The Significance of Sinai: Traditions About Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity (Themes in Biblical Narrative)

The Significance of Sinai

THEMES IN

BIBLICAL NARRATIVE JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS Editorial Board GEORGE H. VAN KOOTEN, Groningen ROBERT A. KUGLER, Portland, Oregon LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK, Durham Assistant Editor FREEK VAN DER STEEN Advisory Board REINHARD FELDMEIER, Göttingen – JUDITH LIEU, Cambridge FLORENTINO GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ, Groningen-Leuven HINDY NAJMAN, Toronto MARTTI NISSINEN, Helsinki – ED NOORT, Groningen

VOLUME 12

The Significance of Sinai Traditions about Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity

Edited by

George J. Brooke, Hindy Najman and Loren T. Stuckenbruck Editorial Assistance

Eva Mroczek, Brauna Doidge and Nathalie LaCoste

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

Cover illustration from: Simon Levi Ginzburg’s Illustrated Custumal, Minhagim-Book of Venice, 1593. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LC Control No.: 2008038904

ISSN 1388-3909 ISBN 978 90 04 17018 6 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Editorial Statement ..................................................................... Introduction ................................................................................

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Some Unanticipated Consequences of the Sinai Revelation: A Religion of Laws ................................................................. James L. Kugel

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“Fire, Cloud, and Deep Darkness” (Deuteronomy 5:22): Deuteronomy’s Recasting of Revelation ................................ Marc Zvi Brettler

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Priestly Prophets at Qumran: Summoning Sinai through the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice ...................................................... Judith H. Newman

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Moving Mountains: From Sinai to Jerusalem ............................ George J. Brooke

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Moses, David and Scribal Revelation: Preservation and Renewal in Second Temple Jewish Textual Traditions ......... Eva Mroczek

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The Giving of the Torah at Sinai and the Ethics of the Qumran Community .............................................................. Marcus Tso

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Josephus’ “Theokratia” and Mosaic Discourse: The Actualization of the Revelation at Sinai ................................ Zuleika Rodgers

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Why did Paul include an Exegesis of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3? ............................................................. Moses’ Strength, Well-being and (Transitory) Glory, according to Philo, Josephus, Paul, and the Corinthian Sophists George H. van Kooten

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In the Mirror of the Divine Face: The Enochic Features of the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian ................................ Andrei Orlov Torah and Eschatology in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch .......... Matthias Henze Can the Homilists Cross the Sea Again? Revelation in Mekilta Shirata .......................................................................... Ishay Rosen-Zvi

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Hearing and Seeing at Sinai: Interpretive Trajectories ............ Steven D. Fraade

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The Giving of the Torah: Targumic Perspectives .................... Charles Thomas Robert Hayward

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God’s Back! What did Moses see on Sinai? .............................. Diana Lipton

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Sinai in Art and Architecture .................................................... David Brown

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Sinai since Spinoza: Reflections on Revelation in Modern Jewish Thought ....................................................................... Paul Franks

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Index of Modern Authors ......................................................... Subject Index .............................................................................. Index of Primary Texts ..............................................................

355 363 368

EDITORIAL STATEMENT Themes in Biblical Narrative publishes studies dealing with early interpretations of Biblical narrative materials. The series includes congress volumes and monographs. Publications are usually the result of a reworking of papers presented during a TBN-conference on a particular narrative, e.g. the Balaam story, or a specific theme, for instance: ‘clean and unclean’ in the Hebrew Bible, or: ‘the ru’ah adonai and anthropological models of humanity’. Having treated the basic texts for this narrative or theme, other contributions follow its earliest interpretations and receptions throughout the subsequent phases of ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and if appropriate Islam. Also studies which illuminate the successive inculturations into the various Umwelts—the Ancient Near East, the Graeco-Roman World—are included. Extensions to modern Bible receptions and discussions of hermeneutical questions are welcomed, if they are related explicitly to the study of early receptions of Biblical texts and traditions. Contributions to the series are written by specialists in the relevant literary corpora. The series is intended for scholars and advanced students of theology, linguistics and literature. The series is published in co-operation with the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), Durham University (United Kingdom), and Lewis & Clark College (USA). It includes monographs and congress volumes in the English language, and is intended for international distribution on a scholarly level. More information on the series http://www.xs4all.nl/~fvds/tbn/

INTRODUCTION In July 2007 a group of us gathered at the Department of Theology and Religion in the University of Durham to discuss “The Giving of the Torah at Sinai.” Contributors had been solicited to investigate the centrality of the theme in biblical, extra-biblical, rabbinic, early Christian, artistic and later philosophical depictions. Many of the conference participants anticipated a three-day long discussion of Sinai as the paradigm for all other revelation. The assumption was that Sinai would then come to be seen all the more clearly as the exclusive and normative model for subsequent revelation in Judaism, whether as the basis for the authoritative extrapolation of what had taken place there or as the touchstone for any claim to revelatory experience of the divine. For non-Jewish traditions one could well expect that Sinai was the defining moment for revelation and covenant-making. Thus we imagined that our conference in Durham and our subsequent volume would be a work that would discuss Sinai as a paradigm for imagining all subsequent revelations in Judaism and Christianity. However, somewhat to the surprise of the editors of this volume, the papers that were delivered at the conference and that have eventually been revised for inclusion in this volume did not focus exclusively on the centrality of Sinai. Neither did they all argue that Sinai was the paradigmatic revelatory event. Instead, what emerged were very nuanced discussions of the various ways in which Sinai was not central or privileged, but rather relativized amongst many other examples of revelation in the history of ancient Judaism and beyond. This was true in discussions of Qumran literature, in analyses of the writings of Philo and Josephus, in expositions of tannaitic midrash, in fresh readings of the targums, and so on. The openness and willingness of the participants in the symposium to reconsider longstanding presuppositions is what intrigued many of us and will probably surprise our readers as well. The essays presented here provide glimpses of how in antiquity and more recently some Jews and Christians sought to rewrite or even replace the moment of Sinai with other important moments of revelation and communication with the divine. In this it seems in particular that the location of revelation was seen as less and less significant; until

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modern times Sinai as a place was not significant for pilgrimage, even though a monastery was established at its base. But changes took place in two other respects as well. First, it is evident that the scriptural narratives of the Sinaitic revelation were revisited and transformed in a number of intriguing ways, not least to explain what was perceived as problematic or awkward in the plain sense of the text. Miraculous theophany, anthropomorphic description of the divine, the role of Moses as actor or mediator, the response of Israel, were all handled with exegetical skills that released the story of what happened and especially the divine participant in it from the control of the text itself so that everything could be appropriated afresh. Second, the content of the revelation, especially the significance of covenant, was rethought and reworked in philosophical, political, and theological ways. Several of the studies in this volume represent some of the various ways in which these modifications of the tradition represent competing claims to Sinai in antiquity. Some of the post-biblical texts considered here claim to redo or even replace the Sinai event with a new and better covenantal event. Other essays suggest that there were many occasions for authoritative theophany throughout the history of Judaism. The contributors considered a variety of communities in many different places over a broad chronological span of time. The essays are presented in an order that indicates approximately the chronology of their principal subjects and that puts several naturally together; no subheadings are used in the table of contents to allow the reader to enjoy moving beyond the regular canonical boxes in the very juxtaposition of studies that are presented here. James Kugel provides the opening essay in which he wrestles elegantly with matters of faith and history, challenging Jewish orthodoxy with an appealing interrogation of texts that asks how Jewish tradition arrived at where it is now if its origins were really more in the seventh century B.C.E. than they were in the wilderness at Sinai; he points out some of the ways in which the understanding of divine-human relationships in works like Deuteronomy have been transformed into something prescriptive, a system that successfully both keeps the deity at a distance and proves itself to be remarkably durable. Marc Brettler offers some programmatic comments on how the tradition about Sinai was received as he investigates how a part of the text of Deuteronomy probably interpreted its sources. In particular he considers how Deuteronomy fundamentally recasts its source material to foster the notion that “hear-

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ing (rather than seeing) is believing;” he notes how Deuteronomy plays a careful balancing act, giving the Decalogue and the earlier revelation of law some importance, but it gives it less importance than its sources; and he shows how Deuteronomy fundamentally recasts its source material to justify its core idea that the Mosaic discourse in year 40 is more important than the Sinai/Horeb event. For the late Second Temple period there are four studies that depend on the scrolls from the Qumran caves. Judith Newman’s essay on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice suggests that they served at Qumran as a transformative and preparatory rite in the community whose purpose was to summon anew, with a striking priestly-prophetic inflection, the divine glory they considered as first revealed at Sinai. The attention of the songs to description rather than provision of hymns to be sung underlines the view that ultimately God’s self-revelation is beyond words. George Brooke offers some clues as to why the Qumran community and the movement of which it was a part, for all its apparent legal stringency, seemed more concerned with facing towards Jerusalem with eschatological hope than with looking back to Sinai; in a way akin to the authors of Deuteronomy itself, the covenanters may well have had a faith that moved mountains, a law-filled faith that yearned for Zion to become truly the dwelling-place of the divine name. Eva Mroczek neatly aligns the transmission of Mosaic discourse with the prophetic nature of scribalism in Second Temple times. She argues that the expansions and changes of Mosaic legal traditions can be illuminated by considering the related tradition of the growth of psalm collections as linked to David; David and Moses, respectively divinely inspired scribes of liturgy and law, are analogous ideal mediatory figures who inspire continuous text production through the example of their own scribal activity—they both collect, arrange and transmit revelation in a perfect and divinely inspired way. Marcus Tso proposes that, alongside the appropriation of the Sinai and other scriptural traditions, at least three other factors—namely community identity, political and cultural contexts, and eschatology—were interwoven with such traditions in the assembling of the group’s ethical worldview; his own essay concentrates on the intermixed roles of scripture and community and individual identity in the ethics of the Qumran community. Beyond the echoes of Sinai in the Qumran caves, other forms of early Judaism and its emerging Christian offshoot had significant things to relay about the Sinaitic traditions. Three studies look in turn at the

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varying rhetorical strategies in texts which are almost contemporary. George van Kooten considers why Paul included an exegesis of Exodus 34 in 2 Corinthians 3. He argues that Paul’s extensive passage on Moses is embedded in his critique of his opponents at Corinth who, he believes, are behaving like sophists. Over against his opponents who may have stressed Moses’ strength and bodily well-being, Paul portrays Moses in a different and surprisingly positive manner: he does not deny his glory, though he indicates its temporary character and he does indeed contrast it with the still greater glory of the new covenant. While van Kooten considers Josephus’ portrayal of Moses in brief to highlight its difference from Paul’s view of him, Zuleika Rodgers assesses more broadly the constitutional interests of Josephus. By examining Josephus understanding of the transmission of Mosaic law—and his own role in that—she argues that it is possible to discern a link between the Sinai event as articulated in Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish theocracy of Against Apion. Josephus’ reflections on good governance and justice— its effects, the relationship between the character of the state and its individuals, and the virtues of the lawgiver and the ideal statesman— show that themes central to political and philosophical discourse in the Greco-Roman world are anticipated and emulated by Jewish traditions. In a similar vein Matthias Henze exposes how the author of Second Baruch, faced with the destruction of the temple, is left with God and Torah, views them both from the perspective of a promised restoration, and embraces Deuteronomic language to call urgently for obedience to the Torah, the only route to righteousness. In all this he seems to be far from feeling disenfranchised, marginalized, or that he was writing out of a sense of opposition to something supposedly more normative; rather, with Sinai in mind, he addresses all Israel in an inclusive manner. A fourth study returns to the issue of the transformation of Moses at Sinai that has formed the focus of van Kooten’s paper. Andrei Orlov argues that the power struggle between the figures of Enoch and Moses can sometimes be seen in a single text. He argues that in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian the figure of Moses is indeed highly exalted as the mediator of esoteric revelation, enthroned as a counterpart to the stars, transformed so that his luminous face is a reflection of the glorious face of the deity. But the twist in the tale is that the divine face that is mirrored is that which is represented by Moses’ long-lasting contender, Enoch-Metatron. Rabbinic views, some of them from a somewhat later period, are presented in four essays. Ishay Rosen-Zvi looks at the interpretative

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treatment of the Song of the Sea in Mekhilta. He proposes that in intriguing ways concerning issues of time and revelation this interpretation anticipates literarily much of what can be discerned in the rabbinic discussions of Sinai. And like the Sinai traditions, the text of Mekhilta Shirata has a strategy for provoking fear and providing encouragement. Steven Fraade then considers various interpretative trajectories surrounding Sinai itself, noting in particular how some of these focus on the auditory experience of Israel whilst others stress the visual dimension. With reference to scriptural passages, the Targums, Mekhilta, Philo, and Sifre Deuteronomy, amongst others, Fraade expounds the intriguing diversity of the Jewish representation of the kinds of perception that surround the giving of the Law. Robert Hayward develops some similar topics in his detailed discussion of some targumic traditions. In some there is explicit clarification of the role of Moses, in others there is attention to the whole event as a cultic phenomenon, in yet others care to preserve the integrity and the distance of the divine. Taking the matter of precisely what happened at Sinai further, Diana Lipton wonders about what Moses saw when he ascended Mt. Sinai to collect the second set of commandments. She argues that the notion that God allowed Moses to glimpse his back, but not to see his face, has wrongly dominated the recent history of interpretation and she suggests rather that God showed Moses neither his face nor his back on Mt. Sinai, but offered him a glimpse of the future. For Lipton, reading God’s “back” as an idiomatic reference to the future, reflecting a biblical perception of time now lost to us, sheds new light on traditional Jewish and Christian commentaries on Exodus 33:23. Two concluding studies round out this rich collection. In the first David Brown takes the reader, now viewer, on a journey through Sinai in art and architecture, both Christian and Jewish, to reveal from another dimension that interpretation is as much part of Sinai as the revelation itself. Though often to be qualified by reference to other matters, from the Christian perspective Sinai is the locus of revelation and the setting for depicting Moses as mediator, depictions which are often replete with typological suggestiveness for Christ himself. For Jewish artists Moses and Sinai have non-typological timeless immediacy, especially in the modern period, and recent Jewish architecture has created mountainous synagogues as a sign of differentiated identity. Paul Franks then concludes the collection with a profound meditation on the interrelationship of law, nature and society. Although even in antiquity Greek-speaking Jews equated Torah with nomos and natural

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law, it was Maimonides who most extensively treated nomos as a system of governance in the service of eternal truths. But for Spinoza, Torah is not revelation of eternal truths but is only a system of governance, and Sinai even contains the seeds of the destruction of the state that it constitutes. Franks expounds judiciously how Spinoza’s propositions are dealt with directly and indirectly by Moses Mendelssohn, and in Franz Rozenzweig’s dialogues with Martin Buber. We are grateful to the university funds that have supported this venture financially, especially the funds of the Department of Theology and Religion at the Durham University; the Centre for Biblical Studies and the Research Support Fund of the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, the University of Manchester; and the University of Toronto. We are also grateful to the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University for organising accommodation and for hosting the participants in Durham for three delightful and insightful days. In the preparation of this volume we are grateful to the contributors for the timely completion of their revised essays, to Eva Mroczek, for extensive editorial assistance, and to the additional assistance of two undergraduates at the University of Toronto, Brauna Doidge and Nathalie LaCoste. In addition we want to acknowledge the editors of the Themes in Biblical Narrative Series, especially George van Kooten, for accepting this volume. George J. Brooke, University of Manchester Hindy Najman, University of Toronto Loren T. Stuckenbruck, University of Durham

SOME UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES OF THE SINAI REVELATION: A RELIGION OF LAWS James L. Kugel Bar Ilan University, Israel Rabbinic Judaism, it almost goes without saying, is a religion of laws. There are laws governing practically everything: laws about how to keep sabbath (which nowadays include not driving an automobile or answering the telephone on God’s holy day); laws about how to celebrate the biblical festivals (for example, what the maximum and minimum dimensions of the sukkah, or harvest booth, are to be, and on what date before the festival it is permitted to begin thatching the sukkah’s roof ); rules concerning what one is to do upon getting up in the morning—which blessings to recite upon opening one’s eyes, and which others when getting out of bed, washing one’s hands, tying one’s shoes, and so on and so forth.1 Other laws dictate how early, and until how late, and in what posture, the Shema{ is to be recited, along with the conditions governing the recital of a lengthy prayer, the {Amidah, that is to be said (standing) three times day.2 There are laws about relations between parents and children, husbands and wives, shopkeepers and customers, beggars and almsgivers, and on and on and on, until it seems that there is almost no area of life that is not somehow governed by Jewish law. How did all this come about? For someone whose focus is the Hebrew Bible itself, this is a somewhat perplexing question. After all, the stories of Israel’s earliest ancestors make no mention of such laws: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and his family—all seem to function quite well without any legal framework to guide their actions. Apparently, these people never heard of God issuing any set of laws for them to obey. True, none of them lived during or after the time of the great revelation of laws at Mt. Sinai, when God is said to have adopted the

These matters are first codified in the great, second-century rabbinic compendium the Mishnah, specifically in the tractates Shabbat, Sukkah, and Berakhot, though all underwent modification in later rabbinic treatises. 2 m. Berakhot 1–5. 1

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people of Israel as His particular folk on condition that they keep His covenant stipulations, that is, His laws (Exod 19:5–6). Yet there is not much mention of those stipulations, or of that covenant, in the period following Israel’s establishment in its homeland either. Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Samson, Jephthah—which of these heroes from the period of the Judges speaks or acts in obedience to divine laws or on the basis of some great covenant with God? The same appears to be true even after the establishment of the monarchy: in general, the stories about David, Solomon, and their descendants do not show the slightest awareness of the Sinai laws—or of any divine laws at all, for that matter. Their God may reward goodness and punish misdeeds, but He generally seems to do so without evoking any specific legal framework.3 Indeed, scholars have noted that God at one point offers David an unconditional covenant of kingship: “Your dynasty and your kingdom will always stand firm before Me: your throne is established forever” (2 Sam 7:16). Such an unconditional promise seems to jangle with the conditional covenant of Sinai. The Sinai covenant said that God would uphold Israel if it kept His laws, whereas this divine promise to David says He will maintain David’s dynasty no matter what the people, or even David’s direct descendants, do. As the biblical scholar Matityahu Tsevat has observed: “If the existence of the confederacy, which is conditional, is the body, then kingship, which is an organ, cannot be unconditional.”4 In other words: these two covenants seem to be in conflict, as if each was unaware of the other’s existence. If one assumes that this account of the Davidic covenant was written near to the time of David’s reign,5 3 Of course, the Deuteronomistic editor’s summations of various kings and their reigns are often explicitly based on their adherence to the Deuteronomic strictures against “high places” and other things associated with forbidden worship; see, e.g., 2 Kgs 12:2; 14:1–4; 15:1–4, and so forth. But in a sense these summary judgments actually make the opposite point, that despite these kings’ alleged disdain for such laws, the kings in question nevertheless “did what was right in the sight of the Lord” and were rewarded. 4 Cited in Jon D. Levenson, “Who Inserted the Book of the Torah?” HTR 68 (1975): 227. 5 Among others: Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 255; see also P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel (AB 9: New York: Doubleday, 1984); Jon D. Levenson, “The Last Four Verses in Kings,” JBL 103 (1984): 353–61; Baruch Halpern, The First Historians: the Hebrew Bible and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 1996), 144–80; and William Schniedewind, Society and the Promise to David: The Reception History of 2 Samuel 7:1–17 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Many scholars have noted that the wording of this covenant in 2 Sam 7:12–16 is somewhat different from other restatements of it elsewhere in the

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then the apparent conflict between it and the traditions of a covenant at Mt. Sinai would suggest that the latter could not have originated, or at least become widely accepted, until after the time of David. The evidence of writings about, or attributed to, Israel’s early prophets only moves this date still further. Thus Elijah, in the ninth century b.c.e., is said to have built an altar to Israel’s God on Mt. Carmel (1 Kgs 18:30), in obvious contradiction to the Deuteronomic stipulation that sacrifices be offered only at the one, single place “where the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as His habitation” (Deut 12:5). Similarly, the sayings attributed to the eighth-century prophets show little awareness of the Sinai covenant, though here the evidence is not quite unequivocal. The book of Hosea does seem at one point to echo the prohibitions of the Decalogue, mentioning “False swearing and murder and stealing and adultery” (Hos 4:1–3). Apart from this passage, however, there is scarcely anything in the writings attributed to Hosea—or to his rough contemporaries Amos, Isaiah, and Micah— that suggests an awareness of the Sinai covenant or, indeed, the whole notion of God as a great lawgiver. By the late seventh or early sixth century, of course, the situation appears to be quite different. There is, to begin with, the evidence provided by the legal core of Deuteronomy (usually given a terminus ad quem in the seventh century), as well as what was conceivably the earliest form of the great Deuteronomistic History. Both of these writings attest to the centrality of biblical law for their author/editors. Moreover, as many scholars have argued, the late-seventh and early-sixth century prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel seem specifically to evoke biblical laws in their indictment of the people: You have been commanded not to do what you are doing, they say, and you will be judged for your violations. Moving forward in time, no one can miss the centrality of divine laws in the period following Israel’s return from exile, when the Jewish people are said to have specifically undertaken “to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his ordinances and statutes” (Neh 10:29), for which purpose they were said to have Deuteronomistic History; see Michael Avioz, Nathan’s Oracle (2 Samuel 7) and its Interpreters (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005). The apparent ignorance in 2 Samuel 7 of the dissolution of the united monarchy might indeed suggest an early date.

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been guided by one “skilled in the law of Moses” who “set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:6, 10). In post-exilic prophecy, too, divine law is an imposing presence: thus, Zechariah has a vision of a huge scroll of laws that flies through the air to enter the houses of wrongdoers and punish their violations of the Decalogue (Zech 5:1–4). Still later, the law is a potent force in the writings of Ben Sira, as well as in the Qumran scrolls, the writings of Philo and Josephus, and, of course, rabbinic texts. So, in posing my opening question as I have, I seem also to have offered something of an answer to it. Judaism’s “religion of laws” appears to have developed slowly, emerging only gradually as a central characteristic of Jewish piety. But this still does not explain how, or why, the whole idea of divine laws and a divine lawgiver ever got started in the first place. This question appears, when one considers it, a bit more challenging. After all, elsewhere in the ancient Near East, laws were not said to have been promulgated by the gods; they came from men. Thus, we have law codes from earliest times in ancient Mesopotamia, but they are attributed to various rulers—Ur-Namma of Ur (2112–2095 b.c.e.), Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 b.c.e.), Eshnunna (ca. 1770 b.c.e.), Hammurabi (ca. 1750 b.c.e.) and others. True, their legal codes often begin by mentioning that the gods X and Y established these kings on their thrones; in some cases, the king even claims to be of partially divine ancestry. But the laws themselves are promulgated by the king himself or his own legists. How did it happen that Israel’s laws came to be attributed to the authorship of a deity, YHWH Himself ? I must admit in advance that I have little solid information to offer in answer to this question, only a few guesses that, even in the friendliest estimation, could hardly be considered more than possibilities. Still, I hope that in posing the question as I have, I will have highlighted something of its importance, and that in setting down my own gropings for an answer I may at least stimulate others to take up the challenge. Much scholarly speculation on the biblical theme of divinely-given laws has naturally centered on the Decalogue, which is presented as the first set of divine laws delivered by God to Israel (and partially echoed in Hos 4:1–3). While scholars are generally skeptical about locating the Decalogue’s origins during Israel’s (supposed) wilderness wanderings following the exodus, it might seem only reasonable that these ten rules (or something like them) began to circulate sometime in the period preceding the rise of Saul and David, since, presumably,

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any great law-based agreement joining God and Israel ought, after the establishment of the monarchy, to have been mediated through the king, of whom the Sinai covenant makes no mention.6 In other words: if, unlike other ancient Near Eastern law codes, this one makes no mention of the king as its author or even mediator, there may be a simple reason for this circumstance: Israel, or the various tribes that were to become Israel, did not yet have a king at the time. Such an approach bumps up against an obvious problem, however—as we have seen, there is scant mention of a covenant anytime before the seventh century. But what eventually became the first ten stipulations of a great covenant binding together God and Israel may not have started out that way. Perhaps their origins are to be sought, as some scholars have suggested, not at some mass conclave at the foot of Mt. Sinai, but in the hill country of ancient Canaan, as different tribes and ethnic groups in Canaan sought to pull themselves together, through a common code of conduct and a common deity, into some sort of tribal coalition.7 Only later would these basic rules have been reconfigured as the stipulations of a great covenant binding a far larger group of tribes (and spread out over a greater area) to the, or a, national deity.8 In other words, what was to become the set of provisions of the Decalogue might have first been put forward—without the Sinai scenario—in what is called the period of the Judges, as different tribes and ethnic groups in Canaan sought to pull themselves together, through a common code of conduct and a common deity, into some sort of tribal coalition. Only later would these basic rules have been reconfigured as the stipulations of a great covenant binding a far larger group of tribes (and spread over a greater area) to YHWH. But note that even then, when YHWH was being adopted as Israel’s national deity through the conception of such a covenant, He must still have been conceived to

See James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible (New York: Free Press, 2007), 247–49 and sources cited there. 7 Kugel, How to Read, 415–16, 432–35. 8 It may be that the prohibitions of murder, adultery, robbery (or kidnapping), and the others actually owe their origin to a very early attempt to extend the simple rules governing the kinship groups who dwelled on one hilltop settlement in the central highlands to other, unrelated kinship groups elsewhere in the same highlands. On the archaeological evidence of those early, mountaintop settlements as kinship groups: Lawrence Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel” BASOR 260 (1985): 1–37. Along with such kinship rules, or joined to them at some point, was the further stipulation that YHWH was to be the, or a, common deity of all the hilltop settlers. See further: Kugel, How to Read, 248–49 and sources cited there. 6

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have been headquartered far away, in the arid wastelands to the south (as is indeed reflected in those various ancient texts that still locate Him as living in or around Horeb/Sinai, Mt. Seir, Mt. Paran, or Teman),9 well before He took up residence in Zion. For it was only a distant divine monarch who would ever think of approaching Israel with a covenant modeled in its form and wording on the basic ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaty, that is, the standard agreement concluded between a great emperor and his vassal states, scattered about in the territories that he controlled.10 As a resident of Horeb/Sinai etc., YHWH was indeed far from the Israelites in Canaan. No wonder, then, that He opted for the standard stipulation of ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties, namely, the one that obligates the vassal to pledge its exclusive loyalty to this monarch, to have no other monarchs before or along with Him, so as not to enter into any traitorous agreements. Such a scenario might go far in explaining a basic incongruity in the Decalogue. For, as scholars have long been aware, the Decalogue is presented as the set of stipulations binding the vassal-people to their suzerain. To insert the old hilltop rules of conduct as those covenant stipulations was, however, hardly a perfect fit. What real, flesh-and-blood monarch ever cared if his distant vassals honored their parents or had little extra-marital affairs? This part of the Decalogue only supports the hypothesis that this group of laws began in the hills of Canaan, and only later made their way, figuratively speaking, to some southern site where this new God of Israel was said to make His home. If this general approach is correct, it would go a long way to explaining both why this little code of laws came not from a wise king, but from a deity himself,11 and why that deity cared to regulate His people’s actions in ways that normally did not concern a distant suzerain.

