ethiopic translator who confused eij" seirh'na" for wJ" eijrhnai'ai. It is plausible, however, that Panopolitanus presents an inexact transmission of its Vorlage and that there was a Greek text on which the Ethiopic manuscripts were based that replicated more precisely the Aramaic. While a misreading of an earlier Greek text on the part of Panopolitanus is possible, more likely is that the scribe revised the text of 19:2 for stylistic reasons.32 As Larson demonstrates through comparison with the Aramaic of the Book of the Watchers, Panopolitanus’s scribe frequently aims for a literary product. The translator of Panopolitanus had a strong command of Greek and sought “to make the Greek read more smoothly.”33 Lauded today for its literary acumen, Panopolitanus’s translation of the Book of the Watchers includes references to the titans and to Tartarus, both of Greek mythology; indeed Larson sees mythological associations at work in the reference to the sirens (1 En. 9:9; 20:2).34 Hence, the scribe of Panopolitanus may have found the Vorlage lacking (or may have misread the text) and proposed instead seirh'na". It is also reasonable that Panopolitanus added eij" to accompany genhvsontai, a common pairing of this verb (givgnomai) and preposition (cf. Jdt 5:8; 1 Macc 2:11, 43; 3:58). Given the editorial tendencies of Panopolitanus’s scribe, it would be premature to conclude that its rendering “sirens” is to be preferred to the Ge>ez. We will need more than an accounting of the differences between the Greek and Ethiopic texts to determine the superior reading, since both scenarios (Panopolitanus’s scribe revised the text or the Ge>ez translator misread the Greek) are plausible. Thus we arrive at a second matter to consider toward resolving this text-critical issue. Inasmuch as Panopolitanus or any other Greek text is a translation, what word stood in the place of “sirens” or “peaceful” in the Aramaic original? It is easy enough to posit for the Ethiopic reading “peaceful” a form of Ml#$. More interesting is the attempt to find a Semitic Vorlage for “siren.”35 In this regard, there are two prime candidates: the hn(y tb and the tylyl. 32 So
also Olson, Enoch: A New Translation, 268. “Relation between the Greek and Aramaic Texts of Enoch,” 439. Larson lists, however, several inadvertent errors in the manuscript of Panopolitanus (“Translation of Enoch from Aramaic into Greek,” 85–88). 34 Larson, “Relation between the Greek and Aramaic Texts of Enoch,” 443–44. T. Francis Glasson observes, for example, generic as well as thematic affinities to ancient Greece (Greek Influence in Jewish Eschatology [London: SPCK, 1961]), and more recently Nickelsburg affirms that the Book of the Watchers reflects Greek myths and topoi (1 Enoch, 62). Even so, scholars have observed in the narrative antipathy for or at least ambivalence toward Hellenism (e.g., chs. 7–8). Larson’s study is important, therefore, in that it allows one to note the recensional activity of Panopolitanus’s scribes, which reflects a certain level of comfort with Greco-Roman literature and mythology. 35 Although one cannot discount the influence of Greek mythology on the Book of the Watchers or the impact of Hellenism and the Greek language in Israel during the Second Temple period, we have no evidence among the Aramaic fragments of Enoch recovered from the Dead Sea Scrolls that the author utilized Greek loanwords, especially those relating to mythology. It appears prudent, 33 Larson,
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In the Septuagint, siren (seirhvn) is frequently used to render the enigmatic tb hn(y.36 From the context of various biblical texts, the bat ya>ănâ is thought to be a bird of some sort that dwells among ruins (Isa 13:21; 34:13; Jer 50:39) or in the desert (Isa 43:20).37 Its plaintive cry led to its association with mourning.38 hn(y tb (or hn(y twnb as it also occurs) is sometimes translated “ostrich.”39 Although an exact translation is uncertain, it is clear that the creature has some association with wailing, as in Mic 1:8, or is to be taken as a symbol of loneliness (see, e.g., Job 30:29).40 The shortcoming of the hypothesis that the Aramaic Vorlage of 1 En. 19:2 makes reference to the hn(y twnb is that these mythical creatures do not play much of a role in Second Temple period or late antique literature, other than to serve as examples of unclean fowl (see e.g., b. H\ ul. 64b). Given the colorful roles assumed by sirens in Greek mythology, one would hope to find evidence of a more “developed” depiction of hn(y twnb: for example, texts that associate the birdlike creatures with a class of demons.41 Although translators of the LXX at times found a compelling enough match between the siren and bat ya>ănâ
therefore, to posit, if one wants to make a case for the inclusion of “sirens” in the text, that a Greek translator adapted a Semitic expression. 36 seirhvn also replaces the word Nt (“jackal”); see Isa 34:13 and Job 30:29, where, interestingly, seirhvnioi is employed for Mynt and strouqoiv for hn(y twnb. 37 In such desolate landscapes, the hn(y tb is joined by demons, wild goats (or satyrs), jackals, and hyenas (see Isa 34:14–15). The setting described for the hn(y tb, a wilderness place of sorts, vitiates a correspondence between this creature and the siren. 2 Baruch 10:8, perhaps to be dated to the end of the first century or beginning of the second century C.E., associates sirens with the sea. Sipra ynym# IV, 3 also alludes to sirens (here tynwrys) as sea creatures, a correlation one would anticipate from the depiction of sirens in works such as The Odyssey. 38 See Marvin Pope, Job: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 15; New York: Doubleday, 1973), 224. 39 So Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 19; New York/London: Doubleday, 2000), 25, 63; idem, Isaiah 40–55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 19A; New York/London: Doubleday, 2002), 13. The expression is also rendered “owl.” See, e.g., John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1–33 (WBC 24; Waco: Word Books, 1985), 193; idem, Isaiah 34–66 (WBC 25; Waco: Word Books, 1987), 125. See also Klaus Baltzer, DeuteroIsaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40–55 (ed. Peter Machinist; trans. Margaret Kohl; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 171. According to Lev 11:16 and Deut 14:15, hn(y tb is an unclean fowl. 40 So Ralph Smith, Micah-Malachi (WBC 32; Waco: Word Books, 1984), 20; and Delbert R. Hillers, Micah: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Micah (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 23. Matthew Black retains “sirens” in his translation and notes how it corresponds to hn(y tb in the LXX. Black speculates that a comparable term, like Nyym(n tnb (“daughters of loveliness”) used in reference to these fowls in Tg. Isa. 13:2, may have been original to the Aramaic text (Book of Enoch or I Enoch, 161). I am not aware, however, of literature deriving from the Second Temple period that speaks of the Nyym(n tnb and relates these enigmatic creatures (owls, ostriches, or birds of some sort that are comparable to hn(y twnb according the Targumist) to the story of the watchers. 41 Thus, in his study of demonology in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philip Alexander is surprised that while the lists of malevolent beings in 4Q510 and 4Q511 reflect the Myyc and Myx) of Isa 13:21, the hn(y twnb (and also Myry(#) are ignored (“The Demonology of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment [ed. Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1999], 2:331–53, esp. 334, n. 10).
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to warrant the connection, the extant evidence does not indicate that the hn(y tb had the full range of traits associated with sirens, nor does this creature play much of a role in Second Temple texts. Another Semitic expression might be more fitting in this respect. The lîlît (tylyl), who resembles in some ways the Greek notion of “siren,” is also a figure to consider for the lost Aramaic of 19:2. Lîlît appears in Isa 34:14, where the creature is said to find repose in a desolate place; the text, however, provides no further description of this being.42 As the Isaianic text offers the only reference to lîlît in the Hebrew Bible, one must turn to extrabiblical traditions to learn more about this character, who is, in fact, of great antiquity.43 Though lacking in biblical texts, much lore about the lîlît is preserved in the Talmud, later Jewish mystical texts, magic bowl incantations, and amulets.44 Most relevant to our study is that the lîlît appears in exorcism hymns at Qumran. In 4Q510 and
42 With regard to lîlît in this context, see Watts, Isaiah 34–66, 13–14. tylyl is rendered ojnokevntauro" (in the plural!) in the LXX, which suggests to Manfred Hutter a possible connection to the Akkadian Lamashtu (“Lilith,” DDD [1999], 521). Aquila transcribes liliq for his translation, and Symmachus and Jerome render the word lamia. One should note also that 1QIsaa preserves the reading of twylyl for Isa 34:14. 43 Lîlît, perhaps to be understood as a proper name, appears to be related to a class of Mesopotamian demons associated with desolate places and death. According to Lowell K. Handy (ABD 4:324–25), lîlît is the Hebrew form of the Akkadian lilītu (feminine form of lilû), a type of lesser deity in Mesopotamia known for pernicious activities (CAD lilû). The lilītu and Ardat-lilî were seen respectively as endangering women in childbirth and as wild, aggressive consorts incapable of normal sexuality. Thus, the lîlît might be described as a succubus (see Hutter, “Lilith,” 520–21). See also R. Campbell Thompson, The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (Semitic Text and Translation 14; London: Luzac, 1903), 26–36; Israel Levi, “Lilit et Lilin,” REJ 68 (1914): 15–21; G. Scholem, “Lilith,” EncJud (1972): 11:245–49, esp. 245–46; Walter Farber, “Lilû, lilītu, Ardat-lilî,” RlA (1987), 22– 24; and Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (New York: Ktav, 1967), 207–45. 44 See b. Nid. 24b; b. B. Bat. 73a; b. Šabb. 151b; b. >Erub. 100b. See also James A. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur (University of Pennsylvania: The Museum; Publications of the Babylonian Section 3; Philadelphia: University Museum, 1913), 154–55; idem, “Some Early Amulets from Palestine,” JAOS 31 (1911): 272–81; cf. Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 159–214; Peter Schäfer, “Jewish Magic in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” JSS 41 (1990): 75–91; Barbara Koltuv, The Book of Lilith (York Beach, ME: Nicolas-Hays, 1986). In these later traditions (see b. Nid. 24b), lîlît is often depicted as a winged creature, not unlike the Greco-Roman sirens. Comparable creatures may be observed in Zech 5:9, where two women with wings like storks carry off a bushel to the land of Shinar in the prophet’s vision. On the birdwomen of Zech 5:9, see Smith, Micah-Malachi, 210–11; David L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1– 8: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 257–62; and Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai; Zechariah 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 25B; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 312–16. The bird-women have been thought to embody wickedness and impurity (Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah, 259–61), to reflect hybrid creatures popular in ancient Near Eastern iconography, or to represent agents of God (Meyers and Meyers, Haggai; Zechariah 1–8, 313–14; and Smith, Micah-Malachi, 211). Though Zech 5:9 is an interesting text in its own right, the context does not provide any formal name for these mythical creatures to assist in the current study. It suggests, however, that gendered winged creatures, like the lîlît or siren, informed the religious imagination of postexilic Judaism.
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most probably 4Q511 it is named along with the spirits of the destroying angels (yxwr lbx yk)lm) and the bastard spirits (Myrzmm twxwr), both recognizable from the Book of the Watchers as the fallen angels and their offspring.45 Also relevant is the fact that, while the lîlît may have been conceived of as a particular demon in the Mesopotamian and Isaianic traditions, by late antiquity the name lent itself to a class of demons referred to as lilin.46 These were understood to be the demon offspring of a particular lîlît (see b. Ber. 42; b. B. Bat. 73b; Yal. Shim., Ber. 62). The offspring are described as both male and female (respectively lilin and lilatayin); some of these even have distinctive names and family histories.47 Certain later traditions also portray Adam and Eve playing a role in the creation of the lilin and lilatayin (see b. >Erub. 18b; Gen. Rab. 20.11).48 Returning to our Enochic text, which predates by several centuries these elaborate traditions, a felicitous reading for the context of 1 En. 19:2 would be for the wives to become liliths, not a lilith. Thus, one might contemplate something like the Aramaic Nytlyl appearing in the Vorlage.49 Yet, militating against a correspondence between the liliths
45 Following the translation and reconstruction of Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar: “And I, a Sage, declare the splendour of his radiance in order to frighten and terr[ify] all the spirits of the ravaging angels (lbx yk)lm yxwr) and the bastard spirits (Myrzmm twxwr), demons (My)d#), Lilith (tylyl), owls (Myx)), and [jackals…] (conjectured Myyc) and those who strike unexpectedly to lead astray the spirit of knowledge, to make their heart forlorn” (The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, vol. 2, 4Q274–11Q31 [Leiden: Brill, 1997], 1026–29; cf. M. Baillet, Qumrân Grotte 4 III (4Q482–4Q520) [DJD 7; Oxford: Clarendon, 1982], 215–19 and plate 55). The reference to lilith is partially extant in 4Q511 frag. 10. On these exorcism prayers, see also Alexander, “Demonology of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 332–37; Joseph Baumgarten, “N)rmwqm My(gph yry#$ l(,” Tarbiz 55 (1986): 442–45; and Bilha Nitzan, “(#$r twxwr lhblw dxpl N)rmwqm xb#$ yry#$,” Tarbiz 55 (1985): 19–46. Baumgarten has argued that there may be an allusion to lîlît as well in 4Q184 (“On the Nature of the Seductress in 4Q184,” RevQ 15 [1991]: 133–43). In this fragmentary text, a female seductress is associated with darkness and death. Further, she is described as having seductive speech, a corrupt heart, wings, and horns, an attribute that Baumgarten identifies especially with demons (see, e.g., the description of the demon Resheph in 11QPsApa, who is identified as one of the bastard offspring of the angels). For an alternative reading of the figure in 4Q184, see Armin Lange, “The Essene Position on Magic and Divination,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995. Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten (ed. Moshe Bernstein, Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 377–435, esp. 379–80 n. 7. 46 We find already in 2 Bar. 10:8 a reference to the lilin inhabiting desert wastelands. 47 Fourth- to sixth-century C.E. earthenware bowls from Mesopotamia and Iran (see, e.g., bowls 5, 8, and 13) inscribed for magical purposes speak of both male and female lilin. See Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 158–59, 163, 172–73, 202–3. Likewise, medieval incantations texts such as TS K1.18 and 30 from the Cairo Genizah feature both the lilin and liliths (male and female forms of the demon). See Lawrence Schiffman and Michael Swartz, Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 (Semitic Texts and Studies 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 35–36, 69, 71, 73–74. On the naming of particular liliths and on the parentage of a lilith, see Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 158– 63; and Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur, 163. 48 See Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 210–11, 220–21. 49 Nytlyl is an attested feminine plural form of lilith in Aramaic; see Joseph Naveh and Shaul
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and the angels’ wives of 1 En. 19:2 is that these later traditions envision the lilin and lilatayin as offspring of a certain lîlît (or of the first couple); they do not recall the context of the watchers and the watchers’ wives as we have in the Enochic text.50 To summarize to this point, we have examined the texts of Panopolitanus and of the Ge>ez manuscripts for 1 En. 19:2 and have attempted to discern how these readings fit in the narrative context. We have also explored how these texts came by their divergent readings for 19:2 and have hypothesized that redaction on the part of Panopolitanus’s scribe was quite probable, just as the Ge>ez manuscripts could offer closer correspondence to the Greek text (and hence the original Aramaic) on which that translation was based. We have further considered various possibilities for Semitic expressions that could lie behind Panopolitanus’s reading of “sirens.” Though the Greek (“sirens”), Ge>ez (“peaceful”), and Semitic expressions (Nytlyl, hn(y twnb) proposed for a Vorlage are readings that may be reconciled with the larger narrative context to some extent, all appear inadequate in the end. Were the wives of the watchers to have become sirens or comparable mythic creatures (i.e., liliths), it is strange that the tradition was not reflected in Jubilees, the Testament of Reuben, or the PseudoClementines, where the women are portrayed unambiguously as seductresses responsible for leading the angels astray.51 Again, given the elaborate traditions that developed concerning the watchers and their offspring and that are found in numerous texts from the Hellenistic to late antique periods, it is odd that no comparable tradition for the wives qua sirens or liliths is extant outside of 1 En. 19:2. If the Greek (and a proposed Vorlage such as hn(y twnb or Nytlyl) is correct, why are we provided with only such a terse statement about the women becoming a type of mythological creature or demon? What will the women do as sirens, as bĕnôt ya>ănâ or as liliths?52 Were the functions of these creatures so readily understood by all that no further explication is needed? Perhaps. But the description given in 19:1 as to how the fallen angels or watchers will continue to plague humankind (by tempting them to sacrifice to demons) begs for a parallel in the following verse concerning the women, if the wives are similarly to affect humanity in some manner. Also problematic is the Ge>ez reading that the women are to become (as) peaceful. First, what is meant by the terse statement? It would seem that additional information would be in order so that readers could comprehend fully the intended sense. Second, the notion that the women are vindicated and enjoy manumission from their husbands, a position taken by Daniel Olson, would rest awkwardly with Syncellus’s 1 En. 8:1 (close in many respects to the Aramaic of 8:1) and alongside the variant ez of 19:2 prove unsatisfactory to the narrative as it stands.
Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1993), 153–55. 50 See, e.g., Zohar 1:54b and the Alphabet of Ben Sira. On traditions concerning the origin of lîlît, see Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 217–21. 51 See n. 15 above. 52 Olson poses a comparable question regarding the fate of the wives as sirens (Enoch: A New Translation, 268). 53 See n. 15 above; also Olson, Enoch: A New Translation, 268–69, and above.
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In light of this awkwardness, let us explore another possible reading and Aramaic Vorlage for the fate of the wives in 19:2. We return to the question of which extant text of 1 En. 19:2 offers the better reading; as suggested, we can make the case that, though it is the more interesting of the readings, Panopolitanus’s “sirens” is the work of its scribe, who changed for stylistic purposes (or less probably misread) the Greek text before him. Similarly the Ge>ez could offer a reading faithful to the Greek text on which it was based, retaining the word for “peaceful.” Yet “peaceful” does not suit the narrative context as well as one might hope.54 Could it be that an initial Greek translator of the Aramaic misinterpreted a form of Ml#$, a root typically evocative of “peace” or “well-being”? One notes that the Aramaic Ml#$ conveys in the peil the sense “to be finished” or “brought to an end.” Thus, the Aramaic of 1 En. 19:2 might have read simply that the wives of the watchers who transgressed would be destroyed. This use of Ml#$ is attested in the Aramaic of the Astronomical Book (see 4Q209 7 III, 2; 4Q210 1 III, 3–5) and also in the Damascus Document (CD IX, 20).55 It seems possible that the Aramaic of 19:2 could have featured a peil participle or peal passive participle of Ml#$ (Nmyl#$) that, misunderstood, came to be later translated eijrhnai'ai. That the Greek and Ethiopic of 19:2 include the future tense of “to be” in their respective languages poses no difficulty for this reconstruction. The Aramaic could have featured a passive participle of Ml#$ accompanying the imperfect of hwh in a periphrastic construction common to later Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Mishnaic Hebrew.56 Instead of reading “will be destroyed,” the Greek translator rendered the Aramaic expression before him as “will be peaceful.” One might seek to explain the existence of kama (“as” or “like”) in the majority of Ethiopic manuscripts. It is commonly conjectured that the Greek Vorlage (used for the Ge>ez) featured the preposition eij". Could it be that wJ" appeared in the received Greek text, having been used to render the Aramaic k? While we typically translate kama and wJ" as “like” (or “as”), the preposition hardly seems necessary in the proposed reconstruction or in the reading of the Ge>ez manuscripts. In the context, however, the Aramaic k could have functioned as an emphatic or asseverative kaf, where the particle indicates emphasis or the degree to which; the emphatic kaf may be translated as “truly” or it may be ignored altogether in a translation.57 The point of the emphatic kaf would have been to accentuate 54 When
compared to the reading of Panopolitanus, one might find the Ge>ez the more likely in accord with the principle of lectio difficilior probabilior. 55 While the examples cited from the Astronomical Book and the Damascus Document feature Ml#$ with the sense of “bring to completion” or simply “complete,” one finds instances outside of the Dead Sea Scrolls where the verb also signifies bringing a life to an end. See Tanh\. Mishp. 19, where the verb in the niphal indicates that an individual must die. Further Mark 15:37 and Luke 23:46 of the Peshitta furnish examples of $šin-lamad-mim with the sense of bringing a life to an end. My gratitude to Dr. Muraoka for bringing these examples to my attention. Examples of Ml#$ conveying “to come to an end” or “to be finished” are plentiful in the Hebrew Bible and include the Aramaic Ezra 5:16 and Dan 5:26. For use of the verb in this manner in rabbinic literature, see Jastrow (1996), 1585; and Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Dictionaries of Talmud, Midrash, and Targum 2; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990), 554–55. 56 See IBHS, 628–29. See Neh 13:22. As for the form of hwh, one might expect Nywhl, the imperfect third feminine plural form. 57 For examples of the emphatic kaf in Aramaic texts, see Takamitsu Muraoka and Bezalel
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the end to which the wives are brought.58 Yet the sense of the emphatic kaf may have been misunderstood and translated in a wooden manner by an initial Greek scribe (thus wJ") only to be revised by Panopolitanus, which opts instead for eij" to accompany genhvsontai. The scribe of the Ge>ez translates wJ" as kama, retaining a form of “like” or “as.” A possible reconstruction of the Aramaic for 1 En. 19:2 would be, therefore, as follows: Nmyl#$k Nywhl w+x yd )yk)lm yd Nwhy#$nw, “and the wives of the transgressing angels will be brought to an utter end.”59 One might make the case, likewise, that Panopolitanus’s text shows awareness of this proposed reading and that the scribe chose to communicate something of the sense of 19:2 in a more stylized fashion. That is to say, we recall that sirens could function as symbols of mourning and be associated with the realm of the dead. Rather than simply have the wives of the angels in 1 En. 19:2 be eliminated, the Hellenistic scribe chose an evocative term, “sirens,” which would at once be meaningful to his audience and convey the demise of the women. In order to answer the question of what became of the watchers’ wives, we have examined the Greek and Ge>ez readings and have proposed a challenge to the scholarly consensus that Panopolitanus is to be preferred over the reading in the Ethiopic manuscripts. Specifically, we propose that a Greek Vorlage utilized by Ethiopic translators did not alight upon the meaning of Ml#$ required for the narrative. The tendency of Panopolitanus’s scribe to transform the text before him into literate Greek and to use expressions such as “Tartarus” that were familiar in a hellenized environment make it likely that the reading of “sirens” was an attempt to improve a precursor. Even so, we have explored two possible Semitic candidates for the Greek “siren”: the bat ya>ănâ, a creature associated with mourning and desolate places and the lîlît as succubus. With the narrative context providing scant illumination as to what was intended by “sirens,” “bĕnôt ya>ănâ,” or “liliths,” we concluded that Ml#$$ presents an option that accords better both with textcritical reconstructions and with the sparse details of the narrative. Though not a sensational ending, the women are merely terminated and removed from the exposition. The question of which is the correct reading of 1 En. 19:2 becomes a significant one, for it contributes to the cumulative portrait of women in the Book of the Watchers. If Porten, A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic (HO 32; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 331 (see also 179 n. 798); and Ernst Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae veteris testamenti documentis antiques illustratum (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1971), 79. With regard to the emphatic kaf in Hebrew, see Takamitsu Muraoka, Emphatic Words and Structures in Biblical Hebrew (Leiden: Brill; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985), 158–64; and Joüon, 2:616–18 (§164b). The emphatic kaf is not a grammatical proposition that is agreed to universally. See, e.g., Ernst Jenni, Die hebräischen Präpositionen: Die Präposition Kaph, vol. 2 (Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne: Kohlhammer, 1994), 120–22. 58 I wonder if we might not observe the emphatic kaf as well in a variant reading from 1QIsaa 34:12. Whereas the MT reads sp) wyhy hyr#-lkw w)rqy hkwlm M#-Ny)w hyrx, 1QIsaa has k prefixed to the last word (sp)k) to read: “will be utterly destroyed.” It appears that a later scribe thought to emend/remove the kaf as the letter has a scribal marking above and below it, one that typically conveys the need for correction. A later scribe, most likely after comparing the text with another copy, sought to remove the kaf from 1QIsaa. 59 The first part of my reconstruction of the Aramaic builds on that of Charles (Book of Enoch, or 1 Enoch, 43). I thank Dr. Porten for confirming the likelihood and placement of the kaf in this reconstruction.
