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Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28 brill.nl/dsd A Document from “Year 4 of the Destruction of the House of Israel” Es...

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Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

brill.nl/dsd

A Document from “Year 4 of the Destruction of the House of Israel” Esther Eshel,1 Hanan Eshel (‫)ז"ל‬,* and Ada Yardeni2 1

Department of Bible, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 52900 Israel [email protected] 2 72 Borochov Str., Jerusalem 96622, Israel [email protected]

Abstract The article presents a document, a receipt of a ketubba and a waiver of claims, that bears the date “Year 4 of the Destruction of the House of Israel.” The counting is from after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, and the document thus would date to 140 c.e. The discussion consists of text, translation, notes on readings, commentary, and palaeographical description. Keywords Papyrus; Bar Kokhba; Jewish documents; Hebrew; Aramaic

* Hanan Eshel passed away on April 8, 2010, at 51 years of age. The editors of DSD remember him as an active and collegial member of the editorial board, which he joined in 1998. Throughout the years, he substantially contributed to the journal, as an author or, more often, co-author, of no less than seven articles, but even more so by calling attention to articles written in Hebrew that deserved publication in an international journal, and by encouraging young Israeli scholars to submit to our journal. His involvement with DSD till his very end is felt in this issue, which contains both this article, co-authored by Hanan with his wife Esti, and with Ada Yardeni, and a contribution by Yoav Farhi, whom Hanan encouraged to send his paper to DSD. The editors hope to memorialize Hanan’s contributions to the ﬁeld in the 2011 DSD thematic issue on History, Archaeology, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851710X503530

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

1. Introduction The subject of this article is a document that bears the date “Year 4 of the Destruction of the House of Israel.”1 The use of this expression “of the Destruction of the House of Israel” was not previously attested. The known formulas from coins and documents dated to the time of the Jewish Revolts were “to the redemption of Israel (‫ ;”)לגאלת ישראל‬and “to the freedom of Israel (‫ ;”)לחרת ישראל‬and “to the freedom of Jerusalem (‫)לחרת ירושלם‬.”2 Synagogue inscriptions and Jewish tombstones from the Byzantine period sometimes include a dating formula “of the destruction of the Temple (‫)לחורבן בית המקדש‬.”3 The formula “of the destruction of the house of Israel” could be understood as counting from either the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 c.e., or from the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 c.e. Since the document is written in a developed script, and it includes forms characteristic of the second century c.e., and because the term “the house of Israel” appears in two Bar-Kokhba letters, we may conclude that the counting was from after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt. The places named in the document are ancient sites in the region south of Hebron: Bet ʿAmar, Upper Anab, and Aristobulias (see map). It is thus likely that the document was found in one of the Refuge Caves in the upper region of the Judean desert, bordering on the south of Hebron region, perhaps in the Cave of the Tetradrachm.4 It appears that two other 1

For the editio princeps of this document, see E. Eshel, H. Eshel, and A. Yardeni, “A Document From ‘Year Four of the Destruction of the House of Israel’ in Which a Widow Declared That She Received All Her Rights,” Cathedra 132 (2009): 5–24 [Hebrew]. On the 6th of May, 2009, it was reported in the Israeli daily newspapers, and in the international media, that this document had been conﬁscated by the anti-theft unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Thanks are due to Professor Katzoﬀ for his helpful remarks on this paper. 2 H. Eshel, “The Dates Used during the Bar Kokhba Revolt,” in The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered (ed. P. Schäfer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 93–105. 3 J. Naveh, On Stone and Mosaic: The Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions from Ancient Synagogues (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1978), 31–33 [Hebrew]; idem, “Seven New Epitaphs From Zoar,” Tarbiz 69 (2000): 619–35 [Hebrew]. 4 On the Cave of the Tetradrachm, see H. Eshel and D. Amit, “Bar Kokhba Period Finds From the Tetradrachm Cave,” in Refuge Caves of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (Tel Aviv: Israel Exploration Society, 1998), 189–204 [Hebrew]. Unauthorized excavations took place in this cave also in the course of 2008–2009.

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documents that were found in this cave had been brought to the cave by residents of Yaqim: XḤ ev/Se 9 (written in Aramaic) and XḤ ev/Se 69 (in Greek). In the Greek document, as in the document under discussion, the village Aristobulias is mentioned.5 We do not rule out the possibility that the document was found in another refuge cave near the Cave of the Tetradrachm that is not yet known to scholars. If the document is indeed correctly dated to 140 c.e., it would serve as evidence that Jews continued to use the refuge caves after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, during the period of the Hadrianic decrees,6 and that there were Jews who remained in the region south of Hebron after the Bar Kokhba revolt.7 In the document before us, Miriam the daughter of Jacob declared that she had received that which was due to her from the property of her husband, Saul the son of Simeon, and hence, her brother-in-law Absalom son of Simeon was permitted to sell the assets that were in the family’s possession. This type of document is termed a receipt of a ketubba. Examples of such contracts are known from later periods.8 Since we propose that this document was found in the Cave of the Tetradrachm, we recommend that it be assigned the same siglum as the two documents originating from Yaqim. We thus suggest the siglum XḤ ev/Se 51 for this document. On scrolls and documents found or published in the last few years, see H. Eshel, “Gleaning of Scrolls from the Judean Desert,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context (ed. C. Hempel; STDJ 90; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 49-87. 5 H. M. Cotton and A. Yardeni, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek Documentary Texts from Naḥ al Ḥ ever and Other Sites, with an Appendix Containing Alleged Qumran Texts (The Seiyâl Collection II) (DJD 27; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 38–51, 250–74. 6 S. Lieberman, “On Persecution of the Jewish Religion,” in Salo Wittmayer Baron, Jubilee Volume (ed. S. Lieberman; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), 3:213–45 [Hebrew]. 7 On the question of whether the settlements south of Hebron in which synagogues have been found (Eshtemoh, Susiya, Maon, Rimmon, and Anim) represent continuity of Jewish settlement in this region, or a return by individuals in the beginning of the 3rd century c.e., see D. Amit and H. Eshel, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Southern Hebron Mountains,” in Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies, 25 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1996), 463–79, at 468 [Hebrew]. 8 A. Gulak, A Collection of Legal Deeds Used in Israel—Oṣar ha-Sheṭarot ( Jerusalem: Hapoalim, 1926), 64–65, 107–10 [Hebrew].

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

The Sages sought to minimize the number of such receipts because of the problems of keeping these documents forever. Nevertheless, the Sages did admit that in certain cases it was impossible to avoid writing such receipts.9 The only roughly similar document from the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt is XḤ ev/Se 13.10 Since the document was found in a state of near-complete preservation, we may deduce that it was not hidden in the dirt of the cave, but rather in a leather purse or a waterskin, like the archives found by the excavation team of Yigael Yadin in the Cave of Letters in 1960 and 1961. It is thus likely that additional documents belonging to Absalom the son of Simeon were found together with this document, and we may hope that such will come to light in the near future. Examination of the archives found in the Judean desert reveals marked diﬀerences between those of men and those of women. Women primarily saved documents pertaining to family matters, whereas men sought safekeeping for military correspondence and documents dealing with land sales and leases.11 The document under discussion deals with personal status, and as such it would have been appropriate to a women’s archive; it was given to Absalom son of Simeon.12 Because the excellent condition of 9

A. Gulak, Das Urkundenwesen im Talmud ( Jerusalem: Mass, 1935), 148–50. A. Yardeni, ‘Naḥ al Ṣeʾelim’ Documents ( Judean Desert Studies; Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University, 1995), 54–60 [Hebrew]; Cotton and Yardeni, DJD 27:65–70. See also T. Ilan, “Notes and Observations On a Newly Published Divorce Bill from the Judaean Desert,” HTR 89 (1996): 195–202; eadem, “Notes and Observations: A Correction,” HTR 90 (1997): 225; H. M. Cotton and E. Qimron, “XḤ ev/Se ar 13 of 134 or 135 C.E.: A Wife’s Renunciation of Claims,” JJS 49 (1998): 108–18; A. Schremer, “Papyrus Ṣeʾelim 13 and the Question of Divorce Initiated by Women in Ancient Jewish Halakha,” Zion 63 (1998): 377– 90 [Hebrew]; idem, “Divorce in Papyrus Ṣeʾelim 13 Once Again: A Reply To Tal Ilan,” HTR 91 (1998): 193–202; T. Ilan, “The Provocative Approach Once Again: A Response to Adiel Schremer,” HTR 91 (1998): 203–4; J. A. Fitzmyer, “The So-Called Aramaic Divorce Text from Wadi Seiyal,” Eretz Israel 26 (1999): 16*–22*; R. Brody, “Evidence for Divorce by Jewish Women?” JJS 50 (1999): 230–34; D. I. Brewer, “Jewish Women Divorcing Their Husbands in Early Judaism: The Background to Papyrus Ṣeʾelim 13,” HTR 92 (1999): 349–57. 11 T. Ilan, “Women’s Archives in the Judaean Desert,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery (ed. L. H. Schiﬀman, E. Tov, and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 755–60. 12 In P. Yadin 5 from the Babata Archive, Joseph the son of Joseph acknowledges 10

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the document points to its preservation within a larger collection, we may hope to have more information in the future about the person who preserved this document. The document may be divided into 9 sections, on the basis of its contents: Line 1 Lines 2–3 Line 4 Lines 4–5 Lines 6–7 Lines 7–8 Lines 9–12 Lines 12–15

Date Place and name of the Declarer Name of the Addressee Acknowledgment Speciﬁcation of Assets Receipt; Waiver of Claims Responsibility and Cleansing in Case of a Suit Over the Widow’s Possession Signatures

The document is written in an idiom containing a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic elements.13 The ﬁrst part of the document (lines 1–8) is comprehensible, but the second part (lines 9–12) is diﬃcult to interpret, and we are not certain that we understand it completely.14 The size of the document is 15 × 15 cm.

2. The Text ‫בתרין עשר לכסילו שנת ארבע לחרבן בית ישראל‬ ‫בית עמר מרים ברת יעקוב מסעלב ארמלת‬ ‫שאול בר שמעון שועל מענב העלינה אמרת‬ ‫לאבשלם בר שמעון שועל מן ארשתובול מודה‬ ‫אני לך הימה הזה בכולמא שאהיה לך על יד שאול‬ ‫אחיך שאהיה בעלי קודם כך כתבה וביה וקנין‬

.1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6

a debt that he owes to his nephew, Jesus son of Jesus. See N. Lewis, The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989), 35–40. We are grateful to Prof. Hannah Cotton for directing our attention to P. Yadin 5. 13 Cf. M. Bar Asher, “The Language of the Beit ʿAmar Document,” Cathedra 132 (2009): 25–32 [Hebrew]. He maintains that the document is written in Aramaic, and only the acknowledgment is in Hebrew. 14 A correction of the reading in line 10 (from ‫ כתבא חזה פוטר‬to ‫כתב שהיה‬ ‫ )שטר‬has been oﬀered by Elisha Qimron.

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

‫ומהר תיכול התקבלת ודין ודברים אין בכל‬ ‫מה שאהיה לבעילי קודם כך תיכל התקבלת‬ ‫וכל אדם שאיוהב רשתו לידך על חשבן מאשא‬ ‫כתב שהיה שטר רכושי לותך אלא דין ותשלמתא‬ ‫לך מנכסי ואפר>ע<ך מה לעמת כך וקים לי עליך‬ ‫לעמת כך מרים ברת יעקוב על נ]פש[ה כתבת מן ממרה‬ ‫יהוסף בר שמעון שהד‬ [‫יהורם בר זכריה ]שהד‬ [‫יהוסף בר יעק]וב ספרא‬

.7 .8 .9 .10 .11 .12 .13 .14 .15

3. Translation 1. On the twelfth of Kislev, Year 4 of the Destruction of the House of Israel 2. (in) Bet ʿAmar. Miriam the daughter of Jacob of Shaʿalab(im), the widow of 3. Saul son of Simeon (of the family of ) Shuʿal from Upper Anab, declared 4. to Absalom son of Simeon (of the family of ) Shuʿal from Aristobul(ias): I acknowledge 5. to you this day that all that you had through Saul 6. your brother, who was my husband previously, (the money of the) ketubba and house and possessions 7. and mohar—I have received all, and there is no suit or contest (on my side) concerning all 8. that belonged to my husband formerly. I have received all. 9. And any person who will bring his suit to your hand, on account of that which 10. he wrote, which was a deed of my property with you, if there is no suit, and (then) the payment 11. (I will pay) from my possessions, and I will repay you accordingly. And I swear to you 12. on this. Miriam daughter of Jacob, for herself. I wrote from her statement. 13. Yehosef son of Simeon, witness 14. Yehoram son of Zechariah, [witness] 15. Yehosef son of Jac[ob the scribe]

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

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4. Notes on the Reading Line 1: After the word ‫ בתרי‬there is a vertical line visible on the photograph, which looks like a ﬁnal nun. If this is not a hole or a fold in the papyus, it is possible that the scribe wrote the absolute form ‫ בתרין‬instead of the construct. Line 5: ‫בכולמא‬. The letters kaf and vav might be read as an alef instead, and the mem could be a yod. The word ‫אליא‬, however, would not suit the context. ‫ לך‬a ligature of lamed and kaf. Line 8: The form of the letter bet in ‫ לבעילי‬is unusual. It diﬀers from all the other occurrences of the letter bet in the document. Line 9: In the word ‫שאיוהב‬, the two letters after the relative pronoun ‫שא‬ look like a yod followed by a vav or a resh. Line 10: The ḥ et instead of the ﬁrst he in ‫ שהיה‬is perhaps a scribal error. The shin of ‫ שטר‬is broken at its bottom. In the word ‫תשלמתא‬, mem, tav, and alef are connected, having been written in a single stroke. The form of the alef is unclear. Line 11: The reading and reconstruction of the word ‫ ואפר>ע<ך‬is very uncertain, but the word ﬁts well into the context, and no other convincing reading has as yet been oﬀered. Line 14: [‫יהורם בר זכריה ]שהד‬. This witness signed in an unskilled hand. The letter he looks like a ḥ et in both its occurrences. The vav is written as a diagonal curve, leaning backward. ‫ זכריה‬may alternatively be read as ‫זבדיה‬, with bet instead of kaf and dalet instead of resh.

5. Commentary Line 1 The date ‫—בתרין עשר לכסילו‬If the scribe did indeed write ‫תרין‬, with a ﬁnal nun, this may be an error, the expected construct form being ‫תרי‬.15 ‫—כסילו‬An unusual spelling of the month name ‫כסלו‬. It is diﬃcult to determine whether this spelling indicates vocalization of the samek in this word, or whether it is a scribal error.16 15 16

Bar-Asher, “Language,” 26–27 n. 11. Ibid., 31.

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

‫—שנת ארבע לחרבן בית ישראל‬This dating formula is unique. No other ancient documents have yet been found dated to the destruction of the House of Israel. If the reference would have been to the year 70 c.e., the formula would have speciﬁed the destruction of the Temple and not the “House of Israel.” The phrase “House of Israel”, is known from the Hebrew Bible, and is attested in two Hebrew letters sent during the Bar Kokhba revolt: Mur 42 line 7 reads, ‫“( אהוה שלום וכל בית ישראל‬Be well, and all of the House of Israel [as well]”).17 P. Yadin 49 lines 2–4 read ‫בטב אתן יושב]י[ן אכלין ושתין מן נכסי בית ישראל‬, “In luxury you are dwelling, eating and drinking of the property of the House of Israel.” In the commentary to P. Yadin 49, the editors raise the possibility that the expression “the House of Israel” was used “idiomatically, as a way of designating the network of communities under Shimʿon’s command.”18 Lines 2–3 Place and name of the declarer ‫—בית עמר‬This site is not mentioned in historical sources. On the basis of the reference to upper Anab and Aristobulias, it may be placed south of Hebron. The most likely identiﬁcation is Beit ʿAmra, which is 3 km west of Juttah.19 ‫—מרים ברת יעקוב‬The biblical name Miriam was one of the most popular names for women in the Second Temple period.20 17

Edited by J. T. Milik in Les Grottes de Murabbaʿât (ed. P. Benoit, J. T. Milik and R. de Vaux; DJD 2; Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 155–59; A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic, Hebrew, and Nabatean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert and Related Material (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Dinur Center, 2000), 1:155–56; 2:64. 18 Y. Yadin, J. C. Greenﬁeld, A. Yardeni, and B. A. Levine, The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and NabateanAramaic Papyri ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2002), 284; see also Yardeni, Textbook, 1:165; 2:66. See Tg. Isa. 65:11, where ‫ עזבי יהוה‬was translated as ‫בית‬ ‫ישראל‬. 19 Bar Asher, “The Language of the Beit ʿAmar Document,” 29. On Beit ʿAmra, see M. Kochavi, Judaea, Samaria, and the Golan: Archaeological Survey 1967–1968 ( Jerusalem: Carta, 1972), site 198, p. 71 [Hebrew]. Avi Ofer noted that there are actually three sites in close proximity: Beit ʿAmra South, Beit ʿAmra, and Beit ʿAmra West (“The Highland of Judah during the Biblical Period.” Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 1993. Appendix 2a, pp. 38–39, sites 103–105 [Hebrew]). We are grateful to Dr. Doron Sar-Avi whom we consulted on this matter. The place name may be derived from Ruth 2:15. 20 T. Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity I: Palestine 330 BCE– 200 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 242–48.

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‫—יעקוב‬A biblical name that was also widespread in the Second Temple period. This name usually appears with defective spelling, ‫יעקב‬. The plene spelling ‫ יעקוב‬is found in the Hebrew Bible (Lev 26:42) and in some inscriptions, primarily on ossuaries,21 and on ostraca Nos. 500–501 found at Masada.22 ‫—סעלב‬It appears that Miriam daughter of Jacob was from Shaʿalabim. This site is named in the list of the cities of Dan in Josh 19:42. The name has been preserved in the Arabic Kh. Salhab. In his Onomasticon, Eusebius notes that the name of the place in his time was Σαλαβά.23 After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the site was settled by Samaritans.24 ‫—ארמלת‬The construct form in Aramaic of ‫( ארמלה‬Heb. ‫)אלמנה‬, meaning widow. The nomen rectum is the name of her late husband, Saul the son of Simeon, of the family of Shuʿal. ‫—שאול בר שמעון‬The biblical names Saul and Simeon continued to be in use in the Second Temple period. The name Simeon was one of the most popular names in this period.25 ‫—שועל‬In the Hebrew Bible, this word is used to denote an animal, a place name, and a personal name. The use of animal names as personal names is attested in biblical names such as Caleb (dog), Naḥash (snake), Akhan (snake), Ḥ amor (donkey), Ḥ ulda (rat), and Akhbor (mouse). The name Caleb continued to be used in the Second Temple period,26 and additional names derived from animal names, especially in Aramaic, came into use, such as ‫( גוריא‬lion cub) and ‫עכנאי‬/‫( חכינאי‬snake). Since the name 21

L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 104, 396, 678. 22 Y. Yadin and J. Naveh, Masada I: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965 Final Reports ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989), 43. 23 R. S. Notley and Z. Safrai, Eusebius, Onomasticon: The Place Names of Divine Scripture: Including the Latin Edition of Jerome (Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 9; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 149. 24 E. L. Sukenik, “The Samaritan Synagogue at Salbit,” Louis M. Rabinowitz Fund for the Exploration of Ancient Synagogues Bulletin 1 (1949): 26–30. On hiding complexes from the period of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the area of Shaʿalabim, see B. Zissu and Y. Bordowicz, “Horvat Beth Shanna—An Ancient Site From the Second Temple Period and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Northern Judean Shephelah,” Judea and Samaria Research Studies 16 (2007): 265–84 [Hebrew]. 25 Ilan, Lexicon, 211–13, 218–35. 26 Ilan, Lexicon, 182, 381, 400.

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

Shuʿal appears also after the name of Saul’s brother Absalom (line 4), it seems that this epithet was applied to the patriarch of the family, Simeon. Other examples of family names or epithets appearing on documents from this period include Yehosef Qbšn in XḤ ev/Se 13,27 and Judah son of Elʿazar Khthousion and Judah Cimber in P. Yadin 18.28 ‫—ענב העלינה‬Defective spelling for the place name ‫ענב העליונה‬, Upper Anab, the dwelling place of Saul son of Simeon, the late husband of Miriam. Anab is mentioned in Josh 15:50 in the list of cities in the ﬁfth region of the cities of Judah, the district of which Eshtemoh was the capital. In the Onomasticon, it is noted as a village on the border of Bet Guvrin.29 The name of the place is preserved in three sites, which are called today ʿAnab az-Zeġir (app. 13 km southwest of Juttah), ʿAnab al Kebir, and Qasr ʿAnab al-Kebir (which are 16 km from Juttah). The distance between ʿAnab az-Zeġir and the other two sites is 3.5 km. Apparently, Lower Anab was in ʿAnab az-Zeġir and Upper Anab was in Kh. ʿAnab al-Kebir. Ceramic remains from the early Roman period were found in both ʿAnab az-Zeġir and ʿAnab al-Kebir.30 During the Byzantine period, Christians settled in Upper Anab and excavations conducted at the site revealed remains of a large church, decorated with a beautiful mosaic ﬂoor.31 The designations “Upper” and “Lower” were employed with a number of place names south of Hebron, in order to distinguish settlements with identical names from one another. Thus, Upper Gulloth and Lower Gulloth (Josh 15:19), and Upper Anim and Lower Anim.32 This seems to have been the case also for Anab. Line 4 Name of the addressee The addressee is Absalom the son of Simeon (of the family of ) Shuʿal, the brother of Miriam’s late husband, who resided in Aristobulias. 27

XḤ ev/Se 13 line 4. Yardeni, Textbook, 1:134; 2:57. P. Yadin 18. Cf. Lewis, The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period, 79; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:141; 2:59–60 29 Notley and Safrai, Eusebius, Onomasticon, 28. 30 Kochavi, Judea, Samaria, and the Golan, 76, 78; Ofer, “Highlands,” 3:71–72. 31 Y. Magen, Y. Peleg, and I. Sruh, “The Church at ʿAnab el-Kebir,” Qadmoniot 36 (2003): 47–54 [Hebrew]; M. Bar-Asher, “The Syropalestinian Inscription from ʿAnab el-Kebir,” Tarbiz 72 (2003): 615–20 [Hebrew]. 32 Y. Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 50–51. 28

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

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‫—אבשלם‬Defective spelling of the biblical name Absalom.33 ‫—ארשתובול‬This is to be identiﬁed as Aristobulias, i.e., Kh. Istabul, located 1 km south of Ziph, and 5 km northeast of Juttah.34 As noted above, Aristobolias is mentioned in the Greek document that was found, apparently, in the Cave of the Tetradrachm (XḤ ev/Se 69). That contract, dated to 130 c.e., documented the marriage of a bride named Salome, to a man from Yaqim.35 Yaqim [or] Aristobulias is also mentioned in the Life of Euthymius 12, by Cyril of Scythopolis, of the 6th century c.e.36 On the basis of the name of the site, its establishment may be dated to the Hasmonean period, probably to the time of Judah Aristobulus I, i.e., 104 b.c.e.37 Lines 4–5 Acknowledgment ‫—מודה אני לך הימה הזה‬A Hebrew expression, similar to P. Yadin 45, ‫מודא‬ ‫אני לך היום‬, “I aknowledge to you this day”;38 The root of ‫ מודה‬is ‫יד"י‬, and this is a calque from the Greek ὁμολογέω, meaning “to acknowledge.”39 The Aramaic equivalent, ‫מודיאנה‬, appears in the Aramaic summary of P. Yadin 17.40 ‫—הימה הזה‬This reﬂects the inﬂuence of the Aramaic expression ‫יומא דנה‬ which appears in Aramaic documents from the Judean Desert.41 ‫—בכולמא‬The reading of kaf, vav, and mem is uncertain. It is suggested on the basis of the context. The verb ‫ מודה‬governs the object by means of the preposition ‫ב‬. The form ‫ בכולמא‬is best explained as a combination of the two words ‫ בכול‬and ‫מא‬. The meaning of this expression in the document

33

Ilan, Lexicon, 60–61. D. Sar-Avi, “Where was ‘Aristoboulias of the Zeiphênê’ Located?” Judea and Samaria Research Studies 15 (2006): 151–60 [Hebrew]. 35 Cotton and Yardeni, DJD 27:250–74. 36 A. E. Mader, Altchristliche Basiliken und Lokaltraditionen in Südjudäa, (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1918), 168–76; L. Di Segni, Cyril of Scythopolis: Lives of Monks of the Judaean Desert (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2005), 88 [Hebrew]. 37 M. Avi-Yonah, Gazeteer of Roman Palestine (Qedem 5; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976), 31. 38 P. Yadin 45 line 6. Yadin et al., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period, 58; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:115; 2:53. 39 M. Sokoloﬀ, A Dictionary of Judean Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003), 53. 40 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:140; 2:59. 41 Yardeni, Concordance, q.v. ‫ים‬, ‫ יום‬in Textbook, 2, III, *61–*62. 34

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before us is that Miriam declares that she has received all that (‫)כול מא‬ Absalom received from her husband Saul. ‫—שאהיה לך על יד שאול אחיך‬It is possible that Saul had left his possessions in the keeping of his brother Absalom, and that this document attests that Miriam had received from Absalom that which was due to her. Perhaps this property reached the hands of Absalom after the death of Saul. ‫ שא‬is the relative pronoun in a subordinate clause, and is followed by the verb “to be” in the past tense. The relative pronoun may also appear as an independent word (see below, at the end of line 9), similarly to Aramaic ‫די‬. The form is known from 4QMMT, which documents the ﬁrst extant examples of the relative pronoun in two orthographic forms—as an independent particle (e.g., ‫ בשל שא יהיה‬in 4Q394 3–7 i 19 [= B 16]; ‫שא כתוב‬ in 4Q394 3–7 ii 14 [= B 27]) and attached to the following word (e.g., ‫ שאיאכל את הולד‬in 4Q396 1–2 i 3 [= B 37]).42 J. N. Epstein collected the occurrences of the relative pronoun with the spelling ‫( שא‬as well as ‫שה‬, ‫ )שי‬in Mishnaic Hebrew.43 As Qimron has demonstrated, in all of these occurrences, the relative pronoun is attached to the following word.44 Epigraphic evidence for the use of this attached form is found in the word ‫ שהלרבי‬in a synagogue inscription from Dabbura in the Golan, as well as in a sarcophagus found in Bet-Sheʿarim.45 Various explanations have been oﬀered for this phenomenon.46 ‫—שאהיה בעלי קודם כך‬This appears to be a translation of an Aramaic expression like that found in XḤ ev/Se 13:6 from the Naḥal Ḥ ever collection: ‫“ די הוית בעלה מן קדמת דנן‬that you were her/my husband before this.”47

M. Kister, “Studies in 4QMiqs ̣at Maʿaśe Ha-Torah and Related Texts: Law, Theology, Language and Calendar,” Tarbiz 68 (1999): 317–71, at 359 [Hebrew]. 43 J. N. Epstein, Mishnaic Texts ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 2:1235, 1252 [Hebrew]. 44 E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4, V: Miqṣat Maʿaśe Ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 68–69. 45 Naveh, On Stone and Mosaic, 25. 46 S. E. Fassberg, “The Orthography of the Relative Pronoun -‫ שה‬in the Second Temple Period,” Language Studies 7 (1995): 109–18 [Hebrew]; G. B. Sarfatti, “The Orthography of the Relative Pronoun -‫שה‬,” Leshonenu 59 (1996): 267–68 [Hebrew]; Bar Asher, “The Language of the Beit ʿAmar Document,” 29–30. 47 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:134; 2:57. 42

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13

Lines 6–7 Speciﬁcation of assets ‫—כתבה וביה וקנין ומהר‬The money of the ketubba, the house, the possessions, and the mohar, which were due to Miriam daughter of Jacob. It is interesting that these items were listed without the deﬁnite article.48 ‫—ביה‬house. The standard absolute form for “house” in Aramaic is ‫ בי‬in contrast to the Hebrew usage in which ‫ בית‬is always used for both the absolute and the construct. ‫( קנין‬cf. Gen 34:23 etc.)—This term appears in P. Yadin 1:22, as part of a list specifying a property: ‫וקנין כלה‬, i.e., all the possessions.49 The term ‫ קניין‬appears in the Elephantine papyri,50 and in later documents.51 ‫—מהר‬In the Hebrew Bible, ‫ מהר‬denotes money given by a bridegroom to the father of the bride at the time of marriage. The word ‫ מהר‬appears in P. Yadin 1 line 18.52 Lines 7–8 Receipt; Waiver of claims ‫—תיכול התקבלת‬This expression appears twice: once after the speciﬁcation of the possessions (line 7), and another time in the summary of the waiver of claims (line 8). ‫—תיכול‬The direct object marker ‫ את‬appears here as a preﬁx attached to the word ‫כל‬, in the form of the letter tav followed by a yod. The omission of alef in this word occurs elsewhere in documents and letters from the Judean desert, e.g., in P. Yadin 46, ‫ מלפני מזה‬. . . ‫תכל שהחזיק חנניה‬, “all that Hananiah . . . held prior to this.”53 The spelling with yod is not attested elsewhere, and it may indicate that the tav was vocalized with a hireq. The form ‫ התקבלת‬is ﬁrst person.54

Bar Asher, “The Language of the Beit ʿAmar Document,” 32. P. Yadin et al., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period, 170–200. Yardeni, Textbook, 1:271–77; 2:87–88. 50 B. Porten and A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. Vol. 2, Contracts (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1989), xxxix, e.g., B 2.8:4. 51 M. Sokoloﬀ, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), 497. 52 Yadin et al., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period, 170–200; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:271–77; 2:87–88. 53 Yadin et al., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period, 66; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:118; 2, III, *146–*147. 54 Bar Asher, “The Language of the Beit ʿAmar Document,” 32. 48 49

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‫—ודין ודברים אין בכל מה שאהיה לבעילי קודם כך‬This is a declaration that Miriam will not have any further claim on the matters resolved in the document. The term ‫ דין ודברים‬derives from the Akkadian dīnu u dabābu. The expression ‫ דין ודברים אין‬is the Hebrew equivalent to the Aramaic ‫ודין‬ ‫ ודבב לא איתי‬found in P. Yadin 7: ‫“ ודין ודבב ומומא כלה לא איתי לירתי‬and there shall be no suit or contest or oath whatsoever on the part of my heirs.”55 The expression ‫ ולא דין ולא דבב‬is attested in Aramaic documents from Elephantine from the 5th century b.c.e.56 The expression ‫דין ודברים‬ ‫ אין לי בנכסיך‬appears as part of a formula in the Mishnah pertaining to a husband’s renunciation of claims to his wife’s property: “he who writes to his wife, ‫ דין ודברים אין לי בנכסייך‬he may eat (its) fruit in her lifetime, and if she dies—he inherits from her . . . If he wrote to her ‫דין ודברים אין לי‬ ‫בנכסייך ובפרותיהן‬, he may not eat of (its) fruit in her lifetime, but if she dies—he inherits from her . . . If he wrote to her ‫דין ודברים אין לי בנכסייך‬ ‫ בחייך ובמותך‬,‫ ובפירי פירותיהם‬,‫ובפרותיהם‬, he may not eat of (its) fruit in her lifetime, and if she dies, he does not inherit from her” (m. Ketub. 9:1). See also, “R. Joshua in the name of R. Yannai—unless he writes to her ‫דין‬ ‫ ( ודברים אין לי בנכסייך‬y. Giṭ. 49b; 8:1). ‫—בכל מה שאהיה לבעילי קודם כך‬The reading ‫ לבעילי‬is diﬃcult, though some reference to the husband is expected, similar to that in line 6, ‫אחיך‬ ‫שאהיה בעלי קודם כך‬. The form ‫ בעיל‬for ‫ בעל‬is known from Aramaic.57 Lines 9–12 Responsibility and Cleansing in Case of a Suit Over the Widow’s Possession The text in this document is not clear, and the suggested readings are not certain. This seems to be a safety clause, intended to protect the recipient of the document from an attempt by a third party to challenge the contents of the document. ‫—וכל אדם‬This is equivalent to the expressions ‫ איש אחרן‬and ‫גבר אחרן‬ found in Aramaic documents from Egypt.58

55

P. Yadin 7 line 21. Yadin et al., The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period, 82–83. 56 Porten and Yardeni, Textbook, e.g., B 2.3:14 etc. 57 Sokoloﬀ, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, 108. 58 Porten and Yardeni, Textbook, e.g., B 2.3:16, B 2.7:11 respectively.