See Deut 33:2; Judg 5:4–5; Hab 3:3; Ps 68:8–9. Having YHWH single out Israel with the offer to become His special people implies that He, like a flesh-and-blood suzerain, controls other peoples and territories; that is why He notes specifically in Exod 19:5, “for all the land is Mine,” that is, I could have chosen some other people among My subjects. 11 Here I don’t wish to overstate things; this distinction between man-given and Godgiven laws probably did not mean much at first. The kings of Egypt or Mesopotamia were certainly deemed to rule, and to issue laws, with the authority that devolved from their divine patrons. I doubt that, at first, attributing the promulgation of this or that law via the words, “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying . . .” made it significantly different from laws alleged to have been spoken firsthand by Hammurabi or Eshnunna or whoever. But certainly the difference between a divine and a human legislator was potentially of great significance, and this significance came into full expression soon 9

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To be sure, it must have taken a while for the notion of a set of divinely given laws to be carried to its logical conclusion. Whatever the chronology, however, there can be no disputing the fact that eventually the keeping of God’s laws did become a central form of Jewish piety. In step with this development, the laws themselves became more numerous and more elaborate. Keeping the sabbath meant, in second temple times, not carrying goods in and out of the city gates, or even from one house to another, or drawing water, or traveling on a ship, or even setting out on a journey of any length on a Friday.12 The prohibition of consuming or possessing leavened goods during the festival of Passover now included (as we know from the Elephantine documents) drinking or possessing beer, a prohibition not attested within the Bible itself.13 And so on and so forth.14 The Torah’s laws were so central that it as a whole came to be thought of as one great regula vitae, a manual telling people how they ought to live their lives. It was the torah, the nomos, and if neither of these words means simply “law” or “statute,”15 the legal associations clinging to both words are nonetheless quite undeniable. Even Philo, whose love of the allegorical interpretation of biblical narrative hardly requires glossing, and his younger contemporary Josephus, who says that his two principal motives in writing a history of his people were to put the events in which he himself had participated into their broader historical context as well as to publish an account of events so as to combat the Greek-speaking public’s general ignorance of them16—both these writers nevertheless devote a hefty part of their rewriting of the enough. Someone who violated a law of Hammurabi’s was guilty of committing a crime. But an Israelite who violated a law issued by Israel’s God had committed a sin. His offense was against not only the state, but heaven itself. By the same token, obeying Hammurabi’s laws was, well, merely good citizenship, whereas carrying out God’s commandments was something much higher—doing His will, serving God. 12 See Jer 17:21–22; Neh 10:31; also Jub. 2:29–30 and 50:6–13; James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 646–49, 686–87. 13 Kugel, Traditions, 568–69. 14 It would not be inappropriate to cite here words attributed to the fourth-generation tanna Hananyah ben Aqashiya (m. Makkot 3:16), “It was because God wished to give Israel the opportunity to acquire merit that He multiplied the Torah’s commandments . . .” This “multiplication of commandments” is indeed an altogether visible process that only accelerated in late-biblical times. 15 Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 288–90. 16 Ant. 1:3–4; he goes on to say his book will “encompass our entire ancient history and political constitution,” 1:5—this despite his stated intention (3:223) to compose a separate treatise on Israel’s laws.

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Pentateuch to a review of its laws and their proper interpretation. This is certainly a significant fact. What is more, it is not just the laws themselves that acquired a prescriptive character. The stories of biblical figures like Cain and Abel, Abraham and Jacob, eventually lost their originally etiological role;17 now they were read as lessons in morality: “Be like the righteous Abraham,” the text seemed now to be saying, “don’t be like Cain or the wicked Esau.” (So of course interpreters were at pains to portray Esau as wicked, which he was not, and Abraham as righteous, which he was not always.)18 Similarly, the message of prophets came to be de-contextualized and turned into moral instruction meant for every age: pursue justice, denounce corruption wherever it is found. The same is true of the psalms and songs of Scripture, its wisdom sayings and other writings—these too came to be divorced from the original purposes and life-settings for which they had been composed and came instead to be connected to another set of purposes, those of the great divine guidebook of which they were now deemed to be part.19 In short, the whole Bible became, in a sense, a collection of laws designed to lead people on the proper path. The “religion of laws” was now everywhere. Whatever the precise circumstances that led to this state of affairs, the emergence of this “religion of laws” was, as we have seen, a gradual process, one that found its first explicit outline in the legal core of the book of Deuteronomy. But was this a wholly discrete and isolated development? This seems unlikely; for that reason, the last subject I wish to evoke in this essay is that of the possible influence of the very idea of God-given laws on Israel’s way of conceiving of the divine–human encounter, that is, religion itself. Here again, I aim only to sketch the vague beginnings of an idea, in the hope that it may lead to some further discussion.

17 The concept was first extensively applied by Hermann Gunkel; see his Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897), and The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History (New York: Schocken, 1964). On Gunkel’s work: Werner Klatt, Hermann Gunkel. Zu seiner Theologie der Religionsgeschichte und zur Entstehung der formgeschichtlichen Methode (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969); Konrad von Rabenau, “Hermann Gunkel: auf rauhen Pfaden nach Halle,” EvT 30 (1970): 433–44; Martin J. Buss, Biblical Form Criticism in Context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999). 18 Kugel, Traditions, 151–52, 254–56, 354–59. 19 For all these: Kugel, How to Read.

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It is no secret that the way that God was conceived appears to have undergone a number of significant changes within the biblical period. In many of the texts that are generally conceded to represent the oldest strands of biblical writings, the God of Israel is depicted in highly anthropomorphic terms: He has a human-like body that is not much bigger (if at all) than that of an ordinary man’s; He has eyes and a mouth, arms and fingers, and other human physical characteristics. (True, later interpreters sought to suggest that these were merely metaphorical references, or descriptions intended to make it easier for primitive minds to grasp the reality of God, but—as recent research has suggested—there really is no reason to follow such an interpretive line.)20 Having a body, this God was certainly not omnipresent, nor do these early biblical texts suggest otherwise. He moves from place to place: He is said quite specifically to “go down” from heaven to frustrate the building of the Tower of Babel or to see what the people of Sodom were up to; elsewhere He rides about Heaven on a cherub.21 If He was generally not seen by people, that was not because He was invisible, but because catching sight of Him was usually fatal: “No one can see Me and live” (Exod 33:20). That is why He often sent an angel, some sort of hypostasis, to interact on His behalf with human beings, or else arrived surrounded by a protective cloud covering—one that protected not Him, but the humans who might otherwise be harmed by seeing Him. Nor, finally, was this God omniscient: He asks Adam where he is hiding and Cain where his brother Abel has gone: on the face of things, God does not know at the time of asking (though ancient interpreters of course claimed otherwise). This catalogue could be extended,22 but the general picture is, I hope, clear. Two things in particular characterize human interaction with this deity: intermittence and fear.23 God suddenly appears to humans (often in the form of an angel)—as He does to Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, and so forth—speaks with them or otherwise interacts for a time, and then disappears. As for fear, this too is the virtually universal reaction in early parts of the Bible. Ancient

20 I have explored some aspects of this idea in The God of Old (New York: Free Press, 2003); see further references there. 21 See Kugel, How to Read, 108–10. 22 Kugel, How to Read, 110–18. 23 See George W. Savran, Encountering the Divine: Theophany in Biblical Narrative (LHBOTS 420; London: T & T. Clark International, 2005).

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Israelites are never, like later Jews and Christians, “in search of God”: on the contrary, when God does suddenly appear, their reaction is inevitably like that of the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, who were “afraid and trembled and stood at a distance” (Exod 20:18).24 Nor is there anything particularly Israelite about this reaction. Throughout the ancient Near East, the gods have the power and humans stand before them in fear and trembling. If contact with the deity was frightening and intermittent, contact was nevertheless something to be desired—precisely because the gods had the powers they had; despite their fear, humans needed to be able to seek the gods’ favor, indeed, to curry their favor on an ongoing basis, if they were to benefit from the gods’ powers. To both problems mentioned, intermittence and fear, there was a single solution, and that was the ancient Near Eastern temple. The temple was, quite simply, a sanitized, sterile environment populated exclusively by a specially trained cadre of professionals whose whole job consisted of maintaining a home for the deity that would please him or her in every respect, a home in which animal sacrifices, pleasant incense, and endless offerings of praise were all designed to win the god’s favor and ongoing presence. Much of biblical law has to do with the temple and its proper operation— laws of cultic purity and impurity, classes of different sacrifices and the occasions on which they were offered, laws governing cultic personnel, and so forth. Yet there is a certain dissonance between the very idea of the temple and the tradition of divinely given laws at Mt. Sinai. It is not just that; in a much discussed verse in Exodus, Israel’s acceptance of God’s laws is said to turn Israel into a ‫ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש‬, a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6)—a state of affairs in which the whole nation—not just the priests!—are holy and close to God. But more generally, if, as was suggested earlier,25 obeying divinely given laws makes one more than just a good citizen, but turns one into a righteous non-sinner, indeed, a servant of God, then having a divinely given set of do’s and don’ts may quickly lead to an alternate form of piety. God is served in His temple via the sacrifices offered by His priests, but He is also served by the general populace observing His laws.

24 25

See further my study The God of Old, 37–70. Above, n. 9.

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This point of view comes into clearest expression in the book of Deuteronomy (though its roots are certainly older). That book endlessly uses the phrase otherwise employed to designate the offering of sacrifices—'‫“ לעבוד את ה‬to serve the Lord”—not in that sense at all, but to refer to keeping God’s laws: “to serve the Lord your God with your whole heart and soul, keeping the Lord’s commandments and laws, which I am commanding you this day for your benefit” (Deut 10:12). The laws of Deuteronomy certainly do not omit the priesthood and the temple—they hardly could have!—but these are meshed into a book that clearly presents the ordinary Israelite’s obedience to divine law as the primary form of piety. The temple is, in Deuteronomy, some distance from the town or village that is that book’s real home: one goes on pilgrimages to the temple at the appointed festivals. It is not necessary to go there and offer a sacrifice in order to eat meat—that you can do, according to Deuteronomy, “at your gates” thanks to its innovation of secular slaughter (Deut 12:15). Moreover, that temple is, as every student of Deuteronomy knows, the “place where I will cause my name to dwell” (Deut 12:11; 14:23; 16:2, 6, 11; and so forth), a phrase that seems intended to suggest that God is really elsewhere, in highest heaven: His presence in the sanctuary is altogether metaphorical.26 So too, at the Sinai revelation, the Israelites hear God’s voice but see only a symbolic fire: God spoke to them from His heavenly abode (Deut 4:12, 15, 36; and so forth). As for the sacrifices, modern scholars have noted that they are more a form of charity than a real offering to the deity, to be distributed to the proverbially needy, the Levite, the widow, the orphan.27 It certainly seems no accident that this God is rather more abstract and distant than the God of the priesthood, who is right there in the sanctuary, in the Holy of Holies. Even if He is not caught sight of, the priestly God is still basically human in form: man was created in his shape and image, and what the priest Ezekiel sees in the throne chariot was “something that seemed like a human form” (Ezek 1:26)—this and similar formulations containing only the slightest hesitation at blatant

26 See on this: Sandra L. Richter, Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology (BZAW 318; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002) and my How to Read, 727. 27 See Deuteronomy 16, 11, 14 and two general discussions: Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995) and Bernard Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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anthropomorphism, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (1:28). If one believes in the efficacy of a temple and its specially trained priesthood, then God can never really be deemed to have withdrawn permanently to highest heaven—otherwise, what is the point of the temple? But if, on the contrary, one does believe that God is in highest heaven, then what is there to tie an individual (or a nation) to Him? To this question there is hardly one biblical answer, nor, for that matter, one single cause that one might point to in order to explain how the Israelites ever came to consider the possibility of a great, abstract, heavenly deity. But whatever the cause, one adjustment to this great, abstract deity is well known: the sudden appearance in the post-exilic period of legions of angels. These are not angels like the ones from earlier periods, who are really stand-ins for the deity Himself; rather, they are now part of a complicated divine bureaucracy—angels who have charge of various natural functions, like rainfall and the winds and the seasons, as well as angels that act as intermediaries between God Himself and various nations on earth (eventually including Israel, though not at first), wicked angels that bring illness and madness and need to be fought off with apotropaic prayers and symbolic acts.28 Now, for the first time, these angels have names: Gabriel (Dan 9:11), Michael, Raphael, and so forth. Their very presence fills the space between humans on earth and God in highest heaven, and so it is no wonder that they themselves become the focus of human piety, appealed to or warded off as the case may be. But this is not the world of Deuteronomy. There, God rules Israel directly; although He is said to have given other nations to the worship of heavenly bodies,29 Israel is His own particular possession, “God’s portion is His own people, Jacob, his allotted share” (Deut 4:20; 32:9). What is it, then, that binds this earthly people to its God in highest heaven? The answer has already been seen: the divinely given laws. It is observance of the laws that allows Israel to “cling” and “hold fast” to Him (Deut 13:5; 30:20; etc.). Evidently, obedience to these laws is thus a form of piety parallel to the sacrificial cult: both are ways of

On this there is a vast literature; see recently Esther Eshel, “Demonology in Palestine During the Second Temple Period” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999) and references there. 29 Deut 4:19–20; 32:8. 28

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serving, la{abod, this God.30 But one might also say that observing God’s laws is also parallel to the second temple angels just mentioned: they too fill the gap between heaven and earth, each little commandment, whether kept or violated, is somehow noticed on high and rewarded or punished by the distant deity. As I have already sought to indicate, this notion of things was to become later Judaism’s—not only the centrality of observing God’s laws, but with it, the rather abstract and distant deity who looks on from afar and passes judgment. The point I have been trying to get at is that these two really go together, even if their genesis was originally quite independent of each other. The God of Old, the frightening deity who appeared suddenly and disappeared just as suddenly, was an invader from another dimension who could, and usually did, upset a person’s world utterly. Confining Him to a temple and specially trained personnel was, in a sense, to contain the problem, but the religion of laws, although never envisaged as such when God first spoke at Sinai, turned out be no less an effective way of keeping the deity at arm’s length. He was way up there, and we humans were way down here; what connected us was not direct contact but a set of clearly established ground rules—or, one might say, a set of clearly visible electric wires along which the current of divine–human relations was to flow. This view of things may have come about in the somewhat haphazard way I have described, but it has, in any case, proven to be remarkably durable, leaving its impress not only on rabbinic Judaism but—in ways whose detailed exploration must be reserved for another occasion—on Christianity as well.

30 This is the great theme of Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).

“FIRE, CLOUD, AND DEEP DARKNESS” (DEUTERONOMY 5:22): DEUTERONOMY’S RECASTING OF REVELATION Marc Zvi Brettler Brandeis University, USA As the initial paper, and the only paper focussing on the Hebrew Bible itself, I hope to lay out some of the problems of the biblical text concerning revelation on Sinai. I will do this by highlighting the passage in Deuteronomy 51 that surrounds the Decalogue, examining how it interprets its likely sources,2 and reflecting on the broader matters this interpretation raises, hinting ahead at issues that arise in some of the other papers in this volume. My comments are programmatic rather than comprehensive.3 The central Sinai texts in the book of Exodus are extremely difficult from a source-critical perspective—it is unclear how many different sources or traditions are represented. Baruch Schwartz, for example, finds the standard source-critical model of three sources in Exodus adequate to explain the variation in the chapters.4 Moshe Greenberg suggests that there are more than three sources present: “The extraordinary complexity is best explained as the result of interweaving of parallel narrations; the author appears to have been reluctant to exclude any scrap of data relevant to this momentous occasion”; and suggests that

1 This chapter is typically seen (by and large) as a unity; see e.g., Christianus Brekelmans, “Deuteronomy 5: Its Place and Function,” in Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft (ed. N. Lohfink; BETL 68; Leuven: Peeters and Leuven University Press, 1985), 164–73. 2 Many important insights on this issue are found in Benjamin D. Sommer, “Revelation at Sinai in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Theology,” JR 79 (1999): 422–51. 3 For this reason, footnotes will be kept to a minimum. 4 Baruch J. Schwartz, “The Priestly Account of the Theophany and Lawgiving at Sinai,” in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Manahem Haran (ed. M. V. Fox et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 104–34. William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19–40 (AB 2A; New York: Doubleday, 2006), 141–53, also believes that the mainstream documentary hypothesis is sufficient to explain these chapters. There is even a tendency in some circles of modern scholarship to emphasize the unity, at least at the editorial level, of these chapters; see, e.g., T. D. Alexander, “The Composition of the Sinai Narrative in Exodus XIX 1–XXIV 11,” VT 49 (1999): 2–20.

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the resulting “looseness and obscurity . . . may well have been intended as a literary reflex of the multivalence of the event.”5 Jacob Licht outlines a full fifteen different conceptions of revelation.6 I believe that the majority of scholars would agree with Greenberg, though perhaps not to the excesses of Licht, though there is no consensus because “the traditional source division is unable to cope” with the repetitions and doublets in Exodus7—“The details of narrative sequence in Exodus 19–20 are famously enigmatic.”8 In addition to significant issues in disentangling the narrative material in Exodus, it is very unclear how the different blocks of legal material fit into the narrative, and at what stage of the tradition they were added.9 Which sources or traditions believed in “the giving of a torah on Mt. Sinai”? Which is connected to the Decalogue in Exodus? Which is connected to the tradition at the end of ch. 20, after the Decalogue, concerning the building of an altar? Which is connected with the longer set of laws in chs. 21–23, which begin, “These are the rules that you shall set before them”? The problems involved with the narrative descriptions of revelation, and the connections between the narrative and the law, seem truly intractable. The situation with Deuteronomy is different. Most scholars agree that the two central relevant sections in Deuteronomy, chs. 4 and 5:1–6:3, knew Exodus as we now have it, perhaps without the Priestly texts.10 Furthermore, there is a consensus among scholars of Deuteronomy that the material in ch. 4 is later than that found in ch. 5–ch. 4 is Dtr2, namely a revision during the Babylonian exile of Dtr1.11 The implication of this consensus is that we may assume that these Deuteronomists knew much of the material in Exodus that we now have. Thus, if we Moshe Greenberg, “Exodus,” EncJud 6:1056. Jacob Licht, “The Sinai Theophany,” in Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East Presented to Samuel E. Loewenstamm on His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Y. Avishur and J. Blau; Jerusalem: E. Rubenstein, 1978), 251–67 (Heb.; Eng. summary in English Volume, 201–2). 7 Brevard Childs, Exodus (OTL; Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1974), 349. 8 Sommer, “Revelation at Sinai,” 431. 9 These issues are surveyed in John Van Seters, A Law Book for the Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 8–46. 10 Childs, Exodus, 359; and Thomas B. Dozeman, God on the Mountain (SBLMS 37; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987). 11 On this topic, and more generally on Deuteronomy 4, see Marc Z. Brettler, “A ‘Literary Sermon’ in Deuteronomy 4,” in “A Wise and Discerning Mind”: Essays in Honor of Burke O. Long (ed. S. M. Olyan and R. C. Culley; BJS 325; Providence, RI: Brown University, 2000), 33–50. 5 6

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want to see the earliest extant interpretations of the Sinai material, we need to look in Deuteronomy 5. Below, I examine nine ways in which Deuteronomy interprets its sources.12 My examples for each are selective—my interest is in highlighting, for the sake of the papers that follow, different types of interpretation, rather than being comprehensive: 1. Deuteronomy follows one of its sources at the expense of the other(s). 2. Deuteronomy conflates various (contradictory) sources. 3. Deuteronomy takes an idea that is found in its sources as a peripheral notion and turns it into a central notion. 4. Deuteronomy picks up on the terminology of its sources, but uses the same word or phrase in a way that is different from Exodus. 5. Deuteronomy moves narrative material from its original place to a different place. 6. Deuteronomy, as a treaty concerned with laws, uses narrative material concerning Horeb to substantiate laws given later. 7. Deuteronomy fundamentally recasts its source material to foster the notion that “hearing (rather than seeing) is believing.” 8. Deuteronomy plays a careful balancing act, giving the Decalogue and the earlier revelation of law some importance, but it gives it less importance than its sources. 9. Deuteronomy fundamentally recasts its source material to justify its core idea that the Mosaic discourse in year 40 is more important than the Sinai/Horeb event.

I will now examine these proposals one at a time: 1. Deuteronomy follows one of its sources at the expense of the other(s) This should not be surprising—most authors, when confronted with contradictory information, decide which traditions are most likely to be true. The following three examples illustrate how Deuteronomy accomplishes this. 1. The sources known to Deuteronomy call the place of revelation either Sinai or Horeb, with the former, from the Pentateuchal E source,

12 Although I adduce no specific references to Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), the influence of this book is evident throughout. On inner-biblical interpretation, see also Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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predominating. Deuteronomy uses Horeb, the less frequently used term. The reason for this choice is uncertain, though if E is really northern in origin,13 and D has its origin in the North,14 this may explain the unexpected use. 2. It is unclear from the Pre-D sources if God is speaking “from the very heavens” (Exod 20:22; Eng. 20:19)15 or from the mountain (e.g., Exod 19:18). In this chapter, Deuteronomy favors the idea of God speaking from the mountain rather than from heaven. Twice we hear of God speaking (5:4, 22) “on the mountain, out of the fire,” and nowhere does the word “heavens” appear in the narrative section of ch. 5. The heavens tradition, which is a minority tradition, has lost out to the majority mountain tradition. A still later text, Neh 9:13, treats this problem differently. By stating “You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke to them from heaven,” it conflates the two earlier traditions. This conflation serves as the basis of the rabbinic midrash that during the revelation, God bent down the heavens so that they would reach Mt. Sinai.16 3. Especially if we include Exodus 24 as part of our sources,17 it is unclear if Moses alone, Moses and Aaron, Moses and Joshua, or Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and 70 elders ascended the mountain. Deuteronomy with its Moses-centric view18 has, not surprisingly, opted for a Moses-only experience, rejecting the other options simply by ignoring them.

13 The most comprehensive argument for this is Alan W. Jenks, The Elohist and North Israelite Traditions (SBLMS 22; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977). 14 See Adam C. Welch, The Code of Deuteronomy (New York: George H. Doran, 1924); H. Louis Ginsberg, The Israelian Heritage of Judaism (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1982); and Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11 (AB 5; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 44–57. 15 Unless indicated, all translations follow njps. 16 See Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1968), 3.91. 17 Although Exodus 24 is separated by a legal collection from the main sections concerning revelation in ch. 19 and the end of ch. 20, many scholars believe that it originally preceded the revelation on Sinai as well, and was separated because there were too many traditions to place before the Decalogue. 18 See, e.g., Robert Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History Part One: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges (New York: Seabury, 1980), 25–72; and Patrick D. Miller, “ ‘Moses My Servant’: The Deuteronomic Portrait of Moses,” in A Song of Power and the Power of Song: Essays on the Book of Deuteronomy (ed. D. L. Christensen; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993), 301–12 (= Int 41 [1987]: 245–55).

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2. Deuteronomy conflates various (contradictory) sources Nehemiah 9:13, which conflates the contradictory ideas that God speaks from heaven and from Mt. Sinai, illustrates the manner in which later texts may combine different, or even contradictory traditions from earlier sources. This idea stands behind this essay’s title, which quotes Deut 5:22: “Fire, Cloud, and Deep Darkness.” Some verses in Exodus describe a fire on Sinai. This is clear in Exod 19:18, “for the Lord had come down upon it in fire.” It is also assumed by the burning “bush” story in Exodus 3. The Hebrew term ‫ סנה‬is often mistranslated as a (generic) “bush”—it is instead a particular type of bush,19 chosen to resonate with the name Sinai.20 This episode in Exodus 3 prefigures the revelation at Sinai21—in fact, the reason that the bush does not burn is to prefigure that the next burning holy object will be a mountain, which cannot burn! In addition to burning fires, darkness is important in the Exodus texts; for example, in 19:9 we have a “cloud,” as in Deut 5:22. Exod 20:21 mentions “deep darkness.” It is unclear what image the Deuteronomist had in mind by conflating fire, cloud, and darkness, elements that do not easily fit together, but it is clear that they have been conflated. Deut 5:4–5 presents a much more confusing conflation: (4) Face to face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire—(5) I stood between the Lord and you at that time to convey the Lord’s words to you, for you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain—saying.

Many scholars see almost all of v. 5 as a secondary addition, and believe that v. 4 was originally followed by “saying.”22 There are other cases where Deuteronomy conflates sources to yield a cumbersome or grammatically problematic new text.23 This is likely the case here as well—our author wanted to combine the contradictory ideas that God HALOT, 760. See the literature cited in William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1–18 (AB 2; New York: Doubleday, 1998), 199. 21 On prefiguration, see Marc Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995), 48–61. 22 See the discussion in Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, 240; and Sommer, “Revelation at Sinai,” 434–35. 23 See the example of ‫ עליו‬in Deut 16:3, and the discussion in Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 82–88. 19 20

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spoke (Exod 20:1) and that Moses, rather than God spoke because the people were afraid of God’s voice (20:19). So our author says both. 3. Deuteronomy takes an idea that is found in its sources as a peripheral notion and turns it into a central notion The central notion of Deuteronomy 5 is the role of Moses as covenant mediator and law-giver. This is clear, for example, in v. 5, “I stood between the Lord and you at that time to convey the Lord’s words to you,” and in the end of the chapter, where God approves rather than disapproves of the people’s request (v. 27), “You go closer and hear all that the Lord our God says, and then you tell us everything that the Lord our God tells you, and we will willingly do it.” Moses plays a much less significant role in Exodus. Deuteronomy has taken Exod 19:9a, “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after,’” and makes this idea much more central.24 The same principle may be seen by comparing the use of the word “fire” in both sources. “Fire” appears once in the Exodus Sinai pericope (19:18). In contrast, it appears seven times in Deuteronomy 5.25 The Deuteronomist has moved a peripheral element of his source to the center. Perhaps this change is connected with Deuteronomy’s image of YHWH as a “consuming fire.”26 4. Deuteronomy picks up on the terminology of its sources, but uses the same word or phrase in a way that is different from Exodus It is very difficult to translate the word ‫ יראה‬with its various nuances into English.27 Most often, it refers to fear, a mental attitude. There are, however, cases where is seems to have a broader, perhaps technical meaning connected to following God or his laws. The semantic development is clear—laws may be followed, or may express, fear of

24 This is suggested somewhat tentatively in Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 77. 25 “Fire” appears another 7 times in ch. 4. 26 See Deut 4:24; 9:3. 27 On the range of meaning of ‫ ירא‬when used in reference to God, see H. F. Fuhs, “‫ירא‬,” TDOT 6:290–315.

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God and his punishment, yet these two senses, fear and law observance, are quite distinct. In Exodus, after the giving of the Decalogue, the people fear God: “when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance” (20:18). Moses responds to them two verses later (v. 20): “Moses answered the people, ‘Be not afraid; for God has come only in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may be ever with you, so that you do not go astray.’” As the translation makes clear, the context is referring to gut fear of the numinous. Deuteronomy transforms the whole episode after the Decalogue in several ways. It makes it longer and more detailed, and significantly, views the response of Israel, which Exodus describes in a negative light, in a positive light. What has not been adequately emphasized, however, is the reinterpretation that ‫ יראה‬undergoes as a result.28 Deut 5:29 reads: “May they always be of such mind, to revere (‫ )ליראה‬Me and follow all My commandments, that it may go well with them and with their children forever!” The same root ‫ ירא‬is used from the earlier source, but it is used in its technical sense of following the commandments, as made clear in what follows, to “follow all My commandments.” If Deut 6:1–3 is also part of the unit beginning in ch. 5,29 it is significant that there too we read in v. 2 “so that you may revere (‫ )תירא‬the Lord your God and follow all His laws and commandments” (njps revised). Deuteronomy has transformed ‫ יראה‬from fear to reverence. It has not changed the word, but its revision of context has changed what the word means. A similar transformation likely occurs with the word ‫קול‬.30 In Exodus, this homonymous, or at least polysemic root, clearly means thunder in 19:16, where it is paired with ‫וברקים‬, “and lightning.” The same is probably true after the giving of the Decalogue, where we read in 20:18: “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning”31 ( jps). Exod 19:19b, ‫ משה ידבר והאלהים יעננו בקול‬is ambiguous: kjv, e.g., translates “a voice,” while jps and nrsv translate “thunder.” In sum, the word ‫ קול‬is never clearly used in Exodus in the sense of the revelatory voice of God.

See Arie Toeg, Lawgiving at Sinai ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977; Heb.), 133. This is the opinion of most scholars; see, e.g., Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, 327. 30 See Sommer, “Revelation at Sinai,” 433. 31 For a more recent discussion of the possible meanings of ‫קול‬, see Azzan Yadin, “‫ קול‬as Hypostasis in the Hebrew Bible,” JBL 122 (2003): 601–26. 28 29

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In contrast, the same word ‫ קול‬is used in a different sense after the Decalogue in Deuteronomy: (21) and said, “The Lord our God has just shown us His majestic Presence, and we have heard His voice (‫ )קול‬out of the fire; we have seen this day that man may live though God has spoken to him. (22) Let us not die, then, for this fearsome fire will consume us; if we hear the voice (‫ )קול‬of the Lord our God any longer, we shall die. (23) For what mortal ever heard the voice (‫ )קול‬of the living God speak out of the fire, as we did, and lived?