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“sirens” served as a substitute for mythical creatures like the bat ya>ănâ or the lîlît (creatures associated with wailing, death, or demonic activity), the text presents a negative assessment of or unfortunate outcome for the angels’ wives. In this light, as later traditions (like the Testament of Reuben) would conclude, the women appear guilty of seduction, deserving of a type of punishment, and culpable still for luring men. Following the Ge>ez of 1 En. 19:2, the women appear to be the victims of the watchers’ affections, as is suggested by 1 Enoch 6. If we follow the reconstruction of the Aramaic I am proposing, the wives are simply dispatched. Rather than offering an excessively positive or negative evaluation of the wives, this proposed reading of 19:2 makes a statement about the relative unimportance of the wives in the account. In fact, in this light, the focus of 1 En. 19:2 may not be the wives at all. Their fate merits mention only inasmuch as it pertains to the angels’ punishment. Not only will the fallen watchers be imprisoned, but their wives will be vanquished or put to an end. In this respect, the text, though androcentric, is hardly misogynist in its depiction of the wives. Reconstruction of ancient texts is risky business, because a discovery or identification of a manuscript could easily disprove one’s theory. Thus, the reader should not see in this work definitive claims about the Aramaic original of 1 En. 19:2. This exercise (providing a plausible reconstruction) seems desirable, nonetheless, in light of the fact that one is hard-pressed to find a conclusion for the wives of 1 En. 19:2 that fits well with the narrative context. In its defense, the foregoing reconstruction—doubtfully the only one possible—does accomplish some important aims vis-à-vis our understanding of this troublesome text. The explanation allows us to make sense of how the Greek and Ge>ez manuscripts come upon their different readings for 1 En. 19:2. Moreover, the proposed reconstruction reflects an awareness of the narrative context and is consistent with the fact that even though the wives of the watchers are demonized in later traditions as having seduced the watchers in the first place, they are never represented in these traditions as becoming demons themselves or mythological creatures of some sort. They simply vanish from the tradition, are seemingly disposed of. Kelley Coblentz Bautch [email protected] St. Edward’s University, Austin, TX 78704
Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class
According to Acts 18:3, Paul, along with Aquila and Priscilla, was a skhnopoiov" by trade. Although this specific claim is not corroborated by Paul in his letters, interpreters tend to accept this particular Lukan tradition at face value.1 There is scholarly dispute, however, regarding the precise nature of the apostle’s handcraft. In short, scholars differ over whether Paul was a weaver who made tentcloth from cilicium (i.e., goats’ hair) or if Paul was a leatherworker who crafted leather products, including tents.2 Notable exceptions notwithstanding, a sizable majority now espouse the latter view,3 although Jerome Murphy-O’Connor has proposed that Paul would have been equally adept in working with both leather and canvas.4 This piece had its origins as a simultaneous short paper delivered at the British New Testament Conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh in September 2004. I would like to express my appreciation to those who responded to my presentation at that gathering as well as to the three anonymous reviewers for JBL who evaluated an earlier version of this essay. Their thoughtful critiques and valuable suggestions enabled me to improve this article. 1 See, e.g., Gerd Lüdemann, who declares that “we should not doubt this report” (Early Christianity according to the Traditions in Acts: A Commentary [trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1989], 202). Cf. Ernst Haenchen, who contends that in 18:2–3 one finds “reports of the greatest historical reliability” (The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary [rev. trans. Robin McL. Wilson; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971], 538). Note also Jürgen Becker, who credits Luke with offering “historical truth in this case” (Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles [trans. O. C. Dean, Jr.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993], 37). 2 For representative bibliography, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998), 626. 3 Whereas Peter Lampe (“Paulus-Zeltmacher,” BZ 31 [1987]: 256–60) propounds that Paul was a linen worker who made tents for the wealthy (see, e.g., F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Free Spirit [Exeter: Paternoster, 1977], 36; and Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology [trans. Doug Stott; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998], 148), most Pauline scholars would affirm Martin Hengel’s conclusions: “Presumably as a ‘tentmaker’ he [i.e. Paul] worked in leather. . . . We should not understand the designation ‘tentmaker’ in too narrow a sense. The goods produced in this trade may have included a variety of leather articles or comparable products, just as a ‘saddler’ does not produce only saddles” (The Pre-Christian Paul [trans. John Bowden; London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991], 17). 4 See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 86–89, esp. 86. Morna Hooker supports Murphy-O’Connor’s proposal (Paul: A Short Introduction
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Turning to Paul’s epistles, one discovers a number of texts where the apostle speaks of his manual labor in general terms (see esp. 1 Thess 2:9; 1 Cor 4:12; 9:6; 2 Cor 11:27; cf. 2 Thess 3:8; Acts 20:34–35). Taken together, these passages suggest that Paul supported himself in the midst of his ministry by plying a trade. Even if he occasionally received material assistance from given congregations and persons (note 2 Cor 11:9; Phil 4:15–16; Rom 16:1–2, 23), it was Paul’s stated missionary policy and practice to be fiscally independent (see esp. 1 Cor 9:12, 15, 18). Contemporary interpreters of Paul concur that the apostle worked as an artisan in conjunction with his mission. They are also agreed that his toil as a tentmaker marked not only his missionary activity but also his apostolic self-understanding.5 Pauline scholars have rarely asked, however, how the apostle regarded his labor as a leatherworker. Roughly a quarter of a century ago, Ronald F. Hock called into question the common scholarly assumption that Paul viewed (his) work favorably. In contradistinction, he posited “that Paul’s view of his trade and of work in general was not as positive as is often assumed.”6 Although Pauline interpreters have sometimes questioned this provocative proposal in passing, I am not aware of a sustained response to Hock on this particular issue.7 This essay examines Hock’s contention, which cuts against the grain of interpretive tradition.8
[Oxford: Oneworld, 2003], 19 n. 18). Cf. Udo Schnelle, Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology (trans. M. Eugene Boring; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 62–63. 5 See, e.g., Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1983), esp. 9, 27, 29; David G. Horrell, The Social Ethos of the Corinthian Correspondence: Interests and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement (Studies of the New Testament and Its World; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 76; and Justin J. Meggitt, Paul, Poverty and Survival (Studies of the New Testament and Its World; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 75– 77. 6 So Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 66–67. Note also Hock’s “Paul’s Tentmaking and the Problem of His Social Class,” JBL 97 (1978): 555–64, esp. 560–62, 564; and “Paul and Greco-Roman Education,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook (ed. J. Paul Sampley; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 198–227, here 218 n. 1. See similarly Abraham J. Malherbe, Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 55–56; idem, The Letters to the Thessalonians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 32B; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 161. 7 See, among others, John C. Lentz, Luke’s Portrait of Paul (SNTSMS 77; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 102; and Richard S. Ascough, “The Thessalonian Christian Community as a Professional Voluntary Association,” JBL 119 (2000): 311–28, here 314. Meggitt (Paul, 88) maintains, “[Hock’s] accusation that Paul demonstrates a ‘snobbish’ attitude to his own toil is extremely ill thought out.” The scope and focus of Meggitt’s monograph, however, preclude him from developing this criticism in any degree of detail. 8 To wit, Arthur T. Geoghegan writes, “St. Paul had a high regard for labor and sought by his example and his teaching to inculcate in others a genuine esteem for it” (The Attitude towards Labor in Early Christianity and Ancient Culture [Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 6; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1945], 119). See also Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001), 71–73.
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At least two related working hypotheses appear to support Hock’s view that Paul possessed a “snobbish and scornful attitude” toward work.9 First is the observation that upper-class Greeks and Romans regarded manual labor as something “slavish and demeaning.” Second is the suggestion that Paul hailed “from a relatively high social class.”10 If both of these suppositions are correct, then one only needs to take a small syllogistic step with Hock in order to conclude that Paul, like any self-respecting aristocrat of his day, viewed work with an upper-crust disgust.11 In this critical note we will discover what taking this step entails and will consider where such an interpretive trail leads. Although Justin J. Meggitt has noted primary sources that demonstrate “the equivocal nature of attitudes towards physical labour amongst all elements in first-century society,”12 for the purposes of this essay I will grant the point that in Greco-Roman antiquity the wealthy looked disparagingly upon work.13 I will not, however, presuppose with Hock (and a number of other contemporary Pauline scholars) that Paul was “born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”14 Nor will I maintain with Meggitt that Paul was “a real leatherworker from the cradle to the grave (and not some kind of financially embarrassed aristocrat or the like).”15 Rather, without positing a particular social class from which the apostle arose, I will seek to ascertain how he viewed (his) manual labor by examining pertinent texts from the Thessalonian and Corinthian letters.16 Before analyzing these particular passages, 9 Hock,
“Paul’s Tentmaking,” 562. ibid., 564. 11 Those who follow Hock on this point include Peter Marshall, Enmity in Corinth: Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians (WUNT 23; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 359; John B. Polhill, Paul and His Letters (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), 190; and MurphyO’Connor, Paul, 86. See similarly Goran Agrell, Work, Toil and Sustenance: An Examination of the View of Work in the New Testament, Taking into Consideration Views Found in the Old Testament, Intertestamental and Early Rabbinic Writings (Lund: Verbum Håkan Ohlssons, 1976), 104, 115. 12 Meggitt, Paul, 88 n. 64. See also Timothy B. Savage, Power through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians (SNTSMS 86; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 84–86. 13 As maintained by Hock in “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 560; idem, Social Context, 35. Longtime Yale University Roman historian Ramsay MacMullen questions whether the wealthy in the empire were as averse to and as jaundiced toward work as modern scholarship is wont to claim. See MacMullen’s Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1974), 120, 202 n. 105. For pertinent bibliography on this subject, see Ascough, “Thessalonian Christian Community,” 314 n. 19. 14 Ernest Best, Paul and His Converts (James Sprunt Lectures 1985; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988). For representative lists of scholars who maintain that Paul was and was not from an affluent background, see Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 555–58; and Meggitt, Paul, 80 n. 26. To these two listings, one may now add Morna D. Hooker (Paul, 19) and Calvin J. Roetzel (Paul: The Man and the Myth [Studies on Personalities of the New Testament: Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998], 22–23) to those who think that Paul did (Hooker) and did not (Roetzel) come from a well-to-do family. 15 Meggitt, Paul, 96. 16 If this is a cautious approach, it is also, in my judgment, warranted. Even Steven J. Friesen (“Poverty in Pauline Studies: Beyond the So-called New Consensus,” JSNT 26 [2004]: 323–61), who not unlike Meggitt maintains that poverty characterized Paul’s converts and associates, speculates that 10 So
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however, an overview of Hock’s groundbreaking work on Paul and tentmaking is in order. Placing our specific inquiry into a broader frame will allow for a clearer view of both the contextual forest and the exegetical trees.
I. The Centrality of Paul’s Trade in His Life and Ministry To the extent that Pauline interpreters are presently apprised of the apostle’s work as an artisan in the Mediterranean milieu in which he lived and ministered, academic credit should be given and scholastic gratitude expressed to Professor Hock. Beginning in 1976 and continuing until 1980, Hock produced a steady stream of studies on Paul’s tentmaking and the sociohistorical context thereof. Following the publication of an article on a laboring Cynic philosopher Simon the shoemaker, Hock wrote essays that probed the relationship between Paul’s handcraft and social class, on the one hand, and the apostle’s tentmaking and missionary preaching, on the other.17 Building upon his previous publications as well as his doctoral dissertation, in 1980 Hock completed a slender, yet substantive, monograph.18 In the span of 112 pages (including front matter, notes, bibliography, and a source index), Hock examined Paul’s work in greater detail and with finer precision than any other scholar before or since.19 A brief summary of and response to this highly influential and rightly heralded volume is now in order. After introducing his study and the need for such (ch. 1), Hock considers Paul’s trade as a leatherworker and how he came to learn this craft (ch. 2). He then turns in ch. 3 to consider Paul’s work as a tentmaker in conjunction with his Gentile mission. In doing so, Hock describes the apostle’s travels, toil, and work environment in some detail. Next, Hock examines the identifiable tension that developed between Paul and the Corinthians because of the apostle’s refusal to set aside his trade and become their client (ch. 4). In chs. 3 and 4, which constitute the heart of the volume, Hock situates and interprets the apostle and his labor within a Greco-Roman framework.20 By way of conclusion (ch. 5), the apostle “may have chosen a life of downward mobility” (p. 359). See also Horrell, Social Ethos, 203. With respect to the economic conditions of Paul’s converts, John M. G. Barclay comments, “I doubt we will ever be able to reach more than tentative and imprecise conclusions” (“Poverty in Pauline Studies: A Response to Steven Friesen,” JSNT 26 [2004]: 363–66, here 365). The same might be said of the (socio-)economic circumstances into which Paul was born. On the choice of the Thessalonian and Corinthian letters for this study, see Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 555. 17 Hock, “Simon the Shoemaker as an Ideal Cynic,” GRBS 17 (1976): 41–53; idem, “Paul’s Tentmaking” (see n. 6 above); and idem, “The Workshop as a Social Setting for Paul’s Missionary Preaching,” CBQ 41 (1979): 438–50. 18 Ronald F. Hock, “The Working Apostle: An Examination of Paul’s Means of Livelihood” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1974). See further nn. 6 and 17 above. 19 See now, however, Helenann Hartley, “‘We Worked Night and Day That We Might Not Burden Any of You’ (1 Thessalonians 2:9): Aspects of the Portrayal of Work in the Letters of Paul, Late Second Temple Judaism, the Graeco-Roman World and Early Christianity” (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 2005). 20 One of the distinguishing features of his work to which Hock often draws attention is his effort to consider Paul’s trade “not merely in terms of a Jewish history-of-religions context” but “in
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Hock highlights three potential contributions of his study. First, he suggests that his work establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Paul made tents from leather and not goats’ hair. Second, Hock maintains that it is an interpretive misstep to view Paul’s work from a Jewish point of reference. Instead, Hock contends that Paul’s outlook on work in general and his own toil in particular was more in sync with his Cynic contemporaries than with secondcentury rabbis. Additionally, it is suggested that the apostle viewed work more negatively than his interpreters typically assume. Finally, Hock reiterates that Paul’s work as a tentmaker was central, not peripheral, to his mission and self-conception. In sum, Hock conceives of his study as one that retrieves Paul from the margins of religious and theological history and places him in “the social and intellectual milieu of the urban centers of the Greek East of the early empire.”21 Along with a number of others (see n. 3 above), I am inclined to agree with Hock’s proposal that the apostle would have worked with leather. I also concur with his view that Paul’s manual labor was integral to his life and ministry. Furthermore, Hock is clearly correct to insist that Paul was in no way immune to the hardships of living as an ancient artisan in and en route to urban settings. As intimated in my introductory remarks, however, I have yet to be persuaded by Hock’s claim that Paul, like an upper-class Greek or Roman, looked at work askance. In what follows, then, we will examine this particular contention. To begin, let us consider the relevant textual data in the Thessalonian and Corinthian letters.
II. Paul’s Remarks Regarding His Physical Labor 1 Thessalonians Despite scholarly speculation, it is now impossible to determine when, where, and from whom Paul learned his craft.22 What one can say with confidence is that at least by the time of his initial visit to Thessalonica Paul was simultaneously engaged in plying his terms of the social and intellectual milieu of the Greek East of the early Roman Empire” (Social Context, 17). 21 Hock, Social Context, 68. 22 So also Hengel, Pre-Christian Paul, 16. There are at least three viable options. Paul could have learned his trade from his father as a child in Tarsus (so Hock, Social Context, 24; see also C. J. den Heyer, Paul: A Man of Two Worlds [trans. John Bowden; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000], 30), as a rabbinical student in Jerusalem under Gamaliel (see Polhill, Paul, 9), or at some point after his conversion/call prior to his far-flung missionary travels (so Klaus Haacker, “Paul’s Life,” in The Cambridge Campanion to St Paul [ed. James D. G. Dunn; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 19–33, here 25; and Murphy-O’Connor, Paul, 86; see also Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 149). Although it is frequently suggested that Paul learned his trade in conjunction with his theological training in Jerusalem (so, e.g., Günther Bornkamm, Paul [trans. D. M. G. Stalker; New York: Harper & Row, 1971], 12), Hock speculates that Paul learned the tentmaking trade while serving as his father’s apprentice (Social Context, 24). As it happens, this suggestion stands in tension with Hock’s claim that Paul “was by birth a member of the socially elite” (Social Context, 35), as Meggitt (Paul, 87) has also noticed.
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trade and preaching the gospel.23 As the apostle reflects on his Thessalonian mission, he remarks, “For you remember, brothers and sisters, our labor and toil; working night and day in order that we might not be a fiscal burden upon any of you as we preached to you the gospel of God” (1 Thess 2:9). Based on the literary context of this comment, it is clear that Paul regarded his work as an artisan in Thessalonica to be an expression of his affection for the Thessalonians (2:8) as well as a sign of his unimpeachable character (2:10; cf. 1:5b). Earlier in the same chapter of the letter, Paul reiterates that his ministry in their midst was neither motivated by greed (2:5) nor marked by his becoming a (financial?) burden (2:6; cf. 1 Cor 9:4-6).24 Later in 1 Thessalonians, apparently Paul’s oldest surviving letter,25 the apostle reminds his converts of the way that he and his fellow missioners lived out their faith before them (4:1). He also reiterates the instruction they gave to the Thessalonian congregation regarding work (4:11). In sum, Paul’s remarks about (his) labor in 1 Thessalonians are anything but negative. On the contrary, as Richard S. Ascough has rightly observed, “In 1 Thessalonians Paul’s language about work reflects a more positive attitude.”26
The Corinthian Correspondence Even though Hock incorporates texts from 1 Thessalonians into his writings on Paul’s tentmaking, it is from the Corinthian letters that Hock seeks to build his case that the apostle possessed an elitist attitude toward labor. That being the case, we will now turn to treat in greater detail those verses in 1 and 2 Corinthians that are most pivotal to Hock’s argument. To begin, it is in the course of a passage replete with satire and irony, where Paul is depicting his apostolic existence in stark, contrastive tones (i.e., 4:8–13), that one encounters the first of five peristasis catalogues in the Corinthian correspondence (1 Cor 4:11– 23 Dates for Paul’s sojourn in Thessalonica range from the late 30s (so, e.g., Gerd Lüdemann, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology [trans. F. Stanley Jones; London: SCM, 1984], 238) to the late 40s (so, e.g., Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 73). I regard the latter as more likely. For a discussion of these chronological issues, see the still useful summary of Robert Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (FFNT; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 49–60. 24 Is the word bavro" in 2:7 (GNT) to be taken as (1) “burden, weight,” (2) “authority, dignity,” or (3) both? See, e.g., F. F. Bruce (1 & 2 Thessalonians [WBC 45; Waco: Word Books, 1982], 31); Charles A. Wanamaker (The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text [NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Exeter: Paternoster, 1990], 99); and George Milligan (St. Paul’s Epistles to the Thessalonians [London: Macmillan, 1908; repr., Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, n.d.], 20–21) respectively. Although double entendre is not without parallel in Paul (option 3) and context allows for option 2, given the way Paul employs cognates of bavro" elsewhere (note esp. 1 Thess 2:9 and 2 Thess 3:8; cf. 2 Cor 12:16 and 2 Cor 11:9), I am presently inclined to see a financial connotation. 25 In addition to various commentators on the letter, see Raymond F. Collins, The Birth of the New Testament: The Origin and Development of the First Christian Generation (New York: Crossroad, 1993), esp. 1–4. 26 Ascough, “Thessalonian Christian Community,” 314.
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12a; cf. 2 Cor 4:7–12; 6:4–5; 11:23–29; 12:10; note also Rom 8:35–36).27 In this particular list of hardships, Paul not only speaks of his being hungry, thirsty, poorly clothed, beaten, and homeless, but he also refers to the fact that he labors with his own hands (4:12a). Some have taken Paul’s depiction of his labor in this passage as a clear indication of a privileged past.28 Correlatively, Paul’s incorporation of his manual labor into this catalogue has been understood to indicate the apostle’s espousal of a “traditional Greco-Roman view of labor [i.e., a negative view].”29 To be sure, Paul does not cast his arduous labor as an artisan in the most positive of lights in 1 Cor 4:12; rather, he places his exhausting toil alongside other apostolic perils. But does the fact that Paul was often, if not always (see Phil 4:12), subject to physical exhaustion, social devaluation, and grim working conditions necessarily suggest that he despised manual labor? It is worth asking whether Paul’s terse remark regarding his work in this rhetorically charged passage should be construed to indicate that the apostle held a negative view of his trade. Is it not as plausible to view Paul’s comment about working with his hands in 1 Cor 4:12 as descriptive of his toil? That Paul would speak about and even conceive of his labor as an unenviable, if volitional, part of his apostolic remit does not require a reader to perceive him as a former aristocrat who abhorred (his) work. Although Hock appeals to 1 Cor 4:12 to support his argument that Paul “viewed his working at a trade none too positively” (also noted in passing are 1 Cor 4:10 and 2 Cor 2:17), he puts the burden of proof for making his case squarely on the textual shoulders of 1 Cor 9:19 and 2 Cor 11:7.30 The critical question is if these two verses can bear up under the considerable weight that Hock has placed on them. In 1 Corinthians 9 Paul both claims and renounces his rights as an apostle, particularly his right to be supported by the gospel (9:14). Instead of viewing the gospel as a ticket to entitlement and/or support, Paul perceives it as an obligation with which he has been laden and a commission with which he has been entrusted (9:16–17). Therefore, Paul preaches the gospel gratis (9:18). In 9:19 in particular, Paul asserts his liberty from all, yet his slavery to all, so that he might win many people over to the gospel. The apostle’s remark in v. 19 that “he has enslaved himself to all” (pa'sin ejmauto;n ejdouvlwsa) is of particular interest and import to Hock. Reading the liberty and the slavery of which Paul speaks in 27 On
these lists in general, as well as in 1 Corinthians 4 and 2 Corinthians 4; 6 in particular, see John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence (SBLDS 99; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). See also David E. Fredrickson, “Paul, Hardships, and Suffering,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World, 172–97. 28 For example, Hooker interprets Paul’s comment that he worked with his hands to indicate that this “was not something he would normally have expected to do: in other words, he was not what we would term ‘working-class’. He gave up a comfortable life-style for the sake of the gospel” (Paul, 19). See similarly E. P. Sanders, Paul (Past Masters; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 11; and A. D. Nock (St. Paul [London: Butterworth, 1938; repr., New York: Harper & Row, 1963], 21–22), who approvingly quotes C. H. Dodd with special reference to 1 Cor 4:12: “A man born to manual labor does not speak self-consciously of ‘labouring with my own hands.’” 29 So Dale Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1990), 123. 30 The quotation appears in Hock, Social Context, 67. Support for the substance of this sentence may be found in Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” esp. 558–62; see also Social Context, 36, 59–65.