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‫—שאיוהב‬A diﬃcult form, that is possibly best explained as a participle of the root ‫יה"ב‬, i.e., “who gives.”59 If this reading is correct, it involves an inappropriate use of the waw as a mater lectionis. The meaning of the words could be “And any person who will bring his suit to your hand.”60 ‫—שאיוהב רשתי לידך‬If the reading is correct, this phrase addresses the possibility of a case of a suit brought over the widow’s possession (see Discussion). ‫—רשתו‬The Aramaic verb ‫ רשו‬is frequently used in the Elephantine documents, meaning “to bring suit,” sometimes as part of the waiver of suit, e.g. in Cowley 13: ‫ וגבר אחרן ירשנכי דין ודבב בשם ביתא זך‬. . . ‫לא אכל אנה ובני‬ ‫זי אנה יהבת לך וספרא כתבת‬, “I shall not be able, I or my children . . . or another person to bring against you a suit or process in the name (=regarding) that house which I gave you and about which I wrote the document for you.”61 The noun ‫רשו‬/‫ רשה‬is found twice in Judean Aramaic, interpreted as “permission, authority.”62 Based on the above suggested interpretation, the reading of Se/Ḥ ev 7: ‫ דיתה רשו מן כל אנש‬should not be translated: “who has permission from everyone,” but rather “(If ) a suit will be brought by any person.”63 Thus, we might suggest interpreting lines 9–10 ‫וכל אדם שאיוהב רשתי לידך על חשבן מאשא כתב שהיה שטר רכושי‬ ‫לותך אלא דין ותשלמתא לך מנכסי ואפר>ע<ך מה לעמת כך‬, “And any person who will bring his suit to your hand, and (then) the payment I will pay 59

This form was found only once in a tenth-century poem named ‫יאמר לי‬ ‫ מוכיחי‬from the Genizah, written by ‫יחזקאל הכהן‬, saying ‫ואור שחר מה לי יוהב‬ (line 7); see M. Zulay, From the Lips of Poets and Precentors (ed. S. Elizur; Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi, 2004), 158 [Hebrew]. 60 Bar Asher, “The Language of the Beit ʿAmar Document,” 32. The root ‫יה"ב‬ appears in the participial form, for example, in Mur 32:2: ‫“ ויהב ]אנ[ה‬and [I] give” (lines 2–3). Cf. Milik, DJD 2:149–51; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:35. Cf. the plural form in Mur 27 line 4, ‫“ ויהבין לך‬and give you”; Milik, DJD 2:138–39; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:31; 2:23. 61 B. Porten and J. A. Lund, Aramaic Documents from Egypt: A Key-Word-inContext Concordance (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 286; see Porten and Yardeni, Textbook, B2.7; see also B.5.5. This meaning is based on Akkadian rašûtu, “creditor’s claim,” see CAD 14:213–16. Thanks are due to Professor M. Kister for drawing our attention to this possibility. 62 Sokoloﬀ, Judean Aramaic, 80. 63 A possible parallel using ‫ מלין‬instead of ‫ רשו‬might be found in the wife’s waiver in a deed of sale. See Se/Ḥ ev 8a:12-13 “And I, Shal(o)m . . . have no claims ever (‫)מלין לאיתי לי‬, regarding the sale/purchase of that house, and forever”.

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from my possession, on the account of that which he wrote, which was a deed of my property with you, if there is no suit and (then) the payment (I will pay) from my possessions, and I will repay you accordingly”. ‫“—על חשבן‬On the account,” see Cowley 81:79 ‫חשבן עבורא זי כתבת‬ ‫]ו[נתנת לאבהי‬, “Account of the grain which I wrote [and] gave to Ab(i)hi,”64 and the subscription of Ḥ ev 17:2 (41): ‫לחשבן פקדון‬, “on account of deposit.”65 ‫—מאשא‬Apparently a combination of two words, ‫( מא‬equivalent to Hebrew ‫ )מה‬+ ‫( שא‬the relative pronoun). ‫—כתב שהיה שטר רכושי‬The readings ‫( כתב שהיה‬instead of our former reading ‫ )כתבא חזה‬and ‫( שטר‬instead of our former reading ‫ )פוטר‬in line 10 have been oﬀered by Elisha Qimron in oral communication. The word ‫ כתב‬seems to be a verb in the past tense, third person, i.e., “he wrote.” The syntax here is unclear and requires further investigation. ‫—רכושי‬this word is used only in Biblical Hebrew, and is not attested in Mishnaic Hebrew. If the reading is correct, this would be the ﬁrst time that this word appears in documents from the Judean desert.66 ‫—אלא דין ותשלמתא לך מנכסי ואפר>ע<ך מה לעמת כך‬if there is no suit, and (then) the payment to you (I will pay) from my possessions, and I will repay you accordingly. Miriam took upon herself an obligation to compensate Absalom from her property in case of a suit. In Mur 18:7–8 the full expression appears: ‫[“—תשלמ]תא[ לך מנכסי ודי אקנה לקובלדך‬the pa]yment to you (will be) from my property and (from) whatever I shall acquire according to that.”67 Also in the document that was apparently discovered in the Cave of the Tetradrachm, XḤ ev/Se 9:10, it is written: [‫[“ ]פר[ען תשלמתה מן נכ]סי‬the fulﬁll]ment of the payment (will be) from my pro[perty].”68 ‫—אלא‬Perhaps this is to be taken as “if (it is) not.”69

64

Porten and Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, Vol. 3, Literature, Accounts, Lists (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1993), C 3.28. 65 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:140; 2:59. 66 We are grateful to Prof. Shlomo Naeh for his assistance with some of the problems pertaining to line 10. 67 Milik, DJD 2:101; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:15–17; 2:19. 68 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:23–25; 2:21–22. A similar formulation appears also in a document from Wadi Sdeir, ibid., 1:20; 2:20. 69 U. Mor, “‫אם לא‬, ‫אילא‬,” Leshonenu 70 (2008): 167–84 [Hebrew].

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‫—אלא דין‬See the equivalent expression ‫ולא דין‬, found, for example, in the Aramaic documents from Egypt.70 ‫—תשלמתא‬The deﬁnite form of the word ‫תשלמה‬. ‫—ואפר>ע<ך‬The reading and reconstruction are not certain. The root ‫ פר"ע‬denotes payment of a debt. Thus, in Mur 18 we ﬁnd: ‫דנה אפרוענך‬ “that I will pay you.”71 In XḤ ev/Se 49:8–9: ‫שאפר>ע<ך בכל זמן שת]ומ[ר לי‬ “(on the condition) that I shall pay you at any time that you say to me.”72 In P. Jericho 2:1: ‫“ ]א[פרעה לרבע‬and I will pay it oﬀ by quarters,”73 and in Mur 174:6-7: ‫“ ]וכ[ל זמן שתומר לי אפרעך‬and any time that you say to me I will pay you back.”74 In XḤ ev/Se 49, the ʿayin was not written (‫)אפרך‬. ‫—וקים לי עליך לעמת כך‬This section contains formulas that are both longer and shorter than in the other documents from the Judean desert; for example, in Mur 24: ‫“ וקים עלי לעמת ככה‬and it is established by me accordingly.”75 Lines 12–15 Signatures ‫—מרים ברת יעקוב על נ]פש[ה כתבת מן ממרה‬The scribe (Yehosef son of Jacob) signed in the name of Miriam. This practice is attested in a few documents from the Judean desert.76 Sometimes, one of the parties was not capable of writing his name and another person signed in his place. Usually, this would occur with women, who apparently were illiterate, and the person signing in their name would add the words ‫( מן ממרה‬i.e., at her statement/instruction). Thus, for example, Elazar the son of MTT’ signed in the name of Shalom daughter of Simeon in XḤ ev/Se 8a:15,77 and MTT son of Simeon signed at the instruction of Shelamzion daughter of Yehosef in XḤ ev/Se 13:12.78

70

Porten and Yardeni, Textbook, e.g., B 2.11:12, B 3.5:15. Mur 18 line 6. Milik, DJD 2:101; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:15–18; 2:19. 72 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:19. 73 E. Eshel and H. Eshel, DJD 38: 31–36; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:86; 2:40. 74 E. Eshel, H. Eshel, and G. Geiger, “Mur 174: A Hebrew I.O.U. Document from Wadi Murabbaʿat,” Liber Annuus 58 (2008): 313-26. 75 Passim, Milik, DJD 2:122–34; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:107–12; 2:50–51. 76 Yardeni, Textbook, 2:94. 77 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:71; 2:34–35. 78 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:134; 2:57–58. 71

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

‫—יהוסף בר שמעון שהד‬The reading of the name Yehosef is not certain. The last letter looks like a ﬁnal pe. We thus identify the previous letter as a large samek. [‫—יהורם בר זכריה ]שהד‬The biblical name Yehoram (1 Kgs 22:51) is also known from P. Jericho 1, verso:24.79 The biblical name Zechariah was quite common in the Second Temple period.80 [‫ — יהוסף בר יעק]וב ספרא‬The restoration of ‫ ספרא‬is based upon the fact that this is a “Simple Deed” (‫)גט פשוט עדיו בתוכו‬, in which two witnesses signed the document on its front side rather than on its back, the word ‫ בתוכו‬referring to the inside of the rolled or folded document. The handwriting of Yehosef ’s signature is the same as that of the main text. It is possible that the scribe, Yehosef son of Jacob, was the brother of Miriam daughter of Jacob.

6. Discussion This is a receipt, signed by two witnesses (the ﬁnal signature is that of the scribe). The document was written parallel to the ﬁbers, and it was folded sidewise. The document was written by the scribe Yehosef son of Jacob in the name of Miriam daughter of Jacob, the widow of Saul son of Simeon of the Shuʿal family. It was given to Absalom son of Simeon, her husband’s brother. In this document Miriam acknowledged that she had received (the monetary value of ) her ketubba, the house, the assets and the dowry. Some of the formulations in the document are similar to expressions familiar from other documents from the Judean Desert, while some are not previously attested. The document is unique as far as its contents. Its language is a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic and its dating formula, “of the destruction of the House of Israel” is not attested in any other document. The script is a semi-cursive “Jewish” hand in the style known from other documents from the Judean desert dating from the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e., and has distinctive personal characteristics. Because of the careless writing of certain letters, and the singularity of some of the expressions, the reading of certain words is uncertain, and has 79

H. Eshel and H. Misgav, DJD 38:21-30; Yardeni, Textbook, 1:374–75; 2:127; Ilan, Lexicon, 126. 80 Ilan, Lexicon, 90–93.

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

19

been determined on the basis of the context, according to our understanding of the text. This document should be identiﬁed as a receipt of ketubba. It belongs to a group of documents given by women after receiving that which was due to them; that is, a document in which a woman acknowledged to her husband or his heirs that she had received her ketubba and had no further claims. Such receipts were common in later Jewish documents.81 Lines 9–12 bring the possibility of the case of a suit brought over the widow’s possessions. Such a claim might originate either (a) if Miriam had borrowed money, and the creditor might expect it to be paid from her ketubba. In this case, her brother-in-law Absalom might have suspected that this debt would be carried to him; or (b) if Miriam sold her ketubba. This possibility was discussed in m. Ket. 11:3, t. Ket. 11:1 and b. Ket. 97b.82 From the language of the concessions in this document, it seems that Miriam had rights on the basis of her husband’s obligations to her, and that after his death, she received everything due to her from her brotherin-law and had no further claims.

7. Palaeographic Discussion83 by Ada Yardeni The present document displays a “Jewish,” semi-cursive hand, in a script style known from the documents from the Judaean desert dating from the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e. This is a personal handwriting, written with a reed pen with a ﬂat nib, mostly held in a perpendicular stance and sometimes in a diagonal stance in relation to the line. The width of the strokes varied in accordance with the angle in which the pen was held and with the direction in which the strokes were drawn. The reading of certain words is uncertain because of careless performance of some letters (and because of the uniqueness of some of the expressions), and, as said, it is dependent on the context, reﬂecting our interpretation of this deed.

81

Gulak, A Collection of Legal Deeds, 59. See R. Katzoﬀ, “P. Yadin 21 and Rabbinic Law on Widow’s Rights”, JQR 97 (2007): 545–75 at 560–61. 83 Many thanks to Mr. Eugen Han for his helpful computer work with the drawing and alphabetic charts. 82

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There are many ligatures (letters drawn together without interruption, i.e., without raising the hand from the writing surface), some of which are known from other contemporary documents from the Judaean desert, such as Mur 30.84 The ﬁrst ligature appears in the word šnt (line 1)—the bottom of nun joining the top of the left stroke of tav, which continues down and bends back to the right under the nun, and terminates between the lines.85 In a similar way, the lamed joins tav in the words ‫ארמלת‬ (line 2) and ‫( התקבלת‬line 8)—the bottom of lamed continues leftward and joins the top or the left stroke of tav, continuing downward and creating a loop on its way to the right, convex part of tav. Other letters which join tav in a similar way are vav in ‫( לותך‬line 10) and mem in ‫( תשלמתא‬line 10) and in ‫( לעמת‬lines 11, 12). A ligature of mem and tav appears, e.g., in the word ‫ לעומת‬in Mur 30:24. A conventional ligature, the “Jewish” script inherited from the cursive Aramaic script of the 5th and 4th centuries b.c.e., appears in the word ‫( בר‬lines 3, 15), in which bet and resh were drawn together without interruption; A similar ligature appears, e.g., in a Bar Kokhba letter (pap. Yadin 49:1).86 It is possible that kaf and vav in the word ‫( בכולמא‬line 5; conjectural reading) were written in a similar way. Another ligature appears in the word ‫( לך‬line 5), in which the ﬁnal kaf appears as one stroke of medium length attached to the bottom of lamed, clearly diﬀering from its independent form made of two strokes, which appears in the words ‫( כך‬lines 6, 8, 11, 12), ‫( אחיך‬line 6), ‫( לידך‬line 9), ‫( לותך‬line 10). Another conventional ligature is that of samek and ﬁnal pe, appearing in the signature ‫( יהוסף‬line 15). This ligature appears, e.g., in the name ‫ יהוסף‬and in the word ‫ בכסף‬in Mur 30:9, 20 respectively, and in ‫ יהוסף‬in XḤ ev/Se 13:11.87 In line 12, a ligature of the particle ‫ מן‬appears, which is known in various forms from other documents from the Judaean desert.88 Most of the letter forms in this document resemble their conventional forms in the “Jewish” cursive script of the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e.89 The letters gimel and tsade do not appear in this document. 84

Yardeni, Textbook, 1:52, 54. Cf., e.g., the ligature in the name ‫ יהונתן‬in Mur 30:9. Yardeni, Textbook, 1:52, 54. 86 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:165. 87 Yardeni, Textbook, 1:52, 54, 134. 88 Cf., e.g., P. Yadin 49 line 3. Yardeni, Textbook, 1:165. 89 Cf. Yardeni, Textbook, 2, II, [147]-[218]. 85

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

21

alef appears once in its conventional form consisting of three strokes, in the name Ysrʾl (line 1). In the rest of its occurrences it consists of two strokes, the third (left) stroke being omitted. In most of the cases, the right stroke joins the diagonal at its centre or near its bottom, and in certain cases, such as the word ‫( ארבע‬line 1), it joins the diagonal at its bottom resembling a V. This form is not known from other documents from the Judaean desert. The letter is relatively small. bet was mostly drawn continuously, beginning at the top, curving down to the left and creating a loop with the base-stroke, which slants up to the right. This form is known from most of the documents in “Jewish” script from the Judaean desert. In the word ‫( לבעילי‬line 8) the form of bet lacks the curve at its top as well as the slanting base-stroke (the conjectural reading is based on the context). dalet diﬀers from resh in that it consists of two strokes; the right stroke begins at the right edge of the horizontal “roof ” or somewhat above it, and descends vertically or in a slight slant to the left. he is relatively large. The “roof ” is horizontal or slightly slanting leftward. The right stroke begins above the right edge of the “roof ” and slightly slants to the right. The left stroke is mostly a separate stroke which slightly slants to the left, but sometimes it begins at the left end of the “roof ” (‫שאהיה‬, ‫[ וביה‬line 6], ‫[ התקבלת‬line 8]). In the signature in line 14, a he appears twice which resembles ḥ et, with two vertical, parallel “legs” and a horizontal bar connecting them. vav appears in diﬀerent lengths, sometimes being as short as yod. It mostly begins with a convex curve, and slants slightly down to the right. In certain cases it continues somewhat to the left at its bottom, in the direction of writing (e.g., ‫[ ודין ודברים‬line 7]). zayin appears once in the main part of the deed (‫[ הזה‬line 5]) and is relatively short. It has a bold “head” resulting from a short stroke attached to its top on the right, characteristic of the letter in the “book-hand.” zayin in the form of a vertical stroke appears in the signature ‫( זכריה‬line 14). ḥ et consists of three strokes, being narrower than he and clearly diﬀering from it, its parallel down-strokes slanting down to the right (compare ‫[ חזה‬line 10] and ‫[ הזה‬line 5]). A small ḥ et appears in the word ‫חשבן‬ (line 9; the left “leg” touching the top of lamed in line 10). tet appears only once (‫[ פוטר‬line 10]). Similar forms of this letter appear, e.g., in pap.Yadin 7. yod consists of a short, mostly convex, stroke, slightly slanting down to the right. In single cases it is long like vav (e.g., ‫[ בעלי‬line 6]). In the word

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‫( אין‬line 7), a yod appears which consists of two strokes, resembling its traditional form in the Aramaic script. A ﬁnal, large yod, with a long “sting” slanting down to the left, appears in the word ‫( לבעילי‬line 8; the reading of bet in this word is conjectural). kaf clearly diﬀers from bet. Its height and width equal in their relative size, the horizontal “roof ” and base-stroke are somewhat concave, and parallel each other. In the word ‫( מנכסי‬line 11), the base-stroke is missing. In the word ‫( רכושי‬line 10) the reading of kaf is uncertain. If the reading ‫( בכולמא‬line 5) is correct, a tiny, cursive kaf joins vav in a ligature resembling the ligature of br, but the vav does not extend below the base line. Final kaf mostly consists of two strokes. It has a horizontal or concave “roof ” and a very long down-stroke (sometimes crossing 2 or 3 lines), which begins above the right end of the “roof,” continuing straight downward and becoming sharp at its bottom while drawn to the left in the direction of writing. A variant of this letter, lacking the “roof ” and resembling ﬁnal nun, appears in the word ‫( עליך‬line 11), a shorter variant of this appearing in the ligature ‫( לך‬line 5). lamed consists of a down-stroke, somewhat curving to the left, which begins high above the line (often penetrating into the line above it) and terminates above the base-line or at the base-line with a curve to the left in the direction of writing. In most of its occurrences it has a long “sting” which slants down from its top to the left, and in some cases it is long and curved ( ֹ‫[ תיכל‬line 8]). A similar form appears in documents from the Judaean desert (the early appearances of the “sting” at the top of lamed seem to be from the third century b.c.e.). mem appears mostly as a circle of medium size, somewhat narrowing at its bottom and sometimes open at its upper left part, from where a diagonal stroke slants down toward the following letter. When the letter does not join another letter, or in ﬁnal position, it has a characteristic additional down-stroke to the left of the circle, sometimes attached to it (e.g., ‫[ מרים‬line 2], ‫[ מענב‬line 3]) and sometimes joining it (‫[ מודה‬line 4], ‫קודם‬ [line 8]). If the reading ‫( בכולמא‬line 5) is correct, a tiny mem joins alef in a ligature, similar to mem in the particle ‫( מן‬line 12). Final mem mostly resembles the medial form of this letter, but once it is narrow and long, and from the left end of its “roof ” a short stroke slants down to left. This is a semi-cursive form of the archaic ﬁnal mem of the “book-hand,” consisting of a long and narrow “body” and a high serif which became a separate stroke at the end of the “roof.” Similarly to alef which resembles V (see above), this form of mem does not appear in other documents from the Judaean desert.

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

23

nun is made of one medium-size down-stroke, which curves or bends at its bottom to left, creating a short base (‫[ העלינה‬line 3], ‫[ וקנין‬line 6]). Final nun is a very long down-stroke (sometimes crossing 3 lines), somewhat curving in the direction of writing. samekh diﬀers only slightly from mem, its “roof ” being somewhat longer. Because of the resemblance between these two letters, its identiﬁcation mainly depends on the context. It appears only three times in this document (‫[ מסעלב‬line 2], ‫[ מנכסי‬line 11], ‫[ יהוסף‬line 15, in ligature with ﬁnal pe]). ayin is relatively large, consisting of two strokes, the right one slanting down to the left and the left one slightly slanting down to the right, joining the former near its top. Its shape is quite uniform in all its occurrences in this document, except for the signature ‫( שמעון‬line 13). pe appears perhaps once. The reading of the word ‫[ ואפר>ע<ך‬line 11] is graphically very doubtful—except for ﬁnal kaf—and it is diﬃcult to identify in it the letter pe. Final pe appears in the signature ‫( יהוסף‬line 15) in ligature with the preceding samek. qof is large and easily recognizable. In the semi-cursive form, the top of the “leg,” which is a wavy down-stroke of medium size, mostly joins the lower end of the “body” (e.g., ‫[ יעקוב‬line 2]) and sometimes joins the “roof ” (‫[ וקים‬line 11]). In the words ‫ קודם‬and ‫( התקבלת‬line 8; and perhaps also in the signature ‫[ יעקוב‬line 12]) the letter is more cursive, only the “roof ” remaining from the upper part of the letter, the “leg” beginning directly from it. All these forms appear also in other documents from the Judaean desert. resh diﬀers from dalet in that it is made with one continuous stroke. In the name ‫( ישראל‬line 2) it has a concave “roof ” and an angular shoulder, but in its other occurrences its has a round shoulder is curved or no shoulder at all and it is made as a short stroke curving leftward. shin appears in a number of variants, most of them semi-cursive. All these forms are already known from other documents from the Judaean desert. The quite rare variant appearing in the words ‫( שנת‬line 1) and ‫( חשבן‬line 9), looks like a shin lying on its left side, because of its horizontal left stroke. This form appears, e.g., in XḤ ev/Se 7 and in pap.Yadin 47.90 Another variant consists of three curved strokes (e.g., ‫ רשתי‬and ‫מאשא‬ [line 9]). Still another variant, resembling the form of the letter in the “book-hand,” appears in the word ‫( אבשלם‬line 4), with an additional short stroke slanting down to the top of its right “arm.” There also appears a shin, 90

Yardeni, Textbook, 1:64–65, 75.

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Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

the medial stroke of which is higher than the two other strokes (e.g., ‫שועל‬ [line 4], ‫[ שאיוהב‬line 9]). A broken shin appears in ‫שטר‬ (line 10). A more cursive form of shin, with the two right “arms” made like a zigzag, and its left stroke being somewhat wavy and slanting down to the right, appears in the word ‫שהד‬, in the signature of the ﬁrst witness (line 13). tav is quite large and made with one continuous stroke. It begins at the top of the left down stroke which curves at the bottom to the left while creating a loop and returns upward, until it reaches the “roof,” which curves and continues to the right and then down toward the base-line (e.g., in the word ‫[ התקבלת‬line 7]). This is one of the main forms of tav in the “Jewish” cursive script style, and it appears in several variants in the documents from the Judaean desert (a “looped” tav already appears in Aramaic documents dating from the 4th century b.c.e.). To sum up, this document was written by a scribe who was trained in the oﬃcial “Jewish” script style used in the ﬁrst and second centuries c.e. He did not try to write in an elegant script but used a semi-cursive hand, usually keeping small spaces between the individual letters. However, because of his rapid and somewhat careless writing, he did not refrain from using a few conventional ligatures of pairs of letters, characteristic of the cursive “Jewish” script of that period.