Here, ‫ קול‬is clearly transformed from thunder to voice. And in case this meaning is not clear enough here, it is emphasized two verses later, when we see the same word used of the nation’s voice: The Lord heard the voice (‫ )קול‬of your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the voice (‫ )קול‬of the words that this people spoke to you; they did well to speak thus’” (njps revised).

Here, ‫ קול‬can by no means mean thunder. Thus, as with the root ‫ירא‬, to “fear/revere,” Deuteronomy has retained an earlier term, but changed its meaning significantly. Deuteronomy is conservative in its use of the old term, but radical in changing its meaning. 5. Deuteronomy moves narrative material from its original place to a different place In Exodus, the request for Moses to act as an intermediary is mentioned only after the Decalogue. The Decalogue itself is presented as uttered by God—20:1: “God spoke all these words, saying.” Given that the people object to hearing God’s voice at the end of ch. 20, the chapter as a whole is ambiguous—at what point does Moses take over from God? This obvious issue was dealt with in classical Jewish interpretation.32 In its retelling Deuteronomy also notes the role of Moses as intermediary after the Decalogue, but it also moves this idea to before the Decalogue, stating in 5:5: “I [Moses] stood between the Lord and you at that time to convey the Lord’s words to you, for you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain—saying.” It

32

James L. Kugel, The Bible as it Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1997), 376–77.

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thus suggests here33 that Moses had the role of intermediary from the very beginning of the revelation of the Decalogue. A different type of transfer of material is seen in the notice in 5:23 that “the mountain was ablaze with fire.” This is not expressed anywhere in the Sinai pericope, but is noted concerning the burning “bush” in Exod 3:2: “and there was a bush ablaze with fire” (njps revised). The author of Deuteronomy 5 understood properly that Exodus 3 was meant to prefigure Sinai/Horeb, and thus moved the Exodus 3 phrase to Deuteronomy 5. 6. Deuteronomy, as a treaty concerned with laws, uses narrative material concerning Horeb to substantiate laws given later Unlike the Exodus pericope, which is focussed on revelation itself, and in some cases the reception of a body of law, there are at least two specific laws that stand behind the current phraseology of the Horeb pericope in Deuteronomy.34 The first of these is the law in 18:14–22, concerning the true prophet. That law explicitly mentions Horeb (18:16): “This is just what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the Assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear the voice of the Lord my God any longer or see this wondrous fire anymore, lest I die.’ ” In the same way that the law in ch. 18 is cast with Deuteronomy 5 in mind, Deuteronomy 5 is cast with the law of the prophet in mind; this is suggested by the close verbal similarities between Deut 5:27 (Eng. 24) and 31 (Eng. 28) and ch. 18; the former are constructed to anticipate the law of the prophet, and the role of Moses as the prototypical prophet. A second law that the Horeb pericope hints at is the recitation of the law every seven years at Sukkot according to Deuteronomy 31—what is called haqhēl in later Jewish tradition, following the words of Deut 31:12: “Gather (‫ )הקהל‬the people.” It is likely that the law there relates to calling Israel a “congregation” or ‫ קהל‬in 5:22. The similarity between the language for following the law in ch. 5 and 31:12b, “that they may hear and so learn to revere the Lord your God and to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching” also suggests that the two passages are For a different tradition, see 5:22. In some sense, then, Deuteronomy is hinting ahead to Jubilees, which integrates law into the narrative in a more systematic and obvious fashion. On the importance of law and laws in Deuteronomy, see James L. Kugel, “Some Unanticipated Consequences of the Sinai Revelation: A Religion of Laws,” 1–13 of this volume, esp. 3, 12. 33 34

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interrelated, and that in its current form, Deuteronomy 5 is also interested in hinting ahead at this law concerning gathering or ‫הקהל‬. 7. Deuteronomy fundamentally recasts its source material to foster the notion that “hearing (rather than seeing) is believing” I have already discussed this idea in detail elsewhere in relation to Deuteronomy 4.35 Deuteronomy can be characterized as super-aniconic, and as insisting very, very strongly that God is incorporeal—after all, it is only God’s name that resides in the Temple.36 Seeing is a central part of the Sinai material in Exodus—for example, 20:18 notes: “All the people witnessed [lit. “saw”] the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance.” Exod 24:10 and 11 claim, “and they [Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Avihu, and the seventy elders] saw the God of Israel . . . they beheld God;” those phrases are even more straightforward and emphatic. The assumption that God is visible also appears several times in ch. 19, e.g., in v. 11: “Let them be ready for the third day; for on the third day the Lord will come down, in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai.” Deuteronomy knows these texts, I believe, but will have none of the idea that they express. That is why Deut 5:1 opens in an auditory, “hear, O Israel,” and continues “which I speak into your ears today” (translation mine). In v. 4, God speaks only. In contrast with Exodus, which uses the verb ‫ראה‬, “to see,” after recounting the Decalogue, Deut 5:22 notes: “The Lord spoke (‫ )דבר‬these words . . . with a mighty voice . . . ” Later in that same unit, the people don’t talk about fear of seeing God, as we might expect, but of hearing him (vv. 25–26; Eng. 22–23): (22) Let us not die, then, for this fearsome fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, we shall die. (23) For what mortal ever heard the voice of the living God speak out of the fire, as we did, and lived?

35 Brettler, “A ‘Literary Sermon.’ ” For a discussion of this issue in post-biblical literature, see Steven D. Fraade, “Hearing and Seeing at Sinai: Interpretive Trajectories,” 247–268 of this volume. 36 On this belief, see Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theologies (CBOT 18; Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1982), 38–79.

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In fact, there is a great preponderance of words of hearing in these post-Decalogue verses in Deuteronomy 5; more than twenty occurrences of speak (‫)דבר‬, hear (‫)שמע‬, and voice (‫ )קול‬are found at the end of Deuteronomy 5. Revelation there is an auditory experience only. Even when the verb “to see (‫)ראה‬,” is used, it emphasizes the auditory, as in 5:24b, ‫היום הזה ראינו כי־ידבר אלהים‬, “We have seen today that God can speak” (my translation). The author of Deuteronomy 5 is rebalancing the sensory experience of his source so that it fits his theology—instead of both seeing and hearing causing belief, as in Exodus, only hearing is believing. 8. Deuteronomy plays a careful balancing act, giving the Decalogue and the earlier revelation of law some importance, but it gives it less importance than its sources In contrast to the Covenant Collection in Exodus, which does not contain legislation that contradicts the Decalogue, we read in Deut 7:9–10: (9) Know, therefore, that only the Lord your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps His covenant faithfully to the thousandth generation of those who love Him and keep His commandments, (10) but who instantly requites with destruction those who reject Him—never slow with those who reject Him, but requiting them instantly.

This repetitive and emphatic statement is, as Fishbane has noted, a polemic against what it says in the Decalogue concerning intergenerational punishment.37 The fact that such a polemic could exist suggests that for the Deuteronomist, the Decalogue and the surrounding material was not of the greatest importance. In fact, Horeb is not mentioned very frequently in Deuteronomy, and one of the references, in 9:8, is negative: “At Horeb you so provoked the Lord that the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you.” In the eyes of the Deuteronomist, Horeb is in part a place of anger and destruction; this may explain why it may feel comfortable disputing part of the Decalogue, the centerpiece of the revelation. It is also likely that the next principle played some role in allowing the Deuteronomist to disagree with the Decalogue.

37 Michael Fishbane, “Torah and Tradition,” in Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament (ed. D. A. Knight; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1977), 279–80.

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marc zvi brettler 9. Deuteronomy fundamentally recasts its source material to justify its core idea that the Mosaic discourse in year 40 is more important than the Sinai/Horeb event

One of the final verses in Deuteronomy, 28:69, reflects Deuteronomy’s ambivalent attitude toward Horeb: “These are the terms of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to conclude with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant which He had made with them at Horeb.” In other words, revelation at Horeb is only one of two bĕrîtôt or covenants, and at least according to Deuteronomy, is the less important of the two.38 The end of Deuteronomy 5 says, in essence, that public revelation by God at Horeb was a bad idea— revelation through a prophet like Moses is a better idea. A significant phrase in Deuteronomy consists of the root to command (‫ צוה‬in the piel) alongside “today” (‫ )היום‬hayom—it is attested over 25 times.39 It makes a simple point—what Moses is commanding “today,” namely at the end of the period of wandering, is much more important than what was commanded then, at Horeb. This observation concerning the diminished place of Horeb in Deuteronomy as compared with other Torah sources means that a final issue we need to consider in looking at various post-biblical interpretations is: How important is revelation at Sinai?—after all, it cannot simply be assumed to be central, as does later Judaism.40 Deuteronomy offers us an important warning that we must be careful not to buy into the rabbinic view, and the view of parts of Exodus, that Sinai is the key biblical event. We must remember von Rad’s claim in “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch” that the Sinai material is secondary.41 As significant a source as the Deuteronomist42 might not recognize this conference’s title, “The Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai”—he

The discussion about the relative value of the different covenants in Deuteronomy in Toeg, Lawgiving at Sinai, 122, 133, is very instructive. 39 Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 356, #7. 40 The centrality of Sinai is the theme of Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism ( JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003). 41 Gerhard von Rad, “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken; London: SCM Press, 1984), 13–20; see esp. 13–14 on Wellhausen’s geographical observation suggesting already that the Sinai pericope is secondary. 42 I am here sidestepping the issue of the number of Deuteronomists, and in fact, whether the term is still helpful; see most recently Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deu38

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cloud, and deep darkness”

27

certainly would have been happier with a symposium on the giving of the Torah opposite Beit Pe’or.43 This quick survey highlights certain issues concerning Deuteronomy that are relevant to post-biblical interpretations: which biblical sources they prioritize, to what extent they tolerate contradictory biblical views, which peripheral notions are moved into the center, which biblical phrases are used in later sources in a way that differs from their biblical use, to what extent do specific legal concerns enter the narrative of Sinai/Horeb, are auditory or visual experiences the key, and is Sinai or Horeb a central or peripheral event? Exploration of these issues might allow us to begin to sort and categorize interpretative traditions about Sinai. It would also help answer a question which continues to intrigue me as a critical biblical scholar who is interested as well in post-biblical interpretation: which of the many biblical perspectives on such crucial narratives as Sinai “won” in post-biblical literature, and why?

teronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T & T Clark International, 2006). 43 See Deut 4:46. For the afterlife of this idea, see George J. Brooke, “Moving Mountains: From Sinai to Jerusalem,” 73–90 of this volume.

PRIESTLY PROPHETS AT QUMRAN: SUMMONING SINAI THROUGH THE SONGS OF THE SABBATH SACRIFICE Judith H. Newman University of Toronto, Canada What would occasion songs in the liturgical life of the Qumran community? One could well imagine that given their seeming estrangement from the priesthood in Jerusalem and its temple praxis, laments, or qinot, would have been a much more appropriate response to their situation in the wilderness. And indeed, of the great quantity of liturgical texts found at Qumran, the number designated as shir is rare.1 The collection known as Shirot Olat haShabbat constitute a significant exception.2 The nine fragmentary copies of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice found at Qumran, eight from cave 4, one from cave 1, not to mention the text found at Masada, argue for their central role in Qumran ritual life. But what role was that? In her most recent writing on the purpose of the Shirot, Carol Newsom has suggested that The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice provide the means by which those who read and heard it could receive not merely communion with angels but a virtual experience of presence in the heavenly temple among the angelic priests . . . the text readily may be understood as a means of enhancing the sense of priestly identity through its vivid description of the Israelite priesthood’s angelic counterparts.3

1 Of the twenty-two occurrences of shir in the so-called non-biblical texts, ten occur in headings of the Shirot Olat Hashabbat, three occur in the prose Psalms piece, “David’s Compositions,” two appear in the Songs of the Sage and there are singular mentions in 3Q6 1, 2; 4Q418 (4QInstruction); 4Q433; 4Q448. There are seven occurrences of the plural form shirot, all in the liturgical/calendrical text 4Q334 and one in 4Q433a ; the masculine plural construct occurs in 11Q13 II, 10 though with some question about the final yod; data from Martin Abegg, et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 2 The noun can be masculine or feminine, a distinguishable feature of biblical songs that was interpreted with eschatological significance in the rabbinic literature and likely influenced early Christian use of odes; see James Kugel, “Is there but One Song?” Bib 63 (1982): 329–50. 3 Carol Newsom, “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” EDSS 2:889. Much the same idea is expressed in her earlier article, “He Has Established For Himself Priests,” in

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Others have largely followed Newsom in this characterization, and her work on the Shirot remains indispensable, yet it seems more could be said. The Shirot have also often been characterized with the later trends of Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism in mind, such that we have them described as “songs meant to engender mystical communion with the angels,” or as “mystical songs.”4 These characterizations remain somewhat vague and perhaps even suggest a kind of passivity or otherworldliness not otherwise characteristic of the zealous, ascetic sectarians whose writings and practices reflect a vivid concern for political and material matters in the here and now. Although any thesis about the use of these elusive compositions must remain tentative, I mean to suggest a more specific role for their use and argue that the thirteen Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, which are tied to the first quarter of the solar year, served at Qumran as a transformative and preparatory rite in the community that prepared those who participated in it for the all-important festival of Shavuot and its calendrical cultic aftermath, including the full vesting of the consecrated priesthood on the thirteenth Sabbath in breastplate and other sacred garments. The complete season included reception of the divine spirit by the purified elect and the production of new scriptural interpretation through oracular means, perhaps especially toward the end on the fourteen days between Shavuot and the summer solstice. Their purpose was thus to summon the immanent presence of the divine glory first revealed at Sinai anew, though in a new locale and with a decidedly priestly-prophetic inflection through the influence of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Elijah. The scriptural account of the revelation at Sinai in Exodus is recognized as a notoriously difficult narrative to comprehend because of its complex incorporation of various traditions. In the case of the Shirot, the influence of Sinai is seen not in a distinct mention of the wildernesss mountain nor of the covenant mediator Moses himself, but more obliquely in the priestly kabod tradition associated with a visual and

Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. L. H. Schiffman; JSPSup 8; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1990), 115–16. 4 Esther G. Chazon has rightly suggested that the view of Ithamar Gruenwald, Rachel Elior, and now we might add Philip Alexander, that proposes a trajectory between the priestly Qumran community to the merkavah mystics makes some good sense, but the situation was likely more complicated; see her “Human and Angelic Prayer in Light of the Scrolls,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. E. Chazon; STDJ 48; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 35–47, esp. 46–47.

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mobile manifestation of divine glory which threads its way through the Sinai narrative emphasizing the mediating leadership of both prophet Moses and priest Aaron (inter alia Exod 16:7–10; 24:16–17).5 The locale for revelation has thus shifted from a desert mountaintop to a wilderness sanctuary as refracted through another Israelite mountain, Zion, and other scriptural traditions as well.6 The ritual function of the Shirot in their particular instantiation at Qumran may be thought to comprehend three elements: their liturgical function as texts in the “worship” of the community, their instructional function as part of a “catechesis” in morally shaping the community, and their theurgic function as both “inspired” and “inspirational” compositions that stimulate the production of additional sacred teachings and ultimately texts.7 As used at least during part of the history of the inhabitation of Qumran, the members of the Ya ad were sufficiently purified during the course of the cycle so that by the seventh Sabbath, the congregation had become fully transformed from a group of embodied men to a symbolic miqdash adam, a sanctuary of men who understood themselves to have escaped the concerns of the flesh.8 Within

5 Explicit association of the Torah with Moses is rare in the Qumran literature. The phrase “torah of Moses” appears only eight times, five in the Damascus Document in the space of two chapters (CD XV, 2, 9, 12; XVI, 25), twice in the Community Rule (1QS V, 8; VIII, 22) and once in 4Q513. Moses is mentioned by name in connection with his mediation of the Torah four times (1QS VIII, 15; 4Q364 14, 4; 4Q382 104, 7; 4Q504 4, 8). The book of Jubilees, clearly important at Qumran, depicts Moses as mediator of a Sinai revelation that comprises much more than the content of the biblical Pentateuch to include traditions of practice and belief of a contemporaneous Jewish community. In that sense, the “biblical Moses” is co-opted in Jubilees into the service of the second century b.c.e. “Moses” responsible for its authorship. As this essay seeks in part to argue, the scarcity of authority connected explicitly with Moses at Qumran reflects the donning of the prophetic mantle by priestly leaders of the community. 6 On the nature of this shift, see elsewhere in this volume, George J. Brooke, “Moving Mountains: From Sinai to Jerusalem.” 7 The role of the Shirot in shaping the sectarians through worship may be understood as one part of the community’s ethical imperatives, on which see Marcus Tso, “The Giving of the Law at Sinai and the Ethics of the Qumran Community,” in this volume, esp. 124–126. 8 The sectarian ideal of the community as a divinely constructed and sanctified temple is evident in a number of texts, rooted interpretively in Exod 15:17–18 and the play on “house” in 2 Sam 7:10–13 and articulated in Qumran literature in 4QFlorilegium (4Q174 III, 6–7) and CD III, 12–IV, 4. For more, see George J. Brooke, “Miqdash Adam, Eden and the Qumran Community,” in Gemeinde ohne Tempel: Community without Temple (ed. B. Ego, A. Lange, P. Pilhofer; WUNT 118; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 285–301 and Devorah Dimant “4Q Florilegium and the Idea of the Community as Temple,” in Hellenica et Judaica (ed. A. Caquot; Leuven: Peeters, 1986), 165–89. The view taken in this essay, then, is quite distinct from the recent perspective argued by

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that figured space a priestly leadership performed its duties, whose own liturgical telos was ultimately to offer inspired compositions in imitatio angelorum, the hosts who had commenced their continuous song of praise upon witnessing the creation. Perhaps a better characterization would be to liken the priests to malakhim because they became prophetic messengers in the classic tongue of Hebrew through their divinely inspired utterances. While detailed argumentation about the calendrical cycle and its relation to the liturgical performance must await another essay, to support a more limited thesis, I will consider their sequential structure as reflected in some particular features of language as a progressive movement in liturgical time, space, and energy. Mapping the Genre: the Distinctive Shape of the Shirot A brief consideration of the genre of the Shirot must set the stage. The significance of their distinctiveness and its implications for establishing their possible liturgical function is often given insufficient or imprecisely described attention by scholars. This seems especially to

P. Alexander, who views the temple of the Shirot as a spiritual, celestial temple created by the praises of the angels. Praises are not in fact offered but described in the Shirot, and the two mentions of “heaven” in the Shirot do not refer to the temple; (4Q400 2, 4; 4Q401 14, I, 6); see his Mystical Texts (LSTS 61; London: T & T Clark, 2006), 29–32. He draws support for his argument in part from a comparison with writings of the later merkavah mystics, which seems methodologically unsound; see n. 9 below. Rather, in my view, according to the sectarian understanding, just as good or bad spirits may possess individuals, so too spirits inhabit the material temple of men, which is understood figuratively as the divine temple. In the temple of men, as in the temple of stone in Jerusalem, the priests understood themselves as serving like angels (Mal 2:7). An assumption of this paper not argued in detail is that the liturgical cycle of the Shirot reflects an increasing blurring of distinctions between angels and men, angels and God, temple features and human features. Such blurring of boundaries between God and angels was not a new feature of Qumran ideology and practice, but one of longstanding in ancient Israel; on this phenomenon, see James Kugel, The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible (New York: The Free Press, 2003), esp. ch. 2, “The Moment of Confusion,” 5–36. The identification of priests as angels is not prominent in the Hebrew Bible although clearly in evidence in the sectarian scrolls; see the insightful essay by Devorah Dimant, “Men as Angels: The Self-Image of the Qumran Community,” in Religion and Politics (ed. A. Berlin; Bethesda, MD: University of Maryland Press, 1996), 93–103. She sees an analogy between men and angels as well as a strict separation between heaven and earth in perhaps overdrawn fashion, rather than an identification of the two. Dimant argues that the tasks assigned to the angels as described particularly in the Shirot, corresponds to that of the priests in the community rules (see in particular her comparative list on 100–1), an argument substantiated by this essay.

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be the case among those scholars of Jewish mysticism who wish to emphasize thematic continuities with later apocalyptic or Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, often neglecting formal generic differences.9 Such inattention to genre results in a skewed interpretation of the ritual role of the Shirot at Qumran.10 Those who have attempted to evaluate the precise genre and function of the songs have found the task a challenge, whether trying to connect them in some way to psalms or on a continuum between psalms and ascent texts.11 The headings of the 9 The tendency to ignore formal, generic differences in favor of thematic or linguistic similarities mars some otherwise excellent studies; see for example Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). She refers to the Shirot as “angelic songs,” and describes their performance thus: “The terrestrial chief priests, who had withdrawn from the Temple, and the heavenly priests of the inner sanctum, who were painted with a clearly priestly brush, sang together, in a permanent cyclic order, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice; in a regularly, prescribed daily, weekly, monthly order of set times they recited psalms, songs, hymns, and Kedushahs, shared by angels and men” (33). This assumes too much without argumentation about the context for recitation of the liturgy, in which perhaps the most overt error is that there is no threefold repetition of qadosh in the Songs, much less a formal Qedushah in any of the forms known from the traditional Jewish liturgy. Elliot Wolfson, in “Seven Mysteries of Knowledge: Qumran E/sotericism Recovered,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman and J. H. Newman; JSJSup 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 177–213, reflects a similar tendency to Elior in reading mysticism into the Shirot and overemphasizes the individual’s role in the presumed mystical experience engendered by the Shirot, perhaps influenced by the privatized role of the Hekhalot and other mystical texts in later Jewish tradition rather than the corporate nature of the Qumran liturgy in which the worshippers take part as a communal act, as an integrated Ya ad. His reading of the language of the Shirot is itself nuanced and insightful, although when it comes to describing the Shirot’s liturgical function, Wolfson fluctuates between acknowledgment that the community as a whole plays a part in generating the liturgy and an emphasis on individual, solipsistic experience in describing the role of the “visionary poet and inspired exegete” who alone imagines the temple. Similarly, and intriguingly suggestive yet problematic, focused as it is on the maskil, is his characterization of the link between inspired exegesis and liturgy. Wolfson’s essay was developed in conversation with Hindy Najman, who herself does not discuss the details of the instantiated liturgy, but points to a general interconnection between revelation and prayer at Qumran and among the Therapeutae in her recent “Towards a Study of the Concept of Wilderness in Ancient Judaism,” DSD 13 (2006): 99–113 especially 109–10. By contrast, Michael D. Swartz offers a more careful assessment of the formal characteristics of the Shirot in his article, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Later Jewish Magic and Mysticism,” DSD 8 (2001): 182–93. 10 It is important to recognize that each liturgical performance is unique to its context and dynamic in the sense that such performances evolve over time depending on the participants and a host of additional contextual factors. Let my use of the term “liturgical function” thus serve as shorthand for this broader consideration. 11 Daniel K. Falk, Daily, Sabbath, & Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 27; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 133. He draws some formal comparisons with biblical psalms, in particular the fact that the plural imperative ‫ הללו‬hallelu form which begins each song

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Songs offer the most uniform element of the compositions. The headings that survive commence with “for the sage,” lammaskil, continuing with a date formula: “the song of the whole burnt offerings of the xth Sabbath on the yth day of the zth month.” A call to praise in the form of a second person plural imperative follows: hallelu. The texts from each Sabbath vary considerably in length and content. Yet while each of the Shirot begins with a call to praise, they do not contain actual words of praise, angelic or human, but rather are almost entirely in the form of third-person description or second-person exhortation to praise for which there is no precise parallel in the history of Jewish mysticism or liturgy.12 One final point to be made about the unique genre of the Shirot relates to the oft-made comparison to later Merkavah and Hekhalot literature. While the Songs doubtless belong to the same complex stream of Jewish tradition which reflects an interest in the human experience of the enthroned divine king in the heavenly realm as described in Isaiah, Ezekiel and some enthronement psalms, there is a significant difference between the Shirot and Jewish mystical texts of a later era. The texts of the Merkavah and Hekhalot feature long hymns of praise often including the scriptural elements (Isa 6:3 and Ezek 3:12) that would later be incorporated into Jewish liturgy as the Qedushah. The words offered by the angels in praise as well as the formal element of the Qedushah are absent from the Shirot. As Newsom notes, “such differences are scarcely accidental.”13 The Songs concern themselves with the activity of the is rare in the Qumran corpus aside from the Shirot. While comparing the Shirot to other songs offered on a Sabbath, he also recognizes their unique character. In terms of their function, Falk suggests that the single instance of a first person plural form in 4Q400 2, 7 “implies that not only are the songs to be recited communally but they are to be said by the human community”. It is not clear that a single instance of a first plural form would permit this inference for the entire collection. A second claim that “the style of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice seems intended to engender ecstatic praise” is more cogent but left undeveloped; Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 135. 12 Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 259. 13 Carol Newsom, “Mysticism,” EDSS 1:594. On the other hand, her suggestion that the lack of a Qedushah in the Shirot may possibly suggest a polemical rejection by the authors of the Songs against such inclusion elsewhere errs in positing a formal Qedushah in Jewish liturgy at this early date in the first century b.c.e., for which there is no support from the literature. On the entry of the qedushah into Jewish liturgy, see Ezra Fleischer, “The Diffusion of the Qedushot of the Amidah and the Yo er in the Palestinian Ritual,” Tarbiz 38 (1969): 255–84 and D. Flusser, “Jewish Roots of the Liturgical Trishagion,” Immanuel 3 (1973–74): 37–49. Owing to the first appearance of two variant forms of the Qedushah/Sanctus in the Apostolic Constitutions, I have

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35

angelic priests in praising God rather than the words of the angels themselves. If the larger thesis of this essay is correct, the significance of that omission is that the Songs point beyond themselves to the active composition of new “songs” and other “offerings of the Sabbath” by those commissioned by the inspired angelic priests during the course of the liturgy, compositions that are enabled by esoteric knowledge and which are not disseminated to hoi polloi. The fact that the Songs defy neat genre classification as a unique set of compositions both in formal elements and the character of their language then suggests implications for the evaluation of their function. Newsom’s more recent work on the Hodayot provides a helpful model in considering genre as a more elastic concept and a part of discourse that embraces all text and practices generally.14 Given this suggestion of taxonomic elasticity, the Shirot may be considered as participating in genre, so that they may be invoking in some sense other uses of “songs” in the Jewish tradition or elsewhere, yet they must be understood against the backdrop of the sectarians’ ideology, practices, and expectations. Thus, sensitivity to the way in which the language both resonates with other sectarian texts, thus inculcating the ethos of the group within a liturgical context, and also may be in tension with the discursive practices of other Jewish communities, provides a useful way of placing the Shirot in their broader socio-historical context.15 In order to support the thesis more fully, it will be helpful to consider some unique features of the Songs in their language and structure. The Body Language of the Shirot One overall point about their language may be made at the outset in order to consider the Shirot in relation to other literature used uniquely

argued that the first liturgical use of the Qedushah was in Christian worship, adapted from its appearance in apocalyptic contexts and reflecting the realized eschatological perspective of the community; Judith H. Newman, “Holy, holy, holy: The Use of Isa 6:3 in AposCon 7:35.1–10 and AposCon 8.12.6–27,” in Of Scribes and Sages: Early Jewish Interpretation and Transmission of Scripture, vol. 2 Later Versions and Traditions (ed. C. A. Evans; SSEJC 9; LSTS 51; London: T & T Clark International, 2004), 123–34. 14 Carol Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (STDJ 52; Leiden: Brill, 2004). 15 For a discussion of the ways in which scripturally-larded discourse of the community might serve to reinforce its sectarian values, see Newsom, “How to Make a Sectarian,” Self as Symbolic Space, 91–190.