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a strictly economic sense and referring to passages from Xenophon and Cicero for support, Hock writes: “Paul’s working at a trade had, on the one hand, allowed him to be selfsupporting and so free, but his very trade had, on the other hand, also made him appear slavish.” With further appeal to Cicero and then to Plutarch as well, Hock concludes that Paul, like a member of the upper class, regarded his work with disdain. For Hock, Paul’s prejudice against manual labor would have been “readily understood and shared” by that small, yet significant, cross-section of the Corinthian congregation drawn from the upper classes (cf. 1 Cor 1:26–29).31 Before considering Hock’s interpretation of 2 Cor 11:7, a brief response to his reading of 1 Cor 9:19 is in order. First, one may wonder if Paul’s metaphorical depiction of himself as a slave may be forced into the exegetical straitjacket that Hock has fitted for it. Given the broader context in which this verse appears, economics should certainly be factored into the interpretive picture. However, an exclusively economic explanation fails to fill out the frame (cf. 1 Cor 6:22; 2 Cor 4:5). In 1 Cor 9:20–23, for example, Paul raises a number of extra-economical issues that were part and parcel of his self-enslavement for the good and the growth of the gospel.32 In brief, it would appear that Hock has done too much with too little and too little with too much.33 Additionally, Hock’s criticism of Pauline interpreters for appealing to texts elsewhere in Paul to clarify the meaning of doulou'n in 9:19 rings especially hollow in light of the fact that Hock himself turns to the likes of Xenophon, Cicero, and Plutarch for lexicographical and ideological aid.34 If Pauline parallels can themselves be problematic, the same may be said, and then some, of the Greco-Roman texts that Hock marshals. Furthermore, if Hock is correct in claiming that Paul’s view of work as something slavish would have been “readily understood and shared” by well-heeled Corinthian congregants, then Paul was anything but pastorally adroit in dealing with the church’s (class) divisions.35 By confirming and even affirming the wise, powerful, and noble in their aristocratic arrogance and upper-class snobbery, Paul would have been shaking the very hands he was seeking to slap in Corinth! Far from puncturing their pride and placing their feet back on spiritual terra firma, by sharing the Corinthian elite’s jaundiced view of work(ers) he would have only widened the chasm he was seeking to bridge. Stated otherwise, by 31 Hock,
“Paul’s Tentmaking,” 559, 560–61.
32 See now more fully John Byron, Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity
(WUNT 162; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), esp. 249–57. 33 See similarly Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 425 n. 17. Note also John Elliott, review of Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship, Horizons 9 (1982): 132–33, here 132. 34 Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 559–60. 35 Ibid., 561. The social composition of and the division within the Corinthian congregation are complex issues beyond the purview of this article. For our present purposes, it will suffice to note that in the work of Gerd Theissen (“Soziale Schichtung in der korinthischen Gemeinde: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des hellenistischen Urchristentums,” ZNW 65 [1974]: 231–72), to which Hock appeals (“Paul’s Tentmaking,” 561 n. 35), the Corinthian church is thought to be divided along the lines of social class and that the wealthy and “wise” in the church, though a small group numerically, are seen as wielding a disproportionate amount of influence.
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supporting the “haves” in their prejudice against the “have-nots,” he would have been building up precisely those whom he was seeking to tear down elsewhere in the letter (cf. Gal 2:18). That Paul could be inept and contradictory in his epistolary counsel to the Corinthians is possible; that Paul would have wittingly employed a derisive, upper-class description of work (doulou'n) that would have in effect degraded lower-class Corinthians, the ones for whom he was advocating, is implausible. The other verse on which Hock focuses is 2 Cor 11:7.36 In the course of excoriating those whom he sarcastically dubs “superlative apostles” (11:5; cf. 12:11, 23), Paul puts to the Corinthians the following question with respect to his refusal to receive remuneration from them: “Did I commit a sin by humbling [abasing or humiliating] myself in order that you might be exalted, because I preached to you the gospel of God without payment?” Hock hones in on the phrase ejmauto;n tapeinw'n, which he renders “by demeaning myself.” He eschews understanding tapeinou'n in a “narrowly religious sense”; rather, he advocates apprehending the term in a social sense, more specifically, as a word “used to express upper-class attitudes toward work.” To support the meaning he ascribes to and the milieu he envisions for tapeinou'n, Hock appeals to a passage from Lucian’s Somnium and notes similar usages for the word in Aristotle, Athenaeus, and Plutarch. Having done so, Hock reiterates that Paul employs tapeinou'n socially in 2 Cor 11:7 and contends that this verse, along with 1 Cor 9:19, reveals the apostle’s aristocratic disregard for work. It is with good reason that Hock views the self-abasement of which Paul speaks in 2 Cor 11:7 in conjunction with his work as an artisan. It is worth noting, however, how Paul employs tapeinou'n elsewhere in his letters, including 2 Corinthians. Although Paul clearly uses the term with specific reference to his trade in 2 Cor 11:7, he can use nominal and verbal cognates of tapeinou'n more broadly, as he (arguably) does in Rom 12:16; 2 Cor 7:6; 10:1; 12:21; and Phil 2:3, 8; 3:21; 4:12. Therefore, it seems both unwarranted and unnecessary to delimit so narrowly the lexical range of tapeinou'n in 2 Cor 11:7.37
The (Ir)relevance of 2 Thessalonians 3:6–15 to This Study Although Hock, along with a majority of contemporary Pauline scholars, regards 2 Thessalonians as deutero-Pauline,38 it may prove to be of some probative value at this point in the study to consider how the topic of work is dealt with in the letter. If 2 Thessalonians were in fact written by a later Paulinist, then it will at least be interesting to 36 In
this paragraph, I am interacting with Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 561–62.
37 Ralph P. Martin rightly draws attention to the theological meaning of multiple terms in 11:7,
including tapeinou'n (2 Corinthians [WBC 40; Waco: Word Books, 1986], 345). 38 On the scholarly discussion regarding the (in)authenticity of 2 Thessalonians, in addition to the critical commentaries, see my Conflict at Thessalonica: A Pauline Church and Its Neighbours (JSNTSup 183; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 46–60. Since writing Social Context, Hock may well have altered his view on the authorship of the letter. In his review of Malherbe’s commentary on the Thessalonian letters (RelSRev 29 [2003]: 43–46, here 45), Hock maintains that Malherbe’s defense of the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians (see Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 349–74) “should persuade many scholars to add 2 Thessalonians to the seven authentic letters of Paul when reconstructing his life and theology.”
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observe how the writer understood and appropriated Paul’s earlier instruction to the Thessalonians on the subject.39 If, as it happens, 2 Thessalonians were written by Paul, then the remarks that the apostle makes in the letter may be compared with his statements regarding work in 1 Thessalonians.40 In 2 Thess 3:6–15 one encounters a protracted passage directed against those who are living ajtavktw" (i.e., idly and/or unruly).41 From all appearances and for whatever reasons, certain persons in the congregation had stopped working and had started sponging off other believers. In response to this situation, the author admonishes the assembly to steer clear of the persistently work-shy (3:14). As for those who were not working, they are instructed to work quietly and to eat their own bread (3:12). These injunctions are based on apostolic teaching and living (3:6–10). Although “Paul and his coworkers” arguably had the power and the privilege to forgo labor and to receive support from the church, they chose not to exercise such rights. By laboring and toiling night and day, they were not only able to pay their own way, but they were also able to set forth an example that the apostle deemed worthy of imitation. The missioners’ precepts on work were reinforced by the practice of work. Additionally, it is quite plausible that the admonition “not to be weary in well-doing” (3:13) entails the work to which the congregation is called in 3:6–12.42 In commenting on 2 Thess 3:6–15 (or portions thereof), Hock notes that work in general is viewed favorably and that Paul’s labor in particular is regarded as paradigmatic.43 I would concur with Hock on these two points and would further posit that the remarks on labor in 2 Thess 3:6–15 are not incongruent with the positive remarks that the apostle makes on the subject in 1 Thess 2:5, 8–10 and 4:11–12. (See further under “1 Thessalonians” above.)
III. Concluding Comments In seeking to establish that Paul viewed work more like a Greco-Roman aristocrat than a “typical” artisan or laboring rabbi, Hock argues along the following lines: (1) Despite being born and reared in an upper-class family, Paul plied a trade (that he learned from his socially elite father!) while conducting his ministry. (2) Herein, Hock notes, lies an apparent incompatibility, given that Greco-Roman aristocrats were all but unanimous in their disdain of manual labor. (3) Nevertheless, Hock reasons that this tension, though considerable, is not insurmountable, for when read with care and against a Greco-Roman philosophical backdrop, one can see Paul’s true aristocratic colors bleeding through the 39 In
2 Thess 2:15 the author appeals to an earlier letter, presumably 1 Thessalonians.
40 If 2 Thessalonians were written not long after 1 Thessalonians, as most scholars who espouse
the authenticity of both letters maintain (so, e.g., Malherbe, Letters to the Thessalonians, 375), then one might anticipate a greater degree of coherence on this subject. 41 On the meaning of ajtavktw" in the Thessalonian letters, see, among others, my Conflict at Thessalonica, 275–80. 42 So also Beverly Roberts Gaventa, First and Second Thessalonians (IBC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 130. 43 See esp. Hock, Social Context, 17, 48.
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snobbish statements that he makes regarding his work. (4) Therefore, apostolic appearances notwithstanding, Adolf Deissmann et al. are wrong and William Ramsey et al. are right—Paul’s blood really did run blue.44 Hock’s working assumption that Paul was cut from an aristocratic bolt of cloth predisposes him to conclude that the apostle thought ill of work. In my estimation, however, Hock tries to weave a considerable garment from an unestablished, if not unestablishable, supposition (i.e., Paul’s upper-class origins) and a few textual threads (esp. 1 Cor 4:12; 9:19; 2 Cor 11:7). To be sure, Hock notes Paul’s pride regarding the economic independence his work afforded him as well as the impact his manual labor had on his apostolic selfunderstanding.45 Nevertheless, Hock consistently detects and contends that an upper-class residual remained in Paul and that elitist traces may be observed through what he says and fails to say about work. The interpretive approach Hock utilizes is to read occasional comments that Paul makes about his labor against an aristocratic Greco-Roman backdrop and then to sharpen such remarks into a normative apostolic attitude regarding work.46 This essay has demonstrated, however, that upon closer examination Hock’s contention that Paul loathed manual labor like a typical Greek or Roman aristocrat is untenable. Beyond my exegetical misgivings indicated above, Hock may be fairly criticized for his selective use of texts in mounting his case. While making copious use of Greco-Roman parallels, he all but excludes Jewish sources.47 Even though Hock, drawing on Jacob Neusner, regards later rabbinic materials as anachronistic and therefore irrelevant for understanding how Paul viewed work,48 it is historically plausible that subsequent rabbinic perspectives and practices may well reflect earlier realities of (Pharasaic) Judaism.49 What is more, work is consistently affirmed in the Hebrew Scriptures, with which Paul shows himself to be intimately acquainted in his letters (e.g., Gen 2:15; Exod 20:9–10; Prov 6:6– 44 Hock (“Paul’s Tentmaking,” 555-58) cites Adolf Deissmann and William Ramsey as representative of Pauline scholars who do (Ramsey) and do not (Deissmann) think that Paul was born into a privileged family. 45 See, e.g., Hock, Social Context, 67. 46 Lincoln (Ephesians, 305) levels a similar criticism against Agrell (Work). Lincoln contends that the elevation of some verses to the neglect of others “evidences an atomistic and dogmatic approach . . . [that] presses occasional paraenetical texts for a whole theology of work which they are incapable of providing.” 47 See, e.g., Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 557; idem, Social Context, 18, 22–24; also noted by Kathleen O’Brien Wicker, review of Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship, JBL 101 (1982): 466–67, here 467; and Carolyn Osiek, review of Ronald F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship, CBQ 43 (1981): 296–97, here 297. Hartley’s Oxford Ph.D. thesis (“Portrayal of Work”) goes some way in remedying this imbalance. See also Geoghegan, Attitude towards Labor; and Agrell, Work. 48 See Hock, Social Context, 23, 66–67, 77 nn. 26–30. The work of Jacob Neusner on which Hock depends is The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1971). 49 While NT scholars should not facilely assume congruity between Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism, neither should they dismiss out of hand the possibility of continuity between pre-70 and post-70 Judaism. For the perspective that there is both unity and diversity within Judaism from place to place and time to time, see esp. Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (LEC 9; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987).
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11; 10:4–5; 24:30–34; 31:13–27; cf. Sir 7:15; 38:24–34; 51:30).50 It does, in fact, seem unlikely that biblical affirmations of and instruction about labor would be wholly lost on or completely disregarded by one who was in his own estimation a Jew through and through (see esp. Phil 3:4a–6; cf. Rom 9:3; 11:1; 2 Cor 11:22; Gal 1:13–14), at least prior to his Damascus experience. Even after his conversion and call, however, Paul’s surviving correspondence indicates that his theological sensibilities and ethical sensitivities remained distinctly Jewish.51 In his important work Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, John M. G. Barclay compares Paul’s education with that of other Diaspora Jews such as Aristeas and Philo and concludes that “the evidence points to [Paul’s having been the recipient of] a Greek-medium Jewish education, in which the broad spectrum of Hellenism entered Paul’s mind only through the filter of his conservative Pharisaic environment.”52 Elsewhere, in contrast to Hock’s position that Paul was thoroughly conversant with popular philosophic topoi to the extent that the apostle’s view of work “was the same as the moral reflection of Greco-Roman philosophers like Dio Chrysostom,”53 Barclay suggests that the apostle’s knowledge of and appreciation for mainstream Hellenistic thought was minimal when set alongside the Wisdom of Solomon and even 4 Maccabees, not to mention Aristeas, Aristobulus, and Philo.54 Although this is not the place to explore in detail the complicated and controverted issue of the various and relative Hebraic and Hellenistic influences on the apostle,55 it is fitting to note here that a full study of Paul’s (dis)regard for work would need to take into account probative Jewish parallels. At the least, careful treatment of ancient Jewish sources 50 For
a still useful sifting of the OT evidence (including Sirach), see Geoghegan, Attitude towards Labor, 59–73. For additional Jewish parallels both inside and outside of the OT, see, e.g., Savage, Power through Weakness, 86 n. 131; and David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians (NAC 29; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), 477 n. 228. For rabbinic texts pertaining to work, see Geoghegan, Attitude towards Labor, 73–84; and C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology (1938; repr., New York: Schocken, 1974), 440–50. See also David J. Schnall, By the Sweat of Your Brow: Reflections on Work and the Workplace in Classic Jewish Thought (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2001); and more generally, Herbert Applebaum, The Concept of Work: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992). 51 One is left to wonder whether Paul was aware of Jesus’s occupation as a tevktwn (Mark 6:3; cf. Matt 13:55) and was influenced by his example. Alfred Plummer thinks so (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1915], 303). As it happens, Paul was privy to a tradition of Jesus regarding the right to get a living from the proclaiming of the gospel (1 Cor 9:14; cf. Matt 10:10; Luke 10:7). For various congruities between Jesus and Paul in thought and practice, see the essays contained in Jesus and Paul Reconnected: Fresh Pathways into an Old Debate (ed. Todd D. Still; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming). 52 John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE–117 CE) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 384. 53 Hock, Social Context, 67. 54 John M. G. Barclay, “Paul among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?” JSNT 60 (1995): 89– 120, here 105–6. 55 For essays seeking to illustrate that the “Jewish” Paul or the “Hellenistic” Paul is an unnecessary and forced dichotomy, see Paul beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (ed. Troels EngbergPedersen; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001).
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would temper Hock’s categorical claim that the apostle’s view of work mirrored various Hellenistic moralists; at the most, due diligence with respect to relevant Jewish evidence would compromise Hock’s assertion that Paul and Dio Chysostom saw labor in the same light. Turning to Paul’s letters, even if one follows Hock in leaving a potentially illuminating text like 2 Thess 3:6–15 to one side (cf. Col 3:17; Eph 4:32; Acts 20:34-35), one cannot help but note how poorly pertinent passages from 1 Thessalonians fit into his argument that Paul possessed an aristocratic aversion to work. Indeed, it is telling that when Hock employs Pauline passages to support his claim that Paul held a less-than-positive view of work he appeals exclusively to the Corinthians letters.56 But even if one were to focus solely on the intensely occasional and highly rhetorical Corinthian correspondence when seeking to ascertain the apostle’s thoughts regarding work, one would surely want to observe that Paul’s instructions regarding the collection for impoverished saints in Jerusalem presupposes that surplus income generated by church members through their labor could be used for decidedly positive purposes (1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Corinthians 8–9). In fact, it is hard to imagine that the relative merits of earning a living wage, and then some, were lost on the apostle as he labored and toiled. Paul not only valued financial liberty from his churches; he also encouraged sacrificial, voluntary generosity among his churches (see 2 Cor 8:1–7, 17; 9:7, 11, 13). Spendable and surplus income garnered through skillful hands hard at work made independence and interdependence possible for both the apostle and his converts. A final, if unintentional, implication of Hock’s ascribing to Paul a snobbish attitude toward his trade is that it portrays the apostle as a deeply conflicted and decidedly hypocritical individual. On Hock’s reading, even as Paul enjoined his converts to lead a life of humility as graphically exhibited by Christ and himself (see esp. 2 Cor 11:7; Phil 2:3, 8), he harbored an aristocratic hubris against manual labor and, by extension, manual laborers. As it happens, the Paul that Hock gives us is not so much a servant at work as a snob toward work; he is not so much an apostle who condescends as a condescending apostle. It is, of course, possible that Paul’s preaching and praxis did not cohere. It would be both ironic and tragic, however, if he who presented himself as an apostle of weakness (2 Cor 12:5–10), proclaimed a theologia crucis (1 Cor 1:17–18, 23; 2:2; Gal 3:1), and lauded a rich Lord who became poor (2 Cor 8:9; cf. 6:10) harbored “a better than thou” attitude toward nonelite others. Adding insult to injury would be the fact that Paul roundly and routinely denounces this mentality in his letters, especially in 1 Corinthians (e.g., 8:1– 11:1; 11:17–34; 12:31b–13:13; cf. Rom 12:3; 14:1–15:6). If Paul’s rhetoric and commitments were incongruous, then he was clearly not, at least not at this point, worthy of the imitation to which he calls the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; cf. Phil 3:17; 4:6).57 Might it be, how56 See
esp. Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 560, 562.
57 Although Pauline interpreters have drawn attention to the problematic nature of Paul’s very
call for his churches to imitate him (see esp. Elizabeth A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power [Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991]; Sandra Hack Polaski, Paul and the Discourse of Power [Biblical Seminar 62/Gender, Culture, Theory 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999]; Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in Pauline Tradition [HTS 45; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International,
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ever, that if Paul ever had been an aristocrat who thought ill of labor, he subsequently changed his view about work? When compared to some of the other paradigm shifts the apostle made, this one could be described as relatively minor (see, e.g., 2 Cor 5:16; Gal 3:13; Phil 3:7).58 I would like to emphasize here that I am in no way seeking to cast Paul as a Weberian Puritan who possessed and displayed a Protestant ethic and a capitalistic spirit.59 As I read Paul, his christological obsession and eschatological orientation would not allow him to regard work, be it his own or others, as more than a means to what he saw as a greater and nobler end (see, e.g., 1 Cor 7:25–31; 2 Cor 5:14–15; Gal 2:19–20; 6:14; Phil 3:7–11). Nevertheless, to the extent that his work enabled him to share the gospel of God, which Paul viewed as the ultimate good, he could certainly view his and others’ work as a lesser good.60 While Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer may well be guilty of hyperbole when they exclaim that Paul, in contradistinction to the Greeks, gloried in his work,61 Hock is no less overstated in maintaining that the apostle despised his tentmaking trade. As is often the case, the truth may lie somewhere in the muddle that is the middle. If I were forced to put down my tent pegs, however, I would say, against Hock, that Paul perceived (his) work as more of a friend than a foe.62 Making qualitative judgments from ancient documents with little evidence to hand is as perilous as it is painstaking. That being the case, I am willing to concede that Paul may have viewed (his) labor with a certain degree of ambiguity.63 For one whose life and hermeneutic were marked with contrast and tension, it would stand to reason that a certain degree of dissonance might well be present in his perception and portrayal of manual 1998]; and Kathy Ehrensperger, “That We May Be Mutually Encouraged”: Feminism and the New Perspective in Pauline Studies [London/New York: T&T Clark International, 2004]), my point here is that it would be particularly egregious for Paul to enjoin the Corinthians to emulate a perspective that he merely espoused and did not seek to embrace. 58 Among other possible cognitive changes, Haacker suggests, for example, that Paul’s “hostile attitude toward the Gentiles” would have undergone significant alteration as a result of his call/commission to take the gospel to the nations (see esp. Gal 2:2, 7) (“Paul’s Life,” 26). 59 I allude, of course, to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904; trans. Stephen Kalberg; repr., Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001). 60 So also Wicker, review of Hock, 467. Margaret E. Thrall rightly observes that Paul “engaged in manual labour, not to accumulate wealth and thus to achieve status elevation, but to keep himself in economic necessities whilst he pursued his main tasks of evangelism and pastoral nurture” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians [2 vols.; ICC; London/ New York: T&T Clark, 2000], 2:704). 61 Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians (2nd ed.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1914), 87. Cited in Hock, “Paul’s Tentmaking,” 560 n. 32. 62 Cf. Savage, who notes that although Paul can speak of his labor in “harsh terms,” “he always stops short of disparaging work itself ” (Power through Weakness, 86). Savage contends that Paul “follows a line of Jewish tradition by maintaining that while work can be exhausting it is never demeaning.” 63 As Meggitt notes, Paul frequently speaks of his ministry in terms of toil and labor (Paul, 89 n. 65). See, e.g., Rom 16:6, 12; 1 Cor 3:13, 14, 15; 15:10, 58; 16:16; Phil 1:6; 2:16, 30; 1 Thess 1:3; 5:12, 17.