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

25

26

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

27

Eshel and Yardeni / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 1–28

Alphabet Chart

Ligatures [‫]בר‬

[‫]מת‬

[‫]לך‬

[‫]ות‬

[‫]מן‬

[‫ נת‬,‫]ני‬

[‫]לת‬

[‫ כת‬,‫]כו‬

[‫]שנת‬

[‫]סף‬

[‫]מא‬

[‫]לי‬

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Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

brill.nl/dsd

Word Order in the War Scroll (1QM) and Its Implications for Interpretation John Screnock Trinity Western University, 7600 Glover Road, Langley, BC, V2Y 1Y1, Canada [email protected]

Abstract In studies of Qumran Hebrew, syntax has been somewhat neglected. The present study attempts to help ﬁll in our understanding of QH syntax, and word order speciﬁcally. The data of 1QM can best be explained using a Subject-Verb model. However, the model is not perfect. Consideration of the strange word order patterns of ‫ רוע‬and ‫ תקע‬leads to a revision of the SV model, which is better able to account for all the word order phenomena in 1QM. The basic word order of 1QM is best described as Subject-Verb, with inversion triggered by the fronting of a non-subject element or by the use of an intransitive main verb. A robust understanding of word order carries important ramiﬁcations for interpretation. In 1QM 1:1–3, for example, word order supports an identiﬁcation of the sons of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin as “violators of the covenant.” Keywords War Scroll; Qumran Hebrew; Word Order; Syntax; 1QM 1:1–3

Introduction The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late 1940s and their publication over the following sixty years have given the world of biblical studies a wealth of new information from the Second Temple period. As a result, our knowledge of canon formation, textual transmission, Judaisms of the Second Temple period, and the like, has grown impressively. Included among these advancing ﬁelds is our knowledge of the ancient Hebrew language. In the Scrolls, we ﬁnally have evidence of the Hebrew language between the period of Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew, generally © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551563

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J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

referred to as Qumran Hebrew.1 Soon after the discovery of the Scrolls, scholars like E. Y. Kutscher began to chart the features of this type of Hebrew.2 However, studies have focused largely on orthography, morphology, grammar, and lexicology. Though the important studies of Kutscher, Elisha Qimron,3 and Takamitsu Muraoka4 have touched brieﬂy on Qumran Hebrew syntax, this area has been largely neglected. For example, in the seventeen pages of Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls devoted to syntax (70–86), Qimron touches on a smattering of syntactical features observed by himself and others, but is by no means exhaustive in his coverage or in the depth of his analysis of individual features. As a result, Qumran Hebrew syntax remains largely uncharted. This study, then, seeks to help ﬁll in the void in studies on Qumran Hebrew syntax. Though it is limited in scope—my corpus consists only of 1QM, and the only syntactical feature considered is word order—it is my hope that this study, together with other in-depth studies of Qumran Hebrew syntax,5 will improve on Qimron and Muraoka’s account of Qumran Hebrew syntax. Because my corpus is small and I lack the linguistic acumen and training necessary to deal fully with some issues, the results of this study are preliminary and my conclusions tentative. Never1

By “Qumran Hebrew” I mean simply the language witnessed to by the biblical and nonbiblical scrolls found near Khirbet Qumran. I do not mean to imply anything about the group(s) behind the scrolls or their connection to the site of Qumran. 2 E. Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) (Leiden: Brill, 1974). 3 The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986); idem, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert X (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), esp. 65–108. 4 “An Approach to the Morphosyntax and Syntax of Qumran Hebrew,” in Diggers at the Well (ed. T. Muraoka and J. F. Elwolde; Leiden: Brill, 2000). 5 For other studies that consider aspects of QH syntax, see T. Leahy, “Studies in the Syntax of 1QS,” Bib 41 (1960): 135–57; Mark S. Smith, The Origins and Development of the Waw-consecutive: Northwest Semitic Evidence from Ugarit to Qumran (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), esp. 35–63; Søren Holst, Verbs and War Scroll: Studies in the Hebrew Verbal System and the Qumran War Scrolls (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2008); and the publications of the International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, and the Mishnah, edited by T. Muraoka and J. F. Elwolde: The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira (Leiden: Brill, 1997), Sirach, Scrolls, and Sages (Leiden: Brill, 1999), and Diggers at the Well.

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

31

theless, as the ﬁrst study considering word order in Qumran Hebrew, I hope I can oﬀer some important observations. But why should we care about syntax in the ﬁrst place? It isn’t very interesting, at least to most of us, and it doesn’t seem to carry many implications. The answer to this question, though often overlooked, is important. Our understanding of the meaning of texts, and the religious beliefs, history, and people behind those texts, is utterly dependant on our understanding of the language in which those texts are written. Whether we read the Hebrew Bible in the primary language or use English translations, our interpretation is indebted to Ewald, Gesenius, and in the case of the scrolls, Kutscher and Qimron, on whom student Hebrew grammars and translations alike depend. To illustrate this principal more clearly, consider the opening lines of 1QM, which describe the participants in the war about which 1QM is written. In Martin Abegg’s translation, these words follow after the list of the “bad guys”: “Supporting them are those who have violated the covenant. The sons of Levi, the sons of Judah, and the sons of Benjamin, those exiled to the wilderness, shall ﬁght against them.”6 In contrast, Hanan Eshel translates this same passage as follows: “these being helped by those who violate the covenant, (from) the sons of Levi, the sons of Judah, and the sons of Benjamin. The exiles of the wilderness shall ﬁght against them.”7 Whose side are the sons of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin on? If they are allied with the “Sons of Darkness” (as Eshel would have it) instead of the “Sons of Light” (as Abegg would have it), what does this tell us about the author’s theological and social perspectives? Eshel made a considerable case for his understanding. Though his arguments have little to do with syntax, we will see that syntax, particularly our understanding of word order, provides vital evidence for this discussion. My argument proceeds in four steps. First, in section 1, I examine the available models for understanding word order in Ancient Hebrew, all of which come from study of Biblical Hebrew. There are essentially two competing models, one that argues for Verb-Subject (VS) word order, and one that argues for Subject-Verb (SV) word order. Second, I consider 6

Martin Abegg, “The War Scroll,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (Michael O. Wise, Martin Abegg, and Edward Cook; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 148. 7 Hanan Eshel, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 169.

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J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

every full verbal clause in 1QM to see which model ﬁts 1QM best. I ﬁnd that the SV model ﬁts the data of 1QM best, though not perfectly (section 2). Third, I revise the SV model so that it works with all the data of 1QM. This is accomplished through an examination of two anomalous verbs in 1QM (‫ תקע‬and ‫ )רוע‬that leads in turn to an examination of the connections between verb transitivity and word order (section 3). Fourth, in section 4, I bring my revised word order model to bear on interpretation. Speciﬁcally, I examine the implications for our understanding of 1QM 1:2–3.

1. Word Order in Biblical Hebrew The most prominent model for word order, put forth by Ewald, Gesenius, Waltke and O’Connor, Muraoka, and nearly everyone else who has written on Hebrew grammar or syntax, states that the verb normally comes ﬁrst, preceding the subject.8 Deviations from the normal word order are explained as follows: the author may place one constituent before the verb for any variety of reasons, including emphasis, parallelism, contrast, introduction of oﬀ-line9 material or circumstantial information, and even theological considerations.10 Thus clauses are typically VS (i.e., 8

Heinrich Ewald, Syntax of the Hebrew Language of the Old Testament (trans. James Kennedy; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1891), §306b; W. Gesenius and E. Kautzsch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar (trans. A. E. Cowley; London: Oxford University Press, 1976), §142a; A. B. Davidson, Introductory Hebrew Grammar: Hebrew Syntax (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1901), §105; Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), §8.3b. 9 Though the term “oﬀ-line” (denoting information in the background, as opposed to “main-line” material existing in the foreground) was more recently coined, the philologists of previous centuries were by no means unaware of the concept. Ewald §306c: non-VS clauses contain information wherein “the action, its development, and its progress do not come into the foreground”; S. R. Driver, Treatise on the Use of Tenses (Oxford: Clarendon, 1881), §160 Obs.: “A third case in which the same order of words is observed is for the purpose of introducing the mention of a new state of things, or new situation, which, while preparatory to what is to succeed, is in no immediate connexion [sic] with the preceding portion of the narrative.” 10 Ewald §306c, §309a; GKC §142; Davidson §105; Driver §160 Obs.; J. C. L.

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

33

normal), SV (i.e., with the subject fronted), or XVS (i.e., non-verb, nonsubject constituent fronted). Since the vast majority of verbal clauses in Biblical Hebrew have the verb ﬁrst or second (seldom third or later), this model carries a lot of explanatory power and has been used extensively11 to aid interpretation. In contrast to the majority view, Robert Holmstedt and John Cook maintain that Biblical Hebrew clauses are normally Subject-Verb.12 For Cook and Holmstedt, deviations from normal SV order occur when a ‘grammatical word’ (such as ‫ כי‬or ‫ )לא‬comes at the beginning of a sentence, when a non-subject non-verb constituent (e.g., prepositional phrase) comes at the beginning of a sentence, or when a modal verb is used. Such occurrences ‘trigger’ inversion of the subject and verb. Like the VS model, this model is able to account for the majority of verbal clauses in Biblical Hebrew. However, for many this SV model seems too cumbersome, with too many exceptions to the norm, to be realistic. In defense of this model, however, we should point out that it generally has the backing of modern linguistic theory; moreover, the phenomenon of subject-verb inversion is well documented in many languages, and thus is a realistic option for explaining Hebrew word order. Finally, we should note that it is very close to the model put forward by Paul Joüon in his original grammar (i.e., prior to Muraoka’s complete revision of the section on word order).13 Gibson, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar: Syntax (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), §133; Paul Joüon and T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Rome: Pontiﬁcio Istituto Biblico, 2000), §155nb, p. 11 For example, in Robert Longacre, Joseph: A Story of Divine Providence (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003). 12 John A. Cook and Robert D. Holmstedt, Ancient Hebrew: A Student Grammar (Draft copy [pdf ], 2007; available online at http://individual.utoronto .ca/holmstedt/Textbook.html), §27.3, §29.3; Robert D. Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew: a Linguistic Analysis (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002), 149. 13 Paul Joüon, Grammaire de l’Hébreu Biblique (Rome: Institut Biblique Pontiﬁcal, 1947), §155. Unlike Holmstedt and Cook, Joüon explains VS clauses (including all wayyiqtol and converted perfect clauses) as emphasizing the predicate (whether an X element or verb element). Joüon does state that jussive verbs (which are a subset of modal verbs) take VS word order (§155l ), corresponding somewhat to Cook and Holmstedt’s third condition for inversion. However, Joüon did not consider converted perfects to be jussive.

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J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

2. Word Order in 1QM Having reviewed the VS and SV models, developed from data in Biblical Hebrew, I now ask the question “Which best ﬁts the data in 1QM?” In conjunction with a project to create a database of Hebrew syntax, I syntactically diagrammed all of 1QM. One of many syntactical features this diagramming made available was word order. In the following list, constituents are labeled as S[ubject], V[erb], O[bject], and X for any other constituent modifying the verb.14 I have simpliﬁed the word order patterns,15 but give somewhat full reference to clause constituents in order to specify the clause to which I am referring within a given line. Partially reconstructed clauses are marked with an asterisk (*), and are only included when fairly certain. SV[X]—1:2–3; 1:8; 2:5; 6:8, 9, 14; 7:1 (2), 1–2, 16; 8:11; 9:1, 5–6; 10:5–6; 15:2; 16:12; 17:8, 12–13; 18:2–3 SVO[X]—1:14; 7:2–3,16 5, 6–7, 12; 8:1–2, 6, 9–10; 9:1–2, 13; 11:7, 11–12; 12:11–12, 14; 13:9, 10–11; 14:10–11; 16:1*,17 5, 7–8, 8–9, 9, 11; 17:13, 13–14, 14, 14–15; 19:4, 6 SVXO[X]—6:1–2; 8:8–9; 9:12; 16:7* SXV[X]—2:2, 3, 4; 13:11–12; 15:11–12 SXVO—14:12

14

Though linguistically it would be better to deal with complements and adjuncts to the verb (instead of objects and other modiﬁers; cf. Robert D. Holmstedt, “Word Order in the Book of Proverbs,” in Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients [ed. Ronald L. Troxel, Kelvin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magary; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005], 135–54 at 140), distinguishing between complements and adjuncts is an involved and somewhat subjective process. Using the categories of object and other modiﬁers is more objective. Though the distinction is grammatical instead of syntactical, in many cases the object will correspond to the complement and X-constituents to adjuncts. 15 For example, the patterns XVS, XVSX, XVSXX, etc., all fall under the heading XVS[X]. 16 7:2–3 begins with an extended casus pendens (dislocation), and thus might be categorized as XSVO. 17 This clause is partially reconstructed, and may begin with ‫כיא‬, rendering the clause a subordinate clause instead of a basic clause.

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

35

VS[X]—1:4, 6 (2); 3:10; 4:3–4; 7:15; 8:3, 3–4; 9:1,18 4–5; 10:2; 11:6 (2), 11; 15:4, 6–7; 16:4 (2), 13; 17:8; 18:2, 3 VSO—3:9; 11:7 VSXO[X]—6:11; 8:5; 17:11 VXS[X]—6:6; 8:16–17*; 9:3–4, 6; 12:14; 18:4; 19:6, 11–12 VXSO[X]—14:3–4; 16:4–5, 5–6 VXXS—7:9–11 XVS[X]—1:8–9, 13, 13–14; 2:9, 13–14, 14; 5:3; 6:1, 4, 8–9; 7:12–13; 8:10–11, 14; 9:3; 11:1; 14:7, 16–17*; 17:10; 18:3–4, 5–6 XVSO[X]—2:6–7; 8:11–13, 14–16; 9:7; 14:2; 16:8 XVXS[X]—1:10–11; 7:13–14; 8:2; 16:3–4; 18:10–11 XVXS[X]O[X]—8:6–8, 13–14 This data represents all basic, full verbal clauses in 1QM. That is, it only includes clauses with an explicit subject and ﬁnite verb,19 and it does not include subordinate, negative, and interrogative clauses. This understanding of a “basic” (or “unmarked”) clause follows the understanding of Holmstedt,20 with the exception of clauses with converted perfect verbs, which I include.21 When all full verbal clauses in 1QM are considered, we ﬁnd that subject comes before verb 45% of the time, while verb comes before subject 55% of the time. Of the 55% verb-ﬁrst clauses, however, roughly half have a non-subject, non-verb constituent coming at the very beginning (i.e., the order is constituent-verb-subject). Thus, when we include all constituents, we ﬁnd subject coming ﬁrst 45% of the time, verb coming ﬁrst 27.5% of the time, and other constituents coming ﬁrst 27.5% of the 18

In 9:1, the X constituent is an inﬁnitive which serves as complement to the verb, “begin to.” 19 Clauses where ‫ ל‬plus inﬁnitive construct possibly functions as a ﬁnite verb are not included because of the diﬃculty of determining whether the inﬁnitive is predicative or not. Possible clauses in 1QM with this phenomenon include 1:1, 4 (2); 2:1, 2, 3; 3:5; 11:13 (2), 14 (2), 15 (2); 14:5, 6 (2); 17:7 (2); 18:11. Cf. Qimron, Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, §400.02. 20 Holmstedt, “Word Order in the Book of Proverbs,” 144–46. Cf. also Anna Siewierska, Word Order Rules (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 8. 21 I am not convinced that converted perfect clauses are less basic in 1QM; cf. Holst, 127. If I did not include converted perfects, there would essentially be no discussion, as nearly all the VS clauses in 1QM contain converted perfects.

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time. An example of a typical SV clause is 1QM 16:8–9: ‫וכול העם יחשו‬ ‫קול התרועה‬, “And all the people will silence the voice of the alarm.” Fifty-four22 clauses in 1QM take this word order. An example of a VS clause is 1QM 1:6: ‫וסרה ממשלת כתיים‬, “And the dominion of the Kittim will depart.” Thirty-three23 clauses have this order. Finally, a good example of an XVS clause is 1QM 6:1: ‫ואחריהם יצאו שלושה דגלי בינים‬, “And after them three divisions of infantry will go out.” Thirty-three clauses have this word order. If we approach the data of 1QM without preconception of a normal word order for BH, the SV model appears to work best. This is largely because it does not seem plausible that (as the VS model would have it) the subject is emphasized (or fronted for contrast, etc.) in 45% of all full verbal clauses. A close reading of the text and the clauses in question conﬁrms this hunch. For particular examples, see 1QM 16:7–13 and 17:10–15, extended passages that primarily use SV and XVS order but do not appear to be emphasizing the ﬁrst constituents, introducing oﬀ-line material, or the like.24 Using the SV model, on the other hand, it is still diﬃcult to explain the 27.5% of VS clauses where verb precedes subject. Nearly all of these are converted perfects, which according to Holmstedt and Cook would be explained as modal verbs triggering inversion. However, in 1QM converted perfects and yiqtols are equivalent with respect to modality. We must either consider them both to be modal, in which case SV clauses with yiqtol verbs would not follow Cook and Holmstedt’s rules, or we must consider them both not to be modal, in which case the VS clauses with converted perfect verbs are inexplicable. It appears that neither the VS model nor the SV model ﬁts the data of 1QM completely. 22

Note that I am not including clauses in 11:7 and 11:11–12, which are quotations of Scripture, and the parallel clauses in 19:4 (//12:11–12) and 19:6 (//12:14). 23 Note that I am not including the Scripture quotations in 10:2; 11:6 (2), 7, 11; and the parallel clause in 19:6 (//12:14). 24 In passages like these, Holst sees X-yiqtol as “introduc[ing] or bring[ing] back into focus a person or other element of the proceedings” (89), a function close to what text-linguists would categorize as oﬀ-line; rather than seeing a main-line in extended yiqtol passages, he sees a “dotted line” (89, 127). However, I remain unconvinced that yiqtols could function, on the one hand, to introduce oﬀ-line material, while at the same time function as the “backbone” of a discourse.

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37

3. Revising the SV Model for 1QM How are we to proceed, then, with our understanding of word order in 1QM? Of our two word order models from Biblical Hebrew, the SV model seems to work best with 1QM; however, it does not work perfectly. Fortunately, one peculiarity of the text, when ﬂeshed out, oﬀers telling data and ultimately a solution to our dilemma. As a result, we are able to modify the SV model further to account for almost all verbal clauses in 1QM. This peculiarity involves the synonymous words ‫ תקע‬and ‫רוע‬. Both mean “to blow” or “to sound” and are used in identical situations, describing how priests are to blow on certain trumpets to give signals for battle. The curiosities arise when the word order of these two verbs is compared. ‫ תקע‬almost always occurs before its subject (in 15 of 16 full verbal clauses), while ‫ רוע‬is almost always preceded by its subject (in 6 of 8 full verbal clauses). Consider, for example, 1QM 7:15: “and the priests will blow (‫ )ותקעו הכוהנים‬on the two trumpets of assembly,” compared to 1QM 17:12: “and the priests will blow (‫ )והכוהנים יריעו‬on the trumpets of the slain.” Neither the VS nor the SV model can adequately explain why ‫ תקע‬prefers verb ﬁrst and ‫ רוע‬prefers subject ﬁrst. It seems that here we may have reason to explain variation in word order as a product of something other than the traditional explanations of both the VS and SV models. Given the signiﬁcant equivalence of these two words, we can narrow down the possible causes of the problem easily. ‫ תקע‬occurs in the Qal stem, while ‫ רוע‬occurs in the Hiphil stem. When full verbal clauses in 1QM are analyzed with respect to their stem, we ﬁnd that Hiphil and Piel verbs nearly always have subject ﬁrst, while Niphal verbs do not. Clauses with Hiphil verbs have SV order 14 of 22 times,25 as in 1QM 6:1–2: ‫ישליך ֯אל מערכת האויב שבעה זרקות מלחמה‬ ֗ ‫הדגל הראישון‬, “The ﬁrst division will cast seven darts of war into the battle line of the enemy.” Clauses with Piel verbs, similarly, have SV order 6 of 8 times,26 as in 1QM 12:14: ‫ומלכיהם ישרתוך‬, “And their kings will serve you.”

25

Clauses with Hiphil verbs have SV order in 1:8, 16; 6:1; 8:8, 9, 11; 9:13; 14:10; 16:7 (partially reconstructed), 8, 11; 17:12, 13, 14. They have VS order in 9:1 and 16:8. They have XVS order in 1:8; 8:15; 18:3, 10. 26 Clauses with Piel verbs have SV order in 2:2, 3; 10:5; 12:14; 14:12; 19:6 (//12:14). They have VS order in 14:3. They have XVS order in 14:2.

38

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Clauses with Niphal verbs, in contrast, have SV order only 3 of 11 times;27 they are more typically VS or XVS, as in 1QM 18:4: ‫ונאספו אליהם כול‬ ‫מערכות המלחמה‬, “And all of the lines of battle will be gathered to them.” Qal verbs, however, are split between the two word orders. What might explain the trends of these stems and their word orders? The answer is verb transitivity. Verb transitivity, for my purposes, refers to the amount of constituents that are required to complete a verb. For example, a verb that requires an object is transitive, while a verb requiring no object (e.g., a passive or stative verb) is intransitive. Complicating matters, prepositional phrases are often required (i.e., they are not optional) by certain verbs. Thus, determining verb transitivity is not always a matter of whether a verb takes an object or not.28 We could explain the patterns we see with verb stems in 1QM as being a function of transitivity: Niphal verbs are typically passive (entailing intransitivity), while Piel and Hiphil verbs are often intensive or causative (usually entailing transitivity or ditransitivity). When the 72 Qal verbs,29 which are split between VS and SV word order, are examined, we ﬁnd that most of the VS Qal verbs are intransitive (42 of 49),30 while a good majority of SV Qal verbs are transitive (12 to 16 of 23).31 In 1QM 18:2, 27

Clauses with Niphal verbs have VS order in 16:13; 18:4; 19:11. They have SV order in 1:2; 7:7; 15:11. They have XVS order in 1:12; 2:9, 13, 14; 5:3. 28 On the diﬃculty of determining transitivity, see T. Muraoka, “Verb Complementation in Qumran Hebrew,” in idem and Elwolde, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira, 94. 29 I do not include ‫ היה‬in the following ﬁgures, because of the range of its properties and usage, and the aﬃnities of its clauses to nominal (non-verbal) clauses; that is, we should not expect it to act and function like the rest of the Hebrew verbs. ‫ היה‬is typically transitive, and takes SV order in 1:6, 14; 6:14; 7:1 (2), 2, 3, 5, 6, 12; 8:1, 6; 9:1, 12; 14:12 (reconstructed); 16:5 (reconstructed), 9; 17:15. It takes VS order in 6:6, 11; 11:7; 18:3 (reconstructed). It takes XVS order in 1:12 (Niphal); 2:6; 7:12; 8:11; 9:7. 30 Intransitive Qal verbs appear with VS order in 1:4, 6 (2), 13; 3:10; 4:3; 6:1, 4, 8; 7:9, 14, 15; 8:2, 3 (2), 10, 14, 16 (reconstructed); 9:3 (2), 4, 6; 10:2, 3, 6; 11:6 (2), 11; 12:18, 20 (reconstructed); 14:7, 16; 15:4, 8 (reconstructed); 16:3, 4 (2); 17:8, 10; 18:2, 5; 19:10 (reconstructed). Transitive Qal verbs appear with VS order in 3:9; 8:5, 7, 13; 16:4, 5; 17:11. 31 I give a range because the transitivity of 4 of these is diﬃcult to determine. Transitive or ditransitive Qal verbs appear with SV order in 9:5; 11:5, 12; 12:12; 13:9, 11, 18; 16:1, 9; 17:13; 18:10; 19:4. Intransitive Qal verbs appear with SV

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

39

for example, the intransitive verb ‫“( נפל‬to fall”) takes VS word order: ‫ונפלו בני יפת‬, “And the sons of Japheth will fall.” In contrast, transitive and ditransitive verbs like ‫ עשה‬in 13:10–11 take SV word order: ‫ואתה עשיתה בליעל לשחת‬, “And you made Belial for the pit.” Concerning the clauses that seem to go against this general trend, many are easily explained. Of the clauses with Hiphil and Piel verbs, the majority of non-SV clauses are XVS, which can be explained as having inversion triggered by a fronted non-subject constituent. This leaves only three Hiphil or Piel clauses with VS order (9:1, 14:3, and 16:8). Of the SV Niphal clauses, one (1:2) will be debated in the following section, and the other two (7:7 and 15:11) are negated by ‫לוא‬, disqualifying them as nonbasic. Similarly, three of the SV Qal intransitive clauses (7:3, 5, and 6) are negated by ‫לוא‬. Among VS Qal clauses, six of the seven troublesome transitive clauses (8:5, 7, 13; 16:4, 5; 17:11) involve the verb ‫ ;תקע‬while ‫ תקע‬is largely synonymous with Hiphil ‫רוע‬, it may have a shade of difference in meaning because of its intransitivity, in which case many of the objects in these six clauses might better be considered adverbial accusatives.32 The only other transitive Qal verb with VS word order (3:9) is somewhat anomalous, as one of the few full clauses inscribed on a trumpet or banner.33

order in 7:3, 5, 6; 15:2, 11; 16:12; 17:8. Qal verbs whose transitivity is diﬃcult to determine appear with SV order in 6:8, 9; 7:16; 9:1. 32 One does not “blow” (Qal ‫ )תקע‬something, just as one would not “shout” (hypothetical Qal ‫ )רוע‬something. One does, however, “sound” something or “cause” something “to sound” (Hiphil ‫)רוע‬. While ‫ תקע‬appears to take an accusative compliment (‫“ קול‬voice” or ‫“ תרועה‬alarm”) in just 35% of its occurrences in 1QM (6 of 17), ‫ רוע‬takes an accusative compliment in 75% (6 of 8). Thus, it might be better to view these accusatives as adverbial accusatives when used with ‫תקע‬. In 1QM 8:5, for example, we might translate ‫ ותקעו הכוהנים בחצוצרות קול מרודד‬as “And the priests shall blow on the trumpets with a subdued voice.” Also note that ‫“( בחצוצרות‬on the trumpets”) is not used with every case of ‫ תקע‬in 1QM (see 8:14, 16:13, and 17:10), and it is best viewed (with ‫ תקע‬or ‫ )רוע‬as an adjunct. Even if we view some of the ‫תקע‬ clauses as transitive, it would not be surprising for an author to use the typical inversion associated with ‫ תקע‬out of habit. 33 In these inscriptions (found in cols. 3–4, 5, and 6) we usually ﬁnd a nounphrase. It may be that the VS word order of 3:9 follows the word order rules of early BH in order to sound more formal or religious.

40

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

Though not every clause conforms to the pattern we are noting, there remains a striking correlation between verb transitivity and word order. This correlation suggests that we revise our word order model for 1QM in the following way: along with fronted non-subject constituents, intransitive main verbs trigger subject-verb inversion.34 To sum up what has been argued so far, of the two existing models for word order derived from Biblical Hebrew, the SV model appears to work best for 1QM. After we consider various elements of the data in 1QM, particularly verb transitivity, we can revise the SV model to ﬁt almost every verbal clause in 1QM: Word order is normally SV, unless subject-verb inversion is triggered by a fronted constituent or by an intransitive main verb. What remains is to bring this understanding of word order to bear on our interpretation of 1QM.

4. Implications of Word Order for 1QM 1:2–3 The text of 1QM 1:1–3 describes the participants in the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. In line 2, the Sons of Darkness are said to be helped by “those who have violated the covenant.” These covenant violators are presumably Jews who have forsaken the covenant with the God of Israel. Our understanding of word order in 1QM, particularly the hypothesis that intransitive verbs trigger subject-verb inversion (and thus VS order), has something to add to the interpretation of these three lines. 1QM 1:1–3, according to Duhaime’s text,35 reads as follows:

‫למ] [ המלחמה ראשית משלוח יד בני אור להחל בגורל בני חושך‬ ֯ ‫וח◦] [פלשת ובגדודי‬ ֯ 2 ‫בחיל בליעל בגדוד אדום ומואב ובני עמון‬ ‫כתיי אשור ועמהם בעזר מרשיעי ברית בני לוי ובני יהודה ובני בנימין‬ 34

Linguists have observed transitivity’s inﬂuence on word order in several modern languages. See Siewierska, 93–95; Tammy Jandry Hertel, “Lexical and Discourse Factors in the Second Language Acquisition of Spanish Word Order,” Second Language Research 19 (2003): 273–304; and Cristobal Lozano, “Focus and Split-intransitivity: the Acquisition of Word Order Alternations in Nonnative Spanish,” Second Language Research 22 (2006): 145–87. 35 Jean Duhaime, “War Scroll,” in Damascus Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents (ed. James H. Charlesworth; Tübingen: Mohr, 1995).