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by the sectarians at Qumran. Much ink has been spilled by scholars in attempts to elucidate the nature and function of the Songs. If no blood has been shed in the academic skirmishes about the human or angelic nature of those who may have participated in the liturgical performances of the Shirot, perhaps this is owing to the incorporeal character of the language in the texts themselves. Except for the flutter of wings in the twelfth song, the principal body part mentioned aside from a few mouths, lips, and God’s hand at one point, is the tongue, or more precisely in this communal liturgical composition, a plurality, or rather community, of tongues. The Shirot display a decided avoidance of flesh and blood but an enhanced if sometimes obscure portrayal of the relationship among spirits, priests, community members, and angels. The incorporeal language stands in marked contrast to the concern for bodies and body parts found throughout the rest of the Qumran corpus. Many texts concern themselves with the body, whether the character of its different parts or their appearance or the need for their disciplinary restraint. George Brooke has discussed the ways in which concern for body parts among the sectarians manifests itself in various compositions.16 Barkhi Napshi as well as a range of other texts are quite focused on body parts: on eyes, on ears, on minds, hearts, kidneys, livers, fingers, knees, and toes. While Barkhi Napshi may well be of non-Qumran origin, it seems to have been used by the sectarians for their own purposes. Brooke compellingly argues that an evaluation of the physical appearance of individuals was determinative of their entry into the community and subsequent status and the degree to which they might participate in worship. So too, Philip Alexander and more recently Mladen Popović have discussed the significance of physiognomies in reading the human body at Qumran.17 We may also

16 George J. Brooke, “Body Parts in Barkhi Nafshi and the Qualifications for Membership of the Worshipping Community,” in Sapiential, Liturgical, and Poetical Texts from Qumran (ed. D. Falk, F. García-Martínez and E. Schuller; STDJ 35; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 79–94. He also discusses 1QSa II, 3–9; 1QM VII, 4–5; 11QTa XLV, 12–14; 4QMMT (4Q394 8 III); CD XV, 15–17 (4Q266 8 I, 7–9); 4Q186; 4Q521; 4Q525; 4Q561; and 4Q534. See as well the work of David Seely, “Barkhi Nafshi,” in Qumran Cave 4. XX: Poetic and Liturgical Texts, Part 2 (ed. E. Chazon et al.; DJD XXIX; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 255–334. 17 For a discussion of the ranking of the members of the community based on physical appearance, see Philip S. Alexander, “Physiognomy, Initiation, and Rank in the Qumran Community,” in Geschichte—Tradition—Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, P. Schäfer; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996), 385–94. More recently, see Mladen Popović, “Physiognomic Knowledge

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see the various demonic expulsion and purification rites as the opposite end of the ritual spectrum from the Shirot, reserved for performance on the ne’er-do-wells of the community, perhaps before they were sent packing down to the defiled precincts of Jerusalem, descending at least from the elevated perspective of the sectarians.18 All this suggests that the community was quite concerned with measuring and evaluating bodies and their constituent parts, but not, it seems, on the first thirteen Sabbaths of the solar year. Those who participated in this Sabbath liturgy had passed the measurement litmus test of membership among the sons of light, whether reflected in one’s physiognomy or in some other sign of healthy spirit.19 Indeed, the Shirot reflect a transcendence of bodily concerns, presumably because those participating in the liturgy have gone beyond the concerns of the body by virtue of their ascetical discipline, at least during the length of the Sabbath, in order to ready themselves as vessels for reception of revelation. These points can be substantiated through a closer look at the collection. Language Clues: Tracing the Progression of the Shirot The general consensus holds that the Songs can be grouped in three large sections differentiated by content and style: songs 1–5, songs 6–8, and songs 9–13. Ambiguity is part and parcel of the rhetorical style of the Shirot and as the sequence unfolds, the language becomes ever more challenging to parse because of its loosening syntax. Songs 1–5, though much of the material is lost, offer a clearer, more uniform syntax and poetic parallelism. The five songs describe the establishment of the angelic priesthood and its responsibilities as well as an account of the praise that they offer to God. The central section is considerably

in Qumran and Babylonia: Form, Interdisciplinarity, and Secrecy,” DSD 13 (2006): 150–76 and his book Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (STDJ 67; Leiden: Brill, 2007). 18 An expulsion ritual for major infractions is described in the Damascus Document a and Damascus Document c (4Q266 11; 4Q270 7 I, 2) and was performed at the annual ceremony of covenant renewal which occurred on Shavuot. 19 On the importance of the term ‫“( תכון‬measurement”) and the verb ‫“( תכן‬to measure”) as theological terms that reflect divine measurement in the Qumran literature, particularly the Rule of the Community and 4QInstruction, see Menahem Kister, “Physical and Metaphysical Measurements Ordained by God in the Literature of the Second Temple Period,” in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran (ed. E. Chazon, D. Dimant and R. Clements; STDJ 58; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 153–76.

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different, characterized by a formulaic and repetitious literary structure which stresses the number seven. The sixth and eighth form an inclusio around the seventh song. The sixth and eighth to some degree mirror each other in their formulaic repetition of variations of the Hebrew root ‫ שבע‬by the chief princes. The middle sequence of songs has a greater dependency on Isaiah and in particular, the seventh song evokes the throne vision of Isaiah 6 with its commissioning of the prophet. The last songs 9–13 offer a progressive description of the temple and the praise offered by its various animated parts, with a further description of the divine chariot throne with its implied divine presence of kabod, of the angelic priests, with a final vesting of the high priest. The songs in the last section largely comprise nominal and participial sentences with extensive construct chains which defy attempts at straightforward translation. The final collection engages more language and imagery from Ezekiel, especially the prophet’s vision of the restored temple in Jerusalem in Ezekiel 40–48.20 Disagreement remains over the focal point or climax of the songs, whether in the middle at the seventh song or toward the end of the series. Some follow Carol Newsom who has argued on stylistic grounds that the song of the seventh Sabbath constitutes the focal point of the collection. Those who have argued for a progression have done so on thematic grounds, arguing that the eleventh and twelfth songs culminate the cycle with the divine chariot’s descent which corresponds to the timing of the festival of Shavuot.21 The difficulty with the thematic argument is that the final song which describes the priestly vestments seems to some as anti-climactic, yet this ignores the possible significance of the investiture of the priesthood in the final song.22 It seems most likely that there is more than one high point. Philip Alexander views the climax

20 For a discussion of some of the architectural language shared by Ezekiel 40–48 and the Shirot, see Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (HSS 27; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985), 51–58 and more recently, James R. Davila, “The Macrocosmic Temple, Scriptural Exegesis, and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” DSD 9 (2002): 1–19 (5–7). Davila argues convincingly that a number of terms used for the priestly angels in the Shirot derive from the description of the construction of the temple in 1 Chronicles 28–29. 21 Joseph M. Baumgarten, “ShirShabb and Merkabah Traditions,” 206–7, disagrees with Newsom’s triangular arrangement positing the seventh as the culmination. Baumgarten sees a distinct progression culminating in the thirteenth song, the climax being the burnt offering. 22 Davila, Liturgical Works, 90, suggests that the thirteenth “functioned as a kind of coda or denouement that described the heavenly cult of the high-priestly angels.”

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of the cycle coming toward the end, but is ambivalent about whether the twelfth song marks the end with its resonances with the descent of the merkavah, the thirteenth thus functioning as a “coda,” or whether the thirteenth song marks the climactic point of the liturgy. From his perspective, the thirteenth song signifies the “transformation of the mystic,” the maskil at the climax of the ceremony, perhaps supplemented liturgically by the self-glorification hymn from the Hodayot.23 This a plausible suggestion, but with some modification. As noted above, the songs focus not on words of praise to God, but on the angelic-human priests themselves, in part as a means of bolstering the authority of priesthood within the community; thus the thirteenth song offers a fitting conclusion to the series, as Russell Arnold has recently argued.24 Yet the liturgy does more than merely affirm the role of priests in an angel-like status; it also affirms the authority of their inspired teaching. The thirteenth song presents the angel-like priests with the maskil as their head as fully vested and equipped for their oracular performance. We may thus chart a progression and evolution of the songs with multiple high points and a culminating conclusion. Many worthy studies of the language of the Shirot have been published, but even these have not sufficiently mined the rich compositions for their multi-layered intertextual resonances; there are limits to penetration into their esoterica. To support the contention of this essay that the Songs feature the summoning of a reconstrued Sinai revelation and to illustrate their liturgical movement in time, the focus will remain on only certain features of the language in the best preserved specimens, primarily in the first, seventh, eighth, eleventh, and twelfth songs. Song for the First Sabbath The first suggestion of a reconceived Sinai revelation occurs already in the song for the first Sabbath of the year. The first song concerns the establishment of the angelic priesthood and its principal functions of atoning for sin and responsibility for divine teaching. According to the Temple Scroll, the year began with a New Year Festival (11Q19 XIV,

Alexander, Mystical Texts, 50. Russell C. D. Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community (STDJ 60; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 146–48. 23 24

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7–8), followed by a consecration festival lasting seven days for priests and high priests (11Q19 XV, 3). The consecration festival would have coincided with the first Sabbath Song, which is dated to the fourth day of the first month. The first Sabbath Song seems to reflect the consecration theme because it contains mention of the human priesthood as they reflect on their incomparability with the angelic priests. The angels are first mentioned in the first part of the song, 4Q400 1 I, 4, as the “servants of the presence” (‫)משרתי פנים‬, a phrase that is somewhat ambiguous in that elsewhere in the Qumran literature, the angels of the presence are associated with a segment of the Qumran community itself. The “servants of the presence” are more commonly referred to as the “angels of the presence” (‫)מלאכי פנים‬, a phrase that is interpretively derived in part from the phrase in Isa 63:9 (‫מלאך‬ ‫ )פניו‬but also from references in the wilderness and Sinai account in Exodus in which an angel is sent before (‫ )לפני‬the Israelites; cf. Exod 14:19; 23:20–23; 32:34; 33:2.25 The “servants of the presence” at the beginning of the first song thus provides a link to the wilderness–Sinai tradition, not only in Exodus but in its remembered narration through the prophetic prayer in Isa 63:7–64:12.26 Lines 5 and 15 of 4Q400 1 I mark a clear connection to the lawgiving at Sinai: “He inscribed his statutes concerning all the works of spirit,” and “statutes of holiness he inscribed for them.”27 The distinctive root ‫ חרת‬appears in both lines.28 The Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible

James C. VanderKam, “The Angel of the Presence in the Book of Jubilees,” DSD 7 (2000): 378–93 [385–88]. The Rule of Blessings (1QSb IV, 24–26) and the Hodayot (1QHa I, 12–13) associate the angels of the presence as “holy ones” with the men of the council of the Ya ad. A working assumption of this paper is that deliberate ambiguity is built into much of the Songs’ vocabulary, including identity of the angels/priests/ humans in order to obscure the distinction between them as they are brought into contact through the liturgy. On the ambiguity of elohim and qedoshim in the Shirot, see also the comments of James R. Davila, Liturgical Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 100–1. Davila notes the use of meshartim (servants) for deified humans in the eschatological temple in 4Q511 35, 4. 26 For a discussion of the textual and theological difficulties posed by the role of the “angel of the presence” in Isa 63:9 as reflected in the ancient versions and the verse’s interpretative interrelation to Exod 23:20–21 as a background to the Shirot, see Davila, “The Macrocosmic Temple,” 14–16. 27 Translations of the Shirot texts from 4Q follow Newsom’s translations with some variations as discussed ad loc., “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” in Qumran Cave 4 VI Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 1 (ed. E. Eshel, H. Eshel, et al.; DJD XI; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 173–401. 28 On the basis of the word’s appearance in line 5, Newsom, “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” 182, reconstructs the lacuna in line 15, with “statutes of holiness.” 25

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includes this word only in Exod 32:16 as Moses brings the tablets of the law to the people. The engraving refers to God’s own inscription on the tablets to indicate God’s work and God’s writing, (ma asei elohim, miktab elohim). The verb is thus associated uniquely with God’s own action and not that of humans. In that way, arat is like the distinctive verb bara found only in the Priestly strand of the Pentateuch, Psalm 51, and Second Isaiah, in which the act of creation is uniquely the prerogative of God and the substance out of which God creates is not made clear. There is thus an aspect of mystery attached to the word as is the case with arat. In the sectarian literature, the root appears with greater frequency but is still distinctively linked to divine law-giving.29 The verb is used significantly at the end of the Serekh ha-Ya ad where it appears three times in the pledge of the maskil (in the passive form ‫ )חרות‬and also linked with “statute”: 1QS X, 6, 8, 11 in the description of the maskil’s cyclical liturgical obligations:30 “With the offering of lips [I] will bless him like an eternally inscribed statute (‫)כחוק חרות‬. . . . And in everything the inscribed statute shall be on my tongue as the fruit of praise and the portion of my lips. . . . I will declare His judgment according to my sins, and my transgressions shall be before my eyes as an engraved statute.” The sense of inscribed statute in the maskil’s pledge includes not only a performative liturgical sense in which the maskil must recount the acts of God in praise and blessing, but also suggests the juridical in that divine judgement would also serve as an inscribed statute for the 29 Of the nineteen occurrences of the root ‫חרת‬, four occur in the Shirot, six appear in copies of the Rule of the Community (3 in 1QS, 2 in 4Q258, 1 in 4Q256), 3 in 4QInstruction, 2 in the Damascus Document (one partially in a lacuna), one each in the War Rule (4QM), Purification Liturgy (4Q284 3, 4), Ages of Creation (4Q180), and the Song of the Sage (4Q511). 30 There are strong verbal links between the language of the covenant ritual for admission into the community in 1QS I–II and the instructions for the maskil in 1QS IX, 12–XI, 22; see Manfred Weise, Kultzeiten und kultischer Bundesschluss in der “Ordensregel” vom Toten Meer (StPB 3; Leiden: Brill, 1961), 64–68 and Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 110–11. We will not enter here into the debate about the redactional history of the Serekh ha-Ya ad and which texts constitute the oldest part(s) of the Rule but simply affirm C. Newsom’s observation (Self as Symbolic Space, 107) that the role of the material concerning the Maskil in 1QS IX, 12–XI, 22 and its links to the admission ritual “not only serve as a literary inclusion but also encourage one to see in the character of the Maskil the telos of the disciplines and teaching that the Serek ha-Ya ad has described.” Her interest lies in the moral formation of sectarians as patterned after the leadership figure of the Maskil, rather than the actual performative texts that result from such activity on the part of the Maskil.

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maskil. The root -r-t appears as the passive participle arut (inscribed ordinance) everywhere except the Shirot occurrences in which the verb appears as a third person singular active verb with God implied as the subject and in the Song of the Sage in which the implied persona of the maskil claims, “I will recount your wonderful deeds and inscribe them (‫)ואחורתם‬, laws of praise of your glory.” (4Q511 63–64 II, 2b–3). The Song of the Sage thus offers a similar juxtaposition to the pledge of the maskil at the end of the Serekh which combines the recounting of divine activity in a liturgical setting with legal prescription. A number of scholars have pointed to a connection between the inscription of laws in 4Q400 1 I, 15 and the idea of laws inscribed on heavenly tablets found in the book of Jubilees, yet nowhere in the first Sabbath Song is the medium of tablets mentioned.31 The writing down of revelation is an important feature of the narrative in Jubilees.32 There is no mediating role of scribal activity and writing mentioned in the Shirot, only the reception of revelation and visual and oral communication of divine knowledge. The connection between the tablets of Jubilees and the engraving of the Songs thus might best be understood if we think of the role of the angels/priests in the Shirot and the maskil (or angelic priests) in the Rule of the Community the incarnated “medium” of the inscribed information, that is, as agents of divine revelation, though first through visual perception and oral transmission.33 In fact the use 31 Newsom cites seventeen instances of heavenly tablets in the book of Jubilees; she cites three instances in particular that mention “written and engraved” ( Jub. 5:13; 24:33; 32:1), although it is unclear from her discussion whether these are indubitably the cognate equivalent of ‫ חרת‬DSD XI, 180); cf. also J. Davila, Liturgical Works, 101–2. In the book of Jubilees, the heavenly tablets are understood to contain a wide range of information, including the Torah of Moses, a record of good and evil actions, a record of history both past and future, calendrical information, and new amplifications of scriptural law; see Florentino García Martínez, “The Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees,” in Studies in the Book of Jubilees (ed. M. Albani, J. Frey, A. Lange; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 243–60. 32 On the importance of written text in Jubilees, see especially Hindy Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999): 379–410. By contrast with Jubilees, the authority of divine teaching is conferred in the Shirot not through scribal mechanisms but is closely linked to angelic-human mediation in the ritual performance of the liturgy. Needless to say, authority never derives inherently from the product of writing nor from narratives about such writing but from the individuals or communities who confer it; that is, texts gain authority only through use in particular social contexts, be that through a context of communal study, liturgical performance, the juridical process, or some other means. 33 There are suggestive connections between the book of Jubilees and the Shirot, including the role of the angel of the presence as the mediator of the revelation to Moses in Jubilees and the “servants of the presence” “servants of the face of the holy

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of the “engraved statute” on the mouth, tongue, and lips in the song of the maskil suggests precisely such an oral transmission of the “inscription,” thus understood as an oral teaching that issues from the mouth of the instructor based on internalized divine legal knowledge.34 Such juridical knowledge is itself inseparable from the knowledge of events from creation onward, the ethical mores expected by God being knit into the very fabric of the creation. The first song thus provides support for an association of the angelic servants of the Shirot with sectarian leadership in the person of the maskil as the one who is responsible as chief teacher of divine knowledge to the community (cf. 1QS III, 13–15; IX, 18–19).35 Before turning to another excerpt from the Shirot that suggests a reconceived Sinai revelation, it is important to point to a feature of the first song that characterizes the beginning of the Shirot series but not the latter songs, which thus bolsters the argument for a developmental sequence in the liturgical cycle. 4Q400 1 I, 15–16 describes one task of the angels as those who atone God’s will (itself a unique expression) for “all who repent of sin” (‫)כול שבי פשע‬.36 The role of the divine will recurs in the creation account of the seventh song discussed below. “Those who repent of sin” (or alternatively translated, “turn from transgression”) is a distinctive sectarian phrase occurring most notably in the Damascus Document, the Rule of the Community and

king,” and “priests of the inner sanctum” mentioned in 4Q400 1 I, 4, 8, 19, the nearly angelic status of Israel in their observance of the Sabbath ( Jub. 2:28), the legitimation of the solar calendar in Jubilees whose use is assumed in the Shirot. The angel of the presence is to dictate to Moses (‫ )להכתיב‬in 4Q216 V, 6 (4QJuba) an extensive narration “from the beginning of creation until my sanctuary is built in their midst for all the centuries of the centuries.” 34 For the importance of priestly leadership in the central activity of studying Torah and at Qumran, see Steven Fraade, “Interpretive Authority at Qumran,” JJS 44 (1993): 46–69. See in particular his discussion of 1QS VI, 6–8 (56–58). He may mischaracterize the study of the scroll in that passage to indicate the (written) Torah/ miqra and thus create a somewhat artificial distinction between scripture and sectarian law which would not have been held so strictly by the community. Fraade views “study as the link to and reenactment of originary revelatory moment” (68) and acknowledges a connection between study and worship, but does not fully explicate the function of prayer and liturgy within the community. 35 The relationship of the role of the maskil to that of the mebaqqer is unclear, although the mebaqqer also was responsible for instruction according to the Damascus Document (CD A XIII, 6–8). 36 Davila notes the distinctiveness of the phrase and points to the similar expressions “atonements of favor” (4Q513 13, 2) and “atonements of your favor” (4Q 512 4–6, 6).

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three of the Hodayot.37 Here, as in the community rules, it is likely a description of the covenanted community (4Q266 2 II, 5) or a subset of the community consisting of the Community Council (1QS I, 1–3). The contextual horizon of the phrase in Isa 59:20 where it derives is the imminent divine redemption of those who repent and the restoration of Jerusalem in a manifestation of divine glory. The covenant marking this new redemption (Isa 59:21) is the gift of divine spirit that allows the words of God not to depart from the mouths of those who repent and their descendants, an internalized teaching that is transmitted orally. It is difficult to assess how much of the original context of the phrase from Isaiah is summoned in the Shirot, but the notion of internalized divine teaching in Isa 59:21 resonates with the task of the angels in 4Q400 1 I, 17 who are to teach concerning all holy matters. So too, the promised manifestation of divine glory mentioned in Isa 59:19 and its fulfillment in Isa 60: 2 is a theme threading through the Shirot which climaxes in the twelfth–thirteenth songs. Of the extant Shirot texts, sin is mentioned only in the first song and in 4Q402 1, 5 (‫)יםודי פשע‬, a fragment included with the first group of songs, 1–5.38 The tone of the latter two groups of songs shifts decisively from any consideration of sin to praise and blessing, thus serving as an indication of the evolution of the liturgical sequence. The language of the Songs, here and elsewhere, should be understood as polyvalent; individual words are often generative of more than one meaning. One characteristic of the collection is that each song or cluster of songs favors its own set of several or more Hebrew roots.39 A significant case in point is the term for the “establishment”

37 CD II, 5//4Q266 2 II, 5//4Q 269 1, 2; CD B XX, 17; 1QS VIII–IX; X, 20//4Q260 4, 10; 1QHa VI, 24; X, 9; XIV, 6; cf. also 4Q299 71, 1; 4Q512 70–71, 2. For discussion about the centrality of repentance to the Qumran community, see Bilhah Nitzan, “Repentance in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after 50 Years (ed. P. Flint and J. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:145–70. 38 Newsom, “Shirot,” DJD XI, 222–23. 39 Each song contains a repeated use of the root in various forms, yet often there is ambiguity attached to the precise meaning of the word, which may have more than one referential value, especially as the cycle unfolds. To employ a contemporary analogy, the ambiguity is akin to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” routine in which the two conversation partners become mired in confusion stemming from the dual referent of “Who” both as the ballplayer’s surname and as an interrogative pronoun. Whereas the humor for a modern audience comes from recognizing that both possibilities exist, it is less than clear how participants in the ShirShabb performance received the ambiguity of the language, but one can imagine that through the repetition the effect was to draw on more than one level of meaning. The polyvalence of the language, particularly

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of priests derived from the root (‫)יסד‬,40 for foundation, a root that is repeated throughout the first Song. In this case, the verbal root is used to indicate the establishment of the priesthood but suggestive already of another foundation, the groundwork that is laid for the construction of the animate temple to come in the seventh song, building up from the shovei pesha who constitute the Ya ad or some segment of it. A similar reading of “foundations” is found in 4Q164, the sectarian pesher on Isa 54:11–12, in which God’s pledge to rebuild the Jerusalem temple’s antinomy, pinnacles, foundations, and gates are related to different strata of the community: Israel, the priests and the people, the Council of the Ya ad, and the twelve chief priests who enlighten with Urim and Thummim, and the chiefs of the tribes. The term resonates as well with the foundation, sod (‫ )סוד‬of the community council (1QS III, 26; IV, 6; CD X, 6; XIX, 4) which also provides an esoteric sense. Sod itself has the dual meaning of the constituted council of the community and the results of its deliberations, its counsel.41 A particularly relevant passage in the Community Rule (1QS VIII, 4b–13) likens the community to a temple in which the language of foundations and other architectural elements feature prominently. Once the community council, with it ruling body of twelve men and three priests, rightly observes the practices outlined in the Rule: the Community council will be established in truth, to be an everlasting plantation, a holy house (‫ )בית קודש‬for Israel and the foundation of the holy of holies (‫ )וסוד קודש קודשים‬for Aaron . . . This is the tested rampart (‫)חומת הבחן‬, the precious cornerstone (‫ )פנת יקר‬that does not . [blank] [. . whose foundations do not shake or tremble from their place . . . the most holy dwelling for Aaron. . . .

The passage also describes the result of two years’ travel in a pure or perfected path (‫ )בתמים דרך‬on the part of the Council: the interpreter will reveal “hidden things” that is, the esoteric revelation, to the elect

related to elohim, and whether it means God, gods, or makes reference to angels or humans, has bedeviled modern Abbotts and Costellos trying to fix on one meaning, but it seems it is the very ambiguity of references that serves a rhetorical aim, to blur the distinctions among angels, men, and even God understood as the creative fashioner of these two great kinds, as the penetration of alternate realms takes place. 40 For ‫ יסד‬as an alternative form for ‫ סוד‬see Brockelmann, Grundriss 1:275. 41 Daniel Harrington, “Mystery,” EDSS 2:588–91 (589), observes that the word for sod is associated closely with the esoteric terms raz and nistarot. All three terms “convey the idea of the essential knowledge of heavenly or historical matters known to God and granted to humans only by divine revelation.”

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fifteen. The precise means by which such revelation occurs is not specified, but the connections implicit in the language of the Shirot would suggest that the liturgy plays a role in this regard as will become more evident below. The first song also illustrates the developmental nature of the liturgical cycle as the role of the angels as narrators of God’s glory is compared to the lot of those mortals who would also wish to make such an offering. 4Q400 2, 6–7 contains the only first person plural in the collection which indicates a direct address to God. A speaker, or a multitude of speakers, poses a series of questions about the incomparability between the angels and the [human] speakers: “How shall we be reckoned among them and our priesthood in their dwellings? And our holiness with their holiness? What is the offering of our tongue of dust with the knowledge of the ‘gods’?” Such rhetorical questions recall others from scripture, perhaps most notably, Ps 8:5–6 in which the psalmist ponders God’s concern for humans ( enosh, ben adam), but then in the subsequent verse affirms that God has made humans little less than “ elohim”—understood as angels, who are crowned with glory and honor. It is also similar to the language of the Hodayot, the hymn of 1QHa XIX in particular, in which the hymnist thanks God for giving him, a lowly creature of clay and dust, divine knowledge and understanding, asking in wonder about such divine providential election. It seems that the same kind of rhetorical questioning may be occurring here, with a self-abasement on the part of the human participants in the liturgy, which serves as a means of asserting their own significance.42 The comparison of these human tongues of dust at the beginning of the liturgy points to their elevation to the equivalent of angelic tongues by the cycle’s end, moreover tongues that might proclaim the “knowledge of God.” Another implicit if somewhat tentative connection with sectarian literature may be made at this point. According to the calendar of the Temple Scroll, the song for the first Sabbath coincides with the week in which new priests are ordained (11Q19 XV, 3).43 Thus God’s establishment of the angelic priesthood in the Sabbath Shirot seems to correspond with weekday life at Qumran as well. For an assessment of the role of Hodayot rhetoric in shaping sectarians, see Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 191–286. 43 Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (HSM 27; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 72. 42

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4Q401 14 II, 6–8 from the first cycle of songs is a fragmentary piece, perhaps relating to the second Sabbath. The text makes reference to another task of the angels as communicators of esoteric knowledge which issues directly from the lips of God: . . . myster[ies] of his wonderful deeds . . . sound of jubilation [. . .] They are not able [. . .] God makes strong [. . .] princes of m[. . .] They make known hidden things [. . .] at the utterance of the lips of the king with [. . .]

The first word of the fragment, raz, is a common word in the sectarian literature, but appears only three times in the extant portions of the Shirot, here and at the beginning of the litany of the tongues in the eighth Sabbath song (4Q403 1 II, 27) in a slightly different formulation [“seven mysteries of knowledge in the mystery of wonder”]. The phrase “mysteries of his wonderful deeds” which occurs only twice in the Qumran literature, here and in the War Scroll,44 puts an esoteric gloss on the word nipla ot, but an esotericism that jibes with the “hidden things” (nistarot) of line 7. Nipla ot occurs in the Hebrew Bible particularly in reference to narrating divine judgment and redemption, occurring seventeen times in the book of Psalms about divine activity that must be extolled and recounted by those members of Israel who have benefited from it, particularly in those psalms that recount excerpts of the history of Israel (e.g., Pss 78:4, 32; 105:2, 5; 106: 7, 22). So too in the Qumran sectarian texts, the majority of occurrences of nipla ot occurs in liturgical texts, the Hodayot, Dibrei Hamme orot, and Prayers for Festivals. Although it contains gaps, the fragment from the second Sabbath may be read as a statement of the inability of the angels to perform a particular task (line 4), followed by a reference to God’s strengthening them (line 5) so that they might make known the hidden things, the nistarot, those things which proceed from the mouth of God or here expressed as “lips of the king” (lines 7–8).45 Although it is impossible to know whether there were other occurrences in the rest of the whole collection, it seems significant that raz with its esoteric connotations seems here to be entirely a possession of God and it is the priestly angels 44 The War Scroll reference is 1QM XIV, 14 in which the phrase also appears in a liturgical context as a blessing of God (1QM XIV, 8b–18) for all the divine activity wrought on behalf of the covenant people; though not in construct, cf. the use of the terms mysteries and wonders also in 4Q403 1 I, 19; 4Q405 3 II, 9; 4Q405 13, 3. 45 This understanding of the fragment follows Newsom’s construal, “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” DJD XI, 209, of the singular yegabber in line 5 as a Pi’el with God as the subject.