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labor.64 What is more, Paul would have been neither the first nor the last to experience ambivalence with regard to work! Necessary nuancing notwithstanding, this study has shown Hock’s claim that the apostle looked upon his handicraft with an elitist antipathy to be unlikely. Put succinctly, Hock’s long-standing, if largely unexamined, argument that Paul, the one-time aristocrat, evinces in his letters a markedly negative attitude toward work positively will not work. Todd D. Still [email protected] George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798
64 For the stimulating proposal that Paul is an antithetical hermeneutician aware of and alive to “fundamental and irreducible duality,” see Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London/New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 54.
Illuminating Leviticus A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives Calum Carmichael In this original and provocative study, Calum Carmichael—a leading scholar of biblical law and rhetoric— suggests that Hebrew law was inspired by the study of the narratives in Genesis through 2 Kings. Discussing particular laws found in the book of Leviticus—addressing issues such as the Day of Atonement, consumption of meat that still has blood, the Jubilee year, sexual and bodily contamination, and the treatment of slaves—Carmichael links each to a narrative. He contends that biblical laws did not emerge from social imperatives in ancient Israel, but instead from the careful, retrospective study of the nation’s history and identity. $55.00 hardcover
The Johns Hopkins University Press • 1-800-537-5487 • www.press.jhu.edu
The Development of Greek and the New Testament MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX, PHONOLOGY, AND TEXTUAL TRANSMISSION
Chrys C. Caragounis 080103230X • 752 pp. • $69.99p
j
“The Development of Greek and the New Testament is a magisterial work that must be on the bookshelf of every scholar working with the Greek language. It is a treasure trove of information on all aspects of the historical development of Greek (the evidence presented on Phrynichos, Moiris, and the Atticistic reaction, e.g., is invaluable). Especially significant is the attention paid to Byzantine-Medieval Greek (AD 600-1500) and its place in the development of Neohellenic. While Caragounis has his own views on a number of issues, his approach is in no way idiosyncratic, building as it does on the foundational work of Hatzidakis and Jannaris.”—James W. Voelz, Concordia Seminary
Av a i l a b l e a t y o u r l o c a l b o o k s t o re , w w w. b a k e r a c a d e m i c . c o m , o r b y c a l l i n g 1 - 8 0 0 - 8 7 7 - 2 6 6 5 S u b s c r i b e t o B a k e r A c a d e m i c ’s e l e c t ro n i c n e w s l e t t e r ( E - N o t e s ) a t w w w. b a k e r a c a d e m i c . c o m
JBL 125, no. 4 (2006): 797–831
Book Reviews Book reviews are also published online at the Society of Biblical Literature’s WWW site: http://www.bookreviews.org. For a list of books received by the Journal, see http://www.bookreviews.org/books-received.html.
Blood Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power, by William K. Gilders. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. 272. $55.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0801879930. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism, by Jonathan Klawans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 384. $74.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0195162633. Reading Ritual: Leviticus in Postmodern Culture, by Wesley J. Bergen. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. London: T&T Clark International, 2005. Pp. 160. $120.00 (hardcover). ISBN 056704081X. Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity, edited by Kristin De Troyer, Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte. Studies in Christianity and Antiquity. London: T&T Clark International, 2003. Pp. 264. $34.95 (paper). ISBN 1563384000. Soon after I began writing this review, I was making small talk with an acquaintance who asked politely what I was working on. I told her that it was a review essay on biblical sacrifice. She blinked uncomprehendingly. “You know,” I said lamely, “in the ancient world, they would kill animals. For God.” She shook her head, appalled. Uneasily, I changed the subject. Given the constant use of the word “sacrifice” in today’s media, it never occurred to me that an intelligent young woman might not have heard of real sacrifice, the sacredmaking slaughter that characterized so many religions in the ancient Mediterranean and elsewhere. And though this same woman might not think twice about the use of the word “sacrifice” to describe, say, what is currently taking place in Iraq, and though I happen to know that she is willing to eat meat and wear leather, she experienced confusion and revulsion when presented with the idea of killing animals in a sacred context. In popular culture today, animal sacrifice is the purview of Satanism and “voodoo,” and has nothing to do with our own religious legacy. Why is that the case? The author of one of the books under review asks the question
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even more pointedly: Why is our culture more comfortable with the idea of human sacrifice (soldiers, firefighters) than with animal sacrifice? (Bergen, Reading Ritual, 83). Part of the answer can be found in the grim history of Christian supersessionism, which, taking its cue from the NT Epistle to the Hebrews, declares animal sacrifice to be useless routine, a temporary practice that the true children of Israel have now outgrown. Another part of the answer can be found in the history of Judaism itself, which was forced by the destruction of the Jerusalem temple to reimagine the human being’s relationship with God in ways that did not depend on an altar. Finally, we must look to the roots of our own academic discipline, particularly among the anthropologists and biblical scholars of the nineteenth century, who saw sacrifice as little more than a quaint reminder of the curious literality with which ancient people understood the concepts of food or gift. And yet, even knowing all this, the problem has not gone away. The lengthy instructions that the Pentateuch provides for sacrificing animals feel, to the modern reader, somehow both gory and oddly abstract, both tedious and sparse. The authors of Exodus and Leviticus do not provide any interpretations for their instructions, nor do they offer any justification for the work that they describe as so important. This has not stopped generations of Christian, Jewish, and secular scholars from trying to explain what it all “means,” of course, but it does make an emic interpretation of the data unusually difficult. William Gilders’s book, Blood Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible, addresses this problem by trying to understand specifically what assumptions the priestly writers had about blood (although the relative dating of the Priestly [P] and Holiness [H] sources in Leviticus are important for Gilders’s argument, this textual analysis does not bear directly on the broader themes that I am discussing here, so I will speak more generally about the “priestly” writers without addressing the significance of the relationship between P and H). In his introduction, Gilders summarizes the different kinds of “ritual blood manipulations” that can be found in the Hebrew Bible. According to the priestly writers, these manipulations (pouring blood, tossing blood, smearing blood on things) can bring about a variety of effects, including purification from sin, consecration of a priestly authority, transformation of identity or status, and protection from destructive forces (Judith Herbert and her co-editors would no doubt take issue with this narrowness of focus; the essays in their book make the case that the blood that flows in menstruation and childbirth serves, for the biblical authors, as a mirror image of the blood that flows in animal sacrifice, and that the one phenomenon therefore cannot be understood without the other. I will return to this issue below). Gilders thinks that earlier scholarship on biblical sacrifice went astray by seeking to understand sacrifice symbolically, even though the biblical authors themselves do not. Even today, scholars tend to fixate on Lev 17:11 (“For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar” [NRSV]), which is the only place anywhere in the Pentateuch that seems to describe the “meaning” of sacrificial rituals. Armed with that single verse, and thinking much more theologically than the priestly authors ever seemed to, modern readers mechanically apply the blood– life–atonement association to every other reference to sacrificial practice in the Bible. Though Gilders recognizes the importance of Lev 17:11—and indeed he devotes an entire chapter to its analysis—he thinks that the abstract concepts of “blood as life” and “blood
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as atonement” have received far too much attention in the literature, at the expense of more direct and practical understandings of ritual that would have come more naturally to the Israelites. The most penetrating observation in Gilders’s book is, unfortunately, also the most poorly developed. Gilders suggests in his introduction that blood ritual should be seen as an “index” rather than as a symbol (8). The term “index” is borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce, who famously distinguished arbitrary signs (such as the red octagon of a stop sign or the string of phonemes that give us the word “dog”) from signs that have an existential relationship with what they signify (such as a pointing finger or a flare). Nobody would deny that killing and eating an animal brings a person into an existential relationship with that animal. Further, for someone who believes that God’s presence dwells in the temple, the actions that take place in that temple will never be completely arbitrary signifiers. I think this is an important direction for the study of sacrifice and, indeed, ritual studies as a whole to pursue. But Peirce appears nowhere in Gilders’s bibliography, despite the fact that Gilders repeatedly applies Peircean insights about indices to biblical ritual: Moses collecting blood in bowls in Exodus 24, Ahaz constructing an altar in 2 Kings 16, Aaron’s sons bringing blood to their father in Leviticus 7, along with dozens of other characters and actions, are all said by Gilders to “index” various social relationships (see 38, 52, and 95, respectively; the subject index of Gilders’s book contains twenty-eight other references to indexing). And yet Gilders’s analysis is entirely dependent on a brief summary of Peirce originally written by Nancy Jay—who herself is cited only a handful of times in the book, and who, for all her important contributions to the study of blood ritual, is not a semiotician. Peirce has much to offer the study of the Bible, but that means his insights deserve to be read much more closely and applied with much more care. This reluctance to engage with secondary literature outside the immediate purview of biblical studies is, in my view, the greatest weakness of Gilders’s book. The review of the literature in his introduction is competent, and he is conversant with current issues in anthropology and ritual theory, but generally Gilders is more committed to meticulous readings of biblical texts than the broader issues of “meaning and power” alluded to in the book’s subtitle. Once he completes the methodological introduction, he rarely ventures beyond the biblical texts themselves in his attempt to understand priestly attitudes toward blood. (To his credit, he does venture beyond Leviticus; in my opinion, the strongest chapter of Blood Ritual is the sixth [142–57], which argues persuasively that references to blood in Ezekiel and 2 Chronicles, despite their “literary” nature, are directly relevant for the study of temple sacrifice.) I hasten to add that this focused approach is, to some extent, deliberate and certainly defensible: Gilders seems to mistrust cross-cultural comparisons, and I have some sympathy for this view after reading far too many superficial, totalizing accounts of “sacrifice around the world.” Nevertheless, I think Gilders’s caution leads to a lack of richness and explanatory power. When he analyzes the differences between the Hebrew verbs for strewing and sprinkling and scattering in the first appendix (25–32), or when he wonders where Moses is standing when flinging blood onto the people (39), or when he tries to imagine which way the blood splashes when it is tossed “round about” the altar (66), he does not
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link his questions with any bigger picture. What is at stake here? Why do the answers to these questions matter? What does it say about the priestly authors that they left what seem to be crucial details out of their text? What do we have to gain by filling in those gaps—or, to put the question another way, why are we so worried about leaving those gaps unfilled? Gilders’s point that we cannot always trust official or native interpretations of a ritual (6) is well taken, and I share his frustration with modern exegetes who are much too quick to theologize everything. But sacrificial materials in the Bible, particularly in Exodus and Leviticus, so stubbornly resist interpretation that we modern readers simply have to take risks as we wrestle with the text. If anything, Gilders’s book proves that if we limit ourselves to the barest meaning that the biblical texts offer us, and if we read what little we have with a healthy amount of suspicion, then we are left not knowing very much about Israelite blood ritual at all. Wesley Bergen’s book can be seen as the polar opposite to Gilders’s Reading Ritual is a lively and ambitious monograph that tries to understand Leviticus through the lens of Monday Night Football, modern slaughterhouses, contemporary African religion, television advertisements, and the war in Iraq. Where Gilders avoids drawing comparisons even with the Israelites’ closest neighbors, Bergen considers the possibility that Midwestern meat-packing plants or ancestor worship in Ghana can tell us more about Leviticus than Second Temple rabbis can. Bergen’s book will probably infuriate a lot of its academic readers and perhaps many of its nonacademic ones as well. The entire project might strike a more conservative audience as dilettantish or needlessly provocative. When Bergen closes his introduction by saying that one of his goals is “to produce a truly interesting book about Leviticus,” since “[w]riting a dull book about Leviticus would only add to people’s perception that Leviticus is itself dull” (12), one might wonder whether he really believes that the remedy for the existence of boring books about Leviticus is to write a flippant one. First impressions notwithstanding, however, this book is quite serious. Bergen is making a critical point, a point that, in my opinion, needs to be stated in every single course on religious studies that we teach. Namely, our category of “religion” does not overlap perfectly, or even particularly well, with the material that Leviticus covers, and that this can and has led us to badly warped understandings of what is going on in the ancient texts. Bergen’s first example is a tour de force, and it sets the tone for the rest of the book: I used to work on the killing floor of a modern meat packing plant. This means that I spent my day within sight and hearing of the gun that killed an animal every twenty seconds. . . . The person who worked beside me on the killing floor spent his day using a long stainless-steel rod to separate the tracheae from the esophagus of the carcasses going past on the assembly line. He certainly would not have thought of his work as ritual activity. . . . Yet his actions met most of [Catherine] Bell’s criteria for ritualized action. (14–15)
Does the factory floor have more in common with the setting of Leviticus than the church pew? Is that where we need to look to find answers about ancient religion? It is a productive question, and Bergen asks it sensitively, with the full awareness that the differences (such as the lack of an “audience” in a modern factory) are just as important as the
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similarities. His personal experience with slaughter also injects some reality into misguided discussions about how Moses’s dashing blood on an altar ought to serve some lofty theology: “We arrive at theological explanations,” he writes, “because most of us have never witnessed how much blood can pour from an animal” (18). Bergen proceeds to compare Israelite blood sacrifice to other cultural phenomena, picking a theme for each chapter and exploring how Leviticus can be understood through that lens. In the third chapter (27–43), he sketches out the relationships between the participants in modern sports (players, coaches, fans in the stadium, fans watching TV) and draws structural parallels with the figures described or implied by the text of Leviticus (the offerer, the priest, the assembly of elders, the readers of the book). In the fourth chapter (44–68), he looks to Africa as a context with a substantial Christian population where animal sacrifice still regularly takes place, and where the instructions in Leviticus do not necessarily feel as alien and irrelevant as they do to Christians and Jews in the West. In the fifth chapter (69–81), he considers the way the Western media uses the word “sacrifice,” pointing out that the common portrayal of soldiers as “sacrificing their lives for our country” would have made no sense to the Israelites. Though the Bible describes many bloody battles, none of the biblical authors thought to draw a comparison between the death of human warriors and the death of sacrificial animals, thus casting our own “easy” metaphors into question. Reading Ritual is an important and refreshing book; however, like any wildly ambitious project, it has some serious flaws. Bergen is much more willing than Gilders is to look beyond the Bible for insight about Israelite culture, but, like Gilders, he does not steep himself in the scholarship on those other materials. For instance, the chapter on Monday Night Football makes numerous sweeping claims about gender and violence without citing the work of a single sociologist or cultural anthropologist, leading me to wonder, for example, why Bergen is so sure that “the role of women [in football] is supportive: they are to prepare the food and keep it coming” (41). The chapter on Africa is prefaced with a disclaimer saying that not all African religions are the same, but the rest of the chapter basically treats African religions as if they are all the same; rarely does Bergen even bother to mention which African country, much less tribe, he refers to. And the chapter on war expresses a great deal of frustration with the “War on Terror” and the current political climate in the United States, but it does not use any concrete examples to make its case, citing no newspapers, opinion surveys, or political speeches. In the end, it reads more like an angry blog entry than a scholarly analysis of the issues. My point is that if football or Africa or the Bush administration have anything to teach us about ancient Israelite religion, then we need to get into serious and respectful dialogue with the people who study those phenomena, and we need to pay close attention to their “primary sources,” such as they are. Bergen ably demonstrates that our disciplinary boundaries need to be redrawn. Going on to treat history or politics as nothing more than a free-association exercise does a grave disservice to his argument. In this respect, Jonathan Klawans’s Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple provides a greater sensitivity to the theoretical issues that complicate the academic study of religion today. Where Gilders focuses on close reading and word study, and where Bergen seeks answers to his questions in popular culture, Klawans engages directly with the academic literature on sacrifice (Bergen does this to some extent in his sixth chapter, titled “The Afterlife of
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Leviticus 1–7 in the Church” [82–106], but this chapter merely introduces the reader to various issues regarding the historical Jesus and the split between church and synagogue in late antiquity. Bergen appears to have little interest in the debates surrounding the theories of Walter Burkert, René Girard, Jonathan Z. Smith, and their interlocutors). Ironically, this means that Klawans may be the author (of those considered in this review) closest to answering the question I posed at the very beginning of this essay, since theologians and historians must take some responsibility for the revulsion that people like my friend feel whenever they hear mention of animal sacrifice. As the subtitle of his book makes clear, Klawans is concerned with the supersessionist assumptions that have marred biblical scholarship and anthropology over the past two centuries. The Christian tradition teaches that animal sacrifice has been superseded by the death of Jesus, while Judaism takes as axiomatic that animal sacrifice was replaced by prayer and Torah study after the destruction of the Second Temple. For both Christians and (liberal) Jews today, animal sacrifice is assumed to be barbaric and outmoded, a transitional phase in God’s plan for the world. Since even religiously committed scholars betray a lack of sympathy for the sacrificial practices of their spiritual ancestors, secular scholars find no reason to take it seriously at all: nothing in our culture provides any compelling reason to support animal sacrifice, even in an abstract way. Instead of engaging with the already developed sacrificial system of ancient Israel within its social and literary context, Klawans notes, modern anthropologists and historians of religion have constantly tried to dig back through prehistory to find the beginnings of sacrificial practice everywhere, collapsing Greco-Roman, Israelite, and Vedic materials into some prehistoric Big Bang. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with this approach in and of itself, but Klawans argues that nobody has taken any other approach to sacrifice since William Robertson Smith wrote The Religion of the Semites in 1889. Klawans points out that not every book on Jewish circumcision searches for the origins of all body modifications across all cultures. Why is sacrifice in particular treated in this way? In a thoughtful aside (40), Klawans ventures some possible answers to that question, suggesting that many post-industrial writers and readers feel a deep-rooted anxiety about environmental degradation, animal abuse, capitalist excess, and consumerism. Those anxieties leak into their analysis, just as Victorian obsessions with sex can be detected in innumerable books about phallic cults. (Bergen’s striking description of a modern slaughterhouse suggests that he shares the same suspicion; both authors explicitly state that, as Bergen puts it, “Leviticus can form part of a larger discussion on the place of sacrifice in our own society” [81]). For a generation now, historians have been aware that sacrifice is often yoked into the service of totalizing, reductionist theories about religion. Klawans singles out René Girard for particularly brutal critique, though no author before Mary Douglas—and only a few after her—come off especially well in his review of the literature. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple goes even further, however, arguing that criticisms of sacrifice in modern scholarship arise out of stubborn, and surprisingly consistent, misreadings of ancient texts. Scholars who see sacrifice in terms of divine food (following Robertson Smith), or gift exchange (following Marcel Mauss), or the management of violence within a society (fol-
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lowing Girard), simply cannot justify any of those perspectives from within the biblical or rabbinic traditions, since the original texts never interpret what is going on in those terms. Freudians and neo-Freudians, like Girard, get around this problem by claiming to “read between the lines” in order to find the “unconscious motivations” of the text. Klawans has no patience for this approach. I think this is unfortunate, since reading against the grain can be a very productive hermeneutical strategy, as can be seen in the work of scholars who seek to understand minority viewpoints on, say, heresy or gender. Nevertheless, I agree with him when he says that sacrificial texts are frequently read with a peculiar lack of charity and with an aggressive theoretical agenda. The rest of Klawans’s book is made up of case studies. In order to break free of evolutionist assumptions, he treats his material thematically rather than chronologically, which serves his argument well. The only chronological division occurs between the two halves of the book, the first of which deals with biblical sources and the second with late antique material. Within those sections, he treats sacrifice and purity in light of broad themes such as prophecy, cosmos, and priesthood, with a final chapter on the way these ideas were addressed in early Christian texts. Some of these chapters are very strong. I was impressed by Klawans’s treatment of prophetic indictments of sacrifice within the Hebrew Bible (75–100), so often used by Christian apologists as a stick with which to beat Judaism, and also used by modern Jews to justify liturgical and theological reforms that exclude sacrifice even from the text of prayers. The academic left has traditionally defended the position that a person can be a fervent patriot even as she criticizes a governmental policy with which she disagrees. It is an argument that has a special urgency in today’s political climate, and it is a shame that the same logic is so rarely applied to the Jews who loved their temple but hated the hypocrites who, in their view, misunderstood or abused it. At the end of the book, Klawans claims that Jesus and Paul were no different from these other Jews. The anti-priestly and anti-temple material in the NT is all late (Revelation and Hebrews) and unconcerned with the historical Jesus. I found Klawans’s overarching argument quite persuasive. There is much in this book to consider and much to admire. I particularly enjoyed reading it alongside the other books discussed in this review since many of Klawans’s arguments address similar questions from different angles. For instance, his theory about the predication of the sacrificial system on ownership and property (84–89), combined with Bergen’s sly comparison between the book of Leviticus and advertisements for fast-food restaurants (19), could make for some excellent conversation at a conference panel or graduate seminar. And Klawans’s plea for a sympathetic, emic engagement with the texts serves as a useful counterpoint to Gilders’s insistence that we discard our abstractly theological interpretations of what are, at base, practical instruction manuals. Unfortunately, Klawans’s book also shares one of the weaknesses of Bergen’s: a frustrating lack of close readings and too many superficial glosses of relevant ancient texts. Josephus certainly deserves more than five pages of commentary, and Leviticus itself needs to be analyzed rather than simply invoked. The final book under consideration is Wholly Woman, Holy Blood, edited by Kristen De Troyer, Judith Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte. This book is quite different from the other three, and most of the essays in it do not address the topic of sac-
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rifice directly. However, its project dovetails well with elements of the others while providing an important corrective for some of their assumptions about the state of the question. The authors of the essays in Wholly Woman are interested in a constellation of issues surrounding gender, purity, and pollution, paying particular attention to the role of menstruation and childbirth in biblical purity law and in modern Jewish and Christian practice. Grietje Dresen begins her essay (“The Better Blood: On Sacrifice and the Churching of New Mothers in the Roman Catholic Tradition”) on Roman Catholic churching rituals with a comment on the embarrassment about menstrual blood that still permeates our culture; to this day, advertisements for sanitary pads fill eyedroppers with blue liquid, not red, when demonstrating the effectiveness of their product. Dresen continues: “In contrast to these often negative assessments of feminine blood loss stands the awe with which the masculine confrontation with blood is frequently clothed. Much more than women, men have the power to intentionally shed blood: as soldier, sacrificial priest, first lover, ‘blood brother,’ executioner, perpetrator of violent offenses, or as physician” (143). Put another way, it is not just in the case of animal slaughter that the spilling of blood is positively or negatively valorized in the biblical and postbiblical tradition. The authors of these essays inquire how the “holiness” of the Israelite priest (whose ear, thumb, and toe are smeared with blood), or indeed of the circumcised baby boy, compare with other ontological states that are marked by the absence or presence of blood, including virginity, illness, war wounds, and childbirth. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, Klawans makes the point that sacrifice and purity are intimately connected in biblical texts and that they cannot be studied separately. This invites a fruitful conversation with Kathleen O’Grady, who argues, in her essay “The Semantics of Taboo,” that concepts of blood and purity in the Bible are fraught with tensions and contradictions that are often lost in modern translations of the texts. For example, in O’Grady’s opinion, interpreters have been far too quick to call the nazir of Numbers 6 “pure” and the niddah of Leviticus 15 “impure,” even though the word nazir could occasionally be used to describe a curse, and a niddah was sometimes a lustration (19). She adds, perceptively, that Num 6:2 explicitly permits women to become Nazirites, and presumably a woman could take those vows even if she happened to be menstruating at the time. Clearly, then, the relationship between blood and purity is more complex than it may seem at first glance. The essays in Wholly Woman speculate on possible hidden motivations that may have led the biblical writers to form their opinions about blood. Primary among these motivations are concerns about establishing paternity and policing the boundaries of the body and the self. The analyses in this book tend to be more philosophical and speculative than I imagine Gilders and Klawans would be comfortable with, since the essays sometimes leave the biblical text behind in favor of broad cross-cultural comparisons. For example, Judith Ann Johnson compares the red heifer of Num 19:2 with a child sacrifice in an Aztec fertility ritual (using Frazer, of all people, as her source on the Aztecs). The redness and femaleness in both phenomena are an interesting coincidence, but I am not sure whether an analysis of Israelite culture can rest all its weight on it. So far as I could detect, mentions of menstruation and childbearing are totally absent from the other three books that have been discussed in this review. Dresen’s critique of reli-