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

41

‫ ֯ב◦] [לכול גדודיהם בשוב גולת בני אור‬36 3 ‫גולת המדבר ילחמו בם‬ ‫ממדבר העמים לחנות במדבר ירושלים ואחר המלחמה יעלו משם‬ There are two current options for dividing the sentences spanning lines 2 and 3, beginning with ‫ועמהם‬. The ﬁrst option is represented by Abegg, who translates, “Supporting them are those who have violated the covenant. The sons of Levi, the sons of Judah, and the sons of Benjamin, those exiled to the wilderness, shall ﬁght against them.”37 Duhaime, Yadin, and most others espouse the same view of the clause division.38 The second option, held by Dupont-Sommer39 and Hanan Eshel,40 sees the ﬁrst sentence continuing until after the second noun phrase. Thus, Eshel translates “these being helped41 by those who violate the covenant, (from) the sons of Levi, the sons of Judah, and the sons of Benjamin. The exiles of 36

The texts of Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (in The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition [Leiden: Brill, 1997]), Yigael Yadin (in The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962]), Duhaime, and Abegg—both in his Ph.D. dissertation, “The War Scroll from Cave 1 and 4: A Critical Edition” (Hebrew Union College, 1992), and in his Accordance module, “Qumran Non-biblical Manuscripts” version 3.1, 1999–2009—read the ﬁrst letter of 1QM 1:3 as ‫ב‬. Eleazar L. Sukenik, ‫ ( אוצר המגילות הגנוזות שבידי האוניברסיטה העברית‬Jerusalem: Magnes, 1955), J. Carmignac, La Règle de la Guerre (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1958), A. M. Habermann, ‫( מגילות מדבר יהודה‬Tel Aviv: Machbaroth Lesifrut, 1959), and Eduard Lohse, Die Texte aus Qumran (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), however, read ‫כ‬. 37 Martin Abegg, “The War Scroll,” 148. 38 Duhaime, 97; Yadin, 257; Florentino García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 95; Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin, 1998), 163; Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 399; J. van der Ploeg, Le Rouleau de la Guerre (Leiden: Brill, 1959), 35; Philip Davies, 1QM, the War Scroll from Qumran: Its Structure and History (Rome: Biblical Institute, 1977), 114–15. 39 A. Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran (trans. Geza Vermes; Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1973), 169. 40 For his defense of this position, and pertinent references, see Eshel, Hasmonean State, 169 n. 23. Cf. also Yadin, 257 note: “Theoretically one might connect: ‘the oﬀenders . . . of the sons of Levi, etc.’, but this seems improbable.” 41 Eshel’s translation treats ‫ ועמהם‬as though it continues the previous clause, instead of beginning a new one.

42

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

the wilderness shall ﬁght against them.”42 Eshel’s reasons for including the second noun phrase in the ﬁrst sentence are as follows. Philip Davies observes that the trio Levi, Judah, and Benjamin is unusual in the scrolls.43 Eshel argues that the “sons of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin” does not refer to the Qumran community, but to the southern tribes that have returned from exile. Levi, Judah, and Benjamin appear in tandem again in 4Q371 and 4Q372 (Prayer of Joseph), where they seem to be identiﬁed with the temple establishment. Since the Qumranites held a negative view toward many Jewish groups, particularly the temple establishment, it makes sense that 1QM views these people as transgressors of the covenant and members of the Sons of Darkness.44 My word order model for 1QM suggests a third option. If word order in 1QM works as I have suggested, then the intransitive verb ‫“( לחם‬to be engaged in battle”) should trigger inversion of subject and verb.45 In order for the clause with main verb ‫ לחם‬to follow this rule, the preceding noun phrase “captivity of the wilderness” must belong to the previous clause. The lacuna at the beginning of line 3 may possibly contain a subject for the verb ‫לחם‬, perhaps [‫ ֗כו֯ ]ל בני חושך‬46 (“all the Sons of Darkness”). If 42

Eshel, Hasmonean State, 169. Davies, 114 n. 7. Cf. also John S. Bergsma, “Qumran Self Identity: ‘Israel’ or ‘Judah’?” DSD 15 (2008), 172–89, who argues that the Qumran sectarians used the term “Israel” to refer to themselves, but not “Judah” or any of the other tribes. 44 Eshel, Hasmonean State, 169. See Brian Schultz, Conquering the World: The War Scroll (1QM) Reconsidered (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 103–11 for an excellent overview, in English, of Eshel’s argument; see also ibid., 111–24, for his analysis of Eshel’s view. 45 Note, however, that in the body of my argument above, I follow the consensus interpretation and count this clause as SV. 46 The top stroke of the letter appears to be a little short for ‫ב‬. While most begin the lacuna immediately after the ﬁrst letter or render the second letter as unintelligible, Habermann reads the second letter as ‫ו‬, which is compatible with the evidence. I suggest [‫ ֗כו֯ ]ל בני חושך‬instead of [‫ ֗כו֯ ]ל בני אור‬because the “Sons of Light” appear a few words later, and the text as such would be somewhat redundant. Other possible reconstructions include [‫ ֗בנ֯ ]י אור לכלה‬or ‫֗בנ֯ ]י אור‬ [‫לשחת‬. My point here, however, is not to reconstruct the beginning of 1QM 1:3, but to point out how the lacuna in line 3 works with the suggestion that the noun phrases “sons of Levi, sons of Benjamin, and sons of Judah” and “captivity of the wilderness” belong in the preceding clause, in apposition to “violators of the covenant.” 43

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

43

this were the case, the clause would have VS word order and follow our word order rules.47 The resulting understanding of 1QM 1:1–3 would be as follows: The ﬁrst sending of the hand of the Sons of Light is to begin with the lot of the Sons of Darkness, with the army of Belial, with the troop of Edom and Moab and the sons of Ammon and the ar[my of those who dwell in] Philistia, and with the troops of the Kittim of Assyria—and with them, in their support, are those who violated the covenant, the sons of Levi and the sons of Judah and the sons of Benjamin, the captivity of the wilderness. Al[l the Sons of Darkness] will be engaged in battle with them, according to all their lots, when the captivity of the Sons of Light returns. This reading suggests, with Eshel and Brian Schultz, that “the sons of Levi and the sons of Judah and the sons of Benjamin” refers to the Southern Kingdom, not the Qumran community. Moreover, moving the noun phrase “the captivity of the wilderness” to the end of the ﬁrst sentence clariﬁes that the people in view here are the intelligentsia of the Southern Kingdom, who were physically taken to Babylon, and who formed the religious and political elite during the late Second Temple period.48 Thus, sons of Levi, Judah, and Benjamin are given a negative connotation (contra Schultz)49 and are connected to the temple establishment, as Eshel argued.

47

Whether we reconstruct line 3 with a possible subject or a diﬀerent constituent, the ‫ לחם‬clause can easily function without either of the noun phrases preceding it. If no subject is present at the beginning of line three, the clause would have no explicit subject and thus it would still follow our word order rules. 48 That the golah of 1:2 is in the wilderness does not necessarily equate it with the golah of the Sons of Light, who go from the “wilderness of the peoples” to the “wilderness of Jerusalem.” The very notion of a “wilderness of Jerusalem” (while a very literal referent to the Judean desert makes sense here, I highly suspect a metaphorical referent as well, analogous to the “wilderness of the peoples”: Babylon and other places of exile were wilderness, not geographically, but spiritually; cf. Ezek 20:35) heightens the sense of contrast between the covenant violating Jews who consider themselves “out of exile” and the covenant keeping Community who know they are in exile even in Jerusalem. 49 Schultz, Conquering, 113.

44

J. Screnock / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 29–44

There are, of course, strong arguments for all three interpretations. My primary purpose in this paper is not to interpret 1QM 1:2–3. Rather, my point is to show how a robust understanding of word order in QH will inevitably aﬀect interpretation of 1QM, the Scrolls, and the Qumran community.

Conclusion In conclusion, the importance of studying the syntax of Qumran Hebrew should be reiterated. Besides being one of the more neglected areas of Qumran studies, Qumran Hebrew syntax can have a large impact on interpretation. In my study of word order in 1QM, I found that the order is normally SV, unless inversion is triggered by a fronted constituent or by an intransitive verb. The implications of this understanding of word order can be seen in the interpretation of 1QM 1:2–3. Because it ﬁts the data of 1QM, this model is a viable option for describing the word order of Qumran Hebrew. To show that it is the correct model for all of Qumran Hebrew, however, we would need to examine much more evidence from the corpus. Thus, my account is tentative and preliminary. Nevertheless, I hope that my arguments will be helpful in advancing our knowledge of Qumran Hebrew syntax.

Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 45–53

brill.nl/dsd

A Reexamination of the “Sons of the Pit” in CD 13:14 Christopher Stroup Division of Religious and Theological Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Boston University, 145 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215, U.S.A. [email protected]

Abstract This paper reexamines the arguments for the reconstruction, “sons of the dawn,” in CD 13:14 and contends that based on material evidence the former consensus reading, “sons of the pit,” is more likely. The reading “sons of the dawn” gained acceptance because of the apparent absence of the necessary stroke for taw and the discovery of a similar phrase in 4Q298. A close examination of a new image of the manuscript, however, reveals the presence of a serif consistent with taw rather than reš and the remnants of ink where one would expect the leg of taw. Keywords Damascus Document; “sons of dawn;” “sons of the pit;” 4Q298; paleography

Since Solomon Schechter’s publication of the Damascus Document (CD) in 1910,1 scholars have carefully examined the document’s possible readings.2 One consistent challenge to Schechter’s editio princeps was his emendation of what appeared to be ‫“( בני השחר‬sons of the dawn”) to ‫בני הנכר‬ 1

Solomon Schechter, Documents of the Jewish Sectaries: Vol. I. Fragments of a Zadokite Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910; repr., New York: KTAV, 1970). 2 On the MS and its history see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Prolegomenon,” in Schechter, Documents, 9–37; Charlotte Hempel, The Damascus Texts (Sheﬃeld: Sheﬃeld Academic Press, 2000), 19–21; Stefan C. Reif, “The Damascus Document from the Cairo Genizah: Its Discovery, Early Study, and Historical Signiﬁcance,” in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery (ed. Joseph M. Baumgarten, Esther G. Chazon, and Avital Pinnick; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 109–31. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551572

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C. Stroup / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 45–53

(“foreigners”) in CD 13:14.3 Even before images of the CD manuscripts were made available,4 three scholars challenged Schechter’s emendation and proposed the reading ‫“( בני השחת‬sons of the pit”) because the same phrase occurs in CD 6:15.5 This reading, standardized through Chaim Rabin’s later work,6 remained dominant in subsequent scholarship until Joseph Baumgarten made a strong case for Schechter’s unemended, original reading, ‫בני השחר‬, in light of the existence of the phrase ‫ בני שחר‬in 4Q298 (“Words of the Maskil to All Sons of Dawn”).7 Schechter based his emendation on CD 11:2 which speaks of ‫“( בן הנכר‬foreigner”) because he could not make sense of ‫השחר‬. See Schechter, Documents, 53, n. 16. Because of the focus on determining a materially preferable reading, this paper does not address contextual issues for the proposed readings. Supporting ‫ השחר‬see Catherine Murphy, Wealth in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Qumran Community (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 57–60. Supporting ‫ השחת‬see Charlotte Hempel, “The Community and Its Rivals according to the Community Rule from Caves 1 and 4,” RevQ 21/81 (2006): 47–81, esp. 64–66. 4 According to Fitzmyer, “Prolegomenon,” 19, “an arrangement had been made that no scholar would be able to inspect it [the CD MSS] for ﬁve years after Schechter’s edition.” 5 R. Leszynsky, “Observations sur les ‘Fragments of a Zadokite Work’ édités par Schechter,” REJ 62 (1911): 190–96, ﬁrst made this emendation. He was followed by M.-J. Lagrange, “La secte juive de la nouvelle alliance au pays de Damas,” RB 9 (1912): 213–40, esp. 236, n. 7; and R. H. Charles, “Fragments of a Zadokite Work,” in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (ed. idem; 2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1913), 2:785–834, esp. 831. See also Louis Ginzberg, Eine unbekannte jüdische Sekte (New York: [Ginzberg], 1922), 123. There he writes “‫ השחר‬nach 6, 16 [sic] in ‫ השחת‬zu emendieren ist.” 6 Chaim Rabin, The Zadokite Documents: I. The Admonition; II. The Laws (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954), 66–67. 7 Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The ‘Sons of Dawn’ in CDC 13:14–15 and the Ban on Commerce among the Essenes,” IEJ 33 (1983): 81–85. He contends that “without a doubt . . . the word must be read ‫( ”השחר‬82). Later, he reasserted his claim in a note to a critical edition blankly stating, “[t]he MS reads ‫שחר‬, rather than ‫שחת‬, ‘sons of the pit.’” Cf. Joseph M. Baumgarten and Daniel R. Schwartz, “Damascus Document (CD),” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Texts with English Translations. Volume 2: Damascus Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents (ed. James Charlesworth; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 55, n. 203 (Baumgarten is responsible for the material on CD, pages 9–16; cf. ibidem, 8). For discussion of 4Q298 see Stephen Pfann and Menahem Kister, “4Q298: 4QcryptA Words of the Maskil to All Sons of Dawn,” DJD 20:1–30. See also Stephen Pfann, “4Q298: The Maskîl’s Address to All Sons 3

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Since Baumgarten’s article, the consensus has shifted so much so that the present author is unaware of any subsequent Hebrew edition of CD that does not read ‫בני השחר‬.8 Many studies have also employed Baumgarten’s reading as the “materially preferable” reading.9 Catherine Murphy, for example, developed Baumgarten’s assertion and argued that the reading ‫ השחר‬is preferable to ‫ השחת‬because “the vertical stance of the faint letter is more consistent with reš, as is the curve at the upper right corner.”10 In 2006, however, Charlotte Hempel, reversing her previous view, called of Dawn,” JQR 85 (1994): 203–35; and Menahem Kister, “Commentary to 4Q298,” JQR 85 (1994): 237–49. 8 See, e.g., Elisha Qimron, “The Text of CDC,” in The Damascus Document Reconsidered (ed. Magen Broshi; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1992), [34]; Baumgarten and Schwartz, “Damascus Document,” 54; Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1996–1997), 2:572; and Ben Zion Wacholder, The New Damascus Document: The Midrash on the Eschatological Torah of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Reconstruction, Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 94. Some editions revised after the appearance of Baumgarten’s article have retained ‫שחת‬. See, e.g., Eduard Lohse, Die Texte aus Qumran, Hebräisch und Deutsch (4th ed.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986), 94. 9 See, e.g., Pfann, “4Q298,” 225, n. 4; Kister, “4Q298,” 233, 238; Charlotte Hempel, The Laws of the Damascus Document: Sources, Traditions and Redaction (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 130; Murphy, Wealth, 57–60; and Wacholder, Damascus Document, 94 and 347. The translations have been slower in adopting Baumgarten’s reading but have largely accepted it since the publication of Baumgarten and Schwartz, “Damascus Document (CD),” in 1995. See, e.g., Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (London: Penguin, 1962). The underlying Hebrew of the ﬁrst four editions is ‫ שחת‬while the ﬁfth, published in 2004, is ‫ שחר‬with ‫ שחת‬bracketed. For ‫ שחת‬see also Theodor Herzl Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures in English (3d rev. and enl. ed.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 87; Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg, and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 71; and Florentino García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (2d ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 43. 10 Murphy, Wealth, 58. She does not cite either in which images she observed these data or how she determined the standard writing of reš in CD. In other places in the work, Murphy indicates that ‫ השחת‬is the correct reading. See Murphy, Wealth, 77, 373, and 398. Ben Zion Wacholder, Damascus Document, 347, conﬁrmed the shift in the interpretation of the material evidence writing, “Scrollists used to read benē hashaḥat (sons of the Pit) in line 14, but as noted by Baumgarten, the reading benē hashaḥar is secure.”

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Baumgarten’s assessment into question and opted for Rabin’s reading instead.11 In light of this still unresolved textual history, this paper oﬀers observations from a fresh examination of the manuscript of CD and reassesses the interpretations of the material evidence oﬀered for ‫ שחר‬and ‫שחת‬.12 It argues that in light of this reassessment the most probable reading of CD 13:14 is ‫שחת‬. This argument is adduced through an examination of the script on CD, page 13 and the characteristics of what remains of the questionable letter compared with other samples of reš and taw in CD.

Image A: “‫”בני השחת‬: Cambridge University Library, T-S 10K6.7, recto, line 1413 11

Hempel, “Rivals,” 64–66, comments: “I now wonder whether the letter in question was not originally a taf . . . It seems possible that the downstroke of an original taf has faded to leave remains that now admittedly look like a resh.” Supporting this, according to Hempel, ibidem, 66, are the “close similarities between resh and taf in this manuscript.” For her previous position see Hempel, Laws, 130, and eadem, “The Qumran Sapiential Texts and the Rule Books,” in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought (eds. Charlotte Hempel, Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger; Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 277–97, esp. 293, n. 67. 12 This reexamination is based on an observation of the MS on 29 March 2010 and a new high resolution image of CD 13:14 taken by Cambridge University Library Imaging Services. 13 All images used in this article are reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. This image was taken on 29 March 2010.

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An initial glance at “Image A,” seems to show Schechter’s original reading of a ﬁnal reš correct since the letter in question does not appear to have the left vertical stroke needed for taw.14 To accurately determine the materially preferable reading, an assessment of the paleographical characteristics of a sampling of reš and taw in CD is needed. Both letters are comprised of a roof and a leg.15 Taw receives a second leg with a foot. Both letters have a serif on the left end of the roof. Sometimes the serif on the taw appears as a horn. From an examination of the script on page 13 of CD, it is clear that the vertical stance and leg curvature of reš and taw are indistinguishable, contrary to Murphy’s claim.16 Sometimes the vertical line of reš is completely straight, sometimes it is slightly curved at the base, and other times the vertical line is slightly convex. Though the vertical line of taw is more consistently straight, the same range of possibilities exists. An examination of the curved joint Table A: “Sample of Reš and Taw” Cambridge University Library, T-S 10K6.717

14

Schechter, Documents, 86. Louis Ginzberg thought this reading was correct but emended the text to ‫ שחת‬because of the context of the rest of CD. Ginzberg, Sekte, 123. Rabin, however, examined photographs of the MS and determined the most accurate reading to be ‫שחת‬. Rabin, Zadokite Documents, 66. Rabin’s photograph was from 1952 and provided by Professor G. R. Driver (see Rabin, Zadokite Documents, vi). Fitzmyer, “Prolegomenon,” 22 (in the reprinted edition of Schechter’s Documents) notes that the reading should be amended to ‫ שחת‬as well. 15 The paleographical vocabulary is based on Ada Yardeni, The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Palaeography, Script Styles, Calligraphy and Design (London: Oak Knoll, 2002), 149. 16 Murphy, Wealth, 58. 17 “‫ ”ר‬from right to left: line 8, ‫ ;בגבורות‬line 1, ‫ ;וישראל‬line 1, ‫ ;עשרה‬line 5, ‫ ;לתורת‬line 2, ‫ ;בספר‬line 7, ‫ ;סרך‬line 6, ‫ ;בפרוש‬line 12, ‫ ;בגורל‬line 6, ‫;המבקר‬ line 2, ‫עשרה‬. “‫ ”ת‬from right to left: line 20 ‫ ;הבחנות‬line 10, ‫ ;חרצובות‬line 11, ‫ ;וגבורתו‬line 10, ‫ ;בעדתו‬line 6, ‫ ;פתי‬line 6, ‫ ;התורה‬line 4, ‫ ;לצאת‬line 1, ‫ומיאיות‬. Images derived from a JPEG image of T-S 10K6.7, recto taken in 2000. Image

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between the roof and right leg (upper right corner) reveals little more conclusive evidence. Reš is sometimes rounded and sometimes more square in shape. Again, the same range of possibilities occurs for taw. Though the stance and curvature of reš and taw are similar on page 13, there is one characteristic that appears to reliably distinguish the letters in the absence of the second leg: the upper left serif of the roof. In reš the mark is pointed and sometimes angled slightly to the right, while in taw the mark is more rounded and either vertical or angled to the left.18 In many instances the ﬁnal stroke of taw curls slightly to the left as well. Examining more closely the letter in question with these observations in mind, two characteristics support the reading taw. First, the slightly curled serif in the upper left corner consistent with taw, though faint, is present in the letter in question. Though it is conceivable that this serif is the result of a discoloration of the MS, a close examination of this mark reveals the presence of black ink consistent with a serif. Second, a remnant of black ink is also present below the roof where the second leg of a taw would be expected. A close examination of a new high resolution image of this letter conﬁrms the presence of black ink. This most likely indicates that a second vertical stroke was originally present. These two phenomena are better explained by damage to the second leg of taw than by an abnormal formation of reš. Supporting this claim is the damage to the letters following ‫ שחת‬generally taken to be kaf and yod. If the reading ‫ כי‬is correct, the vertical portion of the kaf is completely absent while a remnant of the horizontal portions of the stroke, though damaged, is visible.19 Additionally, at CD 13:13 the visible distinction between vertical strokes of a multi-stroke letter also occurs. The ﬁnal stroke of the second hē in ‫ העדה‬is damaged to a greater extent than the rest of the letter.

used by kind permission of Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Adjustments to contrast and brightness have been made. I wish to thank Dr. Ben Outhwaite of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit for providing me with this image. 18 The reš in ‫( חרצובות‬line 10) is one exception. It angles slightly to the left. 19 See “Image A” above.

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Image B: “Close up of ‫”ת‬: Cambridge University Library, T-S 10K6.720 This is consistent with the appearance of at least one other taw on page 13, as well.21 Whether the phenomenon that caused scholars to question the presence of the second leg of taw in CD 13:14 is a result of fading as Hempel claims or damage to the leather, the fact remains that one stroke can appear more faint or sustain more damage than other strokes in a multi-stroke letter.22 These points give credence to the claim that the absence of the second leg of the taw is the result of greater damage to this stroke than to the ﬁrst leg or the roof. An examination of previously printed images of the letter appears to support this conclusion as well.

20

Image used by kind permission of Syndics of Cambridge University Library. See ‫ ומיאיות‬in CD 13:1. 22 Hempel, “Rivals,” 66. Because of the damage to the letters following ‫שחת‬, it is likely that this phenomenon is the result of abrasure of the leather rather than fading. I am grateful to Professor Eibert Tigchelaar for this suggestion. 21

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Image C: “‫”העדה‬: Cambridge University Library, T-S 10K6.7, recto, line 13

Table B: Printed Images of CD, Page 13, line 1423

Zeitlin, Zadokite Fragments, 1952.

Baumgarten, “Sons of Dawn,” 1983, plate 9.

Qimron, “Text,” 1992, [34].

Qimron’s image reveals that the left leaning serif is present.24 The image in Baumgarten’s publication reveals a more complete vertical stroke and conﬁrms the curled left corner of the letter. The image Zeitlin provides appears to reveal that the letter in question is, in fact, a taw.25 From these arguments, it is my contention that the phrase “sons of the dawn” does not occur in CD.26 An examination of the manuscript indi23

Solomon Zeitlin, The Zadokite Fragments: Facsimile of the Manuscripts in the Cairo Genizah Collection in the Possession of the University Library (Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1952); Baumgarten, “Sons of Dawn,” Plate 9; Qimron, “Text,” [34]. Images obtained from digital scans of respective publications. 24 Qimron, “Text,” [34]. Qimron acknowledges Rabin’s reading in a footnote, but takes ‫ השחר‬as the most probable reading. Qimron, “Text,” [35]. 25 The strength of these claims is mitigated by the quality of the reproduced images. 26 This claim is further supported by syntactical and contextual issues with reading “sons of the dawn” in CD. Scholars supporting ‫ בני השחר‬often relate it

C. Stroup / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 45–53

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cates that the characteristics of taw are present, and therefore, the best reading of CD 13:14 is ‫שחת‬. Contextually, this reading ﬁts well in the Damascus Document and is supported by the use of the same phrase, ‫בני‬ ‫השחת‬, at 6:14, as early scholars noted.27 In my view, the cumulative weight of these arguments moves the burden of proof back on those who argue that ‫ שחר‬is preferable. The materially preferable reading in CD 13:14 is ‫ שחת‬not ‫שחר‬.28

to the similar phrase in 4Q298 (‫ )בני שחר‬and designations ‫ בני אור‬and ‫בני חשך‬ in 1QS (1:9–10; 2:16; 3:13, 24–25) and 1QM (1:1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16; 3:6, 9; 13:16, 17; and 14:17). All of these phrases, however, lack the article while the phrase in CD 13:14 has the article. This seems to indicate that the phrase could not have developed directly from these phrases or in relation to 4Q298 as some scholars propose. See, e.g., Pfann, “4Q298,” 225, n. 4; and Kister, “4Q298,” 238. On contextual problems see the discussion in Hempel, “Rivals,” 66–67. 27 See note 5 above. 28 I wish to thank Professors Jonathan Klawans and John J. Collins who read and commented on multiple drafts of this article. I also wish to thank Jennifer Knust, Eibert Tigchelaar, and the anonymous reader of this journal for their thoughtful comments.

Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 54–73

brill.nl/dsd

Between Imitation and Interpretation: Reuse of Scripture and Composition in Hodayot (1QHa) 11:6–19 William A. Tooman School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, South Street, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JU, United Kingdom [email protected]

Abstract 1QHodayota 11:6–19 exempliﬁes some of the techniques by which an author could, successfully, imitate biblical language without, simultaneously, implying that the reuse was exegetical. Seven scriptural texts—each crafted around themes of life, death, or the sea—dictated the poem’s themes and much of its vocabulary (Jonah 2:3–7; Ps 77:17–18; 107:23–27; Isa 66:7; Jer 10:13/51:16; Job 36:16–17; 41:23). The author of 1QHa 11:6–19 mimicked the biblical idiom of these sources, but, to avoid evoking the sources too clearly, the author broke up and/or adapted many of the most rare and distinctive of the borrowed locutions. In those cases where the author reused multiple locutions from a single source-text, the borrowed elements were separated from one another, scattered widely across the new poem. The outcome was a new text that reﬂected biblical expression and style, yet it did not oﬀer or imply any interpretation of the sources of that style. Keywords Hodayot; Imitation; Interpretation; Reuse; Scripture; Allusion; Intertextuality

1. Introduction When it was ﬁrst published, 1QHa 11:6–19 caused a stir within the academic community on account of its supposed messianism.1 André Original publication: Eleazar L. Sukenik, ‫( מגילות גנוזות סקירה רישונה‬Jerusalem: Magnes, 1948); ‫( מגילות גנוזות סקירה שנייה‬Jerusalem: Magnes, 1950); 1

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551527

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Dupont-Sommer, one of the ﬁrst to argue the point, claimed that the psalm reﬂected a pre-Christian Jewish “myth concerning the mother of the messiah.”2 Soon after, Lou Silbermann and Glenn Hinson asserted the opposite, that the poem contained no messianic content at all.3 This debate waxed and waned for over a decade, before a consensus opinion was achieved. Current consensus holds that 1QHa 11:6–19 is an individual psalm of complaint, expressing a sudden onset of some personal crisis through birth imagery.4 This imagery is complex and contains a fundamental irony: giving birth is pain, and pain is death. One of the most notable things about 1QHa 11:6–19 is its pregnant Biblicism. The poem is rife with words and phrases borrowed from a variety of scriptural sources. The importance of this fact was overshadowed for a time by the debate regarding the poem’s potential messianism. Beginning The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University, (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1955). The standard edition is now Hartmut Stegemann and Eileen Schuller, translation of texts by Carol Newsom, 1QHodayota: With Incorporation of 1QHodayotb and 4QHodayot a–f (DJD 40; Oxford: Clarendon, 2009). A conversion table of column and line numbers between the Sukenik and DJD editions can be found in DJD 40: 49–53. 2 André Dupont-Sommer, “La mère du Messie et la mère de l’Aspic dans un hymne de Qoumrân,” RHR 147 (1955): 174–88. See also J. V. Chamberlain, “Another Qumran Thanksgiving Psalm,” JNES 14 (1955): 32–41; idem, “Further Elucidation of a Messianic Thanksgiving Psalm from Qumran,” JNES 14 (1955): 181–82. 3 Lou H. Silberman, “Language and Structure in the Hodayot (IQH3),” JBL 75 (1956): 96–106; Glenn Hinson, “Hodayoth III, 6–18: In What Sense Messianic?” RevQ 2/6 (1960): 183–204. See also Schuyler Brown, “Deliverance from the Crucible: Some Further Reﬂections on 1QH3.1–18,” NTS 14 (1967–1968): 247–59. 4 See, for example, J. J. Collins, “Patterns of Eschatology at Qumran,” in Traditions in Transformation, Turning Points in Biblical Faith (ed. Baruch Halperin and Jon Levenson; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 351–75 at 369; Silberman, “Language and Structure,” 104–6; Julie A. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis in the Hodayot (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 206–7. I am not convinced by Michael C. Douglas’ argument that the speaker, in this psalm, is the “progenitor of the community” (“Power and Praise in the Hodayot: A Literary Critical Study of 1QH 9:1–18.14” [Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1998], 177), nor by Carol Newsom’s argument that the poem is fundamentally about self-identity (The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 240–53).