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who are acquiring instruction in holy mysteries as a kind of specialized catechesis. Given the prevalence of the phrase the “mystery to come” raz nihyeh in 4QInstruction, it seems that the appearance here and in the eighth song of raz without verbal qualification would support the idea that the Songs portray the mystery’s realized eschatological revelation to the angelic priests and their imitators through the liturgical practice on the first thirteen Sabbaths of the year. While according to the fragment taken from the second Sabbath, the knowledge is still being inculculated by God, by the eighth song such esoteric knowledge becomes a secure possession of the angels as well (4Q403 1 II, 26–27). The mystery appropriated would comprise knowledge of creation, ethics, and eschatology, an all-embracing comprehension ensuring proper behavior in relation to the divine plan for creation and all its inhabitants in heavenly and earthly realms. The contents of the mystery may be understood as a body of teaching transmitted through oral means.46 A significant transition point in marking that transformation occurs in the seventh Sabbath Song in which the divine King and Creator is made manifest in the throne room of the Temple. Songs for the Sixth–Eighth Sabbaths The use of language changes with the sixth song, which along with the eighth song frames the central song of the collection, the sabbath of Sabbath Songs. Both songs six and eight are highly formulaic and repetitive, with a recurrence of the number seven. The songs recount the acts of praise that reverberate from the tongues of the seven angelic chief princes (song six) and deputy princes (song eight), although the words of blessing and praise are not included in the songs themselves. The rhetorical effect of this description is to focus not on God as king, the ultimate object of praise, but on the angels themselves and their intensifying ecstatic acts of praise-on-the-tongue. Although we will return below to the significance of the eighth Song, a brief sample reveals its character, specifically pertaining to the unique language of offering:

46 Daniel Harrington, “The Raz Nihyeh in a Qumran Wisdom Text (1Q26, 4Q415–418, 428),” RevQ 65–68 (1996): 549–53. See also the insightful discussion of Wolfson, “Seven Mysteries of Knowledge.”

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. . . And the offering of their tongues . . [. . .] seven mysteries of knowledge in the wonderful mystery of the seven regions of the hol[y of holies . . . the tongue of the first will be strengthened seven times with the tongue of the second to him. The tongue of the second to him will be strengthened] (4Q403 1 II, 26b–27).

The expression “offering of tongue” (‫ )תרמת לשון‬is unique to the Shirot. Given the heading of each individual song, one might expect mention of an olah, a whole burnt offering. Aside from that, the formulation itself is distinctive. Elsewhere in the Qumran literature not to mention the scriptural psalms, the phrase “offering of the lips” occurs. Not only is the tongue used here as the instrument of praise instead of the lips, but there is an intensification of effect as each subsequent angel seems to join in the exaltation, in a manner approaching a disciplined glossolalia. The content of these praises remains esoteric, hidden seemingly in the razei da at, as “mysteries of knowledge” but in effect, coming as this eighth shir does after the seventh with its vision of the king and his creation, it should likely be understood as connected closely with the revelatory description of the purposeful divine will. Moreover, the repetition of the angelic “tongues” in the sixth and eighth songs picks up the theme introduced in the first song in which the human participants ask how the offering of their tongues of dust might be compared with those of the angels. The implied answer is that the human offering should somehow rival that of the angels; the passionate intensity displayed in the sixth and eighth songs suggests the difficulty of attaining such a standard without purification and empowerment by means of divine spirit. The seventh song can be understood as an expanded depiction of Isaiah’s temple throne vision in Isaiah 6, with the seraphim’s proclamation of divine holiness in Isa 6: 3 preceding the call of Isaiah and his preparation for service through the means of a burning coal from the altar to purify his mouth and lips to deliver the divine message. Although the text of the song is not complete, it can be divided into two parts.47 The first (4Q403 1 I, 31–40) includes calls for angelic praise and in the second (4Q403 1 I, 41–II, 1–16), the temple itself erupts into praise of the King. The location is suggested in part by

47 The text of the excerpt is from Newsom’s critical edition of 4Q403 1 I, 35–42 with reconstructions based on 4Q404 3–5 and 4Q405 4–5; 6, 1–8. Cf. also the translation and notes of Davila, Liturgical Works, 122–25.

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the imbedded allusion to the divine footstool of (4Q404 6, 3).48 One feature of the first part of the seventh song is a veiled allusion to the praise of the seraphim in Isa 6:3 (4Q403 1 I, 30–31). Moreover, a less veiled allusion to Ezek 3:12–13 appears in the song as well.49 Both of these texts are found in prophetic call narratives, a fact that combined with other subtle prophetic commissioning elements as detailed below, loom in significance for understanding the task of the priest-angels as bearers of the divine word. Song for the Seventh Sabbath The seventh song contains no overt links to Sinai revelation, dominated as it is by the Zion tradition, yet there are several lexical elements that suggest prophetic revelation.50 At the center of the seventh song, which is thus the center of the liturgical cycle, lies an account of creation through divine speech: 35. At the sayings of his mouth come into being a[ll the exalted gods]; at the utterance of his lips all the eternal spirits; [by] his knowledgeable [w]ill all his creatures 36. in their missions. Sing (‫ )רננו‬with joy you who rejoice with rejoicing among the wondrous godlike beings. And recount (‫ )והגו‬his glory with the tongue of all who recount with knowledge; and [recount] his wonderful songs of joy 37. with the mouth of all who recount [about him. For he is] God of all who rejoice {in knowledge} forever and judge in his power of all the spirits of understanding. 38. Ascribe (‫)הודו‬

48 The linkage of king and creation, temple and palace is of course an old one in ancient Israel and the ancient Near East, and its eventual association with the Sabbath in Judaism lies behind its appropriation here. For a thorough discussion of the concept of divine kingship in the Shirot, see Anna Maria Schwemer, “Gott als König und seine Königsherrschaft in den Sabbatliedern aus Qumran,” in Königsherrschaft Gottes und himmlischer Kult im Judentum, Urchristentum und in der hellenistischen Welt (ed. M. Hengel and A. Schwemer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 45–118. 49 For the allusion to Isa 6:3, see Schwemer, “Gott als König,” 97–98. For a fuller discussion of the allusions to both Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 3, see Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 138–46. His suggestion that the use of the two texts in song seven suggests a fully developed Qedushah in Jewish liturgies of this era nonetheless overstates the evidence. The earliest appearance of the Qedushah/Sanctus in overtly liturgical material, as opposed to apocalyptic literature, appears in the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers, older prayers imbedded in the fourth century Apostolic Constitutions; nonetheless, Johann Maier’s suggestion that a liturgical Qedushah was used by priestly groups as part of an esoteric liturgy is intriguing, if conjectural: “Zu Kult und Liturgie der Qumrangemeinde,” RevQ 14 (1990): 543–86 (573–74). 50 On the eclipsing of Sinai by Zion at Qumran, see elsewhere in this volume, Brooke, “Moving Mountains.”

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majesty, all you majestic gods, to the K[ing] of majesty; for all the gods of knowledge confess his glory, and all the spirits of righteousness confess his truth. 39. And they make their knowledge acceptable according to the judgments of his mouth and their confessions (they make acceptable) at the return of his powerful hand for judgments of recompense. Sing (‫ )זמרו‬praises to the mighty God 40. with the choicest spiritual portion, that there may be [a son]g (sung) with divine joy, and a celebration among all the holy ones, that there may be wondrous songs (sung) with eter[nal] joy. 41.With these let all the f[oundations of the hol]y of holies praise, the oracle columns (‫ )עמודי משא‬of the supremely exalted abode, and all the corners of its structure. Sin[g praise] 42 to Go[d who is fe] arful in power [all you spirits of knowledge and light ] in order to [exa] lt together the most pure firmament of [his] holy sanctuary (4Q403 1 I, 35–42 with reconstructions based on 4Q405 4–6).

The creation account is truncated compared to the priestly creation account in Genesis or the sapiential account in Ben Sira 24. Whereas in Genesis 1, God speaks the worldly order into being with narrated speech, here the creation is described without direct discourse. Moreover the focus lies on animate beings alone and not the inanimate aspects of the cosmos. The account of divine creation is consistent with the character of the Shirot liturgy writ large: a third person account bereft of the actual speech of the parties described; nonetheless, it is consonant with the understanding of creation through the powerful divine word. The seventh song presents a three-stage creation through God’s mouth, lips, and will, resulting in the exalted gods, the eternal spirits, and finally “his creatures in their missions” (‫)כול מעשיו במשלוחם‬.51 The first two created orders mentioned form parallel expressions and refer to two non-human orders of creation, “exalted gods” here to be understood as angelic beings, and “eternal spirits” as perhaps another kind of angel.52 The characterization of the third creation is different in 51 While the somewhat perplexing choice of ma asei could be translated either “works” or “creatures,” Newsom’s observation that the word modifying the noun is “undertakings” (translated here as “missions”) precludes inanimate beings is likely correct. 52 Cf. the suggestion of Dimant, “Men as Angels,” 98–99, that “spirits” may designate angels in charge of various natural elements. The creation of angels and their subsequent praise, though not mentioned in the Genesis creation accounts, is a wellknown theme in second temple Jewish literature. So, e.g., in Jub. 2:2 the spirits of seven kinds of angels are described as being created on the first day as well as the spirits of all his creatures. Their blessing and praise at his seven great works on the first day is then mentioned in Jub. 2:3. Cf. 11Q5 XXVI, 12 (11QPsa Hymn to the Creator) which also mentions the angels starting their praise after the division of light and darkness on the first day. The tradition is contained in the fragmentary targum of Job on Job 38:7 found at Qumran in which “messengers of God” ‫ מלאכי אלהא‬appears for the

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part because it involves the knowledge of the divine will, which suggests a purposeful creation with a special commissioning for divine service.53 In the Hebrew Bible such commissioning is associated especially with the divine commissioning of angels or human prophets.54 Indeed, the same noun “mission” though in feminine form (‫ )משלוחת‬occurs twice in the Song for the Twelfth Sabbath in reference to the obedient oracular response of the angels to the appearance of divine glory, a feature of that song to which we will attend more closely below. The first half of the seventh song contains seven plural imperatives each of which is repeated three times in the course of the one or two lines in which it appears.55 The first three imperatives ‫הללו‬, ‫שבחו‬, and ‫רממו‬, in lines 30–33 appear before a significant interruption in the series in which the role of God as creator is described in lines 36–37. Four imperatives follow: ‫רננו‬, ‫הגו‬, ‫הודו‬, and ‫זמרו‬. Six of the seven verbs are MT ‫( בני אלים‬11Q10 XXX, 5); cf. the ἄγγελοί in Job 38:7 of the Septuagint. On the diverse interpretations of the exact timing of the angels’ creation, see James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 48–52. 53 For a similar depiction of divine creation particularly as it relates to the divine will and a sequence ending with creatures (“spirit of adam”), cf. 1QHa IX, 8–17. Also salient for the argument of this essay that the community thought of itself in figurative terms as an animate temple is the fact that the Hymnist refers to himself as a “foundation (‫ )םוד‬of shame” and a “building (‫ )מבנה‬of sin” (1QHa IX, 22). Though more remote, compare also the scene of angelic worship at the divine throne in Rev 4:2–11 which recalls Isa 6:3. The twenty-four elders laud creation through the divine will (Rev 4:11). By contrast, the words of praise offered by angels and elders appears, and there is no commissioning of the creatures as described in the seventh song. 54 The word for commissioning appears to be another distinctive word chosen for its resonance with other sectarian discourse. ‫ משלח‬and variants (‫משלוח‬, ‫משלחת‬, ‫)משלוחת‬ occur eleven times in the Qumran literature, three of which are in the Songs, three in 4QInstruction (4Q418), twice in the Rule of the Community (1QS), once each in the War Scroll (1QM), a fragmentary part of the Song of the Sage (4Q511), and a hymnic fragment (1Q40). The first line of the War Scroll, which is also addressed to the Maskil, describes the beginning of the war between the sons of light and sons of darkness as a “first mission of hand combat” (‫ )ראשית משלוח יד‬suggesting that the eschatological battle to be waged is in keeping with the divine purpose. Divine commissioning of intermediaries in the Hebrew Bible uniquely employing the verb ‫ שלח‬is associated with either a malakh who goes before (‫ )לפני‬Israel during the wilderness/Sinai experience (but cf. Gen 24:40) or the commissioning of prophetic figures at their calling (Exod 3:12, 15; Isa 6:8; Jer 1:7; Ezek 2:3; 2Chr 25:15). On the use of the verb with prophetic commissioning, see Wolfgang Richter, Die sogenannten vorprophetischen Berufungsberichte (FRLANT 101; Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 156–78. 55 Newsom refers to seven “calls to praise” rather than identifying imperatives. She regards the second verb in the seventh Song as a Hifil jussive yagdilu, (in lieu of the scribal error yaqdilu) as the second call to praise while ignoring the plural imperative ‫והגו‬ in 4Q403 1 I, 36 as governed by the preceding imperative ‫ רננו‬in the same line.

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quite common in the lexicon of praise in the psalms; moreover, the same six are related to the primary theme words of the psalms of the seven angelic princes in the sixth and eighth songs.56 One verb stands out as distinctive; the fifth imperative derived from ‫ הגה‬is noteworthy because although it appears in the biblical psalms, it nowhere else appears in connection with songs and singing and exaltation. It denotes an oral recitation of some sort, one connected with mental reflection or rumination and is found in sapiential discourse in both the Hebrew Bible and Qumran literature.57 Hagu has often been translated “chant” following Newsom, but “recount” or “proclaim” especially in this context of praise may provide a better sense of the word’s use here.58 Outside of this occurrence in the seventh song, the root appears only rarely in the Qumran literature, but it provides another connection with the understanding of an ongoing, if reconceived, Sinai revelation rooted both in its use in scripture and in its derived use in the sectarian literature. The verb occurs at two significant passages in connection with Torah, in Joshua 1 and Psalm 1. The scriptural passages seem to lie behind the rarer and more specialized use of hgh at Qumran. In Jos 1:8, the verb is specifically connected with transmitting the Sinai revelation to the subsequent generation after Moses’ death. Narrated in the book of Joshua as a direct divine commissioning, God advises the successor of Moses: “This scroll of the teaching (‫ )התורה‬shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate (‫ )הגית‬on it day and night.” Within the larger narrative of the Hexateuch, the torah of Jos 1:8 is connected to a written deposit, the Deuteronomic version of law (Deut 31:9), which itself represents an interpretively transmitted form of the teaching to the generation that succeeded the wilderness generation.59 The Torah is strongly associated with Moses and thus implicitly connected to the divine revelation at Sinai/Horeb but in Joshua, the emphasis is not

56 Newsom, “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” DJD XI, 270, notes that the theme verb ‫ ברך‬used by the chief princes is absent from the seventh song, It would seem that it has been replaced by the distinctive theme verb ‫הגה‬. 57 So for example Ps 37:30–31: “The mouth of the righteous recounts (‫ )יהגה‬wisdom and his tongue speaks justice. The teaching (torah) of his God is in his heart; his steps do not waver.” 58 “Recount” is the translational choice of Davila, Liturgical Works, 123. 59 On the role of the multi-layered book of Deuteronomy as a bridge between torah and its interpretation, see Bernard Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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on the place of revelation but its divine authorization. The passage from Joshua models the idea that oral teaching of the Sinaitic revelation by authorized leadership is a crucial part of the transmission of divine revelation to subsequent generations, wherever the leader may be located, in or outside the land. In an overlapping but distinct vein is the word’s use in Ps 1:1–2: “Happy the man who does not walk in the advice of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor settle in the dwelling of scorners, but rather his delight is in the teaching of the Lord and he recounts (‫ )יהגה‬his teaching day and night.” Standing as the psalm does at the beginning of the collection, the third-person wisdom discourse of the first psalm invites those who use the collection to ruminate on and recite the liturgical collection in the manner of a collection of divine teaching.60 No written scroll is mentioned as in the Deuteronomic passage from Joshua.61 In the Qumran literature, the word appears notably in references to the “vision of hagu” and the “book of hagu/hagy.” Whereas in Joshua and Psalms, the verb is connected to recitation of a scroll of Mosaic teaching and the teaching of the psalms collection itself, both written deposits, the use of this root in Instruction and the sectarian rules also carries an esoteric connotation.”62 The following passage from Instruction describes the glorious promise offered to the sage who possesses esoteric knowledge of God:

60 See Gerald Wilson, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter (SBLDS 76; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) and Patrick Miller, “The Beginning of the Psalter,” in The Shape and Shaping of the Psalter (ed. J. C. McCann; JSOTSup 159; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 83–92. Although the collection of psalms was still in flux in the last two centuries of the common era based on the evidence from Qumran, the first three books of the Psalter seem to have stabilized; see Peter Flint, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Book of Psalms (STDJ 17; Leiden: Brill, 1997) and the work of James A. Sanders beginning with his critical edition of 11QPsa, The Psalms Scroll of Qumrân Cave 11 (11QPs a) (DJD IV; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). 61 On the various meanings of torah in post-exilic compositions not tied to a conception of writtenness, see Jon Levenson, “The Sources of Torah: Psalm 119 and the Modes of Revelation in Second Temple Judaism,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross (ed. P. Miller, P. Hanson, and S. McBride; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 559–74. 62 Psalm 37 mentioned in n. 57 above, may suggest something of an intermediate position between written torah and esoteric wisdom teachings, because the “wisdom” recounted by the righteous lies in parallel to an internalized torah in the second half of the verse.

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[13. And then you will know everlasting glory and his marvelous mercies, and the might of his deeds. And you] 14 will understand the beginning of your reward at the remembrance of [the restitution?] that has come. 15. For engraved is the ordinance (‫ )כי חרות מחוקק‬of God concerning all the in[iquities] of the sons of Seth and a book of remembrance is written before him 16. for those who observe his word. And this is the vision of the meditation (‫ )חזון ההגוי‬for a book of remembrance (‫לספר‬ ‫ )זכרון‬and he will give it to Enosh to inherit with a people of spirit because 17. according to the pattern (‫ )תבנית‬of the holy ones is his crafting; but he did not give meditation (‫ )ההגוי‬to the spirit of flesh because it cannot distinguish between 18. good and evil according to the judgment of its spirit . . . vacat And you, discerning son, consider vacat the mystery of existence (‫ )ברז נהיה‬and know . . . (4Q417 1 I, 13–18 = 4Q418 42–45 I).

The passage offers several resonances with distinctive language in the Shirot that suggest, if not borrowed language, a shared perspective on esoteric knowledge and its dissemination: the mention of engraved statutes, the vision of meditation, the pattern of the holy ones, and the mystery of existence, not to mention the reuse of creation language of Genesis 1–3 elsewhere in Instruction. There have been various suggestions about the identification and contents of the “vision of hagu,” from an actual book (whether a portion of 1 Enoch or some other text) to a visionary experience of some kind.63 Instruction is in fact laconic about the contents of the vision, with a concern rather to indicate who has access to the vision. The above excerpt suggests that the vision is given to the “people of spirit” who can distinguish good from evil in contrast to the “spirit of flesh” who are morally obtuse. Moreover, the vision is given to “people of spirit” because they were created “according to the likeness of the holy ones” (‫( )כתבנית קדושים‬4Q417 1 I, 17).”64 The distinction would seem to point to those whose physical characteristics, discerned by physiognomies and the like, mark them as belonging to one camp or the other. The “vision of hagu” is never identified as an actual document but rather a visual or perceptual experience that somehow engenders a written “scroll of remembrance” a phrase known from Mal 3:16. Moreover, the activity of hgh is equated elsewhere in Instruction with interpretation, suggesting a continuing reconstrual of events

63 See the review by Matthew Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom of 4QInstruction (STDJ 50; Leiden: Brill, 2003), especially 80–99. 64 Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom, 81.

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related to divine mysteries: “Day and night, ruminate on the mystery that is to be (‫ )הגה ברז נהיה‬and interpret (‫ )דורש‬continually.” (4Q417 1 I, 6//4Q418 43, 4).65 Just as the “vision of hagu” has generated various perspectives on its meaning, so too, the “scroll of hagu/hagy,” mentioned in both the Damascus Document and the Rule of the Congregation has prompted a range of suggestions.66 According to the Damascus Document (CD XIII, 2; XIV, 6–8), a priest learned in the “scroll of hagu/hagy” was required to be present in a quorum of each ten men in order to disseminate its teaching. 1QSa I, 6–7 also calls on the Zadokite priests in an idealized time (‫ )אחרית הימים‬to educate youths in the “scroll of hagy” as one stage in their training. Some scholars have equated it with the Torah of Moses, understanding it narrowly to be a version of the first five books of the Bible, others offering broader suggestions not so closely tied to a particular text or set of texts. Cana Werman has persuasively argued that the “vision of hagu” in Instruction should be connected to the “scroll of hagy” in the sectarian texts. Although she overemphasizes the cognitive dimension of “hagu” and argues that such activity involves only mental concentration and study using the “mind’s eye” while ignoring the distinct vocal/aural associations of the verb, her suggestion that the content relates to the addressee’s call to “meditate both on his own life and on the course of creation and history” seems plausible.67 If we can understand the seventh Sabbath Song as itself such a perceptual experience that stimulates the witnessing angels to “proclaim” (‫)הגה‬, a proclamation which ultimately the purified priestly participants are stimulated to imitate, then the observations of Goff and Werman about the “vision of hagu” in Instruction would seem to corroborate the

65 The other objects of the verb ‫ הגה‬in Qumran literature, which are also prefaced with the preposition ‫ב‬, are ‫כבוד‬, ‫פעולת אדם‬, and ‫ ;אמת‬John Strugnell and Daniel J. Harrington, “Instruction,” DJD XXXIV Qumran Cave 4 XXIV Sapiential Texts, Part 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 157. 66 For an overview of proposals, see Steven D. Fraade, “Hagu, Book of,” EDSS 1:327, and Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom, 82–83, especially n. 8. 67 Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom, 23, n. 111, writes: “Cana Werman uses 4QInstruction to help explain the enigmatic “Book of Hagu” that is mentioned in writings of the Dead Sea sect. In her opinion, 4QInstruction calls on its addressee to “meditate both on his own life and on the course of history.” See Cana Werman, “What is the Book of Hagu?” in Sapiential Perspective: Wisdom Literature in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. J. Collins, G. Sterling, and R. Clements; STDJ 51; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 125–40. Werman also briefly examines 4QInstruction in a study of the role of engraved tablets in Jubilees: “The torah and the teudah Engraved on the Tablets,” DSD 9 (2002): 75–103.

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greater argument suggested in this essay. Participation in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice liturgy is reserved for those sufficiently righteous and distanced from fleshly impurity through their ascetic discipline that they have thereby gained access to the vision, a perception of the divine will in creation which also involves the divine role as judge. If we can coordinate the understanding of Instruction with the use of the verb in the seventh Sabbath Song, it may be that a vision of the divine creator such as suggested by the enthroned king sparks the response of “hagu” which includes a recounting of the divine mysteries on the part of the holy ones, understood in the song to be the angels and Qumran priests, the latter being perhaps an elite subset of the larger group living at Qumran. Steven Fraade has argued that an “elitist askēsis” within the community such as the members of the Community Council described in 1QS VIII, 1–19 could serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the movement’s ideal and its ability to fulfil it.”68 Those who performed the Shirot in order to acquire “tongues of angels” would seem to have been such an elite. Indeed the liturgical ritual itself would have played a crucial role of transformation in this regard. Given this brief discussion of hagu in other literature found prominently at Qumran, we can appreciate the word’s significance anew in the seventh song. Our discussion of the verb begs the next question about the angelic instruments giving rise to such proclamation. We noted above that body language is decidedly absent in the Songs, with the striking exception of words used for speech, specifically and most prominently the tongue but also a restricted use of mouth and lips, and one mention of God’s hand. As noted above the tongue is also used in a unique way in connection with the angelic priesthood in the sixth and eighth songs, in the expression “offering of tongues.” “Tongue” is used only once in the entirety of the seventh song; it appears immediately after and in response to the description of the divine creation: Sing with joy you who rejoice with rejoicing among the wondrous godlike beings. And recount his glory (‫ )והגו כבודו‬with the tongue of all who recount with knowledge; and recount his wonderful songs of joy with the mouth of all who recount about him. For he is God of all who rejoice in knowledge forever and judge in his power of all the spirits of understanding (4Q403 1 I, 36).

68 Steven Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality: from the Bible to the Middle Ages (ed. A. Green; New York: Crossroad, 1986), 253–88 (269).

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Another significant word is “mouth,” which appears in the extant portions of Songs four times, once in relation to the angels in the first Sabbath Song (4Q400 1 I, 17 and parallels) in which the angels are said to offer teachings (‫ )תורות‬by means of their mouth. The second mention of mouth occurs in reference to the divine mouth that speaks the created orders into being in the preceding portion of the seventh song (4Q403 1 I, 35). The third is the reference to the mouths of those who join with the wondrous godlike beings in the excerpt above. The fourth is also in the seventh Sabbath song, in line 39: “And they make their knowledge acceptable according to the judgments of his mouth and their confessions (they make acceptable) at the return of His powerful hand for judgments of recompense.” The mouth, whether of angels, priests, or God, is thus concerned with special knowledge of the divine will for creation and redemption, the latter signalled by the divine hand. The tongue offers creative response echoing this knowledge. In this context, we can thus understand the mouths of the angels/priests to be echoing the creator’s mouth, recounting the great works of the creator. The ambiguity created by the use of elohim for both angels/human priests and the God of Israel reinforces the association between the divine act of creation through speech and response in speech. Thus the verbal response being summoned here may itself be understood as a creative act.69 At the heart of the seventh song then, lies a significant liturgical moment of transformation as the angelic priests respond with a spiritual offering of song and the sanctuary itself with its foundations, corners, and oracle pillars, becomes animated with praise, a movement suggesting the eschatological realization of the community’s understanding of itself as the sanctuary, as spiritual power is unleashed by the act of divine creation, calling up a response from the creatures themselves. Another text with resonances to the cluster of songs 6–8 is Barkhi Napshi, mentioned above in connection with its concern for body parts. With five copies of the composition found in Cave 4, the work seems also to have played an important role in sectarian worship. The extant portion of one particular section 4Q436 I, 1–II, 4 acknowledges the divine power in the worshipper who has purified his body parts and then engraved God’s law on his heart and inmost parts which shapes the author in the way of divine understanding and knowledge. Especially notable is a claim imbedded in 4Q436 I, 7–8 to a prophetic gift:

69 On the phenomenon of creative scripturalized liturgical compositions during the tannaitic era, see in this volume, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Can the Homilists Cross the Sea Again,” 217–246, especially 224–226.