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gious literature could well be applied to the scholarly literature too. None of this is to say that the authors of the other three books are uninterested in gender, however. Bergen, for instance, discusses the tension between the implicit exclusion of women from the text of Leviticus and the necessity of women’s involvement in the overall sacrificial system (35). Be that as it may, the focus on animal sacrifice that is in evidence in these books, along with the pull toward “violence” and “contagion” that modern scholars have inherited from Burkert and Girard (even as they struggle against both Burkert and Girard) may be our own generation’s blind spot, one that a new generation of authors will need to overcome. Ayse Tuzlak University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4
The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction, by Thomas Römer. London: T&T Clark, 2006. Pp. x + 202. $100.00. (hardcover). ISBN 0567040224. For some time now there has been a need for an up-to-date, comprehensive treatment of the Deuteronomistic History that both deals with the confusion of recent views in the debate over this corpus of texts from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings and offers a clearly articulated and balanced presentation of its critical analysis as a whole. This introduction fulfills all of those expectations very well. Thomas Römer has been actively engaged in research and publication in this field for over two decades, and this particular work, which has been in the making for some time, has finally appeared. After a short introduction for the uninitiated reader or student, followed by a brief survey of the content of the biblical corpus under examination, Römer gives us a concise review of past scholarship on the Deuteronomistic History down to the present state of the discussion, with special focus on the seminal work of Martin Noth and the subsequent reactions and modifications to his work, and in some cases its outright rejection. Römer examines the key issues of what it means to label this corpus “Deuteronomistic” and whether or not it is appropriate to call it a “history.” With these preliminaries addressed, Römer sets forth his thesis of a Deuteronomistic “school” or “scribal guild” whose work extended from the time of Josiah, through the Babylonian exile, to the restoration in the early Persian period, producing in stages the literary corpus that now makes up the texts of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings in three successive “editions.” While the Deuteronomistic ideology originated in the cultic reform of Josiah, each new historical set of circumstances led to modifications in viewpoint that are now reflected in the additional “redactional layers.” Römer finds these three successive editorial layers already evident within the centralization law in Deuteronomy 12 and sets out to apply this observation to the rest of the Deuteronomistic corpus in the following chapters. In ch. 4 Römer lays out the social and historical context of the Neo-Assyrian period, which scholars find so strongly reflected in cultural and ideological imitation in parts of Deuteronomy and Joshua, but not in Judges, and in parts of the stories of David and Solomon, as well as the history of the monarchies down to the time of Josiah. From these
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clues Römer reconstructs a small Deuteronomistic library collection consisting of a first edition of Deuteronomy, a story of the conquest by Joshua found primarily in Joshua 6– 12, and a first history of the monarchy from David to Josiah. The function of these works was primarily as propaganda to offer “ideological support for the politics of centralization and for the claim that the kingdom of Judah was the ‘real Israel’ ” after the demise of the northern kingdom. Likewise, in ch. 5 Römer describes the social and historical conditions of the NeoBabylonian period and the exile as the context in which he sees the next edition of the Deuteronomistic History. This edition reflects a “mandarin” scribal group of former royal bureaucrats who created an ideology of exile (in contrast to the perspectives of priest and prophet) and who constructed a comprehensive history of Israel and Judah from Moses to the end of the monarchy with an attempt to account for the great disaster as divine punishment. This led not only to extensive supplementation of Deuteronomy and Joshua, making them part of the larger history, but also to the creation of the period of the judges out of old northern hero tales to bridge the gap to the time of the monarchy. Key ideological passages were added at appropriate points of the history, but most extensively in Deuteronomy, and were made specially for the audience of the Golah. It is apparently only at this time that the royal edict of Josiah inaugurating cultic reform became the law of Moses against which the whole history of the people was judged. By far the largest bulk of texts that are considered Deuteronomistic belong to this “edition,” with the result that Römer spends much more time in his treatment of texts in this layer. This leaves a rather brief discussion of the final phase of Deuteronomistic editing in the Persian period, in which the main concerns became separation from “the nations” as ideological segregation from those who did not adhere to the law of Moses, a shift to monotheism in which Israel’s God is the only true deity, and the book of the law that became the central focus of religious concern, especially for the Diaspora. This is highlighted in the story of the discovery of the book in 2 Kings 22 and 23, added to the account of the reform by this late edition. Beyond these Deuteronomistic editions there were other non-Deuteronomistic additions made to the corpus that tended to obscure its role as a history of the people and yield to a wide range of ideological and didactic concerns. This proposal of a three-stage development of the Deuteronomistic History is presented as a compromise among the various theories, in which the first edition reflects the Cross/Harvard school, which advocates a preexilic first edition, while the major exilic second edition corresponds largely to the original thesis of Noth, and the final postexilic edition emphasizes the DtrN edition of the Smend/Göttingen school. Yet the problem remains as to whether one can convincingly correlate the various strata of the text with the appropriate criteria that are thought to distinguish the different editions. This may be illustrated with a few examples. The first case is the correlation of the first edition of Deuteronomy, reflecting strong Assyrian influence on its use of the covenant/treaty form, with the account of the cultic reform in 2 Kings 22–23. Römer assigns to this edition 2 Kgs 22:1–7*, 9, 13aα; 23:1, 3–15*, 25aα. This reconstructed account by itself is quite incoherent. It begins, after the introductory formula for Josiah’s reign, with the inauguration of a renovation of the temple (22:3–7, 9), which is then abruptly interrupted by an assembly of the people to announce a covenant between king and deity that included the people, based on
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the content of a book (23:1, 3). This presumably correlates with the covenant/treaty language of Deuteronomy 13 and 28 that is part of Römer’s first edition. The “words of the covenant that were written in this book” (23:3) have reference to “the words of the book of the covenant that were found in the house of Yahweh” that were read out to all the people as a necessary part of the covenant ceremony (23:2), but Römer relegates the discovery of the book to the third edition, so this verse must not be included in this stage. Römer adds to the exilic edition the account of the consultation of Hulda the prophetess in 22:14– 20 but eliminates from it all references to the book as belonging to the third edition; however, this eliminates the motivation for the consultation in the first place. This seems to me a case of special pleading. The description of the cultic reform in 2 Kgs 23:4–14 seems to be directed primarily at the elimination of all foreign cults and the purification of the worship of Yahweh (see also 22:17), but it does not seem to be specifically concerned with centralization, which may be only a by-product of such activity. What is striking is that the specific language referring to centralization of worship in Deuteronomy 12 is not found in this unit, although it certainly occurs elsewhere in Kings. Instead, we have the language of Deut 12:2–3, which is regarded by Römer as belonging to the latest edition. The negative remarks about Solomon in 2 Kgs 23:13 also fit with Römer’s second edition of Kings, not his first (see Römer, 151). One could go through the unit and eliminate all of these interconnections as “redactional” additions, but this would make the report of the reform less and less Deuteronomistic. The fracturing of the account in 2 Kings 22–23 into three strata seems to rest entirely on the need to reflect three editions in this text. Furthermore, the motivation for the consultation of Hulda, the covenant making, and the reform that follows are a complete enigma without the discovery of the book with its dire threats in the curses of Deuteronomy 28 as reflected in 2 Kgs 22:13, but this is attributed to the third edition. Now, Römer is aware of the fact that there are Near Eastern parallels to this feature in the story of finding ancient documents in temples, which are then used to justify royal activity, and he cites some examples of these, although none from the Persian period, which is his date for this episode in Kings. However, he does not cite the best example, the Shabaka Stone, which contains the so-called “Memphite Theology.” King Shabaka of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty (ca. 710 B.C.E.) claims to have found this document in worm-eaten condition, which he then restored and inscribed in stone. It purports to be a very ancient text, “a work of the ancestors,” written in very archaic language that scholars for a long time thought was dated to the Old Kingdom but was actually composed in Shabaka’s own time. This king clearly intended it to serve his own ideological and propagandist purposes: “in order that his name might endure and his monument last in the house of his father Ptah-South-of-his-Wall throughout eternity” (see M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature [Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975– 80], 1:51–57; 3:5). Based on this and other parallels, it makes the best sense to see this “discovery” of the book as belonging to the time of Josiah and used for similar political and religious purposes of his own day. If this is the case, it would largely dissolve all the arguments for a third DtrN edition. The application of the criteria of Assyriological parallels for dating purposes can be used rather selectively, applied when it is useful or ignored when it is not. Thus, Römer
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advocates an early preexilic version of Joshua in Joshua 6–12 because it so nicely corresponds to Assyriological conventions. This also allows Römer to view this early version of the conquest as quite separate from Deuteronomy in which Joshua is the successor to Moses. The commissioning of Joshua would then be seen in the account in Josh 5:13–15, a scene that also has its Assyrian parallels. However, in Assyrian texts it does not have the function of investiture but rather serves as a divine revelation given to the king before an important battle, and that is clearly the function in Joshua. On the other hand, Joshua 3– 4, which deals with the crossing of the Jordan before the beginning of the campaign against Jericho, is a vital component in the whole conquest narrative. As I indicated in my earlier study of the parallels in Assyrian royal inscriptions, which Römer cites (“Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography,” SJOT 2 [1990]: 1–12), an account of the crossing of a river at flood stage before the beginning of a campaign is a very frequent component of Assyrian inscriptions. And the crossing of the Jordan in chs. 3–4 is preceded by the mustering of the troops in ch. 1, which takes us back to the actual investiture of Joshua in Deut 31:7–8 as Moses’s successor. The parallel Assyrian texts make quite clear that there is no version of the conquest earlier than the one that makes the connection with Deuteronomy and that Römer identifies as the exilic Deuteronomist. Another significant parallel to Near Eastern texts occurs in the Solomonic account of the building of the temple, which Römer again compares with Assyrian building inscriptions, following the work of Victor Hurowitz (I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwestern Semitic Writings [JSOTSup 115; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992]), who also concludes that the Assyrian building accounts represent the closest parallels. However, anyone consulting this important collection of texts will discover that it is in fact the Neo-Babylonian period that provides the closest parallels to temple building. It was the Babylonian kings who were obsessed with building temples, describing their work in great detail and giving rather scant attention to their palaces, just as in the biblical account in 1 Kings 5–8, whereas the Assyrian kings were quite the reverse, with much to say about their palaces but giving little information on temple building. Hurowitz gives only one example of Assyrian temple building (ibid., 76–78), but several by Babylonian kings (ibid., 91–96). In fact, one can find very many accounts of temple restoration from the Neo-Babylonian period with many features similar to those of the Solomonic temple project. (P.-A. Beaulieu in The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556–539 [Yale Near Eastern Researches 10; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989], 42, lists seventeen inscriptions that deal with temple building in the time of Nabonidus; for numerous additional examples in the time of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, see S. Langdon, Die Neubabylonischen Königsinschriften [VAB 4; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912].) Another consideration for dating the biblical account of the temple construction to the exilic period is the fact that for Dtr the primary function of the temple is to house the ark, which Dtr regards as a repository for the two tables of the Decalogue. The temple represents the climax of the ark’s journey from the wilderness period to the special place in Jerusalem, which is synonymous with the place where the deity has set his name (2 Sam 7:1–13; 1 Kgs 8:6, 9, 15–21). The placing of the ark of the covenant in the temple with great pomp and procession is the direct equivalent of the placing of the gods of the Babylonians in their temples, and in both cases this is followed by much celebration. There is
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also the same emphasis on the king’s piety. It seems to me that the whole point of this elaborate temple-building narrative, in imitation of the Babylonian model, is to articulate an understanding of divine imminence in the words of the Horeb covenant, in contrast to the iconographic representations of Assyria and Babylonia. Consequently, there appears to be little left that one can attribute to the preexilic Dtr in Joshua to 2 Kings. There are still a large number of problems about which there could be endless debate. (1) What is the nature of the sources used by Dtr? Römer mentions “annals” and “chronicles,” but Assyrian annals record wars of conquest by an imperial power, which is hardly the case for Israel or Judah, and chronicles are the invention of the Babylonians in the Neo-Babylonian period. (2) What is the relationship of Deuteronomy and Dtr to the Pentateuch? to the Yahwist? to the Priestly writer? Römer briefly states at the outset where he stands on these questions, but they are still strongly contested issues, and he is very much aware of that fact. (3) Is the work of Dtr a history, and is Greek historiography an appropriate model for comparison? Römer, among others, expresses some reservations about making such comparisons, reservations that I do not share, but he has little reticence about employing what to my mind is the more dubious and highly anachronistic notion of editor or redactor in connection with his Deuteronomistic writers. The limitations of a review such as this do not allow one to delve into any of these matters. I am merely suggesting that many issues remain on both the larger questions and the smaller details that will require extensive and sustained discussion. Given the great complexity of the biblical text’s literary history and the vast accumulation of scholarship with its widespread disagreements, it is little wonder that there is no easy and broad consensus. Nevertheless, these remarks should not detract from the excellence of Römer’s book. It remains a very thoughtful and well-informed study that may serve as a good starting point for further discussion on matters such as I have suggested above, and I warmly recommend it to students and scholars as an introduction to this field of study. Unfortunately, the price of the book is way out of line with its modest size and is a serious detriment to its academic purpose. John Van Seters Waterloo, ON N2L 6L1, Canada
Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature, by David M. Carr. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 330. $65.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0195172973 This is a remarkable analysis and critical discussion of the interrelation in antiquity of literacy and orality in the formation of the literatures of the peoples of the ancient Near East, including the Sumero-Akkadian, Egyptian, West Semitic, Early Jewish, Greek, and Hellenistic, with references to relevant manuscripts from Qumran. It is probably the most complete gathering in one place of data culled from recent scholarly literature on the West Asian and Eastern Mediterranean cultures relating to modes of education of the young in biblical antiquity. It will undoubtedly be the touchstone of reference to such studies in the foreseeable future.
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Carr is excellent at perceiving the importance of “schools” in antiquity as the vehicle for the development of literature of various cultures. Schools were of various types from “home schooling” in priests’ families to later priestly and scribal schools where the elite were trained in the traditions that gave a culture its memory and identity (17–173). Temple-based education in Early Judaism was central until around the first century C.E. especially when Sabbath gatherings at early synagogues provided the opportunity for trans-temple textuality and education (177–285). Carr does a convincing job of showing the interplay between memorization and writing in the enculturation process of a people and its development of a distinct body of literature that preserved the memory essential to continuing identity. That process was dependent on the younger generation’s bearing the trappings of the culture in memory, “on the tablet of the heart,” or on recording it for public display and recitation, and it was a process that was similar across the cultural boundaries as diverse as the peoples of the whole area under study. This is the widest range of cultures, to my knowledge, ever brought under one prism for study of education, the mode whereby various peoples maintained cultural identity and continuity—a continuing, vital function of education today. The method Carr uses is to look synoptically at the various ancient venues of traditioning, teaching, and learning. Occasionally he shows how the traditioning worked in specific cases in one of the bodies of literature under purview, but his method is a comparative study of the vehicles of traditioning/education in the several cultures as reported in recent critical literature. Education of the young in a society was in effect “gaining humanity at the hand of the gods,” that is, from their teachers, and the prime teacher or human of a society was its king, the figure in ancient cultures who had contact with the divine and drew on its authority (hier-archy). Carr understands midrash as drawing on tradition to understand the new and intertextuality as the means whereby “new” literature was created out of older works. These are the essential ways to comprehend the creation of literature in antiquity. Those in a society who knew earlier tradition “by heart” were able to create the new out of pastiches of the old. Writing was a means of aiding memory. Literature was an oral/written phenomenon. Literacy was expressed in the various cultures at different levels—vulgar, functional, and “higher literacy.” The Greeks, having a relatively simple alphabetic system, probably attained a rather broad level of “vulgar literacy”; a polis was in part a “school” for learning and sharing the standard works of traditions that rendered a diverse, urban people functionally literate. This was an essential part of the development of the Greek idea of democracy. The Hellenistic education system shaped citizens of a polis into citizens of the world (285). While Carr devotes considerable space to appreciation of the Greek attainments of literacy, he is quite aware of the differences in the ways authority was expressed and recognized in the non-Greek cultures he studies. (Norbert Lohfink over twenty-five years ago noted the role of wisdom schools in canon formation in his Kohelet [Echter, 1980].) Carr is aware of the differences between ancient Greek and Greek-derived societies and the world to the south and east in understanding authority, the former individual and the latter societal. This accounts for the anonymity of authorship both of communal literature and of traditional art that is so much a part of the Orient, near and far, while Greek and western authority were lodged in individuals and their reputations in a community (102–9)—a form of pseudepigraphy that developed in Judaism after hellenization had required it.
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One of the strongest concepts at work in Carr’s reasoning is that of understanding how resistance to a foreign, dominant culture was largely expressed in the terms of that culture (253–72). This principle can be illustrated throughout most literature, and Carr does well in showing in a number of cases how using a foreign cultural trait to resist it worked for the purpose intended. The principle was operative even at Qumran, a sect of early Judaism that sought the purity of its religious observance by isolating itself out in the Judean Desert in protest against the increasingly hellenized culture of Hasmonean Jerusalem (215–39). The principle was denied in the early years of study of the Scrolls to the point that there was vehement opposition on the part of some older scholars in the 1960s and 1970s who had made up their minds that the Qumran community was so antiHellenistic that they would not admit that the original Hebrew of Psalm 151, found in the large Scroll of Psalms from Cave 11, depicted David’s musical ability in Orphic terminology—clearly the reason for the omission of the two verses which so expressed it in the more orthodox LXX/Syr form of Psalm 151 (Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967], 94–103; and Sanders, “A Multivalent Text: Psalm 151:3– 4 Revisited,” HAR 8 [1984]: 167–84). Since that time scholarship has found much at Qumran to have been Hellenistic in expression and thought. Carr offers the felicitous expression: “Hellenized Anti-Hellenistic Torah Judaism” (258). What came later to be called “canon” was probably “a collection of scriptures to resist Hellenism,” a curriculum designed to maintain Jewish identity (276) in a larger, foreign environment. Carr suggests that a nascent canon of Jewish literature probably developed out of the need for a curriculum to teach Torah and Jewish tradition to observant Jewish households. He suggests that there were “Torah schools” after hours when children had completed a day in the regular “gymnasium”—much like the current practice, one supposes, of “release-time” from public schools so that children from religious families can go after school to their mosque, synagogue, or church to learn their faith tradition (254–72, 294). Carr dates the beginnings of the expression “the Law and the Prophets” to the Hasmonean period, especially the literary activity attributed to Judas’s administration, when there was a strong enough central government as well as temple authority to effect the beginnings of the Jewish canon when Jewish identity needed strong central support because of the level of Hellenization in Jerusalem. It would have been the curriculum for the aftergymnasium Torah schools. In contrast, however, to others who see Judas’s literary interests as setting the whole Jewish canon (Leiman, Beckwith, Davies [253–54, 262]), Carr affirms with a growing number of us that the Ketuvim were added after the fall of the temple in 70 C.E., some choosing a date after the Bar Kokhba Revolt of the early second century C.E. (cf. several contributions to the question in The Canon Debate [ed. Lee McDonald and James Sanders [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002]). Carr resists applying the word “canon” yet to this early collection of Torah and Prophets. It is worth noting how Carr puts his point, “the emergent Hebrew collection . . . of ‘scriptures’: numinous, divinely inspired writings that were a crucial part of a process of education-enculturation, writings to be kept on the mouth and written on the heart, so that Jews from Judas to Josephus could remain Torahobservant and resist the onslaught of the Greco-Roman world” (276). He might have gone on to say that the new rabbinic Judaism that emerged after the Jewish War, and especially after the disastrous failure of the messianic Bar Kokhba Revolt, gradually withdrew into
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closed communities in order to be able to be Torah-observant, in-but-not-of the GrecoRoman (and then Christian) world around it. Carr rightly stresses the role of education, but one misses any serious recognition of the role of rite and ritual in the canonical process. The Torah once shaped by Ezra in the Diaspora and introduced to the remnant in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8) would have been shaped in part by the requirements of ritual recitation. This was the case especially in the development of the Ketuvim. It has been well argued that the recitation of the “five scrolls” at the stated feasts and fasts in the Jewish calendar was a vehicle in the process of their becoming a part of the eventual Jewish canon and grouped together in the Ketuvim (in contrast to their being located in the historical and prophetic corpuses in Christian canons). Other books and sections of the Jewish canon may also have been included because of the demands of the observance of the calendar. (See Donn Morgan, Between Text and Community: The Writings in Canonical Interpretation [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990]; and Sanders, Torah and Canon [2nd ed.; Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005], 111– 35; see also James W. Watts, “Ritual Legitimacy and Scriptural Authority,” JBL 124 [2005]: 401–17.) In the case of the early church, as in the case of early Judaism as Carr has earlier shown (see Carr’s “Canonization in the Context of Community: An Outline of the Formation of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible,” in A Gift of God in Due Season: Essays on Scripture and Community in Honor of James A. Sanders [ed. Richard Weis and David Carr [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], 22–64), there were quite different views of what should be included in a Christian canon until the dramatic, forced integration of the Christian movement by Constantine in the first half of the fourth century after which there was but one, basic “catholic” expression of the faith in the west. (See David Laird Dungan, Constantine’s Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006].) What the destitution of the Babylonian exile did for the beginnings of a collection of Scripture apparently accepted by all forms of early Judaism in the “Law and the Prophets,” the fall of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem did for the shaping of the Tanak as a whole after “the great divide,” Constantine’s solidification of the Roman Empire did for the Christian canon. These were the three major historical/political factors that had tremendous generative power, except that in the case of the Jewish canon destitution was the determining factor while in the case of the Christian Second Testament Constantinian triumph was the operative factor; persecution had had the opposite effect on the churches during the preceding three centuries when Christianity was highly diverse. The alphabet in such ancient societies was deeply formative for development of modes of education and of enculturation. An alphabet was revered as sacred. Each letter or sign had numinous qualities. Almost mysteriously thought could be reduced to scratchings arranged in grammatical (verbal and syntactic) ways and through them communicate to others and to the future, those not yet born. Carr notes that the figure “twenty-two” in Josephus’s discussion of the number of books in a Jewish canon in the late first century C.E. came from the fact that the Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two letters (in the traditional mode of counting them). He might have gone on to note that Homer’s division of both the Iliad and the Odyssey into twenty-four books each was undoubtedly because the Greek alphabet has twenty-four letters. The alphabet itself had sacred and numinous qualities.