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with Svend Holm-Nielsen’s 1960 monograph, this feature of the Hodayot began to receive the attention it deserved.5 A number of studies of scriptural reuse in 1QHa 11:6–19 have since appeared, none more detailed than those of Christopher Frechette and Julie Hughes.6 Both Frechette and Hughes highlight the great variety of sources from which the author of 1QHa 11:6–19 borrowed linguistic material and imagistic motifs. In the end, each of them points to one particular source as the principal inspiration for the poem, one literary progenitor, which dictated the poem’s tenor and themes. For Frechette, the primary source text was 1 Sam 4:18–22; for Hughes it was 2 Sam 22:2–20.7 Although I do not agree with either of these suggestions, Frechette and Hughes have made two important observations. The author’s reuse of scripture is the key to understanding the compositional design of 1QHa 11:6–19, and the author does not use sources in equal measure. I will argue below that the author of 1QHa 11:6–19 borrowed linguistic material from a wide variety of scriptural sources. In almost every line of the poem, one can observe the linguistic imprint of antecedent texts like Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Jonah, Micah, Psalms, Job and Proverbs. This is not a new observation, as I have acknowledged 5

Svend Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget I Aarhus, 1960). 6 Christopher G. Frechette, SJ, “Chiasm, Reversal and Biblical Reference in 1QH 11.3-18,” JSP 21 (2000): 71–102; Julie A. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 185–207. Other studies that give attention to scriptural reuse in 1QHa 11:6–19 include: J. Baumgarten and M. Mansoor, “Studies in the New Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns) II,” JBL 74 (1955): 188–95; Jean Carmignac, “Les citations de l’ancien testament, et spécialement des poems du serviteur, dans les hymnes de Qumran,” RevQ 2/7 (1960): 357–94; M. Delcor, Les Hymnes de Qumran (Hodayot): Texte hébreu, introduction, traduction, commentaire (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1962), 109–24; Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 51–64; Menahem Mansoor, The Thanksgiving Hymns: Translated and Annotated with an Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1961); and Silberman, “Language and Structure.” 7 “[T]he key events of this narrative and the event that sets it in motion allude to 1 Sam 4.18–22 and reverses its tragic tone in order to show that the glory of God has not departed but, rather, is actively present as peleʾyôʿēṣ” (Frechette, “Chiasm,” 95). “I suggest that there is an overall structural allusion to David’s psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance, found in 2 Sam 22:2–20” (Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 200).

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above. What has not been noted previously is that, of the scriptural texts that provided building blocks for 1QHa 11:6–19, seven particular texts— each crafted around themes of life, death, or the sea—dictated the poem’s themes and much of its vocabulary (Jonah 2:3–10; Ps 77:17–18; 107:23– 27; Isa 66:7; Jer 10:13/51:16; Job 38:16–17; 41:23). Despite the importance of these seven sources for the composition of 1QHa 11:6–19, the poem’s dependence upon them is not as apparent as one might anticipate. In the case of these seven sources, the author altered the locutions borrowed from the target texts, often breaking up their elements and redistributing them across many lines of the new poem. The outcomes of this technique—intentional or not—were twofold. On the one hand, the new text reﬂected biblical expression and style. On the other hand, the sources of that style were half-hidden, their inﬂuence subliminal rather than overt. Second Temple literature as a whole is rife with scriptural reuse. Not surprisingly, many cases of scriptural reuse are attributed to mimicry, an author’s attempt to replicate biblical idiom, particularly when the text in question manifests a high density of biblical idioms. Identiﬁcation of this phenomenon, sometimes called “imitative allusion” or “reminiscence,” has become a commonplace occurrence in scrolls scholarship.8 The claim, however, is almost always impressionistic. When the exegetical or rhetorical purposes of scriptural reuse are not readily apparent, they are attributed to a desire to imitate biblical idiom. In the case of 1QHa 11:6–19, however, the author’s techniques of textual reuse in these seven cases suggest one diagnostic for identifying imitative scriptural reuse.

8

See, e.g., George Brooke, “Biblical Interpretation in the Qumran Scrolls and in the New Testament,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery (ed. Lawrence Schiﬀman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 60–73 at 67–68; Jonathan G. Campbell, The Use of Scripture in the Damascus Document 1–8, 19–20 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995); N. Fernández Marcos, “Rewritten Bible or Imitatio? The Vestments of the High Priest,” in Studies in Hebrew Bible, Qumran and the Septuagint Presented to Eugene Ulrich (ed. Peter Flint, Eugene Ulrich, Emanuel Tov, and James VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 321–36; Stephen Kaufman, “The Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism,” HUCA 53 (1982): 29–43.

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2. Identifying Scriptural Reuse Studies of scriptural reuse in Second Temple literature tend to divide reuse into two varieties: explicit and implicit. Explicit reuse of scripture is marked by a citation formula or another marker that sets the quotation apart from the context. Though common in certain genres of Second Temple literature (e.g., pesharim), quotations are virtually unknown in the Hodayot.9 Implicit reuse of scripture, which is unmarked, is a demonstrable repetition of some element, or elements, of an antecedent text. An “element” can be a word, phrase, clause, paragraph, topos, or form.10 The key is that its origin is identiﬁable; the element should originate from a speciﬁc source. So, how does one recognize the reuse of some element or section of one text (which presumably bears its own stylistic signature) within a later text? There are three principles, which are relevant to this study, by which deliberate literary borrowing can be recognized: uniqueness or rarity, multiplicity, and thematic correspondence.11 (1) Uniqueness or rarity. The element in question may be unique to a particular source text (excepting its reuse) or rare outside of a particular source text. In either case, the source text is then easy to identify. In the case of 1QHa 11:6–19, the locution ‫פלא יועץ עם גבור‬, “a wonderful counselor with his power” (line 10), is clearly evocative of Isa 9:5, ‫פלא‬ ‫יועץ אל גבור‬, “wonderful counselor, mighty God,” the only other text that manifests the same combination of lexemes. Nearly as recognizable is the

9

See C. D. Elledge, “Exegetical Styles at Qumran: A Cumulative Index and Commentary,” RevQ 21/82 (2003): 165–208; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 41–55. 10 By “form” I have in mind a literary (not oral) structure or pattern that is recognizable and could be replicated. 11 For similar attempts to identify principles of reuse see, for example, Adele Berlin, “Qumran Laments and the Study of Lament Literature,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Esther Chazon; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1–17, esp. 4–9; Esther Chazon, “The Use of the Bible as a Key to Meaning in Psalms from Qumran,” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov (ed. Shalom Paul, Robert Kraft, Lawrence Schiﬀman, and Weston W. Fields; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 85–96; eadem, “Scripture and Prayer in the Words of the Luminaries,” in Prayers that Cite Scripture (ed. James Kugel; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2006), 25–41.

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59

locution ‫משברי מות‬, “gates of death,” which appears in 2 Sam 22:5 and 1QHa 11:9. (2) Multiplicity. A distinctive element from one text may occur repeatedly within a new text, or several elements, which occur in close proximity in the source text, may reappear in a new text. These features can be clear indicators of a source. Although the individual elements in question may not be rare, the combination of elements almost certainly will be. The example from Isa 9:5 also meets the criteria of multiplicity. Three constituents from Isa 9:5 reappear in 1QHa 11:10 (‫יועץ‬, ‫פלא‬, and ‫)גבור‬, which, when combined, occur nowhere else in HB. Several examples of this type, from 1QHa 11:6–19, will be oﬀered below. (3) Thematic correspondence. Many Second Temple authors manifest a proclivity for drawing on texts that share a similar subject, theme, or argument with the text that they are composing. In certain cases, scriptural pericopae on a similar theme were excerpted, copied one after another verbatim, with or without interpretation (e.g., 4QTestimonia, Florilegium, Catena). In other cases, sources on a similar theme were used to construct a new composition (e.g., the so-called “Amos-Numbers midrash” in the Damascus Document). In the case of 1QHa 11:6–19, the author prefered to reuse individual locutions, seldom more than two words in length, drawn from brief texts on the themes of birth, death, and the sea. As we will see, the author made the most extensive use of those texts which manifest more than one of these themes.

3. Scriptural Reuse in 1QHa 11:6–19 The following chart presents the text of 1QHa 11:6–19 in parallel with a catalogue of the most distinctive of its borrowed locutions. As the chart illustrates, the poem is an intricate conﬂation of biblical phrases and clauses. The sources in the left column were identiﬁed by means of the three criteria deﬁned above. Borrowed elements are underlined in 1QHa. In addition, 1QHa 11:6–19 is famously replete with puns, word-play, and morphological variations on graphically similar lexemes.12 These

For example: ‫מים‬, “waters” // ‫ים‬, “sea”; ‫כור‬, “crucible” // ‫בכור‬, “ﬁrstborn”; ‫משבר‬, “vaginal opening” // ‫משבר‬, “breakers”; ‫חבלים‬, “bonds” // ‫חבל‬, “labour 12

pains”; and so forth. See translation below.

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are included in the catalogue of borrowed elements in the chart when appropriate.

Sources

1QHa 11:6–1913

MT

1 Kgs 17:24

‫בפיך אמת‬

Ps 72:13; 109:31 Ps 107:23–24 Jonah 2:4

oppressed + ‫ נפש‬+ ‫ישע‬ ‫ במצולה‬+ ‫באניות‬ 14 ‫ימים )בלבב(מצולה‬

Jer 1:1816 Prov 1:27 Jer 4:31 + 13:21 1 Sam 4:19

‫עיר מבצר‬ ‫צרה וצוקה‬ ‫ כמו אשת לדה‬+ ‫צרה כמבכירה‬ ‫כי נהפכו עליה צריה‬

13

‫ אודכה אדוני כיא‬vacat ] 6 ‫אמ[ת פיכה‬ ̊ [‫ותצילני מ]סוד שוא‬ ‫נפש]י‬ ̊ ‫ ]הוש[עתה‬7 ‫ומ] [י̊ ̊ם‬ ‫וקל[ס יחשובוני‬ ̊ ‫כיא לחרפה‬ ‫נפ ̊ש]י[ ̊כאוניה‬ ̊ ‫וישימו‬15 ‫̊ב ̊מ ̊צו̊ ̊לות י̊ ̊ם‬ [ ‫מלפנ̊ י̊ ] צר‬ ̊ ‫ וכעיר מבצר‬8 ‫ו̊ ̊אהיה בצוקה‬ ‫כמו אשת לדה מבכריה‬ ‫כיא נהפכו צירי̊ ̊ם‬

17

Hebrew text from DJD 40:144–45. The translation below is adapted from ibid., 154–55. 14 ‫ מצולה‬also occurs in Mic 7:19, Ps 68:23, and Job 41:23. I suspect that the immediate source was Jonah 2:4, as discussed below, but the language of Job 41:23 has also colored the poem (see line 16). 15 The expression “to make a person like” (‫ כ‬+ ‫ נפש‬+ ‫ )שים‬is not a typical biblical expression, occurring only once, in 1 Kgs 19:2. In HB, ‫ נפש‬+ ‫ שים‬is accompanied most often by ‫ כף‬+ ‫ ב‬in the expression “to take a life in (one’s) hands” (e.g., Judg 12:3; 1 Sam 19:5; 28:21; Job 13:14). 16 ‫עיר מבצר‬, “fortiﬁed city,” is a common expression in HB, occurring nineteen times, but the simile “like a fortiﬁed city” does not occur. As WernbergMøller observed, “[a]lthough there are several passages where the phrase ‫עיר מבצר‬ occurs, the similarity between its metaphorical usage in Jer 1:18 and our passage is such that we are justiﬁed in supposing a speciﬁc relationship between them” (P. Wernberg-Møller, “The Contribution of the Hodayot to Biblical Textual Criticism,” Textus 4 [1964]: 133–75 at 151); cf. Jer 20:16. 17 The lacuna is 3–4 letters in length. Either ‫צר‬/‫( צריו‬e.g., Stegemann and Schuller, DJD 40:149) or ‫( אויב‬e.g., Delcor, Hymnes, 110) would ﬁt here.

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‫)‪(cont.‬‬ ‫‪1QHa 11:6–19‬‬

‫‪ 9‬וחבל נמרץ על משבריה‬ ‫להחיל בכור הריה‬ ‫כיא באו בנים עד‬ ‫משברי מות‬ ‫‪ 10‬והרית גבר הצרה בחבליה‬ ‫כיא במשברי מות‬ ‫תמליט זכר‬ ‫ובחבלי שאול יגיח‬ ‫‪ 11‬מכור הריה‬ ‫פלא יועץ עם גבורתו‬ ‫ויפלט גבר ממשברים בהריתו‬ ‫החישו כול ‪ 12‬משברים‬ ‫וחבלי מרץ במולדיהם‬ ‫ופלצות להורותם‬ ‫ובמולדיו יהפכו כול צירים‬ ‫‪ 13‬בכור הריה‬ ‫והרית אפעה לחבל נמרץ‬ ‫ומשברי שחת לכול מעשי פלצות‬ ‫ויריעו ‪ 14‬אושי קיר‬ ‫כאוניה על פני מים‬ ‫ויהמו שחקים בקול המון‬

‫‪MT‬‬

‫תחבל וחבל נמרץ‬ ‫כי באו בנים עד־משבר‬ ‫משברי מות‬

‫‪Sources‬‬ ‫‪Mic 2:10‬‬ ‫)‪2 Kgs 19:3 (= Isa 37:3‬‬ ‫‪2 Sam 22:5‬‬

‫גבר ‪ +‬אשה מצרה‬ ‫הרה גבר‬ ‫משברי מות‬ ‫המליטה זכר‬ ‫חבלי שאול‬

‫‪Jer 48:41 = 49:22‬‬ ‫‪Job 3:3‬‬ ‫‪2 Sam 22:5‬‬ ‫‪Isa 66:7‬‬ ‫‪2 Sam 22:6; Ps 18:6‬‬

‫פלא יועץ אל גבור‬

‫‪Isa 9:5‬‬

‫כל משבריך‬ ‫משבר ‪ . . .‬חבלי ילדה‬ ‫נהפכו עליה צריה‬

‫‪Jonah 2:4‬‬ ‫‪Hos 13:13‬‬ ‫‪1 Sam 4:19‬‬

‫כיולדה אפעה‬ ‫וחבל נמרץ‬

‫‪Isa 42:14‬‬ ‫‪Mic 2:10‬‬

‫התבה על פני המים‬ ‫קול נתנו שחקים‬ ‫קול ‪ +‬המון מים‬

‫‪Gen 7:18‬‬ ‫‪Ps 77:18‬‬ ‫‪Jer 10:13 (= 51:16)18‬‬

‫ישב ‪ +‬עפר‬ ‫ויו̊ שבי עפר ‪ 15‬כיורדי ימים‬ ‫יורדי הים )באניות(‬ ‫נבעתים מהמון מים‬ ‫וחכמיהם למו‪ 19‬כמלחים במצולות קול ‪ +‬המון מים‬ ‫מצולה )בלבב ימים(‬

‫‪Isa 26:19‬‬ ‫‪Ps 107:23‬‬ ‫)‪Jer 10:13 (= 51:16‬‬ ‫‪Jonah 2:4‬‬

‫‪18‬‬

‫‪, see n. 37 below.‬המון מים ‪Regarding the source of the locution‬‬ ‫”‪ “their sages are for them‬וחכמיהם למו ‪Stegemann and Schuller transcribe‬‬ ‫‪, “the wise, all of‬וחכמיה כולמו ‪(DJD 40:150), whereas many earlier editions read‬‬ ‫‪them” (// Ps 107:27).‬‬ ‫‪19‬‬

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‫)‪(cont.‬‬ ‫‪1QHa 11:6–19‬‬

‫כי תתבלע ‪ 16‬כול חכמתם‬ ‫בהמות ימים‬ ‫ברתוח תהומות על נבוכי מים‬ ‫ו̊ י̊ ̊ת ̊ר ̊גשו לרום גלים‬

‫‪Sources‬‬

‫‪MT‬‬

‫וכל־חכמתם התבלע‬ ‫המון מים‬ ‫‪20‬‬ ‫ירתיח )‪ +‬מצולה(‬ ‫נבכי־ים‬ ‫ותרומם גליו‬

‫‪Ps 107:27‬‬ ‫)‪Jer 10:13 (= 51:16‬‬ ‫‪Job 41:23‬‬ ‫‪Job 38:16‬‬ ‫‪Ps 107:25‬‬

‫‪ 17‬ומשברי מים בהמון קולם‬ ‫‪21‬ובהתרגשם יפתחו‬ ‫]וא[ב ̊ד]ון‬ ‫̊‬ ‫]או[ל‬ ‫̊‬ ‫̊ש‬

‫משבר ים ‪ +‬קול מים‬ ‫קול ‪ +‬המון מים‬ ‫שאול ואבדון‬

‫‪Ps 93:4‬‬ ‫)‪Jer 10:13 (= 51:16‬‬ ‫‪Prov 15:11‬‬ ‫)‪(Prov 27:20 Qerê‬‬

‫‪ 18‬ו[כו̊ ̊ל חצי שחת עם מצעדם‬ ‫̊‬ ‫לתהום ישמיעו קולם‬ ‫ויפתחו שערי] עולם‬ ‫תח[ת‪ 22‬מעשי אפעה‬ ‫̊‬

‫שמע ‪ +‬קול )‪ +‬מן ‪ +‬שאול(‬ ‫פתחי עולם‬ ‫שערי )מות(‬ ‫כיולדה אפעה‬

‫‪ 19‬ויסגרו דלתי שחת‬

‫סגר ‪ +‬דלת ‪ +‬בעד‬

‫בעד הרית עול‬ ‫ובריחי עולם‬ ‫בעד כול ̊רוחי אפעה‬

‫ברחיה בעדי עולם )ארץ(‬ ‫כול רוחי )ם(‬ ‫כיולדה אפעה‬

‫‪Jonah 2:3‬‬ ‫‪Ps 24:7, 9‬‬ ‫‪Ps 107:18; Job 38:17‬‬ ‫‪Isa 42:14‬‬ ‫‪Isa 26:20; 2 Kgs‬‬ ‫‪4:4, 5, 3323‬‬ ‫‪Jonah 2:7‬‬ ‫;‪Jer 49:32, 36‬‬ ‫‪Ezek 5:10, 12; 21:2‬‬ ‫‪Isa 42:14‬‬

‫‪vacat 20‬‬

‫‪18‬‬ ‫‪19‬‬ ‫‪20‬‬ ‫‪21‬‬ ‫‪22‬‬ ‫‪20‬‬ ‫‪23‬‬ ‫‪21‬‬

‫‪See line 7 and note 12.‬‬ ‫‪ is unknown in HB, but similar expressions‬ובהתרגשם יפתחו ‪The locution‬‬ ‫שאול ‪ +‬פער ;)‪ (Isa 14:9‬שאול ‪ +‬רגז ‪abound. See, for example, the following:‬‬ ‫‪ (Hab 2:5).‬שאול ‪ +‬רחב ;)‪(Isa 5:14‬‬ ‫‪22‬‬ ‫שערי ‪The lacuna here is 8–10 letters in length. Stegemann and Schuller read‬‬ ‫‪], “the eternal bars [benea]th the works” (DJD 40:150). Other‬עולם תח[ת מעשי‬ ‫שערי ‪ (// Isa 38:10),‬שערי ]לכול שאול[ ‪suggestions, rejected in DJD 40, include‬‬ ‫‪.‬שערי ]שאול ל[מעשי ‪] (// col. 14:27), or‬מות‬ ‫‪23‬‬ ‫‪.‬סגר ‪ +‬דלת )בטן( ‪Compare Job 3:10,‬‬

W. A. Tooman / Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 54–73

63

6. [ vacat I thank you O Lord, that] your command is truth, and that you delivered me from [a worthless council] and from[ ]ym 7. you have saved my life. [For] they regard me [as a reproach and a deris]ion and make my life like a ship on the [d]epths of the sea 8. and like a city fortiﬁed before[ the enemy]. I was in distress, like a woman giving birth to her ﬁrstborn,24 when pangs overcome 9. and painful labour upon her womb opening, causing spasms in the crucible of the pregnant woman. For children come to the womb opening of death, 10. and she who is pregnant with a manchild is convulsed by her birth pains. For in the breakers of death, she delivers a male. And in the cords of Sheol25 there bursts forth 11. from the crucible of the pregnant woman a wonderful counselor with his power; and the manchild is delivered from the breakers by the one who is pregnant with him. All 12. wombs hasten, and there are severe labor pains at their births, and shuddering for those pregnant with them. And so at his birth all these pains come 13. upon the crucible of the pregnant one. But she who is pregnant with venomous vanity26 (will be subject) to painful labor and the womb opening of the pit to all the works of terror. The unexpected, recurring metaphor for the womb ‫כור‬, “crucible” (lines 9, 11, 13), is a pun on ‫בכור‬, “ﬁrstborn” (line 8). To eﬀect the pun, ‫ כור‬is always written with a preposition attached (‫מכור‬/‫בכור‬, “in/from the crucible”). See Baumgarten and Mansoor, “Hodayot II,” 190; Silberman, “Language and Structure,” 101–3. 25 The expression, ‫חבלי שאול‬, “bonds of Sheol” is a pun on ‫חבל‬, “labor pains” (lines 9, 12, 13). 26 The translation “venomous vanity” for ‫ אפעה‬was ﬁrst suggested by Frechette 24

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And 14. the foundations of the wall groan like a ship upon the surface of the waters, and the clouds thunder with tumultuous noise. The dwellers in the dust 15. are like those who go down in the seas, terriﬁed by the roar of the waters. And their sages are for them like sailors on the deeps; for all their 16. wisdom is swallowed up by the tumult of the seas. When the deeps boil up over the sources of the waters, the waves surge up on high, 17. and the breakers of water with their noisy roar. And as they surge, they open up Sh[eo]l [and Abadon] [and al]l the arrows of the pit 18. with their retinue. They make their sound heard in the deep, and break open the [eternal] gates [benea]th the works of venomous vanity. 19. And the doors of the pit close behind the one who is pregnant with iniquity, and the eternal bars (close) behind all the spirits of venomous vanity. 20. vacat It is readily apparent, just from scanning the poem, that 1QHa 11:6–19 is dense with biblical language, so much so that it might properly be called “pastiche” or, as Holm-Nielsen would have it, “mosaic.”27 1QHa 11:6–19 is constructed, in the main, from scriptural locutions and variations on scriptural locutions. Most of the borrowed elements are very short, individual phrases or clauses. Seven source texts, however, share one or more of the poem’s three dominant themes (life, death, or sea images): Jonah 2:3–7; Ps 77:16–17; 107:23–27; Isa 66:7; Jer 10:13; Job 36:16–17; Job 41:23. When examined it becomes apparent that these particular texts dictated much of the poem’s vocabulary.28

(“Chiasm,” 99–100) and subsequently adopted by Carol Newsom for the English translation of 1QHa in DJD 40:154–55. See also Silberman, 104. 27 The poem “consists almost exclusively of expressions and phrases from the Old Testament to such a degree that it may be justiﬁed to speak of a mosaic of Old Testament quotations” (Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 45). 28 It is important to stress that I am only speaking about these seven texts in

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Jonah 2:3–7, though a mere ﬁve verses, is the largest source. It contributed signiﬁcantly to the poem’s language because it manifests all three of the author’s chosen focal themes: birth, death, and the sea.

1QHa 11:6–19

Jonah 2:3–10 [EV 2:2–9] distress ‫צרה‬ ‫ צרה‬/‫ שאול‬+ ‫ מן‬+ ‫ קול‬+ ‫שמע‬ voice heard from distress/Sheol womb of sheol ‫בטן שאול‬

‫מצולה בלבב ימים‬

3 3 4 4

deep, in heart of the seas

‫כל משבריך‬

4

all your breakers

‫משבריך גליך‬ (your) breakers and waves deep ‫תהום‬ descended ‫ירד‬

‫ברחיה בעדי עולם‬ its bars around me forever pit ‫שחת‬

4 6 7 7 7

distress ‫צוקה‬/pangs ‫ציר‬ ‫ תהום‬+ ‫ ל‬+ ‫ קול‬+ ‫שמע‬ make voice heard unto deeps sheol ‫שאול‬ (‫מצולות )ים‬ depths of sea 29 (‫משבר )כל‬ (every) birth canal/breakers

‫גלים ומשברי‬ waves and breakers deep ‫תהום‬ descended ‫ירד‬

‫בריחי עלום בעד‬ the eternal bars behind . . . pit ‫שחת‬

8, 12, 18 10, 17 7, 15 7, 15 16 16, 18 15 19 13, 17 19

There are two locutions that are particularly distinctive of Jonah 2:3–7, which reappear in 1QHa 11:6–19. (1) The combination + ‫ בעד‬+ ‫ברחיה‬ ‫ שחת‬+ ‫( עולם‬v. 7) is broken up and its constituents redistributed in lines 13, 17, 19. (2) The expression ‫משבריך גליך‬, “(your) breakers and waves” (v. 4) appears inverted in 1QHa 11:16 and 18 as ‫גלים ומשברי‬, “waves and breakers.”30 Most of the other locutions from Jonah 2:3–7 that are reused in 1QHa11:6–19 are individual words. They are clustered this regard. The author has reused certain locutions, like the locution from Isa 9:5 (line 10), that are clearly evocative of their sources. These are, to my mind, deliberate allusions. 29 The poem contains an elaborate word-play between ‫משבר‬, “womb opening” (lines 9 bis, 12, 13) and ‫משברים‬, “breakers” (lines 10, 11, 17). It is not always readily apparent which translation (if either) is intended in a given case. See the discussion in Silberman, “Language and Style,” 99–101. 30 For inversion as a marker of reuse see Moshe Seidel, “Parallels Between Isaiah and Psalms,” Sinai 38 (1955–56): 149–72, 229–40, 272–80, 335–55 [Hebrew].

66

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most heavily around the beginning and the end of 1QHa 11:6–19 (esp. lines 7–8 and 15–19).31 After examining all of the examples of scriptural reuse in 1QHa 10:22– 32 (Sukenik 2:20–30) that were identiﬁed by Jean Carmignac and Sven Holm-Nielsen,32 Bonnie Kittel noted the following features of the “biblical language” in the Hodayot:33 1. Many of the quotations34 consist of only one or two words, and frequently the two words used in the Hodayot come from different parts of the biblical verse cited. 2. Both Carmignac and Holm-Nielsen frequently admit that in the case of these one- and two-word “quotations” the context and meaning of the words employed in the Hodayot has changed considerably. 3. In a number of cases, a “quotation” is actually an idiom occurring several times in the OT. Holm-Nielsen frequently has trouble deciding which passage is “quoted” by the poet in these cases—a sure sign that no passage is quoted at all. 4. In most cases, the Hodayot passage [that is] considered a quotation employs different forms of the verb, and different pronominal suffixes, and stand in syntactic relationships quite different from the biblical passage.

31

Minor similarities like these are not notable enough, in themselves, to indicate reuse, but once reuse has been established they can help establish the parameters of the reused material. See Ziva Ben-Porat, “The Poetics of Literary Allusion,” PTL: A Journal of Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (1976): 105–28, esp. 111–13; also, C. Kronfeld, “Allusion: An Israeli Perspective,” Prooftexts 5 (1985): 146–51; James Coobs, “Allusion Deﬁned and Explained,” Poetics 13 (1984): 475–88, esp. 481; Michael Leddy, “The Limits of Allusion,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (1992): 110–22, esp. 112. 32 Jean Carmignac, “Les citations de l’Ancien Testament, et spécialement des Poèmes du Serviteur, dans les Hymnes de Qumran,” RevQ 2/7 (1960): 357–94; Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot. 33 Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, The Hymns of Qumran: Translation and Commentary (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1981), 49. 34 Kittel recognizes that “quotation” is not an accurate label for every borrowed locution. She discusses this point at length on pp. 48–52. The nomenclature in this quote need not detract from her point.

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These observations are entirely accurate regarding this example. Though the two texts are dense with similar vocabulary, most of the locutions borrowed from Jonah 2:3–7 are individual words. In the case of borrowed phrases, all of them are broken up (e.g., ‫ )מצולה בלבב ימים‬and/ or reformulated syntactically and morphologically (e.g., ‫)משבריך גליך‬.35 In effect, the language of 1QHa 11:6–19 is remarkably close to that of Jonah 2:3–7, but no phrase or clause that is a signature marker of Jonah 2:3–7 remains verbatim. This practice of breaking up and reformulating locutions is also evident in the author’s use of the other six thematically-related texts: Ps 77:17–18; 107:23–27; Isa 66:7; Jer 10:13; Job 36:16–17 and Job 41:23.

Psalm 77:17–18

1QHa 11:6–19

17. When the waters (‫ )מים‬saw you, O God, ‫—להחיל‬line 9 when the waters saw you, they quaked ‫—תהמות‬lines 16, 18 (‫)יחילו מים‬ the very deep trembled (‫)תהמות‬.36 ‫ים‬/‫—מים‬lines 6, 7, 16 (3x), 17 18. The clouds poured out water (‫;)מים‬ ‫—ויהמו שחקים בקול המון‬line 14 the skies thundered (‫—חצי ;)קול נתנו שחקים‬line 17 your arrows (‫ )חצציך‬ﬂashed on every side.

The locution ‫ שחקים‬+ ‫ נתן‬+ ‫ קול‬is unique to Ps 77:18. The author of 1QHa borrowed the expression but inverted the two nouns, altered the verb (‫)המה > נתן‬, and relocated the object (‫ )קול‬in a prepositional phrase. The other locutions borrowed from Ps 77:17–18, all individual words, were redistributed across twelve lines of text.