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. . . . and perform all your good will (‫)רצונכה‬. You have made my mouth like a sharp sword (‫)כחרב הדה‬, and my tongue you have set loose for holy words (‫)ולשני פתחתה לדברי קודש‬. You have set [upon them] a bridle, that they not meditate (‫ )יהגו‬upon the deeds of mankind, upon the destruction (emerging from) his lips.70

The allusion to Isaiah’s role as bearer of the divine word is clear (Isa 49:2; cf. Wis 18:16). Whereas in Isaiah, the prophetic commission is extended to the people of Israel (Isa 49:3), in Barkhi Napshi the role of prophet seems to pertain only to an individual. The characterization of the prophetic task also reverberates with the Shirot. As M. Weinfeld/ D. Seely observe, “‘To open the lips or mouth’ is a standard biblical metaphor, but of course not ‘to open the tongue’.”71 On the other hand, ‫ פתח‬here may reflect its other sense of “engrave” as appears in 4Q405 14–15 I, 5.72 This would make more sense of the passage. A final point of connection occurs with the distinctive word ‫הגה‬. In this case, the author is thankful that God had restrained his mouth and tongue from recounting human deeds; the implication is that divine deeds are those that should be recounted with a divinely inspired tongue, as we see in the case of the angelic priests of the seventh Sabbath Song. The divine will (‫ )רצון‬described in the seventh Sabbath as instrumental in the purposeful commissioning of his creatures (4Q403 1 I, 35) is also instrumental in shaping the purposefully purified life of the reciter of Barkhi Napshi. Although we cannot be sure of the way in which the Barkhi Napshi were used at Qumran, their resonance with the Shirot provides another connection with a composition likely used at Qumran. Whereas songs 6–8 portray angelic priests praising God for divine work in fashioning a purposeful creation with a uniquely expressed “offering of the tongues,” Barkhi Napshi suggests that this ecstatic-prophetic role was clearly held in view as an ideal for some segment of the human community as well. It would seem that this link also bolsters the case for the theurgic use of these songs for inspired composition at other times and in other quarters than on the first thirteen Sabbaths of the year. The pivotal role of the seventh Sabbath song in the cycle is also evident in its mention of spirit and spirits. It is notable that there are only two appearances of the root spirit (‫ )רוח‬in the first six songs of

70 The translation is that of Moshe Weinfeld and David Seeley, “Barkhi Napshic,” DJD XXIX, 295–305 (299). 71 Weinfeld and Seeley, “Barkhi Napshic,” 302. 72 Cf. the discussion of Newsom, “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” DJD XI, 332.

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the cycle.73 Beginning in the second half of the seventh song and following, ruah is used frequently, especially in the parts of songs 9–12 that describe the spirits in and among the elements of the sanctuary’s architecture which are then themselves given to praise and blessing. The divine “inspiriting” occurs only after the account of divine creation with its fashioning of the spirits in the center of the seventh song. One additional unique but related lexical feature in the seventh song deserves mention, the account of the animate temple praising God which occurs in lines 41–46 after the description of the angelic praise and the divine creation through speech. Line 41 begins the description: “With these let all the foundations of the holy of holies praise, the oracle columns (‫ )עמודי משא‬of the supremely exalted abode.” The phrase may be translated alternatively as “supporting columns,” in the sense of a feature of the temple architecture; however, if we can understand the temple as an animate and transformed group of the ‫שּבי פשע‬, those in the Qumran community who have been commissioned for special service, then given observations made above about the polyvalence of the term ‫סוד‬, as having both architectural and communal senses, we can understand these “columns” likewise.74 Moreover, the twelfth song makes mention of more oracles; the mention of massa in the seventh song thus serves as an anticipatory signal for the song that follows the celebration of Shavuot. Before turning to the last section of the Shirot, one summative point may be made: the use of the root ‫ הגה‬in the seventh song suggests that an essential component of angelic-priestly praise and one that lies at the heart of their created purpose is to communicate divine knowledge. Understood in connection with the use of ‫ הגה‬in the Hebrew Bible as

73 The first song mentions “spiritual works” (‫ )מעשי רוח‬relating to the divinely engraved statutes (4Q400 1 I, 5); a second contains the phrase “spirit of all” but the text is fragmentary and the phrase has no immediate context. 74 Davila, Liturgical Works, 127, notes that this mention of columns (his translation is “pillars”) is its only occurrence in the extant portions of the Songs. The construal of “columns” in an animate sense might also clarify the use of the term “column” in the physiognomic text 4Q186 1 II, 6 and 2 I, 6 used in relation to men, in which those whose features pass measure make up part of the “second column” indicating the purity of their spirit; this would obviate an anachronistic translation as a list or column of writing such as suggested tentatively by P. Alexander, “Physiognomy, Initiation, and Rank,” 388 n. 7.

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well as its developed use in the sectarian documents of Instruction and the sectarian rules, such divine knowledge is linked in some fashion to the esoteric torah acquired, composed, and taught by select prophetpriests of the community. Songs for the Eleventh–Thirteenth Sabbaths As noted at the outset, the final section of the Shirot in songs 9–13 augur a shift in style. Whereas songs 1–5 offer clear syntax and discursive poetry, and the middle set 6–8 are highly formulaic and repetitive, in songs 9–13 nominal and participial sentences with baroque construct chains fill the compositions. Just as the style suggests a liturgical progression, so too does the evolving subject matter of the cycle. The climax of praise in extolling the divine king and his creation followed by the vivification of the temple and its parts in the second half of the seventh Sabbath song mark a preparatory transition to the last set of songs. The final section of the cycle provides a progressive description of the temple from the entrance to the nave to a description of the innermost sanctum of the tabernacle, the debir with its chariot throne, concluding with the vesting of the high priestly figures. In terms of the development of the liturgical cycle, it is also significant that the eleventh song occurs on the day before Shavuot, the festival observed on the fifteenth day of the third month according to the solar calendar.75 Shavuot had an elevated importance at Qumran, serving also as the date for the annual covenant renewal ceremony which included the yearly evaluation of members and initiation of new members into the Ya ad.76 One feature of the ritual may in fact draw on one of the two meanings of Shavuot (oaths, weeks). The initiate was required to swear an oath (‫ )שבועת אסר‬to turn toward the torah of Moses “according to all its revealed interpretation” (‫)לכול הנגלה ממנה‬ by the Zadokite priests, the keepers of his covenant and the seekers of 75 On the disputed calendrical observance of Shavuot in early Judaism, see James C. VanderKam, “The Festival of Weeks and the Story of Pentecost in Acts 2,” in From Prophecy to Pentecost: the Function of the Old Testament in the New (ed. C. A. Evans; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 185–205; and more generally, James C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time (London: Routledge, 1998). 76 On the different accounts of the admission of new members within the Rule of the Community, see Sarianna Metso, The Serekh Texts (LSTS62; London: T & T Clark International, 2007), 8–10, 28–30. For a discussion of the initiation ceremony as a rite of passage, see Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy, 52–81.

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his will (1QS V, 8–9). The qualification suggests an esoteric dimension of instruction, or at least a knowledge of Mosaic torah with a sectarian inflection. As has been frequently noted, the book of Jubilees which was influential at Qumran likewise places a special emphasis on Shavuot and dates a number of significant events in early Israelite memory to that date, notably, the eternal covenants made with Noah ( Jub. 6:15–21) and Abraham ( Jub. 15:1). Also significant is what follows the festival of Shavuot according to Jubilees: the revelation to Moses commenced on the day after the festival ( Jub. 1:1) and was of some duration.77 Moses is with the glory of the Lord for six days before being called on the seventh day; his time on the mountain lasts forty days.78 According to Jubilees, the revelation comprises knowledge of events from creation to the end times. If indeed such a commemoration of the prophetic process of revelation at Shavuot is being elicited through the performance of the Shirot, then the implications for ongoing revelation within the Qumran community are that it might continue beyond even the first quarter of the solar year. More indications of the prophetic elements of the final series of songs may help to support the suggestion of ongoing revelation. While the songs flanking the Shavuot festival draw on Ezekiel traditions, especially the call and commissioning of Ezekiel and the prophet’s vision of the departure and return of the divine kabod to the temple, the influence of other scripture is evident. The Songs represent a ritual palimpsest with layered allusions to multiple revelatory experiences in 77 VanderKam, “The Festival of Weeks,” 190, notes that the author of Jubilees does not actually provide a precise date for the feast, referring rather to “the middle of the month” which could be the fifteenth or the sixteenth day of the third month of the solar calendar. Early Christians regarded Sunday, the day after Sabbath, as the first day of the second creation. The continuing influence on early Christianity of Shavuot as a first-fruits festival is a topic that warrants further exploration. Consider the statement by Eusebius of Alexandria: “It was on this day that the Lord began the first fruits of the creation of the world, and on the same day He gave the world the first-fruits of the resurrection” J.H. Miller, Fundamentals of the Liturgy (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), 362. 78 Akin to such a depiction, in rabbinic Judaism the festival of Shavuot came to be associated with the giving of Torah at Sinai, and some scholars have seen a precedent for its associated lectionary readings in the eleventh and twelfth Songs. Lieve M. Teugels, “Did Moses See the Chariot? The Link between Exod 19–20 and Ezek 1 in Early Jewish Interpretation,” in Studies in the Book of Exodus Redaction—Reception—Interpretation (ed. M. Vervenne; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996), 594–602. David Halperin posits a first century c.e. introduction of the Jewish lectionary cycle of parashah and haftarah (based on Acts 13:15) and in particular the widespread combination of Exodus 19 and Ezekiel 1 for the lectionary reading for Shavuot; The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (AOS 61; New Haven: AOS, 1980), 179–80.

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the cultural memory of Israel. There are at once glimmers of Sinai as well as the prophetic revelation to Elijah at Horeb, perceived through a heavy scrim of Ezekielian prophetic revelation. Sinai is apparent through various verbal clues. The priestly kabod tradition in Exodus is of course a prominent strand of the Sinai and wilderness tabernacle narrative; references to divine glory in the Songs thus resonate with its various appearances in the Hebrew Bible, from the appearance of the divine glory in the fire and cloud settling on Sinai (Exod 24:16–17) to Moses’ request to witness the divine glory (Exod 33:18–22) to the ultimate arrival of the divine glory in the desert tabernacle carefully made according to divine instruction (Exod 40:34–35).79 Just as in the Sinai and wilderness account, so too in Ezekiel, the kabod YHWH signifies the visible and mobile divine presence that is incompatible with human sin and impurity and so must relocate from the sanctuary to Babylon, where Ezekiel first encounters it. The mobile glory is thus an appropriate figure for God for those outside the city of Jerusalem who view the temple as a place of defiled worship. Evidence of the priestly Sinai traditions also appears in distinctive wording. Both the eleventh and twelfth songs make mention of “purely salted” (‫ )ממולח טוהר‬incense (4Q405 19, 4; 20 II–22, 11; 23 II, 10). The phrase occurs in Exod 30:35 in reference to a uniquely holy incense that is restricted for use in the inner parts of the tent of meeting where God meets Moses. Another link to the wilderness tradition is reflected in the use of the term “tabernacle” (‫( )משכן‬4Q405 20 II–22, 7; cf. also 403 1 II, 10). The word in its singular form is infrequent in the Qumran literature but appears most frequently in the priestly wilderness tradition in Exodus 25–40. Also notable, however, is its significant occurrence in Ezek 37:26–28 which foresees an eternal covenant in which God’s tabernacle will dwell with the people forever. An important indication of the ongoing retrieval of the Sinai/ Horeb tradition appears both at the end of the eleventh song and the beginning of the twelfth in a clear allusion to the theophany to Elijah in 1 Kgs 19:12. In a small fragment from the eleventh, again at the

79 Carey C. Newman, Paul’s Glory Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric (NTSup 69; Leiden: Brill, 1992). Early tradents did not of course explicitly distinguish “priestly” traditions of the Pentateuch, yet there seemed to be a differentiated sensitivity to certain strands of the tradition nonetheless. See for example in this volume C.T.R. Hayward’s characterization of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan as interpretively elaborating especially implicit “mystical aspects” of the mattan torah; “The Giving of the Torah: Targumic Perspectives,” 269–86, especially 278–82.

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end of the eleventh and four times in the twelfth Song, accompanying the movement of the cherubim throne is a “still sound” or alternately “a divine still sound” ( ‫( )קול דממה‬4Q405 19, 7; 4Q405 20 II–22, 6–7, 8, 12, 13).80 Dale Allison has argued that the “still sound” is the angelic worship itself and accounts for the absence of words of the angelic songs in the Shirot. His analysis is problematic in terms of other sounds that are mentioned in the passages, which he treats primarily in a footnote.81 A stronger suggestion is that of Philip Alexander who in evaluating occurrences of ‫ דממה‬and ‫ קול‬in the small fragment from the eleventh Song, 4Q405 18, connects the “quiet divine spirit” with “the sound of the Glory” namely, the theophany of the divine presence itself, noting also the connection to the plural “voices” of the Sinai theophany in Exod 19:16 and Ezek 1:25.82 The significance of the allusion to Elijah’s experience of theophany is worth elaborating because this provides not only another connection to Sinai/Horeb revelation, but also a development of it. George Brooke has underlined the importance of the community’s belief in the imminent return of Elijah for their eschatology.83 Elijah is portrayed in scripture as a Moses redivivus, as a prophet worthy of the master (Deut 18:15). Elijah experiences a prophetic revelation in the same place as his prophetic forebear but in a very different and unexpected way. After the account of the theophany in 1 Kgs 19:12, God commissions him to go to the wilderness of Damascus to anoint royal figures where he will also choose his charismatic successor Elishah, akin to Moses’ designation of Joshua. The theophany is thus a pregnant pause in Elijah’s

80 Cf. also 4Q401 16, 2; 4Q402 9, 3; 4Q405 18 3, 5. On the distinctive interpretive combination of 1 Kgs 19:12, Ezek 3:12–13, Ezek 1:24 and 10:5, see Carol Newsom, “Merkabah Exegesis in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot,” JJS 38 (1987): 11–30. 81 Dale Allison, “The Silence of Angels: Reflections on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” RevQ 13 (1988): 189–197; see 195 n. 17. 82 Cf. also the singular divine “voice” in Exod 19:19. P. Alexander, Mystical Texts, 38–39. For a discussion of the various ways in which post-biblical interpreters negotiated the tension between auditory and visual language related to the Sinai revelation, see in this volume, Steven Fraade, “Hearing and Seeing at Sinai,” 247–268. The Shirot in their focus on recreating the sanctuary space emphasize the visual aspects of theophany, though inescapably through words that must be heard through performance. Whatever ritual actions may have accompanied the Shirot liturgical texts to engage the participants’ eyes are unfortunately lost to us. 83 Mal 3:23–24 played a crucial role in this expectation; George J. Brooke, “The Twelve Minor Prophets and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Congress Volume: Leiden 2004 (ed. A. Lemaire; VTSup 109; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 19–43 (41). See further, G. Xeravits, King, Priest, Prophet: Positive Eschatological Protagonists of the Qumran Library (STDJ 47; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 184–91.

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continued mission and continuing delivery of the prophetic word. The invocation of his quiet revelatory experience in the twelfth song thus evokes and legitimates the notion of the renewal and reestablishment of prophetic tradition; the Sinai/Horeb font thus continues with the availability of suitable mediators. Occurring as this does in the middle of a composition that also summons a vision of the presence of the glory in the tabernacle, it would seem to indicate that the revelation has become mobile, no longer tied to a fixed geographical location such as Sinai, but an experience tied to a mobile divine presence, making itself known to those who have been properly purified for tasks associated with such divine commissioning. Further accentuating the prophetic element in the Songs is the occurrence of the term massa . The word has a double-meaning as both burden and oracle, clear already from Jer 23:33–40 where the threat of false prophecy is articulated through a play on this double sense.84 The two are not unrelated semantically in the sense that prophetic oracles were also “burdens” borne by the prophet who was necessarily bound to deliver their weighty substance. There are twenty-six instances of the term in the Qumran literature, eleven of them in the Shirot, although some appear in fragments so small as to be impossible to translate with certainty.85 The word occurs in the seventh Sabbath Song, translated above as “pillar oracle” (4Q403 1 I, 41) and several times in the twelfth song. Indeed, in the small fragment from the twelfth Song, 11Q17 VIII, 5b–6, comes the affirmation that “from the four foundations of the wonderful vault, they declare with the voice of the divine oracle (‫)מקול משא אלוהים‬. . . .” The twelfth song also contains the first use of the term ‫כליל‬, which is translated variously as “whole offering” (used as synonymously with “whole burnt offering” (Ps 51:21) and also as “crown” in the Qumran literature. Given that the titles of the compositions suggest the liturgical cycle is to be connected with the 84 The particular word massa as opposed to neum or dabar, is associated in scripture particularly with southern prophets in close association with the Zion tradition rather than the northern prophetic tradition. Thus the word is not used with a positive association in Jeremiah to indicate his own delivery of divine messages, but it is found in Isa 13:1; 15:1; Nah 1:1; Zech 9:1; 12:1; Mal 1:1. 85 The DSSC lists four occurrences of massa as “oracle” and twenty-two occurrences as having the meaning, “burden, task,” including all eleven instances from the Shirot, though clearly “oracle” is a possible if not probable meaning in many of the Shirot instances. See also the corroborating comments of Davila, Liturgical Works, 154, “The word may be used in this [oracular] sense in lines 8–9 and in XII 4Q405 23 I, 1, 5; 11Q17 X, 6; 4Q405 81, 3 [very fragmentary]; 4Q286 2, 1, although the contexts are frequently broken.”

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whole burnt offerings of the Sabbath, the use of this synonym may point to another culminating element of the cycle. The remainder of the twelfth song includes language describing the vivified temple with gates that give voice to psalms and doorways proclaiming the glory of the King, language echoing that of Ezek 46:1–10 with its description of the prince and people in the re-imagined temple or Ps 24:7, 9 with its portals praising the King of glory. These architectural features are deemed “not too exalted for his missions (‫( ”)משלוהתו‬4Q405 23 I, 11) recalling the language of divine creation and commissioning found in the center of the seventh song (4Q403 1 I, 36). The twelfth song thus picks up some of the language of the central song of the cycle as the series comes to its rapturous culmination. If we consider the animate sanctuary equipped with its furnishings and features as a figuration of the transformed elect from the community, the miqdash adam in worship, then the theophanic “still sound” should be understood as imminently to be replaced by the sound of the priest-prophets in the community engaged in their oracular teaching stimulated by the onset of the theophany, the descent of the chariot-throne into the midst of the gathered community at the Feast of Weeks. Discussion of oracular elements in the eleventh and twelfth songs provides an appropriate transition to the thirteenth. A location in the holy of holies is signalled in the thirteenth song by further mention of the purely blended salt incense, the divine footstool (11Q17 23–25, X, 7; Isa 66:1; 1 Chr 28:2), and finally of course, mention of the devir itself. The sanctuary is replete with spirits, spirits that in fact are rather hard to place given the difficult syntax of the composition and its fragmentary state. The song seems to relate the investiture of the angelic priests in the highly priestly garb of breastplate, ephod, and variegated material which prepares them for their priestly role as sacrificial officiants, teachers, and oracular speakers as well as related functions of blessing, judging, and differentiating between pure/impure, clean/unclean.86 Oracular use of the Urim and Thummim by anointed priests is evident in Apocryphon of Moses: 86 On these chief functions of priests, see Florentino García Martínez, “Priestly Functions in a Community without a Temple,” in Gemeinde ohne Tempel, 303–19. See also the classic study relating to Mal 2:6–7 of Joachim Begrich, “Die Priestliche Torah,” in Werden und Wesen des Alten Testaments (BZAW 66; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1936), 63–88. Begrich understood torah taught by the priests in Malachi to refer to revealed instruction and oracular knowledge. For a discussion of the semantics of rqmh (“embroidered material”) at Qumran which suggests that its possessor has acquired an authoritative

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They shall give light and he shall go out together with it with tongues of fire. The left-hand stone which is in his left hand side will be revealed to the eyes of the congregation until the priest is finished speaking . . . (4Q376 1 II, 1–2// 1Q29 1, 1–2).

So too, 4QIsaiah Pesherd (4Q164 1, 3–5) links Isa 54:11–12 to an interpretation of the twelve chiefs of the priests who enlighten through their use of the Urim and Thummim. Such teaching activity, if not explicit oracular delivery, is also apparent in the thirteenth Song: “In the chiefs of offerings are tongues of knowledge; they bless the God of knowledge with all his glorious works” (4Q405 23 II, 12). The verse recalls the offerings of tongues found in the sixth and eighth songs, those ecstatic, if orderly, tongue offerings. Here, the content of the tongue offerings is more specifically identified with divine knowledge of God’s works of glory. A liturgical cycle whose calendrical beginning can be correlated with a ceremony consecrating new priests thus rightly closes as a group of priestly figures are elevated to their proper role and prepared for service. The Liturgical Telos of the Shirot Florentino García Martínez has observed that “The Ya ad community considered its inner circle as a temporary functional compensation for the invalid atonement at the desecrated temple of Jerusalem. Its lay members are said to form symbolically the heikhal (“house”) and its priests the Holy of Holies (1QS IV; V, 6; VIII, 11; cf. 4Q258 1 I, 4, 4Q258 2 II, 6–7; 4Q509 97; 98 I, 7–8; 4Q511 35, 3).”87 As suggested by this essay, he could also have added implicit references to the architectural features found in the Shirot. The composition and use of the Shirot may well have predated the sectarians’ settlement at Qumran, but the architectural elements could variously relate to different parts of an Essene group and its leadership. As for the sectarians, the ideal depiction of the Qumran community as described in the Community Rule might offer a correlation between the Council of the Community, which when established, would serve as “an everlasting plantation, a house

or leadership status within the community, see George J. Brooke, “From Qumran to Corinth: Embroidered Allusions to Women’s Authority,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 195–214. 87 “Temple,” EDSS, 924.

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of holiness for Israel, and a foundation (‫ )סוד‬of the holy of holies for Aaron” (1QS VIII, 5–6). If indeed as has been argued, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice served as a means of preparing a select number of priests for their own role as ongoing authoritative interpreters of the tradition within such a “house of holiness,” what would the content of such narrative response be? Any discussion must also consider other dimensions of community life at Qumran. An important text in this regard is the Rule of the Community, with its description of the community’s commitment to spending onethird of each night in reading (aloud) the scroll (‫)לקרוא בספר‬, and in studying the law (‫ )לדרוש משפט‬and in blessing as a community (‫ולברך‬ ‫( )ביחד‬1QS VI, 7–8). Many scholars have emphasized the first two activities and neglected the significance of the third, which suggests considerable time spent in liturgical activities. It is clear that the legal traditions and their interpretation at Qumran were an ongoing source of engagement in the community as it sought to extend and develop scriptural legal traditions. If analogies with later rabbinic practices hold, much of the interpretation seems to have gone on orally and was preserved in that way, and perhaps alongside written texts.88 So, too, studying “the scroll” was also a central common activity.89 Steven Fraade emphasizes especially the two activities of studying Torah and sectarian rules as paramount: Once so established as a ‘community of holiness’, study both of Torah and communal laws constitutes a central practice of their religious life. Through such ongoing study, the Torah is more fully disclosed to them and new laws are revealed to them to suit their changing circumstances.90

He rightly points to study as a medium of their ongoing revelation and notes the close connection between such collective study and worship, though neglecting the liturgical context as itself a revelatory locus:

88 Metso, The Serekh Texts, 68–69, refers in particular to the work of Martin S. Jaffee in discussing the traditions of halakhic interpretation at Qumran; Jaffee has considered the evidence from Qumran to some extent but certainly not the liturgical materials which comprise roughly one-third of the “non-biblical” texts discovered: Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 100 B.C.E.–400 C.E. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 89 Fraade, “Interpretive Authority at Qumran,” 56–57, suggests that the “book of Torah” may possibly be equated with the “sēper hehāgô” mentioned in a parallel passage in CD XIII, 2–3. 90 Fraade, “Interpretive Authority at Qumran,” 61.

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The community considered itself to be a ‘congregation of holiness’ . . . or ‘council of holiness’ . . . whose members worshipped in the presence of holy angels, as they constructed lives of levitical purity and moral perfection, while engaging collectively in the cultivation of esoterically revealed knowledge.91

Given the supposition that these ongoing revelatory compositions were initially oral, any suggestions must necessarily involve speculation because the mysteries of knowledge underlying some of the sect’s activities were indeed kept obscure, and we might consider a range of possibilities in understanding the nature of such priestly-angelic proclamation. It could be understood most narrowly to relate to the content of the Sabbath Songs themselves.92 It seems more likely to point beyond the authorship and content of the songs themselves, to be linked to the group’s discursive composition, whether of liturgical materials, given the great number of prayers, hymns, and psalms found in the Qumran collection or even more broadly to the production of such distinctively sectarian teachings as the pesharim, or the Temple Scroll. A few examples might illustrate such creative liturgical composition “on the tongue” on the part of elect priestly elements of the Qumran community. The Hodayot as uniquely sectarian liturgical compositions provide a particularly apt example. Using the trope of life-giving springs, the hymnist describes himself as a source linked to the waters of divine mystery: “But you, O my God, have placed your words in my mouth, as showers of early rain, for all who thirst and as a spring of living waters.” (1QH XVI, 16). Another thanksgiving praises the “God of knowledge”: You created spirit for the tongue and you know its words . . . You bring forth the measuring lines according to their mysteries, and the utterances of spirits in accordance with their plan in order to make known your glory and recount your wonders . . . (1QH IX, 27–30).

An even clearer example appears in another thanksgiving which depicts the vocation of the “holy ones” who have entered a purified realm: There is hope for the one you have created from dust for the eternal council. You have purified the perverted spirit from great sin in order that

Fraade, “Interpretive Authority at Qumran,” 63–64. This is the view of Wolfson, “Seven Mysteries of Knowledge,” 198 (cf. 208, 213), who describes the content of the narration suggested by the Songs as a “poetic depiction of the imaginal realm preserved in the hymns.” 91 92

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judith h. newman he might take his stand with the host of the holy ones and enter in the Ya ad with the congregation of the sons of heaven and you have allotted for each an eternal destiny with the spirits of knowledge to praise your name joyfully in the Ya ad and to recount your wonders, to declare all of your works. (1QH XI, 21–23)

The excerpt above would even seem to encapsulate in brief the liturgical movement of the Songs themselves, from the first song in which the worshippers bemoan their “tongue of dust” until their purification allows them to join in the spirit-induced ecstatic praise to recount the divine wonders of creation, indeed all of God’s “works.” As was evident in the seventh Song, blessing at Qumran involves rumination (hgh), and presupposes interiorization of scriptural instruction from the daily practice of study that allows for its creative readaptation. An example of such creative praying of the tradition might be found in one account of the covenant renewal ceremony itself.93 With an elaborated version of the three-fold priestly blessing known from Num 6:24–26 (1QS II, 1–4), the priests are called to bless the tammim, the pure ones who have entered successfully into the Ya ad. While the blessing of the priests is included in the Rule of the Community, they are also expected to “recite the righteous deeds of God in all his great words and announce his merciful favors toward Israel (1QS I, 21). The priests are not described as reading from a scroll, which would be indicated by the verb ‫קרא‬, but are depicted as offering a recounting (‫)מספרים‬ of divine involvement in Israel’s past, thus suggesting an oral delivery of such account. The Levites are also said to play a seemingly shadow role to the priests in the liturgy by recalling the sinful activity of Israel and by cursing those of the lot of Belial. A more expansive view of the content of the narration engendered by the Songs thus might include various reconstruals of the contents of some parts of the Tanakh, those compositions that have been classified as “parabiblical” among the Qumran literature.94 If we can assume that the Songs predate the settlement of a group at Qumran, the liturgical performances and their

93 Different versions of the entry rites for new members are found in the rule texts; see the careful discussion of Metso, Serekh Texts, 28–30. 94 The term Tanakh is used heuristically, while recognizing the textual pluriformity of those books that would later be included in the Bible; on this see the writings of Eugene Ulrich, e.g., “The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures Found at Qumran,” in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation (ed. P. Flint; STDSRL; Grand Rapids; MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 51–66.