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Notable is Carr’s succinct statement about the alphabetic principle: “anchored at the early end by learning the alphabet and extending ultimately to mastery of a Hebrew Corpus defined by the alphabet’s numbering” (270). Carr notes that memory worked hand in hand with writing so much that each manuscript was a scribal “performance” or an “Einheit für sich.” This variable scribal “performance” of texts makes it virtually impossible to get a text-critical fix on an Ur-text. “Scribal performances of traditions would have been corrected as often from parallel performances within a network of scribal masters as from consultation of a written version of a tradition” (44, 292). Scholars whose major focus is textual criticism had earlier arrived at the same conclusion (see Sanders, “Stability and Fluidity in Text and Canon,” in Traditions of the Text [ed. G. Norton and S. Pisano; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991], 203–17; and Emanuel Tov, “The Status of the Masoretic Text in Modern Text Editions of the Hebrew Bible,” in The Canon Debate, 217.). Carr attributes a large part of what text critics call “fluidity” in pre-Masoretic texts (largely the Scrolls and early Greek translations) to dependence on “an oral-written process of memorization-education” (234–39). This underscores the importance of the early history of the transmission of the text of biblical literature which came to a halt at “the great divide” (Shemaryahu Talmon’s apt expression) that occurred after the destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. (see Talmon, “The Textual Study of the Bible—A New Outlook,” in Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text [ed. F. M. Cross and S. Talmon; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975], 321–400; and Talmon, “The Crystallization of the ‘Canon of Hebrew Scriptures’ in the Light of Biblical Scrolls from Qumran,” in The Bible as a Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries [ed. E. Tov and E. D. Herbert [New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, 2002], 5–20). The pre-Masoretic gave way to the proto-Masoretic period, and finally the Masoretic period by the end of antiquity in the classical Tiberian codices and their derivatives. In personal correspondence Carr has indicated to me that he would like to probe more deeply into the current situation in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint. And rightly so. There are a number of junctures in his argument that could be considerably informed by doing so. Carr is quite right to critique those who seek an original or Ur-text through the art of textual criticism; he astutely points out that such is a “moving target” and very difficult to attain precisely because of the fluidity he rightly perceives between written and oral recitation of early texts. This is the principal reason textual critics seek the stage in the history of transmission of each biblical book or large section at which to aim a critically responsible text to recommend—the “aim” of textual criticism. To write this book, Carr read as widely in the pertinent secondary literature as any scholar I have read in the field, covering the best of recent treatises on ancient modes of education in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, West Semitic cultures, Greece, and the Hellenistic world. And with critical imagination Carr has made good sense of where the field should be and what subsequent work should be undertaken. This is clearly the strength of this remarkable, comparative study. For his early post-doctoral work Carr received a coveted Humboldt Grant and studied for a year in Heidelberg. His earlier work, From D to Q (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991) was based directly on his doctoral work (“Royal Ideology and the Technology of Faith: A Comparative Midrash Study of 1 Kings 3:2–15”
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[Claremont Graduate University, 1988]; his Erotic Word; Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003] then pressed the method of comparative midrash to full effect). There is a limit, however, to working almost entirely in the secondary literature and on the externals of the process of canon formation as Carr’s present book largely does. Of this work one could rightly say that what Carr has done here and the perspective it offers are contribution enough to the field. Carr’s focus on the function of schools and their curricula in the formation of canons is compelling, especially his understanding that most of the books in the curricula were chosen for their ability to help early Jews retain their Jewish identity within foreign cultures and hegemony. But one misses serious discussion of how the curricula were chosen and why. Carr rightly notes that such curricula were in large part chosen because of the desire not to lose Jewish identity in a Hellenistic environment. The observation is right, and it is important to see the crucial role of priests and scribes in the selection process. What Carr does not address, however, are the varying needs of communities in the selection process, just as there has generally been a lack of appreciation of the needs of communities in the study of intertextuality generally. Modern scholars still focus largely on their counterparts in antiquity, the individual leaders and their work. But leaders need followers as much as followers need leaders, and they as a community had needs which some literature met and which other literature apparently did not meet, that is, were not shared or picked up again. Carr notes that work now needs to be done on “a broader study of Bible as scripture and of scripture as a particular instance” (295). It is only by tracing the midrashic Nachleben of passages, events, or figures in biblical texts that one can discern the hermeneutics the sequential communities used to re-read and reapply the traditions that one can see how the canon took shape and why—norma normans. Focus on the final stage of that process, that of the closure of a canon—norma normata—fails to appreciate what a canon is and how it works. Only by working through particular trajectories in the formation and transmission of bodies of literature, as Carr does in his previous work but does not do here, can one see the limits of focusing almost solely on the externals of the canonical process. What Carr says is right as far as it goes, but appreciation of the multifarious ways in which intertextuality worked in the formation of all literature, from the earliest to the latest, is necessary to go beyond the dynamic interrelation of memorization and writing, schools and their curricula. With students I developed over the years the subdiscipline of comparative midrash in order to study as thoroughly as possible the Nachleben of biblical passages, figures, and events from inception up to the point of emergence of clear and discernible canons within Judaism and Christianity. This is painstaking work and required co-operative efforts of many students over a period of time to locate and even create Scripture indices to all early Jewish literature so that we could trace the function of a biblical passage or figure in all the available literature (see Craig Evans, Ancient Texts for New Testament Interpretation [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005]). The focus had to be on canon as function, that is, how earlier biblical literature functioned in the later, since there were no clear indications of a literary shape of those traditions until they emerged as functional “canons”—Torah and Prophets and “other literature.” The phrase “Torah and Prophets” probably originally
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referred to the Pentateuch and Early Prophets—the basic Torah story line that governed the formation and sequence of books from Genesis through Kings. The fifteen books of the Latter Prophets were then gradually added to explain the uses of adversity in the hands of One God and to substantiate the basic point of the full Torah story: that Israel and Judah were at fault for the disasters that befell the people in the late Iron Age, and not God; for God was now understood as both creator and redeemer and would be the restorer or “transformer” of the old national cults of North and South into the new Judaism that arose out of the disasters. Carr here proffers an in-depth look at the pertinent scholarly literature that discusses the external cultural vehicles by which a people’s literature became “canon” or “scripture” for that people. As such, it is a highly reliable and valuable summary of the best current thinking in several fields of study of the ancient Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean cultural institutions and modes by which some of the literature from those areas became enduring reading for following generations. There is little here, however, that offers specific cases of what actually happened to Scripture in the process, and little from the Bible itself, as Carr recognizes (295). And there is little here about how certain traditions or writings were shared from community to community or from generation to generation— the work of comparative midrash which Carr earlier had done so well. And there is little that helps understand the force and power of Torah in all subsequent Jewish literature (290) in comparison to the influence of Homer on later Greek literature. Carr recognizes that there was a difference in the central and centrifugal force of Torah in the ever-changing challenges to the identity of the Jewish people, but he fails to state what the difference was or is in his search for the “origins of scripture and literature.” Torah is Judaism and Judaism is Torah, and until that equation is addressed seriously one cannot know Judaism. The formative function of Homer throughout subsequent Greek literature, including the NT, cannot be denied, but there can be no comparison to the iconic importance of Torah as definitive and constitutive in the formation of Early Jewish literature, including the NT. If Carr had made clear that he viewed his work in this remarkably helpful book as providing the externals of the process by which some curricula became canons, I would have no problem. But, with regard to internal processes, he too quickly dismisses work in canonical criticism as Protestant theology. One cannot possibly work on the internals of biblical literature itself without seeing the central role of “God” through it all, even with “the seventy names” the Bible gives the deity. The Hebrew Esther is a brilliant example of how to monotheize without mentioning God. Careful work in textual criticism requires that one allow that the passage under study referred to the role of God in the events depicted without mentioning God. (See the parade examples in Deut 34:6; and 1 Sam 1:23 where MT refers to God but LXX does not.) To dismiss work on the canonical process as an effort at Protestant theology like that of Brevard Childs is to misunderstand and to reflect mistaken opinions in some secondary literature. Nor does it account for the fact that canonical criticism has been as well or better accepted in Jewish and Catholic scholarship than in Protestant. What Carr has done is provide the field with a very valuable and authentic look at important major externals of the canonical process by which some literature became the curricula (and, I think Carr would add, cultic recitations) and eventually the canons of
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ancient cultures. No one to my knowledge had done this so well, and we should be very grateful to Carr for providing understanding of how such external vehicles of the canonical process worked. I hope he will now devote his attentions to helping further develop the internals of the canonical process for which he has provided such acute insight on the externals in this excellent treatise. James A. Sanders (Emeritus) Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711
Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present, by Dale C. Allison, Jr. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005. Pp. 288. $34.99 (hardcover). ISBN 0801027918. Studies in Matthew, by Ulrich Luz. Translated by Rosemary Selle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Pp. 397. $30.00 (paper). ISBN 0802839649. These recently published collections of essays by Dale Allison and Ulrich Luz display the significant interest in historical-critical issues, the history of interpretation, and the narrative, synchronic dimensions of Matthew’s Gospel found in their commentaries. Allison’s essays are either new or significantly revised, whereas most of Luz’s are English translations of prior work. Allison divides his thirteen essays into “The Exegetical Past” (Part I), consisting of six new pieces, and “Literary and Historical Studies” (Part II), consisting of three new and four revised essays. The essays in Part I generally provide substantive discussions of exegetical history involving both giants like Chrysostom and lesser-known figures like Cosmas Indicopleustas. Allison’s mastery extends also to Reformation and post-Reformation theologians and scholars as well as figures from other fields such as English author Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). Allison’s references are intrinsic to his arguments and often aid in subverting unhelpful interpretive assumptions. The results are fresh, compelling readings of selected Matthean texts. Further, Allison displays newfound postmodern interpretive sensibilities. In “The Magi’s Angel (Matt. 2:2, 9–10),” Allison maintains that one should not understand the star of Matt 2:2 as a heavenly phenomenon, as does most modern exegesis. Exegetical history largely excludes this option in light of the star’s odd behavior. Positively, ancient interpretation explains Matthew’s star: “Quite simply, Matthew’s idea of a star was not our idea of a star” (21); ancient texts relating and equating angels and stars support the conclusion that “the guiding star was a guiding angel” (29). In “Seeing God (Matt. 5:8),” Allison draws on exegetical history to investigate the neglected phrase “they will see God,” concluding that “[Matthew] and his early readers . . . probably hoped one day to share the experience of the angels in heaven and to see a somatic God face to face” (61)—a reading counterintuitive to modern interpreters. Allison’s interest, however, is here less exegetical and more theological and theoretical. Allison concludes with a section entitled “The Theological Value of Exegetical History,” in which he sounds positively postmodern. First,
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exegetical history shows that a verse is “only a station on the way” whose “full meaning can only be pondered by retracing the paths that led to it and by uncovering the paths that have gone out from it” (61). Second, that readers are situated means that interpretations are constantly changing; the plain sense may supply a modicum of interpretive certitude, but “we may be equally grateful that such stability does not prevent the ceaseless and creative reapplication of the Scriptures, from which we can bring forth treasures new as well as old” (62). Third, multiple meanings need not be mutually exclusive. Fourth, revelation is a process—given the first three points, “it makes little sense to confine revelation to the words on a biblical page. Exegetical history in its entirety rather confronts us with an ongoing, evolving divine disclosure” (63). Coming from the de facto author of the ICC commentary on Matthew (with W. D. Davies, The Gospel according to Saint Matthew; 3 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988–97) and a heretofore fervent defender of the historical-critical paradigm, this chapter signals a significant change in course. The third essay, “Murder and Anger, Cain and Abel (Matt. 5:21–25),” is less theoretical but equally intriguing. Allison draws on inter- and intratextual connections to contend that this passage “is designed to send informed readers back to Gen. 4, to the story of Cain and Abel” (66), a rhetorically effective move. Allison’s eye and ear for intratextual links and thematic connections in this essay are impressive and foreshadow much of what he will do in Part II. The fourth essay, “Darkness at Noon (Matt. 27:45),” involves approaches found in the previous essays: promising inter- and intratextual connections are detailed; exegetical history is explored; several avenues of interpretation are suggested. Allison again reflects on “Lessons from the Exegetical Past” (103), and argues, in essence, that there is nothing new under the sun: “Because the exegetical present confronts the selfsame text as the exegetical past, repetition must be the rule, novelty the exception” (104). Multiple meanings are often complementary, not exclusive; the hearing of “the voices of the interpretive tradition” is “not a misfortune to be undone but a boon to be appreciated” (105). In “Touching Jesus’ Feet (Matt. 28:9),” Allison explores four possibilities from exegetical history. Why do the two women grasp Jesus’ feet? Out of joy and affection? To signal submission? To worship? To indicate that Jesus’ resurrected body is physical? Drawing on psychiatric research and modern tales of the paranormal, Allison opts for the last as the best option but emphasizes, however, the complementary nature of interpretations: “Who passed the hermeneutical law that a text must, like a one-way street sign, send us in one direction only?” (115). In the sixth essay, “Reading Matthew through the Church Fathers,” Allison contends that neglect of patristic exegesis is “a condescending attitude towards the past” which “impoverishes exegesis” (117), and discusses four areas in which patristic sources have influenced his scholarship: (1) intertextuality: given the fathers’ intimate familiarity with Scripture, if one finds “an allusion . . . that the Fathers’ did not find, the burden of proof is on us; and if they detected an allusion which modern commentators have not detected, investigation is in order” (119); (2) culture: the church fathers’ closeness to the culture in which Matthew’s Gospel was first composed and heard guards against eisegesis; (3) theology: ancient theologians may provide compelling answers to modern theological conundrums; Gregory’s “innovative doctrine of perpetual progress” may solve our unease over
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the Matthean Jesus’ demand to be perfect (127), and (4) rhetoric: “The Fathers often said the right things in ways that have not been surpassed” (130). Part II largely concerns Allison’s interest in the synchronic, narrative dimensions of Matthew. In “Structure, Biographical Impulse, and the Imitatio Christi,” Allison declares a change of position and asserts that Matthew is indeed Greco-Roman biography. Biography explains Matthew’s structure: the fivefold alteration of discourse and narrative sections functions to promote the imitation of Jesus, who fulfills his own commands and whom the disciples imitate. In “Matthew’s First Two Words (Matt. 1:1),” Allison surveys various translations of bivblo" genevsew" and six interpretive options for their scope and import, arguing that English translations should leave the phrase vague so that readers might identify all six options and hear echoes of Genesis. In “Divorce, Celibacy, and Joseph (Matt. 1:18–25),” Allison contends on narrative grounds that porneiva in Matt 5:32 and 19:9 refers to adultery; Joseph’s resolve to leave Mary coheres with this. Instead of having sought the rationale for the exception clauses outside the text, “we should have been looking for an explanation from within Matthew itself: the exception clauses allow for harmony with the conduct of the righteous Joseph in 1:18–25” (166). In “The Configuration of the Sermon on the Mount and Its Meaning,” Allison offers a convincing outline of the Sermon, noting that 4Q525 and Ps.-Ephraem Beat. 55 support the idea that the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3–12) and Matt 7:13–27 form an inclusio. Further, the triadic structure is important; in fact, the triadic form and triadic content of the Sermon (i.e., the concerns of Torah, cult, and social issues) may confirm W. D. Davies’s thesis that the Sermon on the Mount is a response to Simeon the Just’s three pillars of Torah, temple service, and deeds of loving kindness. In “Foreshadowing the Passion,” Allison details impressive verbal and conceptual clues linking Matthew 1–25 with the events of 26–28. Most scholars have missed them because “[t]he historical-critical method has trained us to relate the First Gospel to texts other than itself.” Matthew, however, “created a work designed to be read and heard again and again” and thus “anticipated listeners who would appreciate intratextual allusions” (234). In “Deconstructing Matthew” Allison discusses instances in which the Gospel “seems to speak against itself ” (237), exploring tensions to the end of offering “a rough typology of the responses of exegetes to the problem” and evaluating them. Allison notes, on the one hand, that many problems would not be problems to Matthew but, on the other, also refuses to ignore genuine difficulties. The final essay, “Slaughtered Infants,” is an exploration of the substructure of Matthean theodicy, a wonderful exploration of five ways Matthew may respond to the problem of evil. This wonderful collection is certainly worth the purchase price. Several issues may be raised, however. First, Allison uses critical terminology such as “intertextuality” and “deconstruction” with little awareness of the terms’ origins, history, and functions. Second, his newfound postmodern sympathies are somewhat at odds with his practice and certain implied assumptions; Allison frequently reveals a fundamental orientation toward traditional author- and source-centered methodology. Allison could profit from exploring critical and literary theory in greater depth, sorting, sifting, learning, and holding fast to the good, much as he has done with ancient and modern interpreters. Third, one might wish that Allison would enrich his natural theological sensitivity through more reading of historical and contemporary theology. That is, Allison’s work contains some theoretical dissonance, and one hopes that his facility in theory and theology might one day match his
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unmatched expertise in ancient texts and exegetical history. These critiques should not detract from the fundamental value of this collection of essays or one’s opinion of Allison as a brilliant, erudite scholar. Sixteen of the eighteen essays in Luz’s collection are previously published and unrevised, most appearing in English for the first time. There is little one cannot find in Luz’s magisterial commentary. The essays range from the late 1970s to the immediate past; the collection simply “document[s] my exegetical journey with Matthew” (vii). Divided into eight sections, the book falls naturally into two parts: essays 1–12 are chiefly exercises in historical-critical exegesis, while 13–18 concern “Hermeneutics with Matthew in Mind.” The halves are distinct but not discrete. Several fundamental approaches and ideas appear repeatedly: (1) a source- and redaction-critical approach; (2) understanding Matthew’s Gospel as a “two-level” story involving the risen Jesus present to Matthew’s community; (3) understanding Matthew’s sources as Mark and Q, the latter brought to Syria by members of the Q community in the aftermath of the Jewish War and the failure of the mission to Israel; (4) interest in patristic exegesis and the broader history of interpretation; (5) investment in Gadamer; and (6) a “meant-means” hermeneutical stance that relies largely on (a) the overarching story of Jesus and (b) the Augustinian principle of love from De Doctrina Christiana. In short, Luz’s fundamental exegetical and hermeneutical perspective is largely that of a classic modern liberal Protestant. Several essays are particularly worthy of note. In “Fictionality and Loyalty to Tradition in Matthew’s Gospel in the Light of Greek Literature,” Luz examines fictionality in the latter and, in contrast to Allison, concludes that Matthew is not biography but fictional narrative: unlike biography, Matthean fictions “create a new historical course of events, corresponding to the historical experiences of his own community” (76). Ancient historians would find Matthew’s fictions unacceptable, but Matthew was unaware of any problem; the issue is the community’s experience of the risen Jesus, and the Gospel is better compared to Deuteronomy and Jubilees than Greco-Roman literature in any case. In “Discipleship: A Matthean Manifesto for a Dynamic Ecclesiology,” Luz examines the oft-neglected mission discourse, which reflects “the salvation history experience of his community in their own story” (147–48) and is “Matthew’s basic manifesto for his view of the church” (149). Matthew’s church should be engaged in mission and proclamation, consist of “potential itinerant radicals” (151), and have kingdom-oriented poverty and suffering as marks of discipleship. Luz’s reading is intriguing, and the essay becomes even more so when Luz brings his analysis into conversation with Reformation and Catholic ecclesiology. Yet Luz simply concludes that “Matthew’s ecclesiology approach offers an opportunity for both Roman Catholics and Protestants to bring movement into the fixed basic concepts of church we have inherited” (164). Hermeneutical concerns are paramount in “The Primacy Saying of Matthew 16:17– 19 from the Perspective of Its Effective History.” Luz notes the exegetical consensus against the traditional papal interpretation and then examines its reception history, noting that “the original sense of a text cannot regulate its later applications” (172). But Luz then launches directly into traditional exegesis. Luz asserts that Gadamer’s significance for interpretation implies interpretive freedom, but writes, “Freedom of application must have its limits, or there can be neither church nor agreement within society” (179). Luz thus proposes two interpretive truth criteria: (1) correspondence to “the basic line of Jesus’
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story” (179); and (2) an Augustinian criterion of effects: Does an interpretation build up love? Luz suggests that the papal interpretation of Matt 16:17–19 does neither. Reception history “draws our attention to how this potential for freedom was often destroyed when the texts were used as biblical legitimations [sic] of a doctrine or institution” (181–82). The essay titled “Reflections on the Appropriate Interpretation of New Testament Texts” is similar. Historical-critical pursuit of the original sense, Luz argues, “actually makes it difficult or even impossible to answer the question of its present-day meaning” (266). Gadamer’s insights, however, imply freedom in interpretation and the ability of the Bible “to speak, time and time again, to new people in new situations and to be interpreted in new ways in their lives” (276). Luz again suggests the story of Jesus and the love criterion as interpretive criteria, although with awareness of the limitations and problems inherent in each. In “The Significance of the Church Fathers for Biblical Interpretation in Western Protestant Perspective,” Luz notes that the Fathers have been neglected in Western, Protestant exegesis due to the principle of Sola Scriptura and the academic quest for the original sense. The fathers are useful, however; exegetically, they may give insight into the sense of a text, and, hermeneutically, they show how the Bible functions as a coherent, Christocentric unity within the community. The latter is decisive: “The hermeneutical impetus they can give us seems much more important to me than the exegetical, however useful this may be” (311). The book closes with two new pieces. In “Hermeneutics of ‘Effective History’ and the Church,” Luz brings Gadamer into conversation with Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox interpretation. Effective history challenges facets of each and also “remind[s] ecclesial exegesis that the effect of the Bible reaches far beyond the church” (367). In “The Significance of Matthew’s Jesus Story for Today,” Luz, speaking explicitly as a Swiss Western European, asserts that Matthew’s Gospel, as an open story, presents God and enables an experience of God that is both congenial and challenging to those in a post-Christian society. Luz is rightly renowned, and every student of Matthew must own his commentary. This makes this particular collection of essays somewhat disappointing, however. The older essays are simply outdated; serious Matthean scholars should already be familiar with the essays in their original languages; there is little value for beginning students of Matthew or scholars whose specialties lie outside Matthew. Further, the topical organization defeats the stated purpose of providing an overview of Luz’s Matthean journey. Moreover, many of the essays have a certain superficiality; they were composed as essays and outlines and thus lack argumentative depth. Again, Luz is a wonderful scholar, but one’s money would be better spent on his magisterial commentary, the first volume of which was recently revised and republished (2002). Most of the insights in these essays will be found there. Beyond this, one notes significant methodological incoherence; Luz often mixes modernist historical criticism with postmodern emphases on hermeneutics, narrative, and readers. For instance, in “The Miracle Stories of Matthew 8–9,” Luz appropriates Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) while also examining Matthew’s reworking of his sources. Certain scholars can skillfully employ aspects of literary and critical theory as heuristic tools; Luz, however, appears ill-at-ease in attempts to do so.