35 Reformulation is, of course, necessary to marry reused material to its new context. When reformulation occurs, however, with very small locutions, only one or two words in length, it renders them less evocative of their original context. 36 Ps 77:16 combines images of water and pain using vocabulary that is similar to 1QHa 11:6–19.

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Psalm 107:23–27

1QHa 11:6–19

23. Some went down to the sea in ships ‫ כיורדי ימים‬,‫—כאוניה‬lines 7, (‫)יורדי הים באנית‬, 14, 15 doing business on the mighty waters (‫ים ;)מים‬/‫—מים‬lines 6, 7, 16 (3x), 17 24. they saw the deeds of Yhwh, his wondrous works in the deep ‫ פלא‬,‫—מצולה‬lines 7, 11, 15 (‫)נפלאותיו במצולה‬. 25. For he spoke and raised the stormy wind, ‫—לרום גלים‬line 16 which lifted up the waves (‫)ותרומם גליו‬ 26. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths (‫—תהמות ;)תהומות‬lines 16, 18 their courage melted away in their calamity; ‫( משבר‬pun on ‫—)?שכור‬lines 9 27. they reeled and staggered like drunkards (2x), 10, 11, 12, 13, 17 (‫)שכור‬, and all their wisdom was swallowed up ‫—תתבלע כול חכמתם‬lines (‫)וכול־חכמתם התבלע‬ 15–16

The most distinctive marker of this source is the expression ‫וכול־חכמתם‬ ‫( התבלע‬v. 27). It is repeated with only slight alterations in lines 15–16. The other evocative expressions borrowed by the author of 1QHa were altered more dramatically in the new composition. The phrase ‫יורדי הים‬ ‫( באניות‬v. 23), was broken into two parts and the elements were separated by seven intervening lines of text (lines 7, 15). The unique clause ‫“( ותרומם גליו‬and it lifted its waves”) was recrafted into a subordinate infinitive clause (“to lift the waves”, line 16). The other elements of Ps 107:23–27, which also appear in 1QHa 11:6–19, were dispersed across thirteen lines.

Isaiah 66:7

1QHa 11:6–19

Before she was in labor (‫)תחיל‬ she gave birth (‫;)ילדה‬ before her pain came upon her (‫)חבל‬ she delivered a son (‫)המליטה זכר‬.

‫—להחיל‬line 9 √‫—ילד‬lines 8, 12 (2x), √‫—חבל‬lines 9, 10 (2x), 12, 13 ‫—תמליט זכר‬line 10

The clause ‫המליטה זכר‬, “she delivered a son,” is a clear marker of literary dependence on Isa 66:78, the only place in HB this expression occurs. (HB prefers ‫ בן‬+ ‫ילד‬.) The only alteration made to the locution is that

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it is rendered in the imperfect in 1QHa 11:10. Other shared elements are limited to individual words and occur repeatedly in 1QHa 11:6–19 (nine total occurrences).

Jeremiah 10:13/51:16 When he utters his voice (‫)קול‬, there is a tumult of waters (‫ )המון מים‬in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings out the wind from his storehouses.37

1QHa 11:6–19

‫—בקול המון‬line 14 ‫—מהמון מים‬line 15 ‫—בהמות ימים‬line 16 ‫—מים בהמון קולם‬line 17

Variations on ‫ימים‬/‫ מים‬+ ‫ המון‬+ ‫ קול‬occur four times in 1QHa 11:15–17. That the source text and the new composition share the themes of water and storm serves to confirm the connection. None of the four occurrences of these three constituents within 1QHa 11:6–19 retain all three elements in the same order in which they appear within Jeremiah. The occurrences in lines 14, 15, and 16 each replicate two words, and line 16 adapts “waters” (‫ )מים‬to “seas” (‫)ימים‬. Only line 17 contains all three constituents from Jer 10:13a/51:16a, but they are inverted in the new composition.

Job 38:16–17 16. Have you entered into the springs of the sea (‫)נבכי־ים‬, or walked in the recesses of the deep (‫?)תהום‬ 17. Have the gates of death (‫ )שערי מות‬been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness (‫?)שערי־צלמות‬

1QHa 11:6–19

‫—נבוכי מים‬line 16 ‫—תהום‬line 15 ‫—שערי] עולם‬line 18 ‫—משברי מות‬lines 9, 10

37 The locution ‫ המון מים‬also occurs in Hymn to the Creator (11QPsa 26:10), which is largely composed of phrases from Biblical wisdom literature (DJD 4:47). “He makes the mist . . . his storehouses” also appears in Ps 135:7.

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The locution ‫ נבכי־ים‬only occurs in Job 38:16. Its reappearance, slightly adapted (‫)מים > ים‬, in 1QHa 11:16 is a strong indicator of textual borrowing. Apart from this one unique locution, there is a complex wordplay between combinations of ‫משברים‬/‫“( שערים‬gates”/“womb opening”) and ‫צלמות‬/‫“( מות‬death”/“darkness”). The remaining shared locution is a single vocabulary word (‫)תהום‬.

Job 41:23 It makes the deep boil ( ‫מצולה‬+ ‫ )ירתיח‬like a pot; it makes the sea (‫ )ים‬like a pot of ointment.

1QHa 11:6–19

‫—ברתוח‬line 16 ‫—מצולה‬lines 7, 15 ‫ים‬/‫—מים‬lines 6, 7, 16 (3x), 17

Within HB, the idiom ‫ מצולה‬+ ‫ירתיח‬, “deeps boil” only appears in Job 41:23. In 1QHa 11:6–19 the image is preserved in line 16, but altered to ‫ברתוח תהומות‬, “deeps boil.” The term ‫ מצולה‬is retained in the new composition (lines 7, 15), but it is separated from ‫רתח‬. Of the many texts that provided linguistic material for the construction of 1QHa 11:6–19, only the seven texts described above (Jonah 2:3–7; Ps 77:17–18; 107:23–27; Isa 66:7; Jer 10:13/51:16; Job 36:16–17; 41:23): (1) manifest at least one of the chosen themes of 1QHa 11:6–19, and (2) supplied the author of 1QHa 11:6–19 with more than one “biblical” phrase or clause. In each of these seven cases, there is one particularly rare or evocative phrase which the author of 1QHa 11:6–19 borrowed, which, in most cases, is broken up or otherwise altered. The only exceptions to this are ‫התבלע‬/‫כול־חכמתם תת‬/‫( ו‬Ps 107:27 // 1QHa 11:15–16), ‫המליט)ה( זכר‬/‫( ת‬Isa 66:78 // 1QHa 11:10), and ‫מים‬/‫( נבכי־ים‬Job 38:16 // 1QHa 11:16). The other borrowed elements are common idioms or individual words, which are sown widely across the new composition, coloring the language and motifs of the whole poem with the tones and hues of these particular texts.

4. Results There are many examples of texts composed from fragments of preexisting scriptures, texts like Catena and Florilegium as well as portions of the

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Temple Scroll, Damascus Document, Jubilees, Melchizedek, Pseudo-Ezekiel, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, and the Hymn to the Creator (to name just a few).38 This is a well-established compositional technique by the second half of the Second Temple period.39 Texts of this type—many of which are classiﬁed as thematic-commentaries, parabiblical texts, or rewritten scripture— are deliberately exegetical. If, however, an author wished to mimic biblical idiom or style without explicitly or implicitly oﬀering an interpretation of the source texts from which the language was drawn, then he or she was confronted with a challenge. On the one hand, the new composition must be dense with biblical language. On the other hand, the author must do something to discourage readers from making too close an association between the new text and the sources he quarried for linguistic material. With regard to the seven source texts examined in this study, the author of 1QHa 11:6–19 successfully accomplished these conﬂicting goals in three ways. First, to mimic biblical idiom, the author of 1QHa 11:6–19 constructed the new psalm from biblical words, phrases, clauses, and images, drawn from diverse sources. Second, the author refrained from oﬀering any explicit interpretation (however deﬁned) of the sources. There is no interpretation of individual words, phrases, or clauses from any of the source texts. There is no (re)application of any law or legal source text. In no case is a referent of a source text reapplied to a new person, event, or circumstance. There is no conceptual harmonization of the sources (apart from merely conﬂating locutions and metaphors). No gap in a source text is ﬁlled in the new composition. There is no statement of prophetic fulﬁllment. Even in cases where the source is clearly identiﬁable (Isa 9:5; 2 Sam

38

This is not to suggest that all these texts are identical in genre or compositional style. There is, naturally, a wide range of techniques for reusing scripture in all these texts. See, for example, the survey by George Brooke, “Thematic Commentaries on Prophetic Scriptures,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. Matthias Henze; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005), 134-57. 39 There are also many thematic compositions among the parabiblical literature, including the DSS, texts composed of or inspired by scriptural sources on a select theme or themes. Some of these contain portions of pastiche, others do not. See Jean Carmignac, “Le document de Qumrân sur Melkisédeq,” RevQ 7/27 (1970): 343–78, esp. 360-61; Brooke, “Thematic Commentaries”; Ida Fröhlich, “‘Narrative Exegesis’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. M. E. Stone and E. G. Chazon; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 81–99.

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22:5), there is no interpretation.40 Third, and ﬁnally, the author attempted to avoid even the most implicit interpretation of the source texts by breaking up or otherwise adapting many of the most rare and distinctive of the borrowed locutions. In those cases where the author reused multiple locutions from a single source-text, the borrowed elements (usually no more than one or two words in length) were separated from one another, scattered widely across the new poem. The author of 1QHa 11:6–19 made no systematic eﬀort to hide literary borrowing. (Within a textually saturated, relentlessly allusive culture like that of late Second Temple Judaism, such an eﬀort would, in any case, be all but impossible.) This is clearly indicated by the fact that the author reused some particularly evocative locutions verbatim or nearly verbatim. Nonetheless, the author’s techniques of reuse in 1QHa 11:6–19 appear to signal that the new composition, at least with respect to the seven source texts examined here, is not exegetical in nature. There is no need for the reader to “activate” the source texts to comprehend the full semantic freight of the new poem.41 There are a number of reasons why an author might be motivated to compose a text in such way: to speak authoritatively, to claim member status in a group, to speak “sacredly,” to demonstrate virtuosity, to ornament the text, or some mixture thereof. Unfortunately, motives of this kind are not readily apparent from the evidence. What is apparent is that 1QHa 11:6–19 is dense with reused linguistic material from Jonah 2:3–7; Ps 77:17–18; 107:23–27; Isa 66:7; Jer 10:13/51:16; Job 36:16–17; and 41:23, and that the reuse is not exegetical.42 Imitation of authoritative texts is a hallmark of Second Temple Jewish religious literature. 1QHa 11:6–19 exempliﬁes one of the techniques by which an author could imitate biblical language without oﬀering an interpretation of its sources. Without doubt, other techniques were avail40

Contra Angela Kim, “Authorizing Interpretation in Poetic Compositions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Later Jewish and Christian Traditions,” DSD 10 (2003): 26–58, esp. 38. 41 Ben-Porat, “Allusion,” 108; Kronfeld, “Allusion,” 146–51. 42 For examples of the same phenomenon at work within Rabbinic Midrash, undertaken with similar motives, see Arnold Goldberg, “Entwurf einer formanalytischen Methode für die Exegese der rabbinischen Traditionsliteratur,” in Rabbinische Texte als Gegenstand der Auslegung. Gesammelte Schriften II (ed. M. Schlüter and P. Schäfer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 50–79.

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able to authors in order to accomplish the same end. Much remains to be discovered about scriptural reuse in Second Temple literature, including a more complete and coherent set of criteria for validating that scriptural reuse was, in certain cases, imitative and not interpretive.43

43

Thanks are due to Dr. D. Andrew Teeter, Dr. Michael A. Lyons, and Prof. Eibert Tigchelaar for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Dead Sea Discoveries 18 (2011) 74–89

brill.nl/dsd

Covenantal Election in 4Q252 and Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets Shani Tzoref [email protected]

Abstract This study builds upon earlier attempts in scholarship to (1) identify the common element(s) among the thirty or so passages attributed to the Heavenly Tablets in Jubilees, and (2) to determine the unifying factor(s) underlying 4Q252 (4QCommentary on Genesis A). I demonstrate that the close aﬃnity between the list of passages from the book of Genesis that are featured in 4Q252 and those represented in Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets points to a shared exegetical tradition pertaining to Elect and accursed ﬁgures in Genesis. I further argue that the diﬀerences between these lists, and between their respective treatments of some of the accursed ﬁgures, indicate distinctive recastings of this shared tradition. Keywords Jubilees; 4Q252; Covenant; Qumran; Election

1. Introduction In the book of Jubilees, the re-telling of the Genesis narrative is frequently punctuated by quotations from a source termed the “Heavenly Tablets.” The nature of these purported citations varies considerably, and scholars have sought to identify the common element or elements among these 30 or so passages attributed to the Heavenly Tablets.1 Similarly, the eclectic 1

James Kugel has recently argued for the textual unity of the Heavenly Tablets passages in Jubilees, in his “On the Interpolations in the Book of Jubilees” RevQ 24/94 (2009): 215–72. For earlier discussions, see Florentino García Martínez, “The Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees,” in Studies in the Book of Jubilees (ed. Matthias Albani, Jörg Frey, and Armin Lange; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551536

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nature of the selected scriptural passages represented in 4Q252 (4QCommentary on Genesis A) has made it diﬃcult to answer the question—why has the author, or compiler, selected these particular texts for his purpose?2 In this study, I aim to identify and explore a shared exegetical tradition underlying both 4Q252 and the group of passages attributed to the Heavenly Tablets in Jubilees.3 1997), 243–60; Liora Ravid, “The Special Terminology of the Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees,” Tarbiz 68/4 (1999): 463–71 [Hebrew]; Cana Werman, “The ‘Torah’ and the ‘Teʿudah’ Engraved on the Tablets,” DSD 9 (2002): 75–103. 2 See Shani Tzoref, “4Q252: Listenwissenschaft and Covenantal Patriarchal Blessings,” in “Go Out and Study the Land” (Judges 18:2). Archaeological, Historical and Textual Studies in Honor of Hanan Eshel (ed. Aren Maeir, Jodi Magness, and Lawrence H. Schiﬀman; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). Cf. George J. Brooke, “4Q252: 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” in Qumran Cave 4. XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (DJD 22; ed. G. J. Brooke et al.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 185– 207 at 187; Juhana M. Saukkonen, The Story Behind the Text: Scriptural Interpretation in 4Q252 (Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2005). Moshe Bernstein has argued against attempts to impose a theme on the composition, in “4Q252: From Re-Written Bible to Biblical Commentary,” JJS 45 (1994): 1–27; and idem, “4Q252: Method and Context, Genre and Sources. A Response to George J. Brooke,” JQR 85/1–2 (1994): 61–79. For the description of 4Q252 as a composite of multiple sources, see Brooke, DJD 22:187. 3 In this, I diﬀer from Kugel (“On the Interpolations”) who views the passages citing the Heavenly Tablets as the product of a creative “Interpolator” who interacted systematically with the book of Jubilees. Kugel’s Interpolator inserts his own original exegetical remarks in response to the existing text in order to produce an edited version that Kugel dubs “The Book of Jubilees-Plus-Some-Legal Addenda.” My alternative proposal, that an interpolator was working with an inherited tradition or collection of traditions, accounts equally well for the contradictions between the interpolated passages and the main text, and better for the parallels with contemporary sources. My working hypothesis is that the material attributed to the Heavenly Tablets originated in a source distinct from the rest of the material in Jubilees. I distinguish this source from the main body of the work, and I use the term interpolator to refer to the scribe who incorporated pre-existing Heavenly Tablets material into the book of Jubilees. At this point, I do not have a clear position on the relationship between the interpolator and the other scribes who were involved in composing and redacting the book in order to bring it to the form in which we know it. Ongoing research into the textual development of the book of Jubilees will enable more precise hypotheses about the stage of authorship or redaction during which this set of interpolations was incorporated.

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As a group, the citations of the Heavenly Tablets in Jubilees reﬂect a dualistic determinism, such that humanity is divided into Good and Evil, and the Elect are destined to eternal reward whereas Evil Ones are subject to judgment. In a recent article, I have argued that the selection of passages in the main body of 4Q252 reﬂects interest in ﬁrst person divine blessing to Abraham and his oﬀspring.4 Here, I develop this idea further, proposing that 4Q252 and the group of passages in Jubilees that ascribe events to the Heavenly Tablets represent two diﬀerent re-workings of a shared tradition of a compilation of excerpts from Genesis.5

2. Shared Traditions: “Teʿudot” in Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets and 4Q252 Following Liora Ravid and Cana Werman, I ﬁnd it eﬀective to divide the citations attributed to the heavenly tablets in Jubilees into two basic categories, “Laws” and “Testimonies.”6 Werman’s use of the term ‫ תעודה‬for the non-legal passages attributed to the Heavenly Tablets is rooted in her understanding of the expression ‫תורה ותעודה‬.7 Although Werman’s proposal of terminological speciﬁcity has been challenged, and further philological analysis of these terms in the book of Jubilees is required, the taxonomic division between legal and non-legal items attributed to the Heavenly Tablets remains valid and useful.8 An additional problem related 4

Tzoref, “Listenwissenschaft.” In a future study, I intend to further explore the underlying tradition concerning Genesis, the periodization of history, and revelation, by examining the relationship between the texts discussed here and contemporary compositions in the Qumran corpus, especially 4Q180 (Pesher on the Periods) and the Admonition sections of CD. 6 See Tzoref, “Listenwissenschaft.” 7 Werman, “The ‘Torah’ and the ‘Teʿudah’” esp. 478–80; Ravid uses the term ‫ עדות‬in eadem, “The Special Terminology.” 8 Menahem Kister has shown that ‫ תעודה‬is used in Jubilees to designate laws, even in the passages that cite the Heavenly Tablets; see his “Two Formulae in the Book of Jubilees,” Tarbiz 70 (2001): 289–300 at 295; 298 n. 49 [Hebrew]. Michael Segal (The Book of Jubilees, 282–316) argued that ‫ תעודה‬in Jubilees denotes covenantal law and is equivalent to the term ‫תורה‬. Kugel agrees with Segal in viewing the expression ‫ תורה ותעודה‬as a hendiadys (cf. Kugel, “On the Interpolations,” 261 n. 69; Segal The Book of Jubilees, 288), but he has helpfully isolated a consis5

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to the issue of the terminology of ‫ תורה‬and ‫ תעודה‬is the seeming inconsistency in the nature of the material attributed to the Heavenly Tablets. Kister points out that some passages reﬂect a belief that the Heavenly Tablets contain material that pre-existed the creation of the world, while others view the Heavenly Tablets as recording events as they occur in real time.9 The distinction between laws and testimonies/events enables a generally consistent model, in which the items ascribed to the Heavenly Tablets consist of laws that pre-existed creation but were revealed to human beings over time, and records of human actions that were inscribed before creation but unfold in time. The “laws” attributed to the heavenly tablets are regulations that are designated as ‫ חוקים‬in the Pentateuch, usually with the speciﬁc expression ‫חוקת עולם‬, eternal engraving.10 But what common feature(s) bind the items in the list of “testimonies”, which I use here to refer to records?11 Table 1 supports my hypothesis of a broad underlying tent and distinctive technical usage of the term ‫ תעודה‬in the speciﬁc passages ascribed to the Heavenly Tablets, to denote an item attributed to the Heavenly Tablets (ibid., 257–61). 9 As Shalom Paul has demonstrated, both conceptions of the contents of heavenly tablets are found in the earliest attested references to such records in Ancient Near Eastern literature. See Shalom M. Paul, “Heavenly Tablets and the Book of Life,” in Divrei Shalom; Collected Studies of Shalom M. Paul on the Bible and the Ancient Near East, 1967–2005 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 59–70; (repr. from The Gaster Festschrift [ed. David Marcus; New York: ANE Society, 1974], 345–53). Kister takes the discrepancy as evidence of multiple sources underlying the diﬀerent passages. (“Two Formulae,” esp. 291). He rejects an alternative explanation, which I ﬁnd satisfactory, that the disparity is a product of the inevitable paradox arising in any belief system that posits predestination along with free will and reward and punishment. For an insightful recent examination of fate and free will in ancient Judaism, see Jonathan Klawans, “Josephus on Fate, Free Will and Ancient Jewish Types of Compatibilism,” Numen 56 (2009): 44–90. 10 I presented the evidence for this observation in “Priestly Pseudepigrapha,” an as yet unpublished paper delivered at the Annual SBL Meeting, San Antonio, Tex.; November, 2004. This is echoed in the “signature phrases” employed in the passages ascribed to the Heavenly Tablets, e.g., “has no temporal limits,” “for eternal generations.” See Ravid, “The Special Terminology”; Kugel, “On the Interpolations,” 216–17. 11 This latter category, our interest here, incorporates two of the ﬁve categories identiﬁed by García Martínez, “The Heavenly Tablets”: the “register of good and evil” and “the book of destiny.”

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tradition in which the data included in 4Q252 and Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets were viewed as a group, as key points in a pre-determined and dualistic history of humanity. These events correspond to blessings and curses recorded in the book of Genesis—blessings bestowed by God upon Elect patriarchs and their progeny, and pronouncements by those patriarchs upon their oﬀspring. The table demonstrates the alignment between the ﬁgures and events represented in 4Q252 and those that appear in the non-legal “citations” of the heavenly tablets in Jubilees.12 Table 1 4Q25213 I 3 – II 8 Flood; Sons of Noah (|| Gen 9: divine blessing of Noah’s sons)

II 8–10 Abraham is God’s friend; (|| Gen 12: divine command to Abram to go to Israel; assurance of blessing) II 11–13 Abraham promised a covenant with son . . . Isaac (|| Gen 15 covenant of the pieces, 17 divine blessing, prediction of Isaac’s birth) III 1–2 Ishmael’s 12 princes (|| Gen 17 divine blessing of Abraham’s oﬀspring)

III 2–6 Sodom and Gomorrah (|| Gen 18)

12

Jubilees: “Testimonies” attributed to Heavenly Tablets12 HT Jub. 5:13–19 judgment of humanity each generation, in context of ﬂood; Noah saved, and Noah’s sons, for his sake

HT Jub. 16:3 predicted birth and naming of Isaac, in context of revelation to Abram and Sara;

See also HT Jub. 15:30 rejection of Ishmael (within passage on law of circumcision) HT Jub. 16:16–18 fulﬁllment of prediction of Sarah’s pregnancy; blessing of Abraham’s oﬀspring, but true Election of just one of Isaac’s sons (associated with the law of the Feast of Tabernacles) HT Jub. 16:9 eradication of Lot’s descendants like Sodom

For the text of Jubilees, I have relied upon James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (CSCO 511; Leuven: Peeters, 1989). All translations are from this edition, unless otherwise stated. 13 The portion of the table containing the events in 4Q252 is based upon Brooke, DJD 22:188.

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Table 1 (cont.) 4Q252 III 6–10 Binding of Isaac (|| Gen 22 divine blessing of Abraham in reward for binding of Isaac)

Jubilees: “Testimonies” attributed to Heavenly Tablets HT Jub. 18:18–19 Binding of Isaac (associated with the law of the Feast of Passover) HT Jub. 19:8–9 Abraham recorded as God’s friend

[Blessing of Isaac?] (|| Gen 26) HT Jub. 23:32 reward of penitent righteous at end of days; general statement III 11–14 Blessing of Jacob (|| Gen 28:3–4 Isaac’s blessing of Jacob; || Gen 35:9–12, divine blessing of Jacob). HT Jub. 24:33 uprooting of the Philistines (in context of Isaac’s curse, not in MT) IV 1–3 Eradication of Amalek (probably a reﬂection of Gen 27, Isaac’s pronouncements to his sons) IV 3–VI 3 “Blessings of Jacob” by Jacob, (for end of days, each son “according to his Jub. 30: (5), 17, 23 Simeon and Levi recorded for blessing” || Gen 49, Jacob’s pronouncemens righteousness in a “book of heaven”; written to his sons) down “for a blessing” HT Jub. 30:19 election of Levi Reuben rebuked HT Jub. 30:20–22 general statement—men inscribed as enemy or friend, judgment for him and his descendants Messianic interpretation of Judah’s blessing HT Jub. 31:31–32 election of Levi and Judah “just as Isaac blessed them” Blessings of Asher and Naphtali HT Jub. 33:12 in reference to Reuben: “Let the one who lies with his father’s wife be cursed.” (technically a law, but also pertains to Reuben’s loss of status)14 Jub. 32:16–29 Bethel revelation; Jacob reads seven Heavenly Tablets (in the context of the Feast of Atzeret)

14

See Shani Tzoref, “The ‘Hidden’ and the ‘Revealed’: Progressive Revelation of Law and Esoterica,” Meghillot—Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls 7 (2009): 157– 90, esp. 175–80 [Hebrew].

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Three main sections can be discerned in the table: Noah, Abraham, and Jacob.15 In each section, both compositions are primarily concerned with the blessing of these Elect figures and with the status of their offspring as blessed or accursed. Both 4Q252 and the sequential passages in Jubilees feature episodes pertaining to patriarchal blessings that appear in Gen 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 22, and 49.16 In both compositions, the central figures are presented as having been privileged to receive revelation about the righteous and wicked in future times; they are given knowledge pertaining to eternal periods of humankind. Thus, in the first line of the table, note that both 4Q252 and Jubilees’ record of the Heavenly Tablets state that Noah is informed about the Flood. In 4Q252, he also foresees the status of his descendants, as blessed (Shem) and accursed (Canaan).17 Abraham and Sarah are told of Isaac’s birth, which will occur at an appointed time, and of the future of his descendants; Abraham is also given advanced notice concerning the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the paradigmatic example of punishment of the wicked. Revelation concerning appointed times and fates is especially marked in the case of Jacob. In 4Q252, the section containing Jacob’s parting words to his sons is given the heading “Blessings of Jacob.” In the corresponding passages in Jubilees, Jacob comments upon the election of Levi and Judah as fulfillment of his father’s blessing, and in accord with the records of the Heavenly Tablets. By reading seven heavenly tablets, he acquires knowledge of “what would happen to him and his sons throughout all ages” ( Jub. 32:21). 15

It is reasonable to expect that the lacuna at 4Q252 III 10–11 contained a reference to God’s blessing of Isaac in Gen 26:3–4 and/or Gen 26:24. (See Tzoref, “Listenwissenschaft”). This blessing is not featured in the extant collection of Heavenly Tablets citations in Jubilees. 16 There are some diﬀerences in the presentation of the events in each of our comparanda. For example, 4Q252 features introductory glosses at the beginning of new sections, in describing Abraham as a friend of God, in declaring Jacob’s blessed status (III 11–14), and in providing the heading “Blessings of Jacob” in col. IV. In Jubilees, the application of the epithet “friend” to Abraham appears at the end of the Abraham material, and the description of the divine blessing of Jacob, and the elaboration of Jacob’s knowledge of his sons’ future, appear towards the end of the list of passages that cite the Heavenly Tablets. 17 The blessing and cursing of Noah’s sons are developed at length in chapters 7–10 of Jubilees. The Heavenly Tablets are not speciﬁcally cited in these contexts, but the testaments of the patriarchs in the book have strong aﬃnities with the Heavenly Tablets material.

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3. The Doomed Non-Elect The references to Elect patriarchs and their blessed oﬀspring are fairly straightforward in both of the compositions we are considering, as is their derivation from scriptural blessings in the book of Genesis. The references to the rejected genealogical lines of these Elect, especially Ham, Ishmael, and Esau, involve greater exegetical ingenuity and audacity. Both 4Q252 and Jubilees incorporate a blessing of Ishmael, on the basis of Gen 17:20. Reference to the “twelve princes” of Gen 17: 20 appears in 4Q252 III 1–2. The text is not well-preserved, and it is unclear whether the purpose of the citation was to show that Ishmael was blessed, on account of being Abraham’s son, or to call attention to the inferiority of Ishmael’s blessing as compared to that of Isaac. The latter would be more faithful to the biblical text, which emphasizes the limited nature of the blessing of Ishmael, and that it is Isaac’s line that will continue the covenant. Gen 17:20 is also cited in Jub. 15:20.18 The associated passage ascribing the law of circumcision on the eighth day to the Heavenly Tablets denies election to Ishmael and his oﬀspring. As discussed by Michael Segal, Jub. 15:30 pointedly excludes Ishmael from the covenant of circumcision.19 This polemic is probably operative in Jub. 15:25–26 as well, in the insistence that the Heavenly Tablets contain the eternally binding stipulation that circumcision take place no later than the eighth day.20 Further rejection of Ishmael is found in another of the passages pertaining to the Heavenly Tablets. The book of Jubilees records two episodes in which Abraham is visited by angels announcing the birth of Isaac ( Jub. 16:1–4,

18

The twelve sons of Ishmael are also mentioned among those addressed by Abraham in his testament, Jub. 20:1. 19 Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 229–45. 20 We rely here upon Segal’s proposed translation and interpretation of 15:25, “This law is (valid) for all history forever, and there is no circumcising of days. And there is no passing of one day from the eight days” (The Book of Jubilees, 233–37). Segal sees this emphasis on the eighth day as intra-Jewish polemic, but it may rather continue the anti–Ishmael rhetoric. See Kugel, “On the Interpolations,” 248–50. The text continues, “Anyone who is born, the ﬂesh of whose private parts has not been circumcised by the eighth day does not belong to the people of the pact which the Lord made with Abraham, but to the people (meant) for destruction, for being destroyed from the earth, and for being uprooted from the earth because he has violated the covenant of the Lord our God.”