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aftermath may have generated a host of versions of the torah from Sinai during the many years of their use. Conclusion To come full circle to our initial question: Why would members of the Qumran Ya ad participate in a liturgy describing angelic priestly praise and activity, a liturgy that never reveals the words offered to God by the angelic figures themselves? The unique genre of the Songs suggests a unique use within the Qumran community. The answer here proposed is because a remnant of Jacob was indeed no longer rooted in the concerns of fleshly existence but, over the course of the first quarter of the solar year of Sabbaths, was enacting its own telos as a purified “sanctuary of men,” and in performing the heaven-on-earthly, temple-tabernacle liturgy, provided a model and inspiration for continuing revelation by the angelic-priests in the community who served among them. The cumulative evidence of subtle lexical hints suggests as much. At the center of the liturgical cycle lies an account of the purposeful divine creation in which energy unleashed serves as a commissioning of all angels, spirits and created beings by the divine will. For the angels, this involves in part their call to “proclaim” (hgh) through esoteric knowledge. The distinctions between priests, humans, angels, deities, and spirits, clear at the more prosaic beginning of the cycle, gradually becomes blurred if not indistinguishable by the thirteenth Song. It seems clear that highly literate individuals with time to devote to esoteric intellectual pursuits composed the Songs. Just as the Shirot themselves are rich, multi-layered tapestries that offer a narrative depiction of heaven-on-earthly praise, scripturalized discourse offered to the divine king, the songs to be sung by ecstatic tongues should be manifestations of the purified hearts and minds of the priestly community members whose proper mission is to reproduce in the best way possible the gift of divine instruction from Sinai. Depending on the degree of the author’s (inspired) imagination, the resulting compositions might be worthy of “tongues of instruction” such as in the Hodayot (1QHa XVI, 35–36) or other reconstruals of torah (4Q405 23 II, 10b–13). The songs of the angels, and ultimately their own songs, were to be a means of summoning a priestly version of Sinai in which the glorious divine presence and its angelic retinue would continue to reveal the mysteries of the divine purpose in creation and history, past, present,

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and future. The revelation of Torah at Sinai as summoned through the ritual of the Shirot was retrieved through the lenses of three prophets and their commissioning for service: Isaiah, a prophet of Zion who re-conceived the Temple and its role after the exile, Ezekiel, the exiled prophetic visionary, and finally Elijah, the Mosaic successor, as the glorious presence of God among the purified elect signals as well its continuing reception of divine revelation. Rabbinic Judaism would ultimately recognize torah she-be al-peh and torah she bikhtab transmitted through a chain of authoritative propheticsagely voices from Moses to Joshua to the men of the great assembly, but by-passing the priestly house of Aaron (m. Abot 1:1). At Qumran, we may witness in the performance of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice a ritual prompting a torah she be al lashon, torah on the tongue, an ecstatic, spirit-filled offering of the divine teaching from Sinai, generated through a liturgical sequence that served both to legitimate and to reinforce the authoritative angelic-priestly status of the elect leadership. The strands of Sinai that are summoned are enmeshed closely with those of Zion and its prophetic priestly traditions. It is not Moses so much in evidence as the prophetic voice of authority, but the heirs of Aaron and his house who dominate this retrieval of divine teaching.

MOVING MOUNTAINS: FROM SINAI TO JERUSALEM George J. Brooke University of Manchester, England The purpose of this paper is to argue that in terms of its religious outlook the sect behind the sectarian scrolls found in the eleven caves at and near Qumran was oriented towards Jerusalem more than towards Sinai, towards Mount Zion more than towards Mount Horeb. This perspective, it seems to me, can be compared creatively with the outlook of Philo or with the tendenz of later rabbinic compilations in which the locus of revelation is clearly less significant than either what was revealed there or the one to whom the revelation was given. What the Qumran movement seems to share with both Philo and the rabbinic tradition is a concern to pay attention to Moses, and what is mediated through him, moving the focus of attention away from the locus of revelation itself.1 1. The background in the book of Jubilees I accept that the book of Jubilees carries much weight for the group whose library was found at Qumran.2 Jubilees seems to serve several functions. It not only represents the kind of halakhic concerns that are developed in more obviously sectarian compositions like the Damascus Document,3 but it also serves to mediate valuable insights from the

On the significance of Moses for Philo see especially, Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism ( JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 70–107. On the role of Sinai traditions and Moses at Qumran see, in this volume, Marcus Tso, “Giving the Torah at Sinai and the Ethics of the Qumran Community,” 117–28. 2 Michael A. Knibb, Jubilees and the Origins of the Qumran Community: An Inaugural Lecture in the Department of Biblical Studies (London: King’s College, 1989), 17, writes: “there can be no question that the Palestinian priestly reform movement that lies behind Jubilees belongs in the pre-history of the Qumran sect and of the wider Essene movement.” 3 Most scholars have assumed that Jubilees is quoted as an authority in CD XVI, 3–4, but see also Devorah Dimant, “Two ‘Scientific’ Fictions: The So-Called Book of Noah and the Alleged Quotation of Jubilees in CD 16:3–4,” in Studies in the Hebrew 1

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Enochic traditions into a Sinaitic persepctive,4 it provides a reworked but primordial5 version of Israel’s meta-narrative of world history in a chronology of jubilee cycles, and it explains how the revealed law has to be supplemented through knowledge of what is on the heavenly tablets. In its overarching priestly and Levitical interests it is naturally more oriented towards the altar in the Jerusalem temple than towards the altar at the foot of the mountain built by Moses himself (Exod 24:4). The orientation of Jubilees is made plain at the outset: And he said to the angel of the presence, “Write for Moses from the first creation until my sanctuary is built in their midst forever and ever. And the Lord will appear in the sight of all. And everyone will know that I am the God of Israel and the father of all the children of Jacob and king upon Mount Zion forever and ever. And Zion and Jerusalem will be holy” ( Jub. 1:27–28).6

This is taken forward in Jub. 1:29 in which there is a summary description of the contents of the tablets as containing everything “from the day of creation”7 until “the sanctuary of the Lord is created in Jerusalem upon Mount Zion.” Of course the narrative of Jubilees is set on Sinai. It is the location of the establishment of the covenant that God makes with Moses for the children of Israel and their descendants ( Jub. 1:2–6). And according to Jub. 4:26 Sinai is one of the four sacred places on the earth: the garden of Eden, the mountain of the East, Sinai, and Mount Zion. But it is Mount Zion that “will be sanctified in the new creation for the sanctification of the earth.” It is Mount Zion of all the sacred places that is described as “in the midst of the navel of the earth” ( Jub. 8:19; cf. Ezek 5:5; 38:12).8 Furthermore, it is Mount Zion that is explicitly identified as the location of the Aqedah ( Jub. 19:13). Through the

Bible, Qumran, and the Septuagint Presented to Eugene Ulrich (ed. P. W. Flint, E. Tov and J. C. VanderKam; VTSup 101; Leiden, Brill, 2006), 230–49, especially 242–48. 4 As argued by Helge S. Kvanvig, “Jubilees—Between Enoch and Moses: A Narrative Reading,” JSJ 35 (2004): 243–61. Kvanvig proposes that the narrative structure of Jubilees is Enochic, for all that Moses dominates it. 5 To use Hindy Najman’s illuminating term as developed in “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999): 379–410; see also her Seconding Sinai. 6 Trans. Orval S. Wintermute in OTP 2.54. All subsequent English renderings of the book of Jubilees are taken from Wintermute’s translation. 7 This phrase is a restoration proposed by Michael E. Stone, “Apocryphal Notes and Readings,” IOS 1 (1971): 123–31 (125–26). 8 1 Enoch 26:1 also describes Jerusalem as the centre of the earth.

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fiction of the heavenly tablets Jubilees provides for the congregation of Israel the necessary priestly interpretative additions to the Law, additions that are oriented unashamedly towards Jerusalem. 2. Sinai and Jerusalem: vocabulary data Before beginning to describe and analyse some of the reasons why Mount Sinai is left behind in the movement towards Jerusalem, some raw data can be laid out. As background to these data Martin Abegg has noted that in what we might call anachronistically the non-biblical literature of the Qumran library, proper names are far less frequent than in the Hebrew Bible. For example in the Hebrew Bible over eight per cent of the vocabulary is personal names, whereas in the non-biblical Qumran literature the corresponding figure is less than two per cent.9 So, although the Qumran literary corpus has a scriptural feel to it,10 direct comparisons with the situation in the Hebrew Bible are not entirely appropriate, not least also because certain books of the Bible are clearly more significant (and more well attested) in the Qumran collection than others. But we need to get some facts straight before we try to explain this attitude of facing Jerusalem while only looking over the shoulder to Sinai. For place names Abegg has noted as a provisional statistic that in both the Hebrew Bible and in the Qumran corpus the most frequently mentioned name is Egypt,11 but in both corpora the next most frequent name is Jerusalem,12 to which can be added Zion, the next most frequently attested pace name in Qumran Literature. A preliminary comment would thus be in order: the tendency at Qumran to follow the Jerusalem orientation of Jubilees is also a reflection of a similar tendency in the works that were beginning to be assembled to make up the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless, the surprising thing is that in the nonbiblical Qumran corpus the name Sinai survives but five times: (1) in 9 Martin G. Abegg, “Concordance of Proper Nouns in the Non-Biblical Texts from Qumran,” in The Texts from the Judaean Desert: Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (ed. E. Tov; DJD XXXIX; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 229–84 (231). 10 As I tried to demonstrate in George J. Brooke, “The Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Biblical World (ed. J. Barton; London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 1.250–69. 11 Egypt: Hebrew Bible 682 times; Qumran Literature 101 times. 12 Jerusalem: Hebrew Bible 643 times. Qumran Literature 63 times. Zion occurs 38 times in Qumran Literature.

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1Q22 1 I, 4 there is a report of a divine speech to Moses in the fortieth year after the Exodus which is a recollection of “what I commanded you on Mount Sinai;”13 (2) in 4Q365 26a–b, 4, which composition might even be deemed to be scriptural,14 contains a verbatim use of Num 1:1, “in the wilderness of Sinai;” (3) in the so-called Discourse on the Exodus/Conquest Tradition (4Q374) 2 I, 7 the single word “Sinai” is preserved at the end of an extant line;15 (4) in 4QApocryphal Pentateuch B (4Q377) 2 II, 6 in which the revelation at Sinai is recalled in a context that makes clear that divine communication was to all the people, not just to Moses;16 (5) in Visions of Amrame (4Q547) 9, 4 there is a mention of Mount Sinai in a context that seems concerned with the exaltation of the priesthood.17 In addition to these sparse references to Sinai itself, there is just one extant reference to Horeb, the Deuteronomic synonym: in The Words of the Luminaries (4Q504) 3 II, 13, in the prayer for the fourth day of the week, God is addressed as sanctified in his glory and, in a somewhat fragmentary section, the text recalls the covenant made by God “with us” on Horeb. Some of the phraseology seems to recall the language of Deut 5:2 in particular: “The Lord God made a covenant with us at Horeb.” M. Baillet, who was responsible for the principal edition of 4Q504,18 suggested that the very title of the composition, The Words of the Luminaries, possibly 13 For improved readings in a small part of 1Q22 and consideration of its relationship to Jubilees that are significant for the point of this paper, see Eibert Tigchelaar, “A Cave 4 Fragment of Divre Mosheh (4QDM) and the Text of 1Q22 1:7–10 and Jubilees 1:9, 14,” DSD 12 (2005): 303–12. 14 As proposed for 4Q364, 4Q365 and 4Q366 by Michael Segal, “4QReworked Pentateuch or 4QPentateuch?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20 –25, 1997 (ed. L. H. Schiffman, E. Tov and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, 2000), 391–99; and most recently by his teacher Emanuel Tov in a forthcoming study. 15 Carol Newsom, “Discourse on the Exodus/Conquest Tradition,” in Qumran Cave 4.XIV: Parabiblical Texts, Part 2 (ed. M. Broshi et al.; DJD XIX; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 101, comments: “If ‫ סיני‬is the correct reading (rather than ‫)סוני‬, references to taking possession in line 6 and to Sinai here establish the context as that of the exodus/conquest traditions.” 16 James C. VanderKam and Monica Brady, “4QApocryphal Pentateuch B,” in Wadi Daliyeh II: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh and Qumran Cave 4.XXVIII: Miscellanea, Part 2 (ed. D. M. Gropp, M. Bernstein et al.; DJD XXVIII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 213–15. VanderKam and Brady note that the language of Exod 33:11 is transferred from Moses to the assembly of Israel. 17 It might be possible to restore the word “Sinai” in a few other contexts based on other versions of some compositions such as Jubilees and 1 Enoch. 18 Maurice Baillet, Qumrân Grotte 4.III (4Q482–4Q520) (DJD VII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 137–68.

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indicated that the whole was conceived on priestly lines, since works like Ben Sira (45:17) and the Testament of Levi (4:3; 18:3–4) assign the priesthood the task of mediating the divine light to the community.19 As with Jubilees the priestly transmission of the Sinai tradition leads to its transformation in significant ways. For Jerusalem and Zion, as already indicated above, the situation is very remarkably different, with several dozen references in a full range of genres.20 Some of these references are straightforwardly geographical and neutral in tone; in 4Q180 5–6, 4 “Mount Zion” occurs in apposition to Jerusalem, confirming the synonymous character of the labels. Other references are polemical, written against those who have polluted the city and its sanctuary, apparently forcing the members of the community to forsake the city. Yet others are aspirational, either laying out the correct legal framework for the construction of the temple and the sacrifices to be performed there or looking to the future when the community would be able to return there to work in the sanctuary that God himself would build and to live in the city, a perfect piece of town planning. In some instances the sectarian “camp” is the functional equivalent of the “city of Jerusalem.”21 Polemical references can be found in the exegetical compositions. In Pesher Habakkuk the city of which Habakkuk speaks in Hab 2:17 is identified explicitly with Jerusalem (1QpHab XII, 7) and the enemies of the community include the priests of Jerusalem (1QpHab IX, 4). Pesher Isaiah and Pesher Nahum similarly offer negative comments about the inhabitants of Jerusalem (4Q162 II, 7, 10; 4Q169 3–4 I, 10–11). Amongst the aspirational literature is the War Scroll in whose editorial framework there is technical wilderness

19 On 4Q504 as probably Deuteronomic and Levitical in outlook see Daniel Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 27; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 59–94. 20 For a survey of this material and why Jerusalem should be so prominent see, e.g., Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Jerusalem in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Centrality of Jerusalem: Historical Perspectives (ed. M. Poorthuis and C. Safrai; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), 73–88; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Jerusalem,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 402–4; Philip R. Davies, “From Zion to Zion: Jerusalem in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition (ed. T. L. Thompson; London: T & T Clark International, 2003), 164–70. 21 As pointed out most recently by Steven Fraade, “Looking for Narrative Midrash at Qumran,” in Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 7–9 January, 2003 (ed. S. D. Fraade, A. Shemesh and R. A. Clements; STDJ 62; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 43–66 (59).

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terminology used for describing the arrangement of the community as military units, in which the wilderness setting is identified as “the wilderness of Jerusalem” (1QM I, 3); elsewhere in the composition it is assumed that the army leaves “Jerusalem” to go to war (1QM VII, 4); this quasi-liturgical and “pacifist” text which sublimates the violence through cultic action is a priestly text through and through, so the Jerusalem orientation is hardly surprising. Hanan Eshel, for one, considers the hymn that opens with the lines “O Zion, rejoice greatly, O Jerusalem, show yourself amidst jubilation” (1QM XII, 12–15) to be a Qumranic composition.22 Other aspirational texts include the Temple Scroll which describes both how the temple should have been built by Solomon and others, but never was, and also contains mention of the sanctuary which God himself will construct. The New Jerusalem composition describes the perfectly laid out city. The so-called “Apostrophe to Zion” lays out an ideal picture of Jerusalem and expresses a fundamental loyalty to the holy city in the present and future.23 In all this much of the present experiences and the future hopes of the Qumran community and the wider movement of which it was a part are given focus through reacting against the contemporary polluted Jerusalem sanctuary and through longing for a restored Jerusalem temple.24 3. Moving from Sinai to Jerusalem There seem to be several reasons why the setting of the Mosaic revelation is no longer important for the compilers of the Qumran library beyond its cultic and narrative memorialization as the place of the giving of the Law. As the movement represented by the library in the eleven caves stood between Sinai and Jerusalem, between the wilder-

Hanan Eshel, “A Note on a Recently Published Text: the ‘Joshua Apocryphon’,” in The Centrality of Jerusalem: Historical Perspectives (ed. M. Poorthuis and Ch. Safrai; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), 89–93 (89). 23 See Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Apostrophe to Zion (11QPsalms Scroll 22:1–15),” in Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology (ed. M. Kiley; London: Routledge, 1997), 18–22. This poem was probably not a sectarian composition, but was copied, read and used there. 24 On this restoration see Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Concept of Restoration in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives (ed. J. M. Scott; JSJSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 203–21. Schiffman argues that the description of the temple in the Temple Scroll is intended as much for the present as for the future. 22

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ness and the purified sanctuary, between exile and complete return, it devised numerous strategies in self-understanding and religious practice to assist it in its ideological move from Sinai to Jerusalem. A. The book of Deuteronomy The first is perhaps the most obvious. Deuteronomy itself looks elsewhere for the location and dwelling-place of the divine name: the legal core of the book, Deuteronomy 12–26, is a promulgation of legislation to be observed in the land which is given by God. This collection of laws opens with rulings on the centralization of worship at “the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there” (Deut 12:5, 11, 21; cf. 12:14, 18, 26).25 “Deut 12 clearly has Jerusalem in view.”26 But beyond the way that Deuteronomy speaks of such a place, which is clearly not Sinai, the book also has a future orientation that looks beyond the journey of the Israelites with Moses. This orientation is partly responsible for the lack of attention to Sinai as sacred space. With hindsight portrayed as foresight the legislation is couched in covenantal terms that depend on the situation of its pre-exilic redactors in Jerusalem. Those redactors know that there is no point in seeking to make pilgrimages to Sinai, if God himself has decamped and moved house to another country. Part of the trajectory which Deuteronomy itself represents, that is, the ongoing need for the rewriting of the Law, is taken up by compositions such as the Temple Scroll. The content of such rewritings is often a pointer to the sense of the partial inadequacy of the Law as given at Sinai. So, for example, the Temple Scroll can take much of the legislation about the wilderness tabernacle and combine it with other traditions to create a series of divine speeches in a Sinaitic setting that speak directly of the Jerusalem sanctuary as it should have been built, but never was. In imitating and paraphrasing Deuteronomy, works such as the Temple Scroll introduce content that shows them to be shifting the Law ever closer to what with hindsight their authors and redactors could conceive of as life in the land and at the temple. Deuteronomy in 25 The well-known euphemistic phraseology recurs in various guises at Deut 14:23, 25; 16:2, 6, 7, 11, 15, 16; 17:8, 10; 18:6; 26:2; 31:11. 26 Christoph Bultmann, “Deuteronomy,” in The Oxford Bible Commentary (ed. J. Barton and J. Muddiman; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 144. For a discussion of how the relativization of Sinai happens already in the book of Deuteronomy, see Marc Zvi Brettler, “Fire, Cloud, and Deep Darkness,” 15–28 (esp. 26–28) in this volume.

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particular provided form, content and purpose for continuing Mosaic discourse but in a new context away from Sinai.27 B. Focus on the mediator, not the locus of revelation Secondly, it is possible in the Qumran sectarian texts, as for Philo,28 to separate the mediator and the revelation he received from the location where he received the revelation,29 so that although Sinai/Horeb is seldom referred to in the non-scriptural compositions, there is frequent reference to Moses and the Law.30 The mediator and his mediation are indeed recalled, but the setting where it all took place is assumed rather than named.31 Yet, in this matter the evidence for the treatment of Moses in the compositions found in the Qumran library is somewhat ambiguous.32 It has to be acknowledged that Moses generally receives an excellent press. Not only is his name the most frequent personal name in the non-scriptural scrolls, but also his status as lawgiver, as mediator of the Law is unchallenged, as James Bowley has summarised.33 Indeed

27 Overall on how both Jubilees and the Temple Scroll participate in Mosaic discourse see Najman, Seconding Sinai, 41–69. 28 See Najman, Seconding Sinai, 70–107. 29 Though such separation is not that proposed by Martin Noth, The History of Israel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 58: Moses “had no historical connection with the event which took place on Sinai.” 30 Designations such as “the Law of Moses”, “the book of Moses”, “by the hand of Moses”: e.g., CD V, 12; VIII, 14; XV, 9; XVI, 5; 1QS I, 3; V, 8; VIII, 15, 22; 1QM X, 6; 1QHa IV, 12; 2Q25 1, 3; 4Q249 verso 1. Josephus’ statement about the Essenes that “after God they hold most in awe the name of the lawgiver, any blasphemer of whom is punished with death” (War 2.145) might also be relevant. 31 Daniel Falk, “Moses, Texts of,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 577–81, lists briefly many of the compositions associated with Moses: several copies of the book of Jubilees (1QJuba–b; 2QJuba–b; 3QJub; 4QJuba–h, i?;11QJub + XQTextA); several copies of what have been labelled an Apocryphon of Moses (1QWords of Moses [1Q22]; Liturgy of the Three Tongues of Fire [1Q29]; and Apocryphon of Moses a,b,c [4Q375, 376, 408]); various compositions akin to the book of Jubilees (4Q225–227); Apocryphal Pentateuch A (4Q368); the various copies of the Temple Scroll (4Q524; 11Q19–21; possibly some fragments of 4Q365), a composition which is addressed to Moses. There are also a number of exegetical works, in which the exegesis is implicit in the rewriting of large sections of the Pentateuch, such as Apocryphon of Moses (2Q21); Paraphrase of Exodus (in Greek; 4Q127); and Apocryphal Pentateuch B (4Q377). 32 Some of the following two paragraphs on Moses is expounded more fully in my article, George J. Brooke, “Moses in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Looking at Mount Nebo from Qumran,” in La construction de la figure de Moïse/The Construction of the Figure of Moses (ed. T. Römer; TranseuSup 13; Paris: Gabalda, 2007), 209–23. 33 James E. Bowley, “Moses in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Living in the Shadow of God’s Anointed,” in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation (ed. P. W. Flint; Studies

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to join the movement is to swear “to return to the Torah of Moses” (CD XV, 12, 19; XVI, 2, 5), an oath based on the view that in the Law of Moses “everything is precisely explained” (CD XVI, 1–2). As Geza Vermes pointed out long ago: “The law of Moses was the only rule of life . . . The Torah of Moses was the charter of the community. In it . . . all things are strictly defined.”34 Two further items exemplify the high status of Moses. To begin with there is reflection on his prophetic status. Somewhat in line with the shift of emphasis from Sinai to Jerusalem, this has an eschatological dimension. In Testimonia (4Q175) Exodus 20 is cited in a form also known from the Samaritan Pentateuch in which Deut 5:28–29 and 18:18–19 from the proto-Masoretic tradition are combined to provide a proof-text for the expectation of an eschatological prophet.35 The identity of the eschatological prophet who is to be like Moses has been widely debated: the most popular candidates have been Elijah (cf. 4Q558) or the Teacher of Righteousness returned from the dead.36 A minority opinion has identified this eschatological prophet with Moses himself.37 Second, two texts have been understood as possibly indicating the apotheosis of Moses. In the Discourse on the Exodus/Conquest Tradition (4Q374) a part of frag. 2, col. II, reads as follows: “(6) [And] he made him as God [lxlwhym] over the mighty ones and a cause of reeli[ng] to Pharaoh.”38 Carol Newsom has noted how the phrasing in line 6 recalls the language of Exod 7:1: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you God [xlwhym] to Pharaoh and Aaron your brother will be your prophet’.” Crispin Fletcher-Louis has understood the text as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 159–81. 34 Geza Vermes, “The Qumran Interpretation of Scripture in its Historical Setting,” ALUOS 6 (1966–1968): 85–97 (87); reprinted in Geza Vermes, Post-Biblical Jewish Studies (SJLA 8; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 37–49 (39). 35 On the implications of 4QTestimonia and 4Q158 for the better understanding of the origins of the Samaritan expectation of the Taheb, see Ferdinand Dexinger, “Der ‘Prophet wie Mose’ in Qumran und bei den Samaritanern,” in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Mathias Delcor (ed. A. Caquot, S. Légasse and M. Tardieu; AOAT 215; Neukirchen: Kevelaer and Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1985), 97–111. 36 This is the line taken early on by Geza Vermes, “La figure de Moïse au tournant des deux testaments,” in Moïse: l’homme de l’alliance (H. Cazelles et al.; Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1955), 63–92 (83). 37 A view recently espoused again by John C. Poirier, “The Endtime Return of Elijah and Moses at Qumran,” DSD 10 (2003): 221–42. 38 Carol Newsom, “374. 4QDiscourse on the Exodus/Conquest Tradition,” in Qumran Cave 4.XIV: Parabiblical Texts, Part 2 (ed. M. Broshi et al.; DJD XIX; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 99–110 (102).

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implying “that throughout lines 6–10 the actor who stands at centre stage is the divine Moses, though God himself is ultimately responsible for the plot as he directs the drama from the wings.”39 The view of Moses in 4Q374 is certainly exalted; he is likened to the angels, and the healing properties of his shining face would seem to have theophanic characteristics, but whether he is as exalted as Fletcher-Louis proposes has yet to be determined, not least because the statement of Exod 7:1 which might be understood as equating Moses with God seems to be made into a matter of comparative agency in the Discourse on the Exodus/ Conquest Tradition (4Q374), frag. 2, col. II. In Apocryphal Pentateuch B (4Q377), frag. 2, there seems to be a continuation from earlier columns of a narrative reworking of the account of Israel at Sinai.40 In it a certain previously unknown Elibah exhorts the congregation of YHWH in a long speech: (4) . . . vacat Cursed is the man who will not stand and keep and d[o ] (5) all m.[ ] . . through the mouth of Moses his anointed one [mšy˜w], and to follow YHWH, the God of our fathers, who m . .[ ] (6) to us from Mt. Sin[ai] vacat And he spoke wi[th ]the assembly of Israel face to face as a man speaks (7) with his friend and a[s ]r . . š.[ ]r He showed us in a fire burning above [from] heaven vacat [ ] (8) and on the earth; he stood on the mountain to make known that there is no god beside him and there is no rock like him [ ] (9) the assembly {the congrega[tion}] they answered. Trembling seized them before the glory of God and because of the wondrous sounds, [ ] (10) and they stood at a distance. vacat And Moses, the man of God, was with God in the cloud. And the cloud covered (11) him because .[ ]when he was sanctified [bhqdšw], and like a messenger he would speak from his mouth, for who of fles[h ]is like him, (12) a man of faithfulness [xyš ˜sdym] and yw.[ ].m who were not created {to} from eternity and forever. . . . [ ]41

39 Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 137; his ideas on this composition were first outlined in “4Q374: A Discourse on the Sinai Tradition: The Deification of Moses and Early Christology,” DSD 3 (1996): 236–52. His ideas have been described as “a tantalizing possibility” by James R. Davila, “Heavenly Ascents in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Account (ed. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 461–85 (472–73). 40 Johannes Zimmermann, Messianische Texte aus Qumran: Königliche, priesterliche und prophetische Messiasvorstellungen in den Schriftfunden von Qumran (WUNT 2/104; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 332–42. 41 James C. VanderKam and Monica Brady, “377. 4QApocryphal Pentateuch B,” Wadi Daliyeh II: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh and Qumran Cave 4.XXVIII (ed. D. M. Gropp, M. Bernstein et al.; DJD XXVIII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 205–17 (214).