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This incoherence extends further to Luz’s interest in Gadamer and the history of interpretation. These essays display a fundamental if tacit commitment to classical liberal Protestant and Enlightenment historiography and theological values, and, as a result, Luz functions with a fundamental meant/means framework. He thus cannot follow Gadamer’s insights or those of the fathers very far. Exegesis remains fundamentally divorced from hermeneutics; there is no real “fusion of horizons.” The fathers may be hermeneutically useful, but Luz divorces this from their exegetical usefulness and, in any case, does not finally permit their hermeneutics to influence contemporary exegesis or hermeneutics. Finally, Luz’s own theological values govern the hermeneutical criteria of the “story of Jesus” and “love.” In practice, the appropriation of Gadamer enables Luz as historical interpreter to become theological arbiter, to judge the contemporary relevance of texts and interpretations on the basis of his Enlightenment-derived Protestant commitments, revealed in critical comments like “fossilized Christian traditionalism” (179), “Stories are not the basis of orthodoxies” (375), and “Jesus was delivered into the hands of theologians and teaching authorities that defined who he is” (375). For instance, Luz asserts not only that the papal interpretation of Matt 16:17–19 “can hardly be justified from the text itself ” (180), but also that the papal interpretation fails the story and love test—history demonstrates that “the papal interpretation of Matt. 16:18 has to a high degree been the interpretation and self-legitimation of church rulers” (181), ostensibly a bad thing. The obvious problem is that the criteria are famously pliable; other Christians could simply construe the Jesus story differently, concluding that an important part of the story is the founding of a church with Peter and his successors at its head, and understand the legitimization of the papacy and the exercise of papal authority as expressions, not failures, of love. In short, mainline Protestants will likely find Luz’s hermeneutics congenial, but they may be received with less enthusiasm by traditional Catholics and Protestants as well as evangelicals. Leroy Andrew Huizenga Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187 My Name is ‘Legion’: Palestinian Judaic Traditions in Mark 5:1–20 and Other Gospel Texts, by Roger David Aus. Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003. Pp. 337. $45.50 (paper). ISBN 076182267X. Matthew 1–2 and the Virginal Conception in Light of Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaic Traditions on the Birth of Israel’s First Redeemer Moses, by Roger David Aus. Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004. Pp. 99. $23.00 (paper). ISBN 0761830383. Imagery of Triumph and Rebellion in 2 Corinthians 2:14–17 and Elsewhere in the Epistle: An Example of the Combination of Greco-Roman and Judaic Traditions in the Apostle Paul, by Roger David Aus. Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005. Pp. x+94. $21.95 (paper). ISBN 0761833218. Roger Aus is pastor emeritus of Luthergemeinde in Berlin-Reinickendorf, Germany, and is the author of numerous books on the haggadic background of gospel traditions
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(some published by Scholars Press but still in print through University Press of America). In my opinion, he has never been given the full credit he deserves for his scholarly work. Aus’s research represents the most detailed and knowledgeable work currently available in what should be an important area of the study of Christian origins, yet this work is often criminally neglected in some literary and historical approaches to the Gospels. This is unusual given the massive amount of attention the Semitic background of the Gospels has received in the past thirty or so years, along with the weighing of historical reliability that continues to dominate Gospel scholarship. The lack of a more widespread dissemination of Aus’s work may be due to the fact that his high degree of expertise in rabbinic Judaism is not something most NT scholars can honestly claim to share. Previous generations of scholars were (rightly) rebuked for getting their knowledge of Judaism from secondary literature, and I suspect that there has not been such a dramatic change despite all the rhetoric of acknowledging the Jewish nature of much of Christian origins. Naturally, there are criticisms that can be leveled at Aus’s work. Aus is prepared, though not without qualification (e.g., some very careful linguistic paralleling), to use late rabbinic texts. Individually this can be a problem, though it has to be said that Aus’s arguments tend not to rely on specific instances but rather collective weight. A more significant criticism is that there is a tendency in Aus’s publications to see secondary haggadic practice behind every Gospel tree and this is problematic in instances where a good case for historicity can be made (see Aus’s treatment of Mark 6.1–6 in Samuel, Saul and Jesus [Atlanta: Scholars Press/University Press of America, 1994]). Conversely, Aus is particularly illuminating when it comes to passages that have little basis in history or are obviously ahistorical literary devices (e.g., parables). Thus, in books under review here, Aus’s approach functions particularly well for dealing with the Matthean infancy story, a Pauline passage, and the Gerasene demoniac, not to mention several related bonus passages. In My Name is “Legion” Aus provides masses of detail on the Semitic background of Mark 5:1–20. He looks at the linguistic background of insanity and how the interpretation of Psalm 91 influenced the Markan passage, alongside the connotations of uncleanness associated with the term “legion.” Aus then shows how traditions relating to the interpretation of Samson (along with supplementary traditions) are a key influence on the passage as a whole. Aus additionally offers reasons for an original Semitic (probably Aramaic) underlying tradition. The purpose of the story is to show Jesus’ great power over many demons (even stronger than Samson and the demoniac). Furthermore, the story is designed to ridicule idolaters and the unclean but then also to provide a particular Christian spin by stressing the beginning of the Christian mission in the Decapolis. Aus also provides a creative and plausible solution to an old geographical problem: the land of the Gerasenes in relation to the Sea of Galilee and the unusually long distance the possessed pigs traveled. Following a variety of commentators in choosing Kursi as the probable location of the exorcism, he then suggests that the different pronunciations of yy)srwk, along with interchanges between k and g, could point to the Aramaic area of yy)srwg underlying Mark 5:1 (73–80). My Name is “Legion” also offers a variety of other interpretations of Gospel texts in haggadic contexts, including catchword connotations and Day of Atonement imagery in
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Luke 4:16–30; Judas “Iscariot” and Ahithophel; Luke 19:41–44 and David’s weeping over the destruction of Jerusalem; Abraham’s prophetic vision of the Messiah and John 8:56– 58; the Messiah as a vulture in Matt 24:28/Luke 17:37b; and the rejection of the mother bird Messiah in Luke 13:34b/Matt 23:37b. In Matthew 1–2 and the Virginal Conception, Aus follows the widely held view that the Matthean infancy story is based on Mosaic motifs, but he adds several new pieces of evidence, largely from rabbinic literature. He argues that the story is based on a specifically Palestinian Judaic haggadic version of Moses’s birth and infancy before being supplemented by Hellenistic Jewish concerns related to heroic Israelite women as born-again virgins. One aspect of Aus’s overall aim is to show that the Matthean story is part of a wider developing Son of God christology, a title Matthew wishes to prove was present at Jesus’s birth. Aus does all of this by paralleling the haggadic traditions with the flight to, and return from, Egypt; the astrologers’ announcement; searching for the newborn child; the child’s age; Mary/Miriam and the holy spirit; Jesus as savior; and the marriage of Mary and Joseph. There are further discussions as well, including the significance of the deification of Augustus and a particularly devastating critique of the naïve and misguided scholarly view that the infancy narrative reflects historical facts. In Imagery of Triumph and Rebellion, Aus leaves behind the gospel tradition of much of his work to look at 2 Cor 2:14–17. Aus also combines Greco-Roman material with Jewish haggadic material. Aus’s overall argument provides another useful contribution to the recent scholarly developments of placing Paul “beyond the Judaic-Hellenistic divide.” Through the catchword “Macedonia,” Paul recalled Paulus’s victory over the Macedonians in 168 B.C.E. and the dramatic triumphal procession that followed. Aus also offers further examples of triumphal processions in the Greco-Roman world as supplementary evidence. This is combined with more Jewish evidence such as the language of God as the Lord of hosts who is at the head of the Christianized, “spiritualized,” and, to some extent, pacified triumphal procession of triumphant missionary “soldiers.” Aus also analyzes the “religious” backgrounds (e.g., the offerings given to the divine at the end of the processions with their use of incense and wine as a part of thanksgivings). This, Aus argues, explains the combination of triumph and thanking God in 2 Cor 2:14, along with the language of 2:14–16 as a whole. This also explains the “Macedonian” literary context, and so there is no abrupt shift from 2:13 to 2:14. For Aus, Paul is also reversing standard Roman ideology through the Christianization of the traditions. Aus shows similar uses of warfare imagery elsewhere in Paul’s letters (e.g., 2 Cor 6:7; 10:3–4; Phil 2:25; Phlm 2), suggesting that this may even have influenced Paul’s ministry (e.g., the Jerusalem collection, boasting, missionary fields, family background). Further, Aus suggests that rebellion against Paul’s apostolic authority also underlies the imagery in 2 Cor 2:14–17. As this was effectively perceived as rebellion against the Lord, Paul could recall the revolt of Korah (Numbers 16; cf. 1 Cor 10:10) and the reaction of Aaron. Paul could then develop the language of incense, alongside the strange use of “those who are being saved, “those who are perishing,” and “being sufficient.” In this context Paul and his fellow missionaries are like Aaron, standing between life and death. Which option is chosen depends on the response of Paul’s audience. There are inevitably some quibbles with specifics. Again the use of some late rabbinic
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sources in particular might be mentioned, though, Aus’s linguistic paralleling makes a stronger case than might be expected. To give a specific exegetical quibble, Aus needs to give some more detailed evidence for the Gerasene demoniac as a Gentile proclaiming to Gentiles: I am not so sure (in a point I owe to Daniel Cohen) there is enough literary, historical, or demographical evidence to back up such suggestions. One thing sometimes lacking in Aus’s work overall is a detailed examination of how the haggadic traditions functioned, changed, and developed in specific historical and social circumstances. Of course, this is not always possible to do without being overly speculative, but this problem comes through in the ways in which Aus views the NT texts, with the obvious exception of his reading of 2 Cor 2:14–17 wherein the sociohistorical contextualization is one of the book’s many strengths. Given the Semitic background of “legion” and its connections with imperial armies, more discussion on how the demoniac story functioned in early Christian interactions with Rome would be worth pursuing further. There is, in fact, great potential for someone to bring Aus’s work together with more detailed social history. But Aus makes a generally persuasive argument in most instances. As ever with Aus, there are always plenty of new things for the reader to learn, especially with his typically impressive array of rabbinic interpretations. A good example of this is his handling of the virgin birth material, where many will recognize fascinating and knowledge-advancing discussions even on such a well-worn passage, such as the application of Jer 31:15 in various contexts related to the Matthean narrative (25–29) and the interpretation of various great Israelite women being miraculously restored to a state of virginity, coupled with divine intervention in conception (52–70). Ultimately, there are very few scholars who can match Aus’s proficiency in both rabbinic sources and the NT texts, coupled with a genuinely critical attitude. No doubt readers will find specific problems and faults in this or that detail, and the late dating of some of the rabbinic material is always going to be a tricky problem for anyone to resolve, though that does not mean that those as qualified as Aus should not try. But ignoring Aus’s learned work on the haggadic background of the NT will mean losing out on an encyclopaedic knowledge of rabbinic parallels, much of it unavailable in commentaries, not to mention such knowledge being creatively and painstakingly applied to early Christian texts. In the light of Aus’s work it should now be undeniable that haggadic traditions were deeply embedded in the cultural world of the first followers of Jesus and, on analogy with nonChristian ancient literature, it should always have been undeniable that the first followers of Jesus invented stories about their figurehead. Is it really worth the risk for historically and literary minded scholars to ignore Aus’s profound expertise in such areas any longer? James G. Crossley University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN UK Die antike Historiographie und die Anfänge der christlichen Geschichtsschreibung, edited by Eve-Marie Becker. BZNW 129. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. Pp. xiii + 308. €88.00/$123.50 (hardcover). ISBN 9783110182088. This collection of essays represents a cross-disciplinary collaboration by German scholars from the fields of classics and biblical studies on the topic of ancient historiog-
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raphy. It is the product of the conference held January, 23–24, 2004, in Erlangen, Germany, on the theme of the beginnings of Christian historiography. The introductory essay by Eve-Marie Becker, entitled “Historiographieforschung und Evangelienforschung: Zur Einführung in die Thematik,” states the volume’s central question, sketches its background, and outlines a strategy to address it. Scrutinizing origin quests in general, the present investigation is framed by Becker as an attempt to understand ancient historiography’s “structural hermeneutic”—a way forward from binary approaches such as history versus textual legacy (3), thought versus production (4), event versus narration (5), speech versus writing (5), myth versus history (6), and past and present (7). As a means of organizing the material presented in the papers, Becker divides historiographical approaches to the canonical Gospels into five parts: (1) early research on the historical Jesus (9–10); (2) the question of genre designation from the work of Franz Overbeck (1882) and F. Leo (1901) to the latest assessments of this question (10–14); (3) the debate about myth versus history (14–15); (4) concerns represented in modern research on historiography; and, (5) the influence of contemporary history on the writings of the evangelists. Although each essay cannot be treated fully here, highlights follow, emphasizing the contributions by Becker and Schröter that address the volume’s topic most directly. The first two pieces are theoretical in nature, offering general perspectives on ancient historiography. As an apt way to begin, Martin Mulsow’s essay, “Zur Geschichte der Anfangsgeschichten,” petitions for greater clarity with regard to the volume’s foundational question. Mulsow states: “Der Anfang der Geschichte der Frage nach den Anfängen der Geschichtsschreibung liegt sicherlich weit zurück” (19). Beginnings, according to Mulsow, lie in the distant past if we seek, for example, the first in a long list of historians or the inventor of the discipline itself. Beginnings are less distant, however, if apprehended in the modern sense of the formation of the concept of history or historical awareness (19). Hans-Joachim Gehrke’s essay, “Die Bedeutung der (antiken) Historiographie für die Entwicklung des Geschichtsbewußtseins,” takes up foundational questions for pursuing the meaning of ancient history for the construction of historical consciousness, asking how, for example, scientific classifications such as truth versus legend or history versus myth might apply. Canvassing theories regarding the origins of historiography in ancient epic and related genres, Gehrke focuses on the impact of social history on historical consciousness. Gehrke’s conclusion lists what he views as differences between Greek and early Christian historiography, such as that Greek historiography relies less on canon than Christian literature and that in Greek historiography the distance between past and present and present and future is negligible (50–51). In the end, Gehrke opts against comparative approaches in favor of viewing texts on a case-by-case basis. He concludes: “Und wir? Ich denke, wir können das mit einem lachenden und einem weinenden Auge sehen. Jedenfalls können wir uns darüber wundern and freuen, daß die uns erhaltenen Autoren womöglich nicht repräsentativ waren, sich aber zu einem Ethos der Wahrheitssuche im Sinne ihrer eigenen Tradition bekannten” (51). Markus Witte’s essay, “Von den Anfängen der Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament—Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Diskussion neuerer Gesamtentwürfe,” takes up the question of the beginnings of historiography in the Hebrew Scriptures, tracing them chronologically through the events of Israel’s history. Burkhard Meissner’s “Anfänge und
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frühe Entwicklungen der griechischen Historiographie” revisits some of the ideas of Gehrke’s essay but uses a less theoretical approach, tracing the origins of Greek historiography in Hekataios’s forerunner, Anaximander, through Hecateus of Miletus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and others. (This essay contains an extensive bibliography on these authors [107–9, n. 78]). Andreas Mehl’s contribution, “Geschichtsschreibung in und über Rom,” accomplishes parallel work to Meissner’s for early Roman historiography, treating mainly Quintus Fabius Pictor (117–23) and Marcus Porcius Cato (123–28), closing with a discussion of two important questions: (1) How and to what extent was Roman history world- and universal-history? (2) To what extent was Roman history oriented to a purpose? Franz Römer’s “Biographisches in der Geschichtsschreibung der frühen römischen Kaiserzeit” treats the relationship between biography and historiography in the early Roman Empire, a question frequently considered of importance for understanding the generic strategy of the four Gospels. Proceeding roughly chronologically, Oda Wischmeyer’s “Orte der Geschichte und der Geschichtsschreibung in der frühjüdischen Literatur,” Beate Ego’s “Vergangenheit im Horizont eschatologischer Hoffnung: Die Tiervision (1 Hen 85–90) als Beispiel apokalyptischer Geschichtskonzeption,” and Hermann Lichtenberger’s “Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtserzählung im 1. und 2. Makkabäerbuch” all address historiography in terms of different Jewish texts. Wischmeyer references not only authors such as Philo and Josephus, but also Demetrius, Eupolemus, Artapanus, and Pseudo-Eupolemus. Ego takes up the very promising topic of history in terms of the eschatological horizon of hope in 1 Enoch 85–90. Finally, on the basis of eight observations, a common element of which is theology (e.g., miracle, martyrdom, atonement [211]), Lichtenberger problematizes the thesis that 1 and 2 Maccabees represent historiography: “Dies alles zusammengenommen weckt erhebliche Zweifel, ob hier tatsächlich Geschichtsschreibung vorliegt” (211). He highlights in particular a difficulty with miraculous events that he supports with a citation by Aristotle on tragedy (i.e., Poet. 15.54b; 211 n. 30). Clearly the operative definition of historiography in this article is narrow. An excursus entitled “Jason von Kyrene und der Epitomator” entertains specific questions concerning the authorship of 2 Maccabees (208–11). Eve-Marie Becker’s “Der jüdisch-römische Krieg (66–70 n. Chr.) und das MarkusEvangelium: Zu den ‘Anfängen’ frühchristlicher Historiographie” and Jens Schröter’s “Lukas als Historiograph: Das lukanische Doppelwerk und die Entdeckung der christlichen Heilsgeschichte” are the only two essays in the volume that address the book’s central question of the beginnings of early Christian historiography directly and substantially. On the basis of a post-destruction date for the Gospel of Mark, Becker argues that the extant Gospel of Mark represents the beginning of early Christian historiography. It is, according to Becker, the immediate result of the destruction of the temple, which, like other historical events of such magnitude (she makes an argument for this scale), had institutional, cultic-ritualistic, theological, and literary effects (225). On the literary effect of the Jewish war with Rome, Becker cites Fergus Millar that this war “gave rise to by far the most important historical works written in the first century AD, the Jewish War, Antiquities and Autobiography” (The Roman Near East: 31 BC—AD 337 [Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1993], 234). Becker borrows Millar’s idea for early Christianity, arguing that, likewise, the Jewish war with Rome—specifically the subsequent
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decoupling of Judaism and earliest Christianity and the loss of authority on the part of the earliest Christian witnesses—gave rise to the earliest Christian historical work, the Gospel of Mark (236). A minor criticism is Becker’s contrast, “Markus arbeitet nur nicht historiographisch, sondern durch die Komposition und Redaktion seiner Quellen deutet und bewältigt er die Geschichte seit Jesu Tod” (235)—which makes little sense in terms of ancient historiographical practice. Schröter’s esssay begins by presenting the communis opinio of Luke-Acts as a unified two-volume work (237). He notes the difficulty (past and present) of designating one genre (e.g., historiography or biography) for both parts, arguing that the author of LukeActs adopts (and adapts) the Markan Jesus narratives as a single part of a more encompassing historical work. Schröter stresses the value of Luke-Acts as “story” over “discourse” (244), often opting for “Geschichtsdarstellung” as a descriptive term (e.g., 261). He makes the case that both parts of the double-work have the other in view, claiming that is precisely how Luke-Acts is historiography. That said, Schröter subscribes to no sharp boundary between historiography and other genres, such as poetry and fable. He concludes the essay with his belief that Luke-Acts—events in the lives of early Christians—represents “theological historiography” from an “israelitisch-jüdischer Perspektive” comparable to 2 Maccabees and Josephus (261). All too common in German New Testament scholarship today, the impact of Hellenistic and early-Roman-period culture is largely overlooked. The essays conclude with two short pieces on post-NT historiography. Wolfgang Wischmeyer’s “Wahrnehmungen von Geschichte in der christlichen Literatur zwischen Lukas und Eusebius: Die chronographische Form der Bischofslisten” contains interesting observations on the relationship between, and understandings of, time and history. Jörg Ulrich’s “Eusebius als Kirchengeschichtsschreiber” takes Eusebius’s church history as only one aspect of his greater apologetic enterprise, involving logos theology and its role in cosmic history (277). This volume is to be recommended to scholars pursuing the current conversation about ancient historiography and the NT. It provides excellent scope and coherence and reflects up-to-date research. If there is any hesitation, it has to do with synthesis: whether the relationship between the volume’s central question about the beginnings of Christian historiography is ever really negotiated in terms of the rich background of ancient historiography provided. That said, the book remains an important new tool for future investigations of the topic. Clare K. Rothschild Lewis University, Chicago, IL 60615
The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? by James R. Davila. JSJSup 105. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Pp. vi + 278. $142.00 (hardcover). ISBN 9004137521. This innovative work by James Davila focuses on the tricky problem of the religious origins of “Old Testament pseudepigrapha.” It provides scholars and students of pseudepigraphic literature not only with a new, well-thought-out methodology in order to