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corresponding to Gen 18:1–15, and Jub. 16:15–31).21 During the second visit, on the Feast of Tabernacles, the angels speciﬁed that just one of Abraham’s sons, and more speciﬁcally, just one of Isaac’s sons, was designated for ultimate Election. All of Jacob’s oﬀspring, but none of the rest of Abraham’s descendants, were to become the “share of the Most High.”22 To summarize, 4Q252 and the main text of Jubilees record the blessing of Ishmael, probably to contrast its scope with that of Isaac. In Jub. 15:25– 26, 29–30, the interpolator eﬀectively reverses this blessing.23 Esau’s status in the book of Genesis is more problematic than that of Ishmael, and his rivalry with his sibling over paternal and divine blessing is intense and direct. For all his eﬀorts to secure his father’s blessing, all Esau managed to procure was an opaque oracular pronouncement, “Your abode will be away from the earth’s richness, and away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from oﬀ your neck” (Gen 27:39–40). This was the best that his father could do for him, since, as he told Esau (Gen 27:37), Isaac’s blessing to Jacob precluded Esau from attaining Elect status, “May nations serve you (Jacob) and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed” (Gen 27:29). Isaac’s pronouncements to his sons have the force of divine benedictions and curses, but, as is typical of poetic prophetic statements, they require 21

For a discussion of this second visit, see Kugel, “Interpolations,” 236–41. And, “all his descendants had fallen into that (share) which God owns” ( Jub. 16:16–18). On Israel as the portion of the Most High (Deut 32:8–9), see Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 229, 250–51, and the sources cited there. See now also, Mark Smith, “What is a Scriptural Text in the Second Temple Period? Texts Between Their Biblical Past, Their Inner-Biblical Interpretation, Their Reception in Second Temple Literature, and Their Textual Witnesses,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at 60: Scholarly Contributions of New York University Faculty and Alumni (ed. Lawrence H. Schiﬀman and Shani Tzoref; Leiden: Brill, 2010). 23 On the even stronger anti-Ishmael polemic in 4Q225, see Cana Werman, The Attitude Towards Gentiles in the Book of Jubilees and Qumran Literature Compared with the Early Tanaaic Halakha and Contemporary Pseudepigrapha (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University, 1995), 125–46 [Hebrew]. 4Q225 II 10 states explicitly of Ishmael, “He will not be a Friend (‫)אהב‬.” See also, Betsy Halpern Amaru, “A Note on Isaac as First-Born in Jubilees and Only Son in 4Q225,” DSD 13 (2006): 127–33. 22

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elucidation. This seems to be the best explanation for the reference to Saul’s defeat of Amalek in 4Q252 IV 1–3. Commentators on this passage have disagreed about whether the mention of Saul is intended to praise the Israelite king for destroying the Amalekites or condemn him for incompletely fulﬁlling his mission. 4Q252 does not seem interested in Saul himself, however. The purpose of the scriptural cross-references to Gen 36:12a (the birth of Amalek), 1Sam ch. 14, 15 (Saul’s destruction of Amalek), and Deut 25:19 (the eradication of the name of Amalek in “the latter days”) is to serve as prooftexts for the fulﬁllment of Isaac’s pronouncement to Jacob and Esau.24 In Jub. 26:34, Isaac’s poetic response to Esau’s plea for a blessing is modiﬁed from MT, so that Esau is not just subject to servitude but to eradication, due to transgression: “if you become great and remove his yoke from your neck, then you will commit an oﬀence fully worthy of death and your descendant will be eradicated from beneath the sky.”25 Esau is not mentioned in any of the passages that cite the Heavenly Tablets, but the issue of the birthright competition is elaborated upon at length in Jub. 35–37, and there is an indirect reference to the celestial records of the eternal curse of Esau’s descendants in Jub. 36:9–11. In his parting words to Jacob and Esau prior to his death, Isaac adjured both his sons to love each other, warning that whichever of the two would violate this, his descendants would be uprooted from the earth; God will destroy him as he destroyed Sodom; and “he will be erased from the disciplinary book of mankind. He will not be entered in the book of life but in the one that will be destroyed.” In Jub. 37, Esau’s sons wage war on Jacob, thereby incurring Isaac’s curse upon themselves.26 24

See Tzoref, “Listenwissenschaft.” Some scholars have attempted to read the reference to Saul’s defeat of the Amalekites as a condemnation of Saul for only partially fulﬁlling the divine command of eradicating Amalek. As argued by Moshe Bernstein, this reading is not suitable to the text. Cf. Bernstein, “4Q252: From Re-Written Bible,” 15–16. On the equation “Esau=Edom=Amalek,” see Louis H. Feldman, Remember Amalek!: Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 67–69. 25 On the treatment of Esau in Jubilees, see Werman, The Attitude Towards Gentiles, 177–79, ch. 6, “Comparing Esau’s Portrayal in Genesis with that in the Book of Jubilees.” 26 Isa 34:16–17 probably oﬀers a scriptural precedent for a heavenly record of the eradication of Esau. See Paul, “Heavenly Tablets,” 62. Cresson elaborates on the “Damn-Edom” theology found in postexilic prophecy, a term he attributes to

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Already in the book of Genesis, Ishmael and Esau are excluded from the covenant despite the facts that they are oﬀspring of Abraham, and that their fathers sought to transmit the covenantal blessing to them. In the biblical text, Ishmael’s blessing is limited, and Esau’s is both limited and conditional. In 4Q252, the treatment of the divine blessing of Ishmael is unclear; Isaac’s “blessing” of Esau is portrayed as having been fulﬁlled in the eradication of a line of Esau’s oﬀspring. In the book of Jubilees, these ﬁgures are excluded from the eternal blessing reserved for those recorded on the Heavenly Tablets as friends. The blessings they received are shown to have been conditional, so that when they fail the test of proper behavior, they become subject to uprooting like Sodom. In both 4Q252 and the Heavenly Tablets passages in Jubilees, the divine verdict against Sodom is treated as paradigmatic for the destruction of wicked populations. In 4Q252, this is achieved by the use of a pastiche of language from Gen 18 (Sodom) with Deut 13 (the idolatrous city).27 In Jubilees, Sodom is held up as a negative model by Abraham and Isaac in their testaments to their oﬀspring. Since the blessings of the non-Elect lines are conditional, Abraham warns his sons that transgression will lead to their being uprooted like Sodom ( Jub. 20:6). In his testament to Jacob, Abraham repeats the example of Sodom in warning Jacob to distance W. F. Stinespring, in Bruce C. Cresson, “The Condemnation of Edom in Postexilic Judaism,” in The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays: Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring (ed. James M. Eﬁrd; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), 125–48. Some sources that continued and developed this negative portrayal of Esau and Edom in Second Temple Jewish writings are listed by Ulrich Hübner, “Esau,” ABD 2:575. 27 On the use of Deut 13:13–19 in this passage in 4Q252, see Bernstein, “4Q252: From Re-Written Bible,” 15 n. 46; George J. Brooke, “The Deuteronomic Character of 4Q252,” in Pursuing the Text: Studies in Honor of Ben Zion Wacholder on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. John C. Reeves and John Kampen; Sheﬃeld: Sheﬃeld Academic Press, 1994), 121–35, at 122–25; Gabriel Barzilai, “The Fate of the Wicked of Sodom and Gomorrah in an Ancient Interpretation from Qumran (4Q252 Col. 3),” Beit Mikra 155 (1998): 323–31 [Hebrew]. Tigchelaar is inclined to accept Barzilai’s proposal that 4Q252 equates Sodom with Jerusalem (Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “Sodom and Gomorrah in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Sodom’s Sin: Genesis 18–19 and its Interpretations [ed. Ed Noort and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar; Leiden: Brill, 2004], 47–62). I am not convinced of this, but even if they are correct, then 4Q252 would still exhibit a typological exegesis of Sodom, though not one that is directed against the Gentiles.

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himself from Canaanites, the idolatrous descendants of Ham (22:22). In Isaac’s testament to Esau and Jacob (36:9–11), he warned that whichever of the two brothers would wish to injure the other would become liable to the fate of Sodom; the continuation of the text conﬁrms that this is Esau. In Jub. 16, the device of the Heavenly Tablets and the example of Sodom are employed to certify rejection of another of Abraham’s kin. In the context of reiterating the angels’ revelation predicting the birth of Isaac, and the episode of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the angelic rescue of Lot is reported—with a twist that interprets and modiﬁes the biblical account. The interpolator seems to take the biblical notiﬁcation that Lot was saved because of Abraham as a basis for qualifying the salvation as associative only, and thus temporary and conditional, not covenantal.28 It follows that by engaging in sexual relations with his daughters, Lot lost all entitlement to the priveleges of election, so that his oﬀspring will be judged like Sodom and eradicated. This is in keeping with a divine proclamation found in Zeph 2:9,29 but the condemnation does not accord with Gen 20:33, 35, where the text explicitly speciﬁes that Lot “did not know” when his daughters lay with him. The representation of Lot’s guilt in this passage is similar to the subversion of the biblical text in writing Ishmael out of the covenant of circumcision. The reference to Lot in Jubilees has no direct 28

Gen 20:29: “When God destroyed the cities of the Plain and annihilated the cities where Lot dwelt, God was mindful of Abraham and removed Lot from the midst of the upheaval.” See Jacques van Ruiten, “Lot versus Abraham: The Interpretation of Genesis 18:1–19:38 in Jubilees 16:1–9,” in Noort and Tigchelaar, Sodom’s Sin, 29–46 at 42. Similarly, Noah’s sons were saved because of Noah: “To all who corrupted their ways and their plan(s) before the ﬂood no favor was shown except to Noah alone because favor was shown to him for the sake of his children whom he saved from the ﬂood waters for his sake because his mind was righteous in all his ways, as it had been commanded concerning him. He did not transgress from anything that had been ordained for him” ( Jub. 5:19). Noah’s non-Elect sons merit only conditional salvation, and in the future they will be destroyed because of their sins. On the conditionality of the Noahide covenant in Jubilees, see Werman, The Attitude Towards Gentiles, 61–66; Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted: The Rewriting of Genesis 1–11 in the Book of Jubilees (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 222. 29 “‘Therefore, as surely as I live’ declares the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, ‘surely Moab will become like Sodom, the Ammonites like Gomorrah—a place of weeds and salt pits, a wasteland forever. The remnant of my people will plunder them; the survivors of my nation will inherit their land.’”

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parallel in 4Q252, but it is possible that the words ]‫ ים לבדם יחרמו‬in III 4 hint at the same theological problem, as suggested by Gabriel Barzilai.30 A further deviation from the biblical text, without a parallel in 4Q252, is found in Jub. 24:28–33, which states that Isaac cursed the Philistines, and cites the Heavenly Tablets as attesting to the uprooting of the Philistines, and to their accursed state. The claim that Isaac cursed the Philistines after having been coerced into a pact with them occurs in the context of the rewriting of Gen 26. The oath at Beersheva is in the biblical text, but there is no obvious exegetical peg for Isaac’s curse. I propose that this tradition arose through a typological understanding of Joshua’s curse of the Gibeonites for having duped the Israelites into a pact, enforced by an oath. The Israelites were constrained to abide by the oath, even though they were prohibited from arranging pacts with local populations, on the basis of Exod 23:31–31 and Deut 20:15–18.31 Note that both of these biblical passages are concerned with covenants that entitle non-Israelites to inhabit the land. The author of Jubilees would ﬁnd this objectionable, since the Land is reserved only for Israel, partners with God in the only valid enduring covenant. As noted by Werman, the status of the Philistines poses a challenge since they are not among the seven nations that the Israelites were commanded to destroy.32 Note also that the curse uttered by Joshua against the Gibeonites in Josh 9:22 is for them to always be hewers of wood and drawers of water. This raises the issue of the relationship between servitude and eradication. Isaac’s blessing of Jacob in Gen 27:29 stated “May nations serve you (Jacob) and peoples bow down to you.” Similarly, Esau and Ham, who are to be destroyed, were cursed with servitude.33 Barzilai, “The Fate of the Wicked,” 326–28. He restores ‫והחטא[ים לבדם‬ ‫יחרמו‬, and suggests that the text intends to make the claim that the reward or 30

punishment of individuals is aﬀected only by their own behavior, without any consideration of the righteousness of wickedness of their kin or compatriots. 31 The Gibeonites acknowledged that God is with Israel, as Abimelech and Pichol acknowledged God’s support of Isaac. 32 Werman, The Attitude Towards Gentiles, 158. 33 For the servitude of Esau, see both the continuation of Isaac’s pronouncement to his sons in Gen 27 and the earlier prophecy to Rebecca concerning her twins in utero, Gen 25:23, “and the older shall serve the younger”; for Ham, see Gen 9:27, “he shall dwell in the tents of Shem: and Canaan shall be his servant.” On the blend of response to contemporary socio-political concerns and intertextual use of scripture (especially Amos 9) in the curse of the Philistines in Jubilees, see Werman, The Attitude Towards Gentiles, 147–58; John C. Endres, Biblical

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I posit that the lack of parallel in 4Q252 to Jubilees’ curse of the Philistines and of Lot’s descendants is an exception that proves the rule, an indication of diﬀerent approaches applied to a shared tradition. Our analysis has demonstrated that both 4Q252 and the book of Jubilees exhibit discomfort with the fact that the book of Genesis records divine (or divinely sanctioned) blessings of the non-chosen sons of Elect individuals. Both texts highlight patriarchal blessings, especially those pertaining to oﬀspring and the Land. Both texts confront exegetical and theological diﬃculties raised by the status of Ham, Ishmael, and Esau. The author of 4Q252 seems to struggle with this problem. The interpolator in Jubilees resolves the problem by asserting that these ﬁgures became destined for total eradication due to their transgressions. “For through Ham’s sin Canaan erred. All of his descendants and all of his (people) who remain will be destroyed from the earth.” ( Jub. 22:21); Ishmael ( Jub. 15:30–32); Esau, in Isaac’s words: “you will complete a sin unto death, and your seed will be rooted out from under heaven” ( Jub. 26:34). We have seen that the interpolator in Jubilees goes to great lengths to restrict the scope of the scriptural blessing of Abraham’s oﬀspring, in excluding Ishmael and Esau, and to extend the divine verdict against Sodom to apply to the descendants, as well as to Moab and Ammon, and the Philistines.34 The treatment of the non-Elect in Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets may reﬂect exegetical development of Ps 69:29 “May [my foes] be erased from the book of life, and not be inscribed with righteousness.”35 But a Tendenz also

Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1987), 68–73. 34 In contrast to the eternal covenantal blessing of Shem ( Jub. 8:17–21) and Jacob ( Jub. 22: 10–24), Noah’s non-Elect sons are susceptible to the Watchers and in danger of being led astray towards sin and destruction ( Jub. 7:26–28; 10:5), and Abraham’s non-Elect oﬀspring are in danger of becoming like the Giants and like Sodom ( Jub. 20:5–6; 36:10). Abraham warns, “And guard yourselves from all fornication and uncleanness, And from all pollution of sin, Lest ye make our name a curse, And your whole life a hissing, And all your sons to be destroyed by the sword, And ye become accursed like Sodom, And all your remnant as the sons of Gomorrah). See also Jub. 22:21–22, which connects the eradication of Ham’s line with that of the sons of Sodom, and of all who follow in their path of idolatry. 35 Given the signiﬁcance of election and dwelling in the Land in 4Q252, note also verse 25: “May their place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in their tents”; and the conclusion of the psalm, 69:35–36: “for God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. Then people will settle there and possess it; the children

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seems to be at play, most likely motivated by the socio-political views of the interpolator, or his predecessor.36 Among the suggestions put forth for a unifying theme in 4Q252 has been Kister’s assessment that the text “emphasizes promises and blessings to the fathers of the Jewish people and discusses the legitimacy of dispossessing or destroying other peoples: Canaan, Sodom, Amalek. This theme probably had concrete political signiﬁcance for the author.”37 Kister’s characterization of the theme of 4Q252 accurately reﬂects the composition, and it is plausible to see this theme as indicative of a political orientation. But the primary concerns of the author of 4Q252, do not seem to be so much political and ethical as theological, ideological, and even (and here I revert somewhat to Bernstein) textual.38 The biblical passages selected in 4Q252 encompass the blessings of the Elect patriarchs concerning their oﬀspring’s inheritance of the Land, and references to the destruction of peoples whom the Israelites were commanded to eliminate from the land—Canaan, Sodom=idolatrous city, Amalek.39 By listing blessings to and by the Elect patriarchs of Genesis, with intertextual use of Deuteronomy, the author seems to seek understanding of the concept of covenant; to grapple with the exegetical and theological puzzle of the accursedness of the sons of individuals who have been promised that their oﬀspring will dwell eternally in the Land: “And he did not curse Ham, but rather his son, because God had already blessed the sons of Noah” (4Q252 II 6–7). The interpolator of Jubilees, on the other hand, does not exhibit any qualms about asserting the accursedness and eradication of the sons of the blessed Elect. He was quite happy to declare all non-Elect as destined for extinction. He did not limit this verdict to the standard list of peoples whom Israel was commanded to destroy, which I suggest was an inherited tradition, shared by the scribe of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name (‫ )אהבי שמו‬will dwell there.” 36 On the radical stance towards the exclusivity of Israel’s rights to the Land in Jubilees, and the anticipation of the destruction of the Gentiles, see Werman, “Attitude,” 336–38. 37 Menahem Kister, “Notes on Some New Texts from Qumran,” JJS 44 (1993): 280–90, at 288; quoted by Tigchelaar, “Sodom.” See Brooke, “Deuteronomic Character,” 133. 38 See n. 2 above. 39 Following Brooke, “Deuteronomic Character,” 133–35, I would thus see 4Q252 as reading Genesis in light of Deuteronomy. I see this as a theologically and exegetically motivated re-casting, however, rather than “militant piety,” which seems to imply more practical intentions.

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who produced 4Q252. Rather, he extended it also to apply to other nations, those whose geographic location threatened encroachment on Israel’s claim to its land—Moab, Ammon, the Philistines, and Edom (generally, rather than speciﬁcally Amalek). These nations inhabited territory understood by the author to have been covenantally promised to Israel. In the Pentateuch, Israel was commanded to exclude Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites from joining the congregation of the Lord, but they were not commanded to destroy these peoples. The destruction of these nations, and of the Philistines, appears in biblical prophecy not as a commandment, but as a prediction or promise. This suits the claim that the destruction was inscribed on Heavenly Tablets, supporting a textual motivation for the author and interpolator of Jubilees. The radical belligerence supports a socio-political motivation as well.40

4. Conclusion I have argued that the close aﬃnity shown between the list of passages from Genesis featured in 4Q252 and those represented in Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets, and the diﬀerences between these lists, points to distinctive recastings of a shared exegetical tradition pertaining to Elect ﬁgures in Genesis. Both select key points pertaining to blessings and curses in the book of Genesis. Both are especially interested in Noah, Abraham, and Jacob, and their progeny, and in divine revelation to these Elect ﬁgures concerning the future of their descendants. Both compositions highlight the election and blessedness of Jacob/Israel and contrast this with the accursedness of the non-elect oﬀspring/nations. Jubilees takes greater liberties with the biblical text and goes to greater lengths to emphasize the rejection of Gentile groups, with a harsher condemnation of Ishmael and Esau than that found in 4Q252, and an extension of the patriarchal curses to the Moabites and Philistines. 40

A potentially fruitful direction for further consideration of the treatment of covenantal blessing and election in 4Q252 and Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets may be sought in George Brooke’s recent observations about two types of anthologies: diachronic collections produced for didactic purposes, and synchronic anthologies produced by marginalized groups, which are “concerned principally with issues of identity and community.” See George J. Brooke, “Genre Theory, Rewritten Bible and Pesher,” DSD 17 (2010): 361–86. Brooke cites Cynthia G. Franklin, Writing Women’s Communities: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Multi-Genre Anthologies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

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brill.nl/dsd

Book Reviews A Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature. By Joseph A. Fitzmyer. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. Paperback. Pp. 248. US$ 24.00. ISBN 9780802862419. What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter? By David Noel Freedman and Pam Fox Kuhlken. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Paperback. Pp. 131. US$ 10.00. ISBN 9780802844248. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Short History. By Weston W. Fields. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Paperback. Pp. 128. US$ 19.95. ISBN 9789004157606. The work entitled A Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature is the successor to Fitzmyer’s The Dead Sea Scrolls: Major Publications and Tools for Study (SBS 28; Scholars Press, 1975), which was revised and expanded in 1990. As Fitzmyer notes in the Preface to this work, the enormous amount of activity in the ﬁelds of DSS study since 1990, including the near completion of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series, necessitated not only an updated bibliography but also the reorganization of the text presentation according to the now widely accepted numbering system (e.g., 1Q20 instead of 1QapGen). This “guide” is a wonderfully helpful tool. Chapter I provides a quick, easy-touse reference to the sometimes bewildering abbreviations used to refer to the scrolls. Chapter II begins with a general introduction to the DJD series, followed by a brief discussion of the series as well as references to various sources for full lists of the Scrolls, collections of photographs, and other valuable primary research tools. The second part of Chapter II, “B. Major Publications (according to Sites),” is the heart of this book. Not only is each text (from Qumran as well as the other ﬁnd-sites in the Dead Sea region) presented in order with the editio princeps and other primary sources, but Fitzmyer also often includes valuable information, such as a list of the biblical passages covered in the texts or a basic orientation to the nature of non-biblical texts. Chapters III–XIV are lists of studies, from basic, categorized bibliographies (III, X), concordances, dictionaries, and grammars (VI), and modern language translations (VIII), to a few outlines of the primary DSS that Fitzmyer has constructed (IX), electronic resources (XIII), and an index of modern authors (XIV). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551581

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For a list of research tools, I actually found this volume fun to read. Even in the list of texts there is the odd and valuable nugget. Moreover, with the proliferation of DSS studies in the last two decades, I ﬁnd it hard to fathom how any serious student of the Scrolls can do without this resource on the shelf. It has become the ﬁrst thing I suggest to students starting research on the Scrolls. The anticipation set up by the catchy title What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter? and the achievements of the ﬁrst author of this short volume are matched only by its shortcoming. This volume by David Noel Freedman and Pam Fox Kuhlken is, regrettably, a disappointing work. The preface indicates that this book was born out of a conversation, whether in person, by email, or in writing, between Kuhlken, who “didn’t know a lot about the Dead Sea Scrolls” (x) and Freedman, who was as close to the Scrolls from the beginning as one could get without actually being in Jerusalem. The resulting question-and-answer format provides 117 exchanges grouped into thirteen sections. The book is aimed at the “public” and so the language of the Q&A exchanges is colloquial (e.g., “Show Me the Money” is one of the sectional titles). Aside from whether one likes a colloquial writing style or not, the looser style seems to have bled into the organization and editing. Organizationally, there is little rhyme or reason to the division or ordering of the sections. (I cannot call them “chapters,” since my understanding of “chapter” involves a signiﬁcantly greater degree of internal coherence than these divisions exhibit.) Moreover, some Q&A exchanges present only partial answers (see, e.g., pp. 12, 19), some are arguably irrelevant to anything the “public” needs or would want to know about the Scrolls (e.g., the discussion of the JEDP documentary hypothesis on pp. 72–77), and some contain no reference to the Scrolls (e.g., the discussion of textual criticism and the Bible on pp. 57–62). There are also a few notable factual errors, e.g., the Tetragrammaton is spelled with a ﬁnal ‫ ן‬instead of a ‫( ו‬25); ‫ ְדּרוֹר‬is never translated as “Jubilee” (29) by any translation I consulted; there is no evidence to connect Qumran with Gomorrah (39). And to top it oﬀ is the occasional mind-boggling question, such as “Will the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls lead to a more accurate, more intelligible Old Testament in its pre-Christian state?” (70)—the implications are, of course, that there is a “post-Christian” state of the Hebrew Bible, that the Christians distorted the actual text of the Hebrew Bible (what happened to the venerable Jewish Masoretic tradition?), and that the Old Testament as we have received it is inaccurate and unintelligible (again, what about the accuracy of the Jewish scribes, who product we have been using for centuries?). The answer does nothing to address the misleading question. It is unclear to me whether a revision or complete reworking could have saved this book. Regardless, it is certainly not representative of the stellar quality of David Noel Freedman’s (‫ )ז"ל‬impressive scholarly achievements.