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Once again, C. Fletcher-Louis has argued that this text envisages a divine Moses,42 but an earlier close reading of the same fragments by Johannes Zimmermann did not produce a divine or angelic Moses.43 However, despite these many and varied positive depictions of Moses, there are several features about him that call for a different kind of assessment. First, apart from some very minor exceptions, such as the brief mention of how with Aaron he stood his ground against Jannes and Jambres (CD V, 18–19), there is no interest in the Qumran library in the other events or circumstances of Moses’ life beyond his mediation of the Law. Second, even in relation to the Law it is understood that Moses’ mediation was incomplete.44 In the Damascus Document there is multiple reference to “the hidden things in which all Israel had strayed: his holy Sabbaths, the glorious appointed times, his righteous testimonies, his true ways, and the desires of his will, which a person shall do and live by them”45 (CD III, 12–16). The Law of Moses was not enough to live by, as 1QS V, 7–10 also makes plain: “Whoever approaches the Council of the Community shall enter the Covenant of God in the presence of all who have freely pledged themselves. He shall undertake by a binding oath to return with all his heart and soul to every commandment of the Law of Moses in accordance with all that has been revealed of it to the sons of Zadok, the Priests, Keepers of the Covenant and Seekers of His will, and to the multitude of the men of their Covenant who together have freely pledged themselves to His truth and to walking in

42 He is supported in this by Jan Willem van Henten, “Moses as Heavenly Messenger in Assumptio Mosis 10:2 and Qumran Passages,” JJS 54 (2003): 216–27 (226–27). 43 Furthermore the close textual analysis carried out by Émile Puech also clarifies the text along the lines of Zimmermann: for Puech in 4Q377 Moses is compared with an angel, but the designations assigned him are indicative of his human status: Émile Puech, “Le fragment 2 de 4Q377, Pentateuque Apocryphe B: L’exaltation de Moïse,” RevQ 21 (2003–2004): 469–75. 44 In addition there is the need to consider the wide-ranging debates about which laws were mediated by Moses and which were heard by the people directly, apart from Moses’ mediation; see the enlightening study on this by Steven D. Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric be Disentangled?” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman and J. H. Newman; JSJSup 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 399–422. 45 Trans. Joseph M. Baumgarten and Daniel R. Schwartz, “Damascus Document (CD),” in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations: vol. 2, Damascus Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 17.

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the ways of His delight.”46 Thus the Law of Moses by itself requires appropriate priestly elucidation, interpretation which itself has also been revealed. To some extent, then, Moses and his Law were compromised from the outset; there is the need for an Interpreter of the Law (dwrš htwrh), whether the Teacher of Righteousness or another.47 Third, the large number of reworkings of the Law, from Jubilees and the Temple Scroll to a range of pentateuchal paraphrases, some of which could claim great authority, all indicate that there was a need to rewrite the Law in various ways for its contemporary appropriation. This was not done in the form of explicit commentary, but through presenting new versions of the Law.48 Perhaps an ongoing sense of being in the wilderness, even if only spiritually, stimulated this literary activity as the movement perceived itself to be the locus for ongoing revelation.49 Whatever the case, if Deuteronomy itself could be understood as pointing away from Sinai, then the other Sinaitic compositions in the Qumran library can also be seen as qualifying the status of both Moses and the specific revelation entrusted to him. Sinai is relativized. C. The celebration of Shavuot and the priestly sublimation of Sinai The publication of the cave 4 Damascus Document manuscripts has made it clear that the community gathered in the third month to initiate new members and re-enact the Deuteronomic blessings and curses.50 This tradition concerning the Feast of Shavuot as the festival associated with the giving of the Law at Sinai seems to depend on Jub. 6:17: “Therefore, it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets that they should observe the feast of Shebuot in this month, once per year, in order to renew the covenant in all (respects), year by year.”51 There has been some debate whether the date given in Exod 19:1, “on the third new 46 Trans. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin Classics; London: Penguin Books, revised edition 2004), 104. 47 See CD VII, 18 = 4Q266 3 III, 19; 4Q159 5, 6; 4Q174 1–2 I, 11; 4Q177 10–11, 5; also 1QS VI, 6. 48 Steven Fraade, “Looking for Narrative Midrash at Qumran,” 59, suggests the implied use of Exod 19:10–12 in 11QTa 45:7–12 and 1QSa 1:25–27 set up the covenantal community as a perpetual Mount Sinai. For a discussion of the role of scribalism in this continued rewriting of Mosaic law, see Eva Mroczek, “Moses, David and Scribal Revelation: Preservation and Renewal in Second Temple Jewish Textual Traditions,” 91–115 in this volume. 49 See Hindy Najman, “Towards a Study of the Uses of the Concept of Wilderness in Ancient Judaism,” DSD 13 (2006): 98–113 (109–13). 50 This is apparent in 4Q266 11, 17–18 // 4Q270 7 II, 11–12. 51 Wintermute, OTP 2.67 n. f., comments that he attempts to keep the spelling of Shebuot as that in order to allow for the modern reader to recognize that the author

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moon,” does not really mark “the beginning of a three-day period of communal purification before the Sinaitic covenant and it may be that the expulsion ceremony described here [4Q266 11, 17] was similarly intended to precede Pentecost.”52 As we have already noted in The Words of the Luminaries (4Q504) 3 II, 13, in the prayer for the fourth day of the week, God is addressed as sanctified in his glory and, in a somewhat fragmentary section, the text recalls the covenant made by God “with us” on Horeb. It is thus clear from that text and from the communal purification and initiation ceremony that Sinai/Horeb played a part in the liturgical life of the community that collected the library together at Qumran.53 Indeed it seems that it was the cultic life of the movement that contributed significantly to enabling them to survive the journey between Sinai and Jerusalem. On the one hand Sinai could be liturgically recalled without the need for a pilgrimage there,54 and on the other hand Jerusalem could be anticipated. The cultic service and its prayers could thus enshrine the past key moments of significance such as the giving of the Law at Sinai, the present experiences of the community in which the ongoing significance of such events could be made explicit, and the future aspirations which were explicitly directed towards Jerusalem. Both recollection and anticipation were dealt with in some measure through the conviction that worship in the community involved participation in the priestly activities of the angels.55 Concern with the place and function of angels in the scrolls found at Qumran has been of Jubilees was probably aware of the play on words between “weeks” and “oaths.” Isaac is born at the time of Shavuot: Jub. 15:21; 16:13. 52 Jospeh M. Baumgraten, Qumran Cave 4.XIII: The Damascus Document (4Q266–273) (DJD XVIII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 78. 53 This is argued in detail by James C. VanderKam, “Sinai Revisited,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. M. Henze; Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 44–60 (48–51); to the texts already cited VanderKam adds 4Q275 which seem to refer to some kind of communal ceremony and 4Q320 4 III, 1–5 and 4Q321 2 II, 4–5 which show that Shavuot was observed on the fifteenth of the third month. VanderKam’s attention to Sinai should not be read as if the Sinai event was the sole provider of terminology for the community’s selfunderstanding and self-description. On Shavuot and Sinai in worship contexts in the Qumran community, see now Judith Newman’s essay in this volume, “Priestly Prophets at Qumran: Summoning Sinai Through the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” 29–72. 54 The ceremony of blessings and curses in Deuteronomy is not interpreted as a past historical event but used as a model for the community’s annual ceremony in which the priests have a dominant role, unlike in Deuteronomy: see Fraade, “Looking for Narrative Midrash at Qumran,” 51. 55 With a different purpose in mind I have discussed some aspects of some of the following remarks about communion with angels in George J. Brooke, “Men and Women as Angels in Joseph and Aseneth,” JSP 14 (2005): 159–77.

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a matter of concern almost from the outset.56 The topic has been of ongoing interest,57 promoted not least by the complete publication in 1985 of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.58 In the cycle of the first quarter of the year Songs 11 and 12 would fall on either side of Shavuot, which might then be seen as forming the backdrop to the climax of the Songs at the moment of access to the divine throne room.59 As Devorah Dimant has pointed out, the Qumran “community aimed at creating on earth a replica of the heavenly world.”60 Point by point Dimant has shown that life in the priestly community was an imitation of the functions of the leading angels.61 Dimant’s work has been taken one step further by Björn Frennesson who has suggested that rather than the angels being involved by way of analogy, it seems as if there was such a thing as communion with the angels.62 It is clear that God’s presence with the community on earth was thought of as an angelic presence; for Frennesson it is also possible that the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice constitute an example of a liturgical text-cycle that in fact makes liturgical communion happen, “joining together heaven and earth through the very performance of ‘a concrete liturgical act’.”63 C. Fletcher-Louis takes a step further, and probably a step too far, by attempting to describe not just communion but angelomorphism in the Dead Sea Scrolls.64 Fletcher-Louis’ most 56 See, e.g., Jospeh A. Fitzmyer, “A Feature of Qumran Angelology and the Angels of 1 Cor 11:10,” NTS 4 (1957–58): 48–58; Dominique Barthélemy, “Le sainteté selon la communauté de Qumrân et selon l’Évangile,” in La secte de Qumrân et les origines du Christianisme (ed. J. van der Ploeg; RechBib, 4; Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959), 203–16. 57 See, e.g., Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchireša{ (CBQMS, 10; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981). 58 Carol A. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (HSS 27; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985). 59 See the brief comments by Russell C. D. Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community (STDJ 60; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 142. 60 Devorah Dimant, “Men as Angels: The Self-Image of the Qumran Community,” in Religion and Politics in the Ancient Near East (ed. A. Berlin; Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture; Bethesda, MD: University Press of Maryland, 1996), 93–103 (101). 61 A key detail in Dimant’s conclusion is that the community seems to have lived its own version of Mal. 2.7, the only scriptural text to describe the priest as mlxk (‘angel/ messenger’): “Men as Angels,” 103. 62 Björn Frennesson, “In a Common Rejoicing”: Liturgical Communion with Angels in Qumran (Studia Semitica Upsaliensia 14; Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1999). 63 Frennesson, “In a Common Rejoicing”, 116. 64 Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam; some of his ideas are also worked out in his studies “Ascent to Heaven and the Embodiment of Heaven: a Revisionist Reading of the

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valuable contribution may well rest in the way that he develops a high doctrine of the priesthood, arguing that the priestly leadership of the Qumran community were envisaged in angelic terms. For him the best example of such a text is 1QSb IV, 24–26: May you be as an Angel of the Presence in the Abode of Holiness to the glory of the God of [ hosts] . . . May you attend upon the service in the Temple of the Kingdom and decree destiny in company with the Angels of the Presence, in common council [with the Holy Ones] for everlasting ages and time without end; for [all] His judgements are [truth]! May He make you holy among His people, and an [eternal] light [to illumine] the world with knowledge and to enlighten the face of the Congregation [with wisdom]! [May He] consecrate you to the Holy of Holies! For [you are made] holy for Him and you shall glorify His name and His holiness . . .65

This is certainly addressed to priests, probably to a high priest. Thus, somebody writing at the beginning of the first century B.C.E. could readily conceive of the high priest as functioning like the Angel of the Presence. In the way in which the blessing continues by describing the priestly functions as enlightening the congregation, it is not inappropriate to envisage that this high priest is supposed to manifest the glory of God (like Moses on Sinai). This priest does not seem to be transformed into an angel, but likened to one in a functional analogy.66 What seems to have happened at Qumran in some measure is that the cultic celebration of initiation and the ongoing experience of the divine and angelic in the worship of the community sublimated the experience of alienation that absence from Jerusalem imposed. The route back to Jerusalem was one of observing the Law as rightly presented and interpreted, but also included right worship in the here and now. The place of Jerusalem in that was mixed: on the one hand yearning for return to it could be expressed through singing Jerusalem’s praise (as in the Apostrophe to Zion and 1QM XII, 12–15), whilst on the other the

Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” SBLSP (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998): 367–99; and “Some Reflections on Angelomorphic Humanity Texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 7 (2000): 292–312 (that issue of Dead Sea Discoveries is devoted to the theme of angels and demons in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other early Jewish literature). 65 Trans. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 389. 66 Functional similarity should not slip into ontological sameness.

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pollution of the sanctuary could be addressed through laments such as in Apocryphal Lamentations A (4Q179).67 4. Conclusion Sinai and the giving of the Law there are intriguingly handled in the memory, self-understanding and practices of the community responsible for the Qumran library. The community seems to live out its identity in an intermediate state, emerging from exile, but not yet at home in Jerusalem, in the promised land, but not yet out of the wilderness; furthermore, the community’s worship is an expression of being in communion with the angels in heavenly praise, but yet away from the holy of holies. In this in-between state the narrative of Sinai provides models for some aspects of community organisation,68 as in its militaristic but priestly self-consciousness or its self-understanding as community, and becomes a touchstone or starting point for both justifying ongoing revelation and understanding how it should be variously presented. Three matters become apparent. First, the giving of the Law, particularly as rehearsed in the book of Deuteronomy, points beyond Sinai to the place where the divine name chooses to dwell. Deuteronomy also projects a point of view that permits the re-presentation, the rewriting of Sinaitic revelation. As the sectarian and non-sectarian compositions in the Qumran library now show, this point of view was widely taken up, not least in priestly circles. Second, with the place of revelation somewhat in the background, the figure of Moses and the revelation given to him is put in the foreground. Moses and the Law are authoritative reference points and yet are inadequate in themselves; for those who put together the Qumran library the Law requires correct priestly interpretation and as a result much of that is directed against “profanation of the Temple” (CD IV, 18) and has an orientation towards Jerusalem, as in the Temple Scroll and MMT. Third, the worship experience 67 See Najman, “Towards a Study of the Uses of the Concept of Wilderness in Ancient Judaism,” 101–3. Philip S. Alexander has even suggested that some members of the Qumran community could have perceived of themselves as a group of “Mourners for Zion.” 68 As VanderKam, “Sinai Revisited,” has argued for the recollection of Sinai at the annual ceremony of covenant renewal, in the use of the term yahad (possibly based on Exod 19:8), in the practice of the sharing of goods (based on Deut 6:5), and in the male only perspective (Exod 19:3, 15). Intriguingly VanderKam makes nothing of the “priestly kingdom” of Exod 19:6.

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of the priestly community becomes a substitute for a return to Sinai; it is in worship that there can be renewed commitment to the covenant and a sense of the presence of divine glory. With suitable lament and confession, the Law can be observed in such a way as to qualify the participants in such worship for staffing the eschatological temple. The priestly communities behind the compositions in the Qumran library are on the move. They have their backs to Sinai and are looking forward to Jerusalem. And he said to the angel of the presence, “Write for Moses from the first creation until my sanctuary is built in their midst forever and ever. And the Lord will appear in the sight of all. And everyone will know that I am the God of Israel and the father of all the children of Jacob and king upon Mount Zion forever and ever. And Zion and Jerusalem will be holy” ( Jub. 1:27–28).

MOSES, DAVID AND SCRIBAL REVELATION: PRESERVATION AND RENEWAL IN SECOND TEMPLE JEWISH TEXTUAL TRADITIONS* Eva Mroczek University of Toronto, Canada And he gave all his books and his fathers’ books to Levi, his son, so that he might preserve and renew them for his sons until this day. Jubilees 45:151 The continuous process of remaining open and accepting of what may reveal itself through hand and heart on a crafted page is the closest I have ever come to God. Donald Jackson, Artistic Director, St. John’s Bible Project, Monmouth, Wales2

In second temple Judaism, particularly in the texts found at Qumran, the revelatory event at Sinai is recalled again and again through new texts that expand and rework materials connected with Moses and the Law.3 But to speak of a “Mosaic” textual tradition raises a host of

* I would like to thank the organizers of the “Giving the Torah at Sinai” conference, Professors George Brooke, Hindy Najman, and Loren Stuckenbruck, for inviting my paper to the volume. This revised version has benefited immeasurably from the suggestions of Profs George Brooke and James Kugel. I also thank the members of the Mullins Seminar, led by Prof. Jennifer Harris, St. Michael’s College, for their comments and support. Above all I thank my teacher, Prof. Hindy Najman, who has challenged and guided me with extraordinary generosity since the inception of this project. 1 Translations from the Book of Jubilees are by O. Wintermute, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols; ed. J. H. Charlesworth; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985). 2 The St. John’s Bible Project seeks to revive the premodern process of creating a biblical manuscript. The quote from Donald Jackson is from www.stjohnsbible.org. See C. Calderhead, Illuminating the Word: the Making of the Saint John’s Bible (Collegeville, MN: Saint John’s Bible, 2005). 3 Such texts include multiform editions of the Pentateuch and 4QReworked Pentateuch, but also Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, which link themselves back to Sinai. The “Pseudo-Moses” texts could also be counted here. See the discussion by J. Strugnell in “Moses-Pseudepigrapha at Qumran: 4Q375, 4Q376, and Similar Works,” in Archeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin ( JSOPSS 8, JSOT/ASOR Monographs 2; ed. J. H. Charlesworth; Sheffield: JSOT,

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questions about scriptural status and scribal self-understanding. If a text was attributed to a great mediatory figure and an ancient revelatory event, how could second temple scribes allow themselves to rearrange, rework or rewrite this text?4 How did these scribes understand the link between the ancient figure and the texts in front of them—and how did they conceive of their own role in the transmission and development of their textual heritage? Are we not forced to make distinctions between what would have been understood as a “scriptural” Mosaic text, and “secondary” rewritings and reworkings by later scribes—distinctions that the texts themselves do not make?5

1990), 221–56, and S. White Crawford, “The ‘Rewritten’ Bible at Qumran: A Look at Three Texts,” ErIsr 26 (1999): 1–8. 4 The practice and function of pseudonymous attribution has been the subject of valuable recent studies. See e.g. M. J. Bernstein, “Pseudepigraphy in the Qumran Scrolls: Categories and Functions,” in Pseudepigraphic Perspectives: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (eds E. G. Chazon and M. E. Stone; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1–26, J. J. Collins, “Pseudepigraphy and Group Formation in Second Temple Judaism,” Pseudepigraphic Perspectives, 43–58; D. Dimant, “Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha at Qumran,” DSD 1 (1994): 151–59; J. A. Sanders, “Introduction: Why the Pseudepigrapha?” in Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation (eds J. H. Charlesworth and C. A. Evans; JSOPSS 14, SSEJC 2; Sheffield: JSOT, 1993), 13–19; M. E. Stone, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Pseudepigrapha,” DSD 3 (1996): 270–95. H. Najman has written extensively on the practice of pseudepigraphy; see e.g. Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2003); “Torah of Moses: Pseudonymous Attribution in Second Temple Writings,” in The Interpretation of Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity: Studies in Language and Tradition (ed. C. A. Evans; JSPSup 33; SSEJC 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 202–16; and most recently, “How Should We Contextualize Pseudepigrapha? Imitation and Emulation in 4Ezra,” Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez (eds A. Hilhorst, E. Puech, and E. J. C. Tigchelaar; JSJSup 122; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 529–36. 5 This is the complex question of how to categorize those texts that are usually called “rewritten Bible” in the second temple period. A clear-cut distinction between “biblical” and “non-biblical” in this era has been challenged by many scholars who have sought to find other terminology and ways of classifying both “rewritten Bible” and pseudepigrapha. See J. Barton’s early argument against using canonical terminology in Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986), esp. 80. For a recent statement on the issue see R. A. Kraft, “Para-mania: Before, Beside and Beyond Biblical Studies,” JBL 126 (2007): 5–27. See also J. C. VanderKam, “Authoritative Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 5/3 (1998): 382–402; and VanderKam, “Questions of Canon Viewed Through the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Canon Debate (eds L. M. McDonald and J. A. Sanders; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 91–109. On the concept of “rewritten Bible” see M. J. Bernstein, “ ‘Rewritten Bible’: A Generic Category Which Has Outlived its Usefulness?” Textus 22 (2005): 169–96; G. J. Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 777–80; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, “The Bible Rewritten and Expanded,” Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (ed. M. E. Stone; CRINT 2/2; Assen/Philadelphia: Van Gorcum/Fortress, 1984), 89–156;

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In this paper I address the question of the relationship between the mediatory figure, the second temple scribe, and the developing text. I propose that the expansion of Mosaic legal traditions can be illuminated by first considering another tradition—psalm collections linked to David, which also underwent growth, change and development.6 They pose similar questions, although on a smaller scale, about how a text might be linked to an ancient figure but remain fluid and tolerant of growth. The “Davidic” and the “Mosaic”—liturgy and law—are linked traditions that undergo analogous development in the second temple period, as both legal and liturgical practices evolve.7 David and Moses themselves also have analogous functions: they are not only responsible for revealed texts, but also serve as ethical models whose pious example continued to inspire future communities. While I consider their role in the broad context of ancient Judaism, I pay special attention to what the figures of Moses and David, the lawgiver and the psalmist, might have meant at Qumran, in a community that strived for perfect adherence to the Torah and for perfect prayer and liturgy, and who preserved most of the expanded “Davidic” and “Mosaic” texts known to us. The production of these texts, I argue, can be understood by thinking of David and Moses as analogous ideal figures who inspire continuous text production through the example of their own scribal activity. Rather than speaking of authorial attribution, the usual way of understanding the link between these figures and their texts, I would like to reconsider the complete identity and function of these mediatory figures by thinking of them as ideal, divinely inspired scribes of liturgy and law. For the second temple period, they are not “authors,” but scribal channels

see also a recent critique of the term by H. Najman, “Reconsidering Jubilees: Prophecy and Exemplarity,” presented at the Fourth International Enoch Conference, “Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees,” 8–13 July, 2007 (forthcoming). 6 See scholarship on the fluid nature of the Psalter and the controversy about the scriptural status of the Great Psalms Scroll from Qumran, summarized with extensive bibliography in P. W. Flint, “Chapter 9: True Psalter or Secondary Collection?,” The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms (STDJ 17; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 202–27, and n. 36 below. 7 For the link between David and Moses, see work on the Book of Chronicles, which explicitly links the two as authoritative figures: S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and its Place in Biblical Thought (trans. A. Barber; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1989), 236-8; S. J. DeVries, “Moses and David as Cult Founders in Chronicles,” JBL 107/4 (1988): 619–39. For the interplay between Sinai traditions and liturgy, see the contributions of George Brooke and Judith Newman to this volume.

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of tradition who collect, arrange and transmit revelation in a perfect and divinely inspired way. Their scribal work is part of their identity as exemplars of piety. Through their intertwined textual and ethical legacy, David and Moses serve as scribal types: models for emulation by actual scribes, who continue the chain of transmission through their own inspired work of collecting, arranging and re-presenting texts for new communities.8 Thus, I offer the concept of the ideal, inspired scribe as a way of thinking about both the ancient mediatory figure, and the actual second temple scribe. On this model, the ancient figure and the working scribe9 occupy successive links on the same chain of revelatory transmission. Reconsidering the revelatory power of scribalism—present both at Sinai and at Qumran—can provide one framework for thinking about continuous, developing textual traditions that have room both for the preservation of and for the dynamic renewal of revealed material. They do not allow themselves to fall into the separate categories of “scriptural” and “secondary,” but stand in a continuous chain of scribal transmission that stretches back to the paradigmatic moments and recipients of revelation. Perhaps this model relativizes Sinai, but it also elevates the work of ordinary scribes, and explains how new scripture could develop long after the great mediatory figures were gone. The argument will be presented in three parts: 1. The Multivalent Character of the Ideal Scribe and the Power of Scribalism; 2. David and Moses as Ideal Scribes: Ethical Exemplarity and Inspired Textualization; and 3. David and Moses as Scribes; Scribes as David and Moses.

8 I am drawing on the work of H. Najman in Seconding Sinai and more recent articles on the concept of discourse tied to an exemplary founder as a way of understanding pseudepigraphy, as well as earlier studies, such as the work of D. S. Russell, who argued for an identification between a writer and his ancient pseudepigraphic “counterpart” (see The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic [ Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964], 132–39). However, I am making a different point about the way the link between the founder and the text was envisioned—not authorial attribution, but scribal transmission. For another engagement with this concept, see Zuleika Rodgers, “Josephus” ‘Theokratia’ and Mosaic Discourse,” 129–47 in this volume. 9 Certainly, not all scribes would fit this description; I am thinking particularly of those scribes who were responsible for transmitting and reworking scriptural texts. For the diverse kinds of scribes active in the second temple period, including those who were experts in sacred text, see C. Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second Temple Period ( JSOTSup 291; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).

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1. The Multivalent Character of the Ideal Scribe and the Power of Scribalism First, I would like to explain how I understand the idea of the scribe and scribal activity in the second temple period.10 The ideal scribe is a multi-faceted figure. First, he is involved with textualizing activity, but neither as an “author” nor as a “mere copyist”: the scribe is a textualizer, collector, arranger and transmitter of revealed traditions, but in this he is an exalted, divinely inspired figure who updates and re-presents written revelation for his time. Second, the identity of the scribe extends beyond his text-related activities: he is a model of piety whose writing is one aspect of his exemplary life. Two sets of textual evidence will illuminate the way second temple Jews understood the scribe: 1) the Wisdom tradition, represented here by Ben Sira and Qohelet, and 2) the Book of Jubilees. The Scribe in the Wisdom Tradition In Ben Sira, the scribe is elevated over all other professions (Sir 39:1–8):11 1 [The scribe] seeks out (‫ )ידרש‬the wisdom of all the ancients, and is concerned with prophecies; 2 he preserves (‫ )ישמר‬the sayings of the famous, and enters into the subtleties of parables. ...

10 I am primarily concerned with the way scribalism was imagined and idealized. For a study of real scribes and the diverse scribal profession in ancient Jewish society, see Schams, Jewish Scribes. See also A. Demsky, “Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth and Rabbinic Period,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. M. J. Mulder; CRINT 2.1; Assen: Van Gorcum and Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), 2–20; M. D. Goodman, “Texts, Scribes and Power in Roman Judaea,” Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (eds A. K. Bowman and G. Woolf; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 99–108; A. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society: A Sociological Approach (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), esp. 241–76. For the role of scribes in transmitting and transforming textual traditions, see M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), esp. 23–78, and “From Scribalism to Rabbinism: Perspectives on the Emergence of Classical Judaism,” The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 64–78. See also D. M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), and K. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). On scribal practices, see esp. E. Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004). 11 Translations are my own, based on the Hebrew text of Ben Sira in M. Segal, Sefer Ben-Sira ha-shalem ( Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1997).

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eva mroczek 5 He sets his heart on rising early to petition the Most High. He opens his mouth in prayer and asks forgiveness for his sins. 6 If God Most High is willing, he will be filled with the spirit of understanding; he will pour forth words of wisdom and give thanks to the Lord in prayer. 7 He [God] will direct his counsel and knowledge, as he meditates on his mysteries. 8 He will pour forth wise teaching, and will glory in the Law of the Lord.

Ben Sira’s text of praise shows the scribe as a channel for preserving and transmitting sacred traditions and as a model of a repentant, prayerful, and pious life. These characteristics are inextricably linked in the divinely inspired person of the ideal scribe, whom God “directs” (‫ )יכין‬and fills with the “spirit of understanding” (‫)רוח בינה‬. Let us examine the first aspect of the scribal identity: the scribe as transmitter of traditions. He seeks (‫)ידרש‬, preserves (‫)ישמר‬, and pours forth (‫ )יביע‬the wisdom of the ancients, all with the help of divine inspiration.12 But what exactly does it mean to “preserve the sayings of the famous” and “pour forth words of wisdom”? As James Kugel shows in his article, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” the activity of the sage was collecting units of wisdom—which were already “out there,” not created by the sage himself—and handing them down to posterity.13 Wisdom is not the abstract capacity for understanding, but a body of knowledge about a divine system. It needs to be gathered bit by bit, arranged in a usable way, and passed down as collections of meshalim. The anthological enterprise of wisdom is concerned with the quantity of things known; hence the import of the staggering number of sayings that Solomon knew (1 Kgs 5:12). The scribe/sage is an anthologist, indeed, like Ben Sira himself, who has collected and transmitted the wisdom of his age. The book of Qohelet provides another witness to how the craft of the scribe/sage was understood. In the epilogue, we read (Qoh 12:9–12): 12 Schams has challenged the tendency automatically to equate the scribe with the sage, which were overlapping, but not identical occupations in Jewish society (see Jewish Scribes, 101); here, however, I am treating them as part of one imagined, idealized type. 13 J. L. Kugel, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” Prooftexts 17 (1997): 9–32, esp. 9, 18, 30; reprinted in The Anthology in Jewish Literature (ed. D. Stern; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 32–52. See also the introduction to this volume by D. Stern, who emphasizes the creative and influential role of the scribe, editor, and anthologist in preserving, transmitting and creating tradition.

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9 Besides being wise, Qohelet also taught the people knowledge, and weighed and studied and arranged many proverbs (‫ואזן וחקר תקן משלים‬ ‫)הרבה‬. 10 Qohelet sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth plainly. 11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are those that are composed in collections (‫ ;)בעלי אספות‬they are given by one shepherd. 12 Beyond these, my son, beware. Of making many books there is no end (‫)עשות ספרים הרבה אין קץ‬.14

The ‫( חכם‬sage) is occupied with arranging (‫ )תקן‬texts, writing down and collecting many things together in books,15 and transmitting their content through teaching. Again, the wise scribe is a prolific anthologist