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approach these texts but also important case studies. However, the interest of this book exceeds the scope of the pseudepigraphic corpus. Indeed, it offers important insight into the difficult (and occasionally painful) question of how to categorize late antique religious forms of identity and community. The issue of the provenance has been addressed in the past, for example by Marinus De Jonge and Robert Kraft. Elaborating on his predecessors’ works, Davila questions two widespread assumptions: (1) that a lack of explicitly Christian features (e.g., references to Christ) in an OT pseudepigraphon indicates that it is Jewish; and (2) that Christian features that can be removed from an OT pseudepigraphon without damage to the sense should lead us to consider them Christian interpolations in a Jewish work. According to Davila, who follows Kraft’s line of argument, the study of the origin of these pseudepigraphic works should begin with the earliest physical evidence for these works, namely, the earliest manuscripts and quotations (as Davila rightfully adds). Elaborating on these insights, in the first part of the book Davila offers a carefully thought out methodology aiming to identify the possible religious origins of OT pseudepigrapha. This methodology is largely based on the recognition of the presence of what he labels “signature features” as well as a rejection of the lack of such signature features as a relevant criterion of identification. In the second part, he implements this methodology to examine a number of these pseudepigrapha. Some readers will perhaps be tempted to understand Davila’s book as an attempt to identify as Christian a certain amount of pseudepigrapha that are usually considered Jewish. Indeed, according to Davila, a pseudepigraphon should be studied primarily in the light of the earliest context in which it is found, and since the earliest evidence in most cases is found in Christian manuscripts, several of these pseudepigrapha, according to Davila, prove to be Christian. As he points out in a footnote, his working hypothesis may appear to conceal “a form of Christian hegemony and [a] Christian expropriation of Jewish traditions” (6 n. 10, quoting Ross Kraemer’s When Aseneth Met Joseph [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998]). Yet Davila’s intellectual rigor should allay anyone’s suspicions of a hidden agenda. First of all, he does not suggest taking the earliest Christian evidence for these pseudepigrapha as a proof of their Christian origins but rather as the starting point from which to work backwards. Second, by laying out a new methodology in order to identify the religious origins of a pseudepigraphon, he in fact contributes to a healthy reassessment of our textual evidence for early Judaism—a central assumption behind his work is that “for the purpose of reconstructing ancient Judaism a false negative is less harmful than a false positive” (7). Needless to say, the use of categories such as “Jewish” and “Christian” in a late antique context poses many problems that are addressed in ch. 1. This chapter is probably the most important one from a methodological point of view. It consists of a discussion of the different religious categories of late antiquity that should be of interest not only to the students of pseudepigraphic literature but also to historians of religion. The questions raised in this chapter focus on a number of issues: What kind of reality do “Judaism” and “Christianity” cover during this period, given the multiplicity in their forms? How can we tell them apart? What are we to do with groups that are close to but not part and parcel of Judaism or Christianity (e.g., sympathizers and God-fearers)? In all cases, Davila is
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careful to insist on the existence of a continuum between “Judaism,” “Christianity,” and “polytheism.” As far as Judaism is concerned, Davila adopts Jonathan Smith’s “polythetic” classification: instead of using an essentialist definition of Judaism, he provides a certain number of criteria from which no single one need be present in every form of Judaism (20). Another section (23) is devoted to “Jews and non-Christian Gentiles.” Admitting that his choice of categories is “to some degree arbitrary,” Davila works with four groups: “proselytes,” “God-fearers,” “sympathizers,” and “syncretistic Jews.” Proselytes as potential authors of OT pseudepigrapha are rightfully regarded by him as Jewish, since the difference is undetectable; God-fearers are taken as potential authors of OT pseudepigrapha; sympathizers can include Hypsistarians, the author of the Poimandres, and authors of Greek magical papyri; and, finally, syncretistic Jews may be represented, albeit with some caution, by Artapanos. This last category seems to me to be incorrect and irrelevant to Davila’s purpose. The idea of a continuum between Jews and polytheists also makes it useless. In my view, just as a Jewish proselyte should be viewed as a Jewish author, a syncretistic Jew should be seen as a Jewish author. As for Jewish-Christians, Davila adopts E. Brown’s suggestion that we must think in terms of a continuum between (Mosaic law) observant and nonobservant Christians rather than between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. Indeed, in this case, too, the various forms of Jewish Christianity and judaizing Gentile Christianity make it epistemologically impossible to identify a work as “Jewish-Christian.” In addition, Davila discusses possible Samaritan and Galilean authorship (based on Richard Horsley’s views of the survival of Israelite culture in Galilean culture of the Hasmonean period, which Davila rejects). Choosing the “continuum” as a model in order to understand the various religious groups that could have authored OT pseudepigrapha, Davila emphasizes the complexity of the religious phenomenon of this period. This complexity makes it highly difficult (impossible?) to identify the origin of a pseudepigraphon. We are thus left with the question of whether it is epistemologically and methodologically relevant to even try to determine the religious provenance of this literature. It seems that Davila’s main problem is that the “real,” “historical” religious identity of the author is, in many cases, not adequately reflected in the text she or he has written. Only works by “boundary-maintaining” authors (as Davila puts it) may be identified. Yet even in this case this endeavor may prove to be difficult. For example, Davila shows in ch. 2 how a “boundary-maintaining” Christian author such as Augustine could produce a text that may look authentically Jewish. He shows that undeniably Christian authors, such as Ephrem, dealing with OT topics and characters felt no need to insert Christian signature features into their productions. Although Davila uses this demonstration as an argument to question the identification of a number of pseudepigrapha as Jewish, I think it points even more to the difficulty of attempting to solve the question of the provenance. Regarding this question, it seems to me that Davila’s book faces two main difficulties, and I am not sure they can be solved. First of all, there is a discrepancy between the “historical” religious continuum analyzed by Davila and the manner in which the beliefs and practice of the different communities and individuals included in this continuum are reflected in their literary production. In addition, a literary production reflects not only
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the supposed religious identity of its author but also the sources used, which may not belong precisely to the same religious sphere (cf., e.g., the case of the Christian authors who used Jewish sources). Second, there is a contradiction between Davila’s use of the model of the continuum in order to describe the religious world of late antiquity and the use of fixed religious categories (e.g., Jewish, Christian, sympathizer, Gentile judaizing Christian, etc.) required by his endeavor to identify the religious origin of the OT pseudepigrapha. Indeed, the concept of a continuum implies that there are many nuances in the late antique religious experience and that they hardly let themselves be pigeonholed. In contrast, the process of provenance identification necessitates clear categories. These problems occasionally appear in the practical cases exposed in the second part of the book (see below). In the second part of the book Davila turns to a number of examples of pseudepigrapha in which he applies his methodology. First he confirms the Jewishness of several writings that are usually accepted as Jewish, such as the Letter of Aristeas, and the Philonic and Josephan corpus. This theoretical exercise serves to legitimize the methodological principles laid out in the previous chapters. In addition to these texts, the Jewish provenance of other writings is on some occasions asserted and on others denied. For instance, Davila raises doubts about the Jewish origin of sections from the Sibylline Oracles 3 and 5 and from the Story of Sozimus and of the full text of Pseudo-Phocylides, Testament of Job, Testament of Abraham, and Wisdom of Solomon. I do find some discrepancies between theory and practice when it comes to Davila’s analysis of various texts. Let us take the example of 2 Baruch. Davila argues, against Rivka Nir’s new study (The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003]), that 2 Baruch should be considered Jewish because of the central importance it gives to the law and its “robust nationalist identity.” Davila also uses the argument of the lack of Christian signature features (128–30) to claim the Jewish origin of 2 Baruch. I find these arguments problematic because Davila’s reasoning contradicts his methodology. For instance, he argues that a lack of Christian signature features is not a valid argument to identify a text as Jewish. Moreover, it seems to me that by discussing this work in the framework of the clear-cut categories of Judaism versus Christianity, he contradicts his discussion of the religious continuum connecting Judaism, Christianity, and polytheism. This indicates, in my opinion, the difficulty of (1) avoiding the use of the argument e silentio, and (2) escaping arbitrary categories constructed in light of our contemporary knowledge of religious experience. Despite his discussion of the ancient religious continuum mentioned above, Davila seems, as it were, stuck in the everlasting debate of “Jewish” versus “Christian” origin. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that Davila significantly enriches the discussion of the religious origins of the pseudepigrapha by attempting to think “outside” of these categories. Indeed, he offers one of the only serious methodological discussions of the possibility that some pseudepigrapha were authored by God-fearers or Gentiles, proselytes and sympathizers to Judaism. Although a lack of evidence makes it impossible to reach any definite conclusions in most cases, it is certainly worth taking his hypotheses into consideration.
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There are many other reasons Davila’s book deserves the attention of the scholarly community. Indeed, the methodology proposed in his book lays the groundwork for new research on the pseudepigrapha. Moreover, as Davila rightly puts it, “the approach in this book allows us to articulate more clearly what we know and do not know, and how we know what we know and why we do not know what we do not know” (233). However, the subject he tackles is a very complicated one because it is closely related to our (re)construction of religious categories. As I pointed out earlier, the discrepancy between the “historical” religious identity of an author (or community) and the manner in which this identity is reflected in pseudepigraphic texts should lead us to change the way we study this literature. It is very difficult to determine the origin of this literature, even if we start from the earliest material evidence, that is, in most cases, Christian manuscripts. A more secure approach may be to focus on the reception of pseudepigraphic literature in Christianity. Indeed, this is a fascinating story that stands on firmer ground. Sabrina Inowlocki L’Université Libre de Bruxelles, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
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Eve-Marie Becker Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie
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JESUS – History & Meaning Jesus & Utopia Looking for the Kingdom of God in the Roman World MARY ANN BEAVIS
Offering a dramatic new direction to old questions in the historical-Jesus quest, Mary Ann Beavis examines biblical contexts as well as ancient utopian thought and communities to define the road from Basileia to Ekklesia. 0-8006-3562-0 224 pp paperback $22.00
Paul on the Cross Reconstructing the Apostle’s Story of Redemption DAVID A. BRONDOS
Brondos maintains that Jesus’ death and its meaning form part of the larger story that culminates in the redemption of Israel and the world. It is this larger story and, in particular, what precedes and follows Jesus’ death on the cross, which makes Jesus’ death redemptive for Paul. 0-8006-3788-7 256 pp paperback $20.00
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Annual Index Volume 125 (2006) I Articles and Critical Notes Atkinson, Kenneth, “Taxo’s Martyrdom and the Role of the Nuntius in the Testament of Moses: Implications for Understanding the Role of Other Intermediary Figures,” 453 Bautch, Kelley Coblentz, “What Becomes of the Angels’ ‘Wives’? A Text-Critical Study of 1 Enoch 19:2,” 766 Billings, Bradly S., “The Disputed Words in the Lukan Institution Narrative (Luke 22:19b– 20): A Sociological Answer to a Textual Problem,” 507 Brown, Jeannine K., “Just a Busybody? A Look at the Greco-Roman Topos of Meddling for Defining ajllotriepivskopo" in 1 Peter 4:15,” 549 Brown, Scott G., “The Question of Motive in the Case against Morton Smith,” 351 Busch, Austin, “Questioning and Conviction: Double-voiced Discourse in Mark 3:22– 30,” 477 Callan, Terrance, “A Note on 2 Peter 1:19–20,” 143 Cortez, Felix H., “From the Holy to the Most Holy Place: The Period of Hebrews 9:6–10 and the Day of Atonement as a Metaphor of Transition,” 527 Dick, Michael B., “The Neo-Assyrian Royal Lion Hunt and Yahweh’s Answer to Job,” 243 Dowd, Sharyn, and Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “The Significance of Jesus’ Death in Mark: Narrative Context and Authorial Audience,” 271 Gray, Patrick, “Presidential Addresses of the Society of Biblical Literature: A Quasquicentennial Review,” 167 Hill, Andrew E., “On David’s ‘Taking’ and ‘Leaving’ Concubines: (2 Samuel 5:13; 15:16),” 129 Knowles, Melody D., “A Woman at Prayer: A Critical Note on Psalm 131:2b,” 385 Kraemer, Ross S., “Implicating Herodias and Her Daughter in the Death of John the Baptizer: A (Christian) Theological Strategy,” 321 Kurek-Chomycz, Dominika A., “Is There an ‘Anti-Priscan’ Tendency in the Manuscripts? Some Textual Problems with Prisca and Aquila,” 107 Lemos, T. M., “Shame and Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible,” 225 Lenzi, Alan, “Proverbs 8:22–31: Three Perspectives on Its Composition,” 687 Leuchter, Mark, “Jeroboam the Ephratite,” 51 Malbon, Elizabeth Struthers. See Dowd, Sharyn Marcus, Joel, “Crucifixion as Parodic Exaltation,” 73 McDonough, Sean M., “Small Change: Saul to Paul, Again,” 390 Moffitt, David M., “Righteous Bloodshed, Matthew’s Passion Narrative, and the Temple’s Destruction: Lamentations as a Matthean Intertext,” 299 O’Day, Gail R., “Editorial Reflections,” 153
845
846
Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 4 (2006)
Osiek, Carolyn, “Catholic or catholic? Biblical Scholarship at the Center,” 5 Pakkala, Juha, “Zedekiah’s Fate and the Dynastic Succession,” 443 Penner, Todd C. See Yoder, Christine Roy Saddington, D. B., “The Centurion in Matthew 8:5–13: Consideration of the Proposal of Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., and Tat-Siong Benny Liew,” 140 Spitaler, Peter, “Analogical Reasoning in Romans 7:2–4: A Woman and the Believers in Rome,” 715 Stackert, Jeffrey, “Why Does Deuteronomy Legislate Cities of Refuge? Asylum in the Covenant Collection (Exodus 21:12–14) and Deuteronomy (19:1–13),” 23 Steiner, Richard C., “Bishlam’s Archival Search Report in Nehemiah’s Archive: Multiple Introductions and Reverse Chronological Order as Clues to the Origin of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4–6,” 641 Still, Todd D., “Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class,” 781 Weeks, Stuart, “The Context and Meaning of Proverbs 8:30a,” 433 Whitekettle, Richard, “Taming the Shrew, Shrike, and Shrimp: The Form and Function of Zoological Classification in Psalm 8,” 749 Yamasaki, Gary, “Point of View in a Gospel Story: What Difference Does It Make? Luke 19:1–10 as a Test Case,” 89 Yoder, Christine Roy, and Todd C. Penner, “Book Reviews in the Journal of Biblical Literature: 125 Years in Retrospect,” 179 II. Book Reviews Allen, James P., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Michael S. Moore) 569 Allison, Dale C., Jr., Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present (Leroy Andrew Huizenga) 816 Aus, Roger David, Imagery of Triumph and Rebellion in 2 Corinthians 2:14–17 and Elsewhere in the Epistle: An Example of the Combination of Greco-Roman and Judaic Traditions in the Apostle Paul (James G. Crossley) 821 ———, Matthew 1–2 and the Virginal Conception in Light of Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaic Traditions on the Birth of Israel’s First Redeemer Moses (James G. Crossley) 821 ———, My Name Is ‘Legion’: Palestinian Judaic Traditions in Mark 5:1–20 and Other Gospel Texts (James G. Crossley) 821 Becker, Eve-Marie, ed., Die antike Historiographie und die Anfänge der christlichen Geschichtsschreibung (Clare K. Rothschild) 824 Bergen, Wesley J., Reading Ritual: Leviticus in Postmodern Culture (Ayse Tuzlak) 797 Boccaccini, Gabriele, ed., Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (James E. Harding) 593 Brant, Jo-Ann, Dialogue and Drama: Elements of Greek Tragedy in the Fourth Gospel (Dennis Sylva) 604 Carr, David M., Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (James A. Sanders) 809 Crenshaw, James L., Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil (W. H. Bellinger, Jr.) 584
Annual Index
847
Davila, James R., The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? (Sabrina Inowlocki) 827 De Troyer, Kristin, Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte, eds., Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity (Ayse Tuzlak) 797 Edelman, Diana, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (Albert L. A. Hogeterp) 581 Esler, Philip, New Testament Theology: Communion and Community (C. Kavin Rowe) 403 Friesen, Steven J. See Schowalter, Daniel N. Gane, Roy E., Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy (Christian A. Eberhart) 573 Gelardini, Gabriella, ed., Hebrews: Contemporary Methods—New Insights (Patrick Gray) 608 Gilders, William K., Blood Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Ayse Tuzlak) 797 Gnilka, Joachim, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (C. Kavin Rowe) 400 Grabbe, Lester L., A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Volume 1, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah (Jon L. Berquist) 579 Hahn, Ferdinand, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (C. Kavin Rowe) 394 Hasel, Michael G., Military Practice and Polemic: Israel’s Laws of Warfare in Near Eastern Perspective (Jacob L. Wright) 577 Herbert, Judith A. See De Troyer, Kristin Holladay, Carl R., A Critical Introduction to the New Testament: Interpreting the Message and Meaning of Jesus Christ (Jouette M. Bassler) 599 Jackson, David R., Enochic Judaism: Three Defining Paradigm Exemplars (James E. Harding) 587 Johnson, Judith Ann. See De Troyer, Kristin Killebrew, Ann E., Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines and Early Israel 1300–1100 B.C.E. (William G. Dever) 416 Klawans, Jonathan, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Ayse Tuzlak) 797 Korte, Anne-Marie. See De Troyer, Kristin Luz, Ulrich, Studies in Matthew (Leroy Andrew Huizenga) 816 MacDonald, Margaret Y. See Osiek, Carolyn Marshall, I. Howard, New Testament Theology: Many Witnesses, One Gospel (C. Kavin Rowe) 404 Moore, Stephen D., and Fernando F. Segovia, eds., Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections (Joseph A. Marchal) 622 Orlov, Andrei A., The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (James E. Harding) 587 Osiek, Carolyn, and Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Laura Nasrallah) 617 Römer, Thomas, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction (John Van Seters) 805
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Schowalter, Daniel N., and Steven J. Friesen, eds., Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Richard E. DeMaris) 614 Segovia, Fernando F. See Moore, Stephen D. Strecker, Georg, Theology of the New Testament (C. Kavin Rowe) 400 Stuhlmacher, Peter, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments (C. Kavin Rowe) 398 Tulloch, Janet H. See Osiek, Carolyn Vouga, François, Une théologie du Nouveau Testament (C. Kavin Rowe) 401 Watson, Francis, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (Susan Eastman) 610 Weinfeld, Moshe, The Place of the Law in the Religion of Ancient Israel (Patrick D. Miller) 570 Wilckens, Ulrich, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (C. Kavin Rowe) 396 Zevit, Ziony, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (Joel S. Burnett) 410 III. Reviewers Bassler, Jouette M., 599 Bellinger, W. H., Jr., 584 Berquist, Jon L., 579 Burnett, Joel S., 410 Crossley, James G., 829 DeMaris, Richard E., 614 Dever, William G., 416 Eastman, Susan, 610 Eberhart, Christian A., 573 Gray, Patrick, 608 Harding, James E., 587, 593 Hogeterp, Albert L. A., 581 Huizenga, Leroy Andrew, 816
Inowlocki, Sabrina, 827 Marchal, Joseph A., 622 Miller, Patrick D., 570 Moore, Michael S., 569 Nasrallah, Laura, 617 Rothschild, Clare K., 824 Rowe, C. Kavin, 393 Sanders, James A., 809 Sylva, Dennis, 604 Tuzlak, Ayse, 797 Van Seters, John, 805 Wright, Jacob L., 577
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JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE
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EDITORIAL BOARD Term Expiring 2006: THOMAS B. DOZEMAN, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH 45406 PAUL B. DUFF, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 CAROLE R. FONTAINE, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 JUDITH LIEU, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom MARTTI NISSINEN, University of Helsinki, FIN-00014 Finland KATHLEEN M. O’CONNOR, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031 EUNG CHUN PARK, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA 94960 TURID KARLSEN SEIM, University of Oslo, N-0315 Oslo, Norway BENJAMIN D. SOMMER, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60645 VINCENT L. WIMBUSH, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711 2007: MOSHE BERNSTEIN, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201 JOHN ENDRES, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94709 JO ANN HACKETT, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 MATTHIAS HENZE, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251 ROBERT KUGLER, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219 TIMOTHY LIM, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 2LX Scotland STEPHEN MOORE, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940 STEPHEN PATTERSON, Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO 63119 EMERSON POWERY, Lee University, Cleveland, TN 37312 ADELE REINHARTZ, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada RICHARD STEINER, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033-3201 SZE-KAR WAN, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA 02459 2008: ELLEN B. AITKEN, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T5 Canada MICHAEL JOSEPH BROWN, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 TERENCE L. DONALDSON, Wycliffe College, Toronto, ON M5S 1H7 Canada STEVEN FRIESEN, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211 JENNIFER GLANCY, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York 13214 A. KATHERINE GRIEB, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA 22304 ARCHIE C. C. LEE, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin New Territories, Hong Kong SAR DANIEL MARGUERAT, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland RICHARD D. NELSON, Perkins School of Theology, So. Methodist Univ., Dallas, TX 75275 DAVID L. PETERSEN, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322 YVONNE SHERWOOD, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK, University of Durham, Durham, England, DH1 3RS, United Kingdom PATRICIA K. TULL, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY 40205 Editorial Assistant: Monica Brady, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 President of the Society: Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304; Vice President: Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542; Chair, Research and Publications Committee: Benjamin G. Wright III, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015; Executive Director: Kent H. Richards, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329. The Journal of Biblical Literature (ISSN 0021–9231) is published quarterly. The annual subscription price is US$35.00 for members and US$150.00 for nonmembers. Institutional rates are also available. For information regarding subscriptions and membership, contact: Society of Biblical Literature, Customer Service Department, P.O. Box 133158, Atlanta, GA 30333. Phone: 866-727-9955 (toll free) or 404-727-9498. FAX: 404-727-2419.E-mail: [email protected]. For information concerning permission to quote, editorial and business matters, please see the Spring issue, p. 2. The Hebrew font used in JBL is SBL Hebrew and is available from www.sbl-site.org/Resources/default.aspx. The Greek and transliteration fonts used in this work are available from www.linguistsoftware.com, 425-775-1130. The JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE (ISSN 0021–9231) is published quarterly by the Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329. Periodical postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Society of Biblical Literature, P.O. Box 133158, Atlanta, GA 30333. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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VOLUME 125, NO. 4
Bishlam’s Archival Search Report in Nehemiah’s Archive: Multiple Introductions and Reverse Chronological Order as Clues to the Origin of the Aramaic Letters in Ezra 4–6 Richard C. Steiner 641–685 Proverbs 8:22–31: A Woman and the Believers in Rome Alan Lenzi 687–714 Analogical Reasoning in Romans 7:2–4: Three Perspectives on Its Composition Peter Spitaler 715–747 Taming the Shrew, Shrike, and Shrimp: The Form and Function of Zoological Classification in Psalm 8 Richard Whitekettle 749–765 What Becomes of the Angel’s “Wives”? A Text-Critical Study of 1 Enoch 19:2 Kelley Coblentz Bautch 766–780 Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class Todd D. Still 781–795 Book Reviews
797–831
Annual Index
845–848 US ISSN:0021-9231
th anniversary issue