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The third and ﬁnal book reviewed, Weston W. Fields’ The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Short History, was thoroughly enjoyable to read. Although introductory books on the Dead Sea Scrolls are increasingly ﬁlled with eye-candy, Fields’ volume is a step above, with numerous high-quality photographs that I, at least, had not yet seen. And yet, the quality of the illustrations holds little over the strength of the narrative. The book is well-organized and the writing is clear and ﬂuid—the occasionally folksy or journalistic style is especially ﬁtting for the intended audience of “non-specialists.” Fields structured his brief introduction in ﬁve chapters (see below), interspersed with photographs and short text selections of major Scrolls: the “Great Isaiah Scroll” (1QIsaa), the “Habakkuk Commentary” (1QpHab), the “Manual of Discipline” (1QS), “Testimonia” (4Q175), the “Rule of the Congregation” (1QSa), and 11QPsalms. Although it is doubtful the nonspecialists could read from the photographs, they will no doubt appreciate the stunning clarity, showing, among other details, the stitching at the seams, the lines used as writing guides, and the various forms of damaged suﬀered by the Scrolls. The ﬁrst chapter, “Discovery and Purchase of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” is without a doubt the narrative highlight of this volume. At thirty-eight pages it is also the longest chapter, and combined with the natural continuation of the second chapter, “Study and Publication” (26 pages), constitutes the heart of the work. The information in both chapters ﬂows from the “more than forty interviews” that Fields carried out with the ﬁrst generation of Scrolls scholars and the “several archives of personal letters and papers, most of which have never been published” (13). Thus, both chapters present episodes, or versions of episodes, that have never been told to the general public. For those readers (specialists and nonspecialists alike) who are intrigued by the twentieth-century history of the Scrolls, these two chapters alone make the cost of the volume worth every penny. The only glaring omission that I could ﬁnd was the complete lack of any mention of the “boot-leg” copy of the Scrolls pieced together from the concordance that Strugnell distributed; since this part of the drama in the early 1990s ﬁgures in almost every other discussion, I am at a loss to explain its omission in Fields’ narrative. Chapters 3–5, where Fields discusses the relationship of the Scrolls to the Bible, to Judaism and Christianity, and Qumran and the Essenes, respectively, are understandable necessities given the purpose of the volume. However, each chapter would have beneﬁtted greatly from a few more pages. For instance, the six pages given to the implications of Scrolls research for the Bible is woefully inadequate, even for a brief introduction. One example (the missing “nun” verse for Ps 145 that is absent from the MT but present in 11Q5) does not suﬃce to illustrate to the nonspecialist how the Scrolls have changed biblical studies. Moreover, the use of terms like “textual stream” and quick reference to the Council of Jamnia will, no doubt, lose the majority of readers that ﬁt the intended audience. A second example that I found mildly irritating was the absence of any explicit

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citations for the classical sources (i.e., Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder) that Fields used to describe the Essenes in Chapter 5. Fields concludes this volume with a timeline of events, many of which were covered in Chapters 1–2, but some of which were not. I found the timeline to be interesting and helpful and of great potential as a future teaching resource. (In fact, I wish I had used it for the summer course on the Scrolls that I recently taught.) In contrast, the glossary is a hit-and-miss resource, since it contains too little for the truly uninitiated. The suggestions for further reading are adequate. Overall, I highly recommend this book. Even for the specialist (in this case, a language specialist on the margins of Scroll research), taking the two hours to enjoy this book was a guilty pleasure. In the best way, this book seems like a cross between a typical brief introduction to the Scrolls and the kind of coﬀee-table book that has for so long the domain of the wonders of ancient Egypt. University of Toronto

Robert Holmstedt

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Reading the Present in the Qumran Library: The Perception of the Contemporary by Means of Scriptural Interpretations. Edited by Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange with the assistance of Katie M. Goetz and Susan Bond. SBL Symposium Series 30. Atlanta: SBL, 2005. Paperback. Pp. viii + 236. US$ 32.95. ISBN 1589831500 || Leiden: Brill, 2005. Hardcover. Pp viii + 236. € 98.00/US$ 146.00. ISBN 9004137610. This book originated in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hebrew Bible Seminar at the International Meeting of the SBL in Cambridge, 2003; there the question was posed “How was the present interpreted by means of reading the (biblical) text?” (195). The contributors have produced a collection of essays with a wider range than the reference in the title to Qumran might suggest. Indeed, it is somewhat surprising to ﬁnd that the editors commissioned Christine Helmer to write the introduction; she addresses the question of scriptural interpretation from a Protestant Christian perspective. Her examples of the transhistorical and dialogical nature of the Bible are drawn mainly from the New Testament and from Christian theology. The beneﬁt of this introductory hermeneutical discussion is that it provides a wider perspective, but I would have found it helpful if the connections to the following chapters could have been made more explicit. The introduction is complemented, however, by De Troyer’s concluding chapter, which summarises and traces the links between the eleven very diverse essays. The ten other contributions are divided into four sections entitled respectively Dead Sea Scrolls, Ancient Judaism, The Textual Tradition of the Hebrew and Greek Bible, and Authoritative Literature in Ancient Israel and Judah. The essays which focus largely on the Dead Sea Scrolls are by Jutta Jokiranta, Lawrence H. Schiﬀman, George J. Brooke, Sidnie White Crawford, Kristin De Troyer, and Armin Lange. The other contributions are by Lutz Doering, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Ulrike Mittmann-Richert, and Beate Ego. Jutta Jokiranta begins with a note of caution by highlighting the danger of circular reasoning associated with trying to reconstruct a historical reality on the basis of the pesharim texts alone. She then oﬀers a reading of the Habakkuk Pesher from the perspective of social identity. She concludes that “the pesharim do not wish to present historical facts as such, but rather point out boundaries” (33) as a means of constructing a positive identity for the community. Lawrence Schiﬀman demonstrates how halakic exegesis approached the need to address contemporary issues. His ﬁrst examples describe the techniques by which the Temple Scroll updated material from Leviticus and Deuteronomy; he likens these to similar techniques used in the Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition. He then considers two well-known legal rulings found in the Damascus Document. He argues that the sectarians were aware that they practised contemporising © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551590

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exegesis and that the theory of “revealed” and “hidden” law allowed for such an ongoing revelation of Torah. In the next (and longest) essay Lutz Doering discusses the reception and rewriting of Jer 29 and the phenomenon of diaspora letters. The essay sits a little uneasily in this section, covering as it does a wide range of texts. In addition to Jer 29 Doering discusses the Epistle of Jeremiah, 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C, Targum Jonathan, Baruch, 2 Baruch, and Paralipomena Jeremiae. He demonstrates how quite diﬀerent groups of people were able to read the situation of the exiles addressed by Jeremiah as analogous to their own. The ﬁnal essay in this section by George Brooke continues the common theme of identity. Under the title “Justifying Deviance” he discusses how Scripture may have been used at Qumran to facilitate conversion to the sectarian way of thinking. In this study he explores whether modern conversion theories may help in the understanding of some features of the use of Scripture at Qumran. In part two Loren Stuckenbruck discusses the portrayal of the past and the future in the Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 85–90). But ﬁrstly he deals with the complexity of the literary and real presents associated with this pseudepigraphical work. This helpful clariﬁcation leads into an analysis of how this text interprets the crisis of the Maccabean revolt in relation to the “crisis-laden time of the antediluvian patriarch” (92). In the next essay Ulrike Mittmann-Richert takes a fascinating new look at the Additions to Daniel. She argues that both the narrative prose and the poetry form a coherent and deep theological reﬂection upon the book of Daniel. She proposes that the allusions and motifs of these texts point to a sophisticated reading of Daniel alongside the books of Jeremiah, Habakkuk and Hosea. This reading addresses the hermeneutical problem of unfulﬁlled prophecy by interpreting Daniel’s prophecy in terms of the restoration of the cult experienced in the Hasmonean era, particularly under Simon (142–135/4 B.C.E.). Both essays in part three relate to the interpretation of Deuteronomy. Using the wealth of texts found at Qumran, Sidnie White Crawford discusses how Deuteronomy was read in a variety of ways during the second temple period. She considers the biblical texts themselves, excerpted texts for study and liturgical use, Reworked Pentateuch texts, and the Temple Scroll. Kristin De Troyer addresses the textual problems regarding the building of an altar and reading of the law commanded in Deut 27. She considers how this passage was interpreted in 4QJosha, the Masoretic text of Joshua, and the Old Greek text. She proposes that 4QJosha represents a later textual tradition than the mt, one that is more compatible with the Qumran sectarian view. The ﬁnal section contains two thought-provoking essays on biblical texts. Beate Ego discusses how the use of Abrahamic traditions in Ezekiel, Isaiah and Nehemiah reﬂect the experience of exile. Armin Lange analyses the method used in Jer 23:33–40 to interpret a prophetic oracle. He compares this with the herme-

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neutics of the pesharim and of ancient Near Eastern omen interpretation. He argues that the use of a similar strategy in the Jeremiah passage suggests that the interpretation reﬂects the redactor’s present situation, namely the marginalization of aural prophecy. The diversity of these essays demonstrates that “reading the present” in Scripture was a widespread and varied phenomenon not limited to any single literary genre or group of people. This volume usefully contributes to placing the interpretation of scripture at Qumran within a wider context. University of Manchester

Julie A. Hughes

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The Dead Sea Scrolls in Perspective. By John C. Trever. North Richland Hills, Tex.: Bibal Press, 2004. Paperback. Pp. xv + 63 + plates 48. US$ 19.95. ISBN 1930566174. This small book falls into many categories. First, it is an autobiographical memoir on Cave 1 scrolls from Qumran: how John Trever (1915–2006), who worked in the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, ﬁrst became acquainted with the discovery, saw and photographed some of the manuscripts (1QS, 1QIsaa, 1QpHab, 1QapGen), and how he was the ﬁrst American to consider the possible antiquity of the manuscripts. He reports about the famous conﬁrmation by W.F. Albright, “you have made the greatest MS discovery of modern times.” As such, the book fulﬁlls the purpose of recording some authentic personal memories and illustrates the diﬃcult political situation during the years 1947 and 1948. In Trever’s previous publications, The Untold Story of Qumran (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1965) and The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Personal Account (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977, repr. 2003), this story was elaborated. Sometimes the reader can feel the excitement of touching and unrolling the ﬁrst manuscripts, sometimes the reader gets lost in the spiral-like account of tracking the routes of the manuscripts from Cave 1. Credibility in the complicated story about the discovery is strengthened by the fact that Trever had a chance to interview three of the Taʿamireh Bedouins who were involved with the discovery. Their story, however, is not by any means critically evaluated or historically veriﬁed and was probably already modiﬁed in the “Bedouin tradition” at the time of the interviews. One third of the book contains photographs taken by Trever, thus completing the publication of his early photographs, previously published in Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1 from Photographs by John C. Trever in 1972. Such photographs are signiﬁcant since they record the scrolls as they were very shortly after the discovery, before further deterioration took place. Trever regards the most important of these photographs to be one fragment from the Genesis Apocryphon which was lost or forgotten for many years—it did not make it in the oﬃcial DJD edition—but was again located and photographed in 1992 by Bruce Zuckerman and Elisha Qimron, and named the “Trevor fragment” in honor of the original photographer and identiﬁer of the fragment. Today Trever’s original photographs are kept in climate-controlled conditions in California, at the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center of the Claremont School of Theology. The ﬁnal section of the book is a personal comment on the religion of the supposed Qumran community. For Trever, the key to understanding the religiosity of this community is the linking of the author of the Book of Daniel with the Qumran community. This author was disappointed in his eschatological expectations and found a place of refuge at Qumran. He turned to authoritative books of the Prophets, such as Habakkuk, and in the kind of interpretation that is pre© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551608

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served in the Pesher Habakkuk, he found new faith and vision. The Qumranites thus lived in this vision, and later also relied on the Book of Daniel to read their present reality in the scriptures. In Trever’s view, such religiosity is too “myopic,” and calls for a reevaluation of present-day eschatological ideas. The theory about the connections between the Danielic visions and the Qumran writings is, however, too brieﬂy presented here for the reader to be able to appreciate it or criticize it. The chapter remains more like a personal afterthought. The book is most interesting because of its personal color and ﬁrst-hand testimony to the Scrolls history. University of Helsinki

Jutta Jokiranta

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Le Rouleau de cuivre de la grotte 3 de Qumrân (3Q15): Expertise—Restauration— Epigraphie. By Daniel Brizemeure, Noël Lacoudre, and Émile Puech, with an introduction by Jean-Michel Poﬀet. 2 vols. STDJ 55. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Hardcover. Pp. xxii + 228; xxvi + 424. € 213.00 / US$ 304.00. ISBN 9789004140301. This publication contains a report on the conservation and restoration of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) made by the Laboratoire EDF-Valectra in Saint-Denis (Electricité de France, EDF) and a revised edition of its text with French and English translation and indices by Emile Puech. The poor condition of the Copper Scroll, which is held in the Archaeological Museum in Amman, for a long time was a matter of concern for the scholars working on this document. In spite of conservation work in 1955–56, its condition was dramatically deteriorating. Hence, the decision of the Electricité de France to conduct conservation work on the Copper Scroll, made at the request of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, was given a jubilant reception by the scholars. The conservation works were performed between 1994 and 1996 (the results were presented already in 1996 at the International Symposium on the Copper Scroll in Manchester). The publication provides a detailed report on the state of preservation of the Copper Scroll since its discovery in 1952, the conservation work performed before 1994, and on all the actions taken by EDF (examination, diagnosis, conservation, restoration, creation and digitization of X-ray images, moulding and reproduction by galvanoplasty). All these works are precisely described in six chapters of the “Livre Premier” in Volume 1 by Daniel Brizemeure and Noël Lacoudre. Volume 2 contains more than 300 photographs of the Copper Scroll, its reproduction and the facsimile. The result of the conservation and restoration is impressive. The new pictures of the Copper Scroll are of very high quality and they considerably improve the legibility of the text. These pictures deﬁnitely determine the signiﬁcance of the new edition by Emile Puech (Volume 1, “Livre Second”). Some letters that were invisible or barely visible are now legible. In relation to the facsimile in Milik’s editio princeps, the legibility of more than twenty words was improved (cf. 2:12 ‫ ;באתו‬2:14 ‫ ;אמות‬3:1 [‫ ;בחצ]ר‬4:1 [‫ ;הגדו]ל‬4:4 ‫;]עס[רה‬ 5:5 [‫ ;מזר]ח‬7:9 ‫ ;חפור‬8:1 ‫ ;בית‬8:2 ‫ ;אחיה‬8:3 [?‫רכע]מ‬/‫ ;תב‬9:7 ‫ ;דרום‬9:11 ‫ ;לכפת‬9:17 [‫ ;בתח]ום‬10:8 ‫ ;בצריח מעינו‬11:4 ‫ ;בתכן‬11:9 (?)(‫טה)ור‬/‫;]]ש[[טח‬ 11:12 ‫האשר)ו(חין‬/‫ ;א‬12:2 ‫ ;כוזין‬12:3 ‫ ;הכוך‬12:8 ‫ הבזך‬and ‫כוך‬/‫ ;הבזך‬12:10

‫שכנה‬. The text of the Copper Scroll in Puech’s edition is divided into sixty notes. In the facsimile (2:397–424) the proposals of the reconstruction for all the lacunae are given. This edition is characterized by a tendency to emphasize the real shape of the letters in the passages that are corrupt as a result of inaccuracy and errors of the scribe. In these cases, Puech gives the correct letters in brackets following © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551617

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the incorrect letter/s. See for example 10:9 ‫ ;אכע)מ(ות‬11:4 (‫כלר)י‬. Although Puech generally conﬁrms the quality of the Milik’s edition, he frequently prefers alternative readings suggested by other scholars. Puech reports the history of the research on the text of the Copper Scroll and evaluates the readings in the editions by Allegro, Luria, Pixner, Wolters, Muchowski, Bedman, Lefkovits, McCarter, and some others. He does this in an objective and reliable way. Although most of the readings proposed by Puech are well justiﬁed, there are some controversial ones as for example in 10:15: (?)‫ביאצית‬, “at the spring?” or in a case of the interpretation of ‫ ככ‬as the abbreviation of (‫( כ)רש( כ)סף‬proposed previously by Lefkovits). In the latter case it seems deﬁnitely more probable that we are dealing with an abbreviated form of the word ‫ככרין‬, ”talents,” which occurs many times in the scroll. It is worth mentioning that the Puech’s text contains only few new readings not suggested in previous editions (as for example ‫מקרת‬, ”frigidarium” in 1:12). It shows well how much the research on the text of the Copper Scroll has advanced. With regard to the historical interpretation, Puech is of the opinion that the Copper Scroll is an authentic document describing real treasures and sacred objects. However, contrary to most scholars, who suppose that these treasures were taken from the Jerusalem Temple about 68 C.E., he claims that they belonged to the Essenes (in line with previous claims by A. Dupont-Sommer and B. Pixner). His main argument for such a conclusion is the location of the hiding places. According to Puech, this reﬂects the location of the Essenes’ communities, mostly situated in the region of Jerusalem and Jericho. This thesis can explain the riddle of the hiding place on Mount Gerizim (12:4). When taking into consideration the large amount of silver and gold, however, it seems doubtful. Puech does not provide convincing arguments how the Essenes could possess such treasures. His supposition that some of them could have been taken from the Jerusalem Temple in 152 B.C.E. by the founders of the Essene sect is clearly hypothetical. Even if we reduce the total amount to 63 tons following the recalculation made by Puech (versus about 200 tons according to Milik), the amount is still enormous and it seems to exceed the ﬁnancial possibilities of Essenes. Concerning the topographic identiﬁcation of the place names, it is noteworthy that Puech rejected some locations in Transjordan proposed by Pixner and some other scholars. This publication deserves the highest recommendation, and it constitutes an important event in the study on the Copper Scroll. It summarizes and evaluates the research on its text in a reliable way. The new photographs, which are of the highest quality, provide new possibilities for resolving controversies concerning the graphic aspects of the scroll and ﬁnally ﬁxing the text. And as far as the conservation and reconstruction work is concerned, a high recognition should be given to the Electricité de France. The new images of the scroll are an important contribution to the study on this exceptional text from Qumran. Adam Mickiewicz University

Piotr Muchowski

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‘You are a Priest Forever’: Second Temple Jewish Messianism and the Priestly Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Eric Farrel Mason. STDJ 74. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. Hardcover. Pp. xiii + 229. US$ 118.00. ISBN 9789004149878. This book is the published version of a dissertation written under the directorship of James C. VanderKam and accepted in 2005 by the University of Notre Dame. The author treats the complex issue of a possible Jewish messianic background of the High Priest and Melchisedek Christology in the letter to the Hebrews in a thorough and systematic way. The chapters are, after an Introduction (1–7): 1. Hebrews’ Presentation of Jesus as High Priest (8–39); 2. Previous Theories of the Background of the Motif (40–63); 3. Messianic Priest Traditions in Second Temple Judaism (64–137); 4. Melchizedek Traditions in Second Temple Judaism (Melchizedek in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Septuagint, in Nonbiblical Second Temple Jewish Literature, and in the Texts of the Qumran Community; 138–90); 5. The Priestly Christology of Hebrews and Qumran Traditions (191–204). The book is concluded with a bibliography (205–24) and an Index of Authors (225–29). Whereas it is obvious that the author is not able to establish any dependency on Hebrews of any early Jewish tradition, as we simply do not know enough about Hebrews or its background, the author’s comparisons with eschatological or messianic priestly and Melchisedek traditions in especially the Dead Sea Scrolls are an important contribution to a much neglected ﬁeld of research. It is in these traditions that we ﬁnd a shared conceptualization between a heavenly Melchisedek ﬁgure together with that of an eternal priesthood from the line of Levi and the Christology of Hebrews. Whereas it will be impossible to trace any historical link between Qumran and Hebrews, the parallels with Jesus as a heavenly high priest in the line of Melchisedek are most noteworthy. The book is especially valuable because of its in-depth analysis of both Hebrews and the Qumran writings Rule of the Community; Damascus Document; Rule of the Congregation; Rule of the Blessings; War Scroll; Florilegium (4Q174) and Catena (4Q177), Testimonia (4Q175); as well as of Aramaic Levi Document; Jubilees, and Testament of Levi. It is in these detailed analyses and the careful drawing of possible parallel line of thoughts that the author excels. McGill University

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

Gerbern S. Oegema

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551626

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Jahre, Jahrwochen und Jubiläen. Heptadische Geschichtskonzeptionen im Antiken Judentum. By Christoph Berner. BZAW 363. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2006. Hardcover. Pp. xiii + 564. € 134.95/US$ 189.00. ISBN 9783110190540. The book, a doctoral thesis at the University of Göttingen (2005, supervisor H.-J. Becker), oﬀers a comprehensive study of all heptadic-structured presentations of history of the Second Temple period. The discovery of several relevant texts at Qumran renewed interest in the topic and put it on a new basis. A brief survey of earlier research deals mainly with J. Milik’s construction of a Book of Periods, B.-Z. Wacholder’s chronomessianism, and J. Maier’s encompassing reconstruction of calendar and chronology. In Berner’s view, earlier studies suﬀer from their concentration on purely calendrical and chronological data, the search for an all-encompassing chronological scheme, and the relative neglect of the individual texts and the theology of history behind them. Berner dedicates very detailed studies to Dan 9, the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, the book of Jubilees, texts from Qumran, and the Testament of Levi. He deals extensively with time and place of origin and the literary unity of every single text and its history of redaction before approaching questions of chronology and historical schemes. Thus he regards Dan 9 as the latest part of the book: its basic text was redacted after 167 B.C.E.; 9:23 was added not later than 163 since, as Berner assumes, 164/163 was observed as a sabbatical year (95) and was regarded by the author as the end of the 70 weeks. The dates are well argued; all the same, I rather doubt here as with many other texts how it is possible to reach such precise dates for single verses, and I wonder how exactly to imagine the activity of Danielic circles responsible for these rewritings. All attempts to ﬁt the seventy weeks of years into an absolute chronology are highly problematic; one might even ask how well the author(s) knew the chronology of the Persian period (Berner [99] concedes that weeks 8–62 need not be chronologically exact). The Apocalypse of Weeks in 1 Enoch is dated to the same time as the Hebrew visions of Daniel, more exactly before 167; the basis of its interpretation is the Aramaic version from Qumran, supplemented by the Ethiopian text. Berner regards it as probable that the author worked with units of 490 years; his own time is at the end of the seventh week which began with the exile and ends with the election of righteous people, in symmetry with the election of Abraham at the end of the third week. The author probably knew Daniel’s 490 years and reconstructed on this basis his chronology but without relying completely on the biblical or any other text. Berner dates the Animal Vision of 1 En. 85–90 between 166 and 161 and not under John Hyrcanus, as frequently proposed; still in the 2d century, 1 En. 83–84 were joined to this text. Berner is rightly sceptical regarding diﬀerent attempts to ﬁt the seventy shepherds into an absolute chronology; they signify a period of punishment which comes to its end in the author’s time. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551635

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The book of Jubilees is dated between 159 and 152; this pre-Qumranic text was supplemented within the next decade to include the history in the land of Israel, whereas the original text ended with the entry into the land at the end of the ﬁftieth jubilee. Thus Jubilees became a universal history, but its heptadic division was not applied to the later history. In many details the chronology of Jubilees does not agree with biblical dates—it seems that they were already authoritative and could not be ﬁtted into the heptadic system, which was the original contribution of the author. For him the entry into the land fulﬁlled a plan present already since the creation; only after entering the land could all commandments of the Torah be fulﬁlled; for this, Israel was set apart from the beginning, which implies a polemic against Jewish assimilation to Hellenistic culture. The continuation of the history beyond the entry into the land is a history of failure, as manifest in the Hasmonean history after the deposal of the Teacher of Righteousness from the high priesthood. Only the ﬁnal salvation could repair the present situation. The following chapter is devoted to the texts from Qumran. Berner here ﬁrst discusses the chronological indications in CD 1. The 390 years are to be read in light of Ezek 4:5, but this Scriptural connection does not necessarily imply that the number has not to be taken seriously, i.e., leading up to the year 196. But twenty years from then would place the appearance of the Teacher in 176, too early if we want to see the Teacher as the high priest overthrown in 152. Proposed solutions that the text works with the chronology of Demetrius (A. Laato) run the risk of circular reasoning; problematic is also the suggestion by A. Steudel (to some extent preceded by S. Schechter) that the numbers mentioned here together with the 40 years after the death of the Teacher (20:15) and the time of his activity in the community, about 40 years, would add up to Daniel’s 490 years. Berner is rightly sceptical regarding such solutions. 4Q180 and 4Q181 (Ages of Creation) are not necessarily parts of the same work, and therefore the seventieth week (of years) when Israel was led astray, mentioned in 4Q181, cannot be interpreted as hinting to a larger heptadic system. 4Q225–227 (Pseudo-Jubilees, or better Deutero-Jubilees) use the system of jubilees, but again it remains unclear whether a heptadic chronology is supposed; the same is true for 4Q228, and again for 4Q243–244 (Pseudo-Daniel ) which contains a universal, but not a heptadic conception of history. 4Q247 has been interpreted as a pesher on the Apocalypse of Weeks, but too much depends on the reconstruction of the lacunae; at most, the text might be using the model of the Apocalypse of Weeks, but even this is not at all clear. In his interesting discussion of 4Q385–390 (Apocryphon of Jeremiah C ), Berner to a large extent follows D. Dimant’s edition and reconstruction (DJD 30), but regards 4Q390 as an independent Qumranic work which presupposes the still pre-Qumranic Jeremiah Apocryphon. Both works divide the exilic and post-exilic history, marked by Israel’s transgressions and God’s wrath, in a sequence of jubilees. Due to the frag-

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mentary preservation it is not certain that the ten jubilees of 4Q387 are presupposed in 4Q390 as well, which is much more structured by weeks of years and jubilees. 11Q13 (Melchizedek), dated to the end of the 2d century, places the arrival of the messenger of good, perhaps the Teacher of Righteousness, in the ﬁrst week of the tenth jubilee; Melchizedek himself will come at the end of this jubilee. Since only a fragment is known, we cannot say whether the preceding jubilees were also discussed in detail. Clear is the connection with Daniel’s seventy weeks, 490 years. If we may assume an exact calculation and 586 as its starting point, 96 B.C.E. would be the end of history which agrees well with the known time of the teacher; A. Steudel takes 566 as the starting point and thus arrives at 72 B.C.E. All such hypotheses are problematic since the author of 11Q13 is above all interested in his own period, considered as the end of times and thus dated to the tenth jubilee, without presupposing a concrete chronological scheme. A last section of this chapter deals with 4Q319 and 4Q320, calendrical texts of Qumran which show a structure in years of weeks or jubilees. As Berner emphasizes, we ﬁnd in Qumran heptadic as well as non-heptadic chronologies and combinations thereof with reinterpretations of earlier schemes. This demands the individual analysis of each text and does not allow any harmonizing overall view of a Qumranic conception of history (465). In the next chapter Berner discusses the heptadic conception of history in T. Levi 16–17. While T. Levi 16 is clearly Christian and no Jewish Vorlage can be reconstructed with any degree of certainty, T. Levi 17 can be seen as a Christian reinterpretation of a Jewish text which describes the continuing deterioration of the priesthood over seven jubilees; only the last jubilee is subdivided in seven weeks of years. The history ends with the appearance of Christ, the new priest (18:2), who corresponds with the ﬁrst priest. Berner proposes that in the Jewish source the seven jubilees might have covered the period of 516–173, ending with the deposition of Onias III and the accession of Jason; 17:9–11 would be an appendix on the sinful Hasmonean priests (490–92). Thus the original text could have been written after 173, the appendix about the middle of the century. We may assume that the text ended with an outlook on eschatological salvation, but it is no longer possible to ﬁnd its traces beneath the Christian rewriting in T. Levi 18. It is impossible to do justice to the rich, most detailed and highly sophisticated discussion of a large number of texts within a short review. Berner shows very well the pervasiveness of heptadic structures of history in the service of its theological understanding in Jewish writings of the second and ﬁrst centuries until they became only historical ciphers without much interest in the details. It is in the nature of the texts and of our limited knowledge of the period that many reconstructions and historical interpretations oﬀered by Berner remain open to discussion. Berner is to be praised for the thoroughness of his analysis and his

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reticence with regard to overarching schemes of history. Berner’s most comprehensive study of all texts from the end of the biblical tradition until the beginning of Christian reinterpretation of earlier traditions is to be highly recommended to everybody interested in Jewish and especially Qumranic conceptions of history. University of Vienna

Günter Stemberger

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The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. By Hagit Allon and Lena Zehavi. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004. Paperback. Pp 40. US$ 12.95. ISBN 9780827608009. This lively illustrated introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls is narrated by a ﬁctional eleven-year-old protagonist named Daniel, and is aimed at readers around or below that age. Authors Allon and Zehavi are “trained as archaeologists and are senior educators at the Israel Museum’s Youth Wing,” according to the blurb on the back cover. These credentials leave their mark on the book, mostly to its advantage. Their archaeological training is evident in the eﬀective selection and presentation of artifacts and information from both Qumran and the Israel Museum. Their pedagogical and museological experience is evident in the narrative framework and the visual presentation. Illustrator Yossi Abulaﬁa’s integration of colorful cartoon-like drawings (primarily of the characters in the story) with actual photographs is perfectly suited for packaging serious data in a manner that is appealing and accessible to youngsters. The six chapters of the book are titled “I Have an Assignment to Do,” “Making Friends with the Man on the Bus,” “I Meet the Curator of the Shrine of the Book,” “Going to Qumran and Meeting Yigal the Archaeologist,” “Jonathan Makes an Amazing Discovery,” and “I Tie Up Loose Ends.” In chapter 1, we meet Daniel and accompany him into the Shrine of the Book for his ﬁrst encounter with the Community Rule, and with Qumran Studies. The full-page photo of 1QS cols. 5–6 is appropriately imposing. Daniel’s assessment of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the museum library is that “There were loads of books there, but most of them were in hard English and seemed very complicated. This was too much.” In his next trip to the museum in ch. 2, Daniel attaches himself to a group of kibbutzniks, and learns the story of the modern discovery of the scrolls from their tour guide, in all its intrigue and with accurate detail. Subsequently, the curator of the Shrine of the Book ﬁlls him on the background of the ancient community of the scrolls, here identiﬁed as Essenes, in keeping with the approach of the museum exhibit. Also following the exhibit, the daily life of the community is portrayed by means of artifacts from the site of Qumran. The “consensus” Essene theory is further developed during Daniel’s trip to Qumran in ch. 4, in which illustrations of his family are superimposed upon vivid photographs of the site. Chapter 5 oﬀers some basic observations about archaeological technique, and the narrative reference to the family’s trip to Ein Gedi aﬀords an opportunity for another beautiful photo; the scene of the water and adjacent greenery within the Judean desert eﬀectively evokes the atmosphere of the region. In the ﬁnal chapter, Daniel returns to the museum. Some more information is provided, but the primary function of this chapter is to highlight how much better-informed Daniel and the readers are now than when we ﬁrst entered the Shrine of the Book in chapter 1. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011

DOI: 10.1163/156851711X551644

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This book is most eﬀective as a complement to the Israel Museum exhibit or to a visit to Qumran. Although the English is mostly smooth throughout, the book reads very much like a translation, for reasons of culture more than language. An unfortunate sentence in the opening paragraph reﬂects the problem in both aspects, in its description of Daniel: “But in the 60-meter race, I am the fastest in my class and this gives me credit with the other kids.” This awkward translation undermines the authors’ obvious eﬀorts to present a bookish but “normal” main character with whom their readers can identify. Success as a sprinter is not likely to be perceived as particularly cool by English-speaking readers. There are also many allusions to modern Israel (for example, references to former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek and to Yigael Yadin) that would not be very relevant to an English speaker who is simply interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although this cultural framework may limit the audience to whom this book will appeal, it also makes The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls particularly suitable for families touring in Israel, or preparing for such a visit. The emphasis on the modern story of the scrolls also makes this a potentially valuable resource for readers of Dead Sea Discoveries who would like to explain their own scholarly pursuits to the young people in their lives. To conclude with the words of a member of the target audience, Miriam Charak (age 10): I liked this book because it was interesting and took a true story and made it into a mystery book. It gives you a lot of information while you feel like you are reading a ﬁction mystery book. The pictures were very interesting and also very helpful because they were photographs but the things that were relevant to that page were cartoons. I could tell who was who and what to look at. University of Sydney

Shani Tzoref with Miriam Charak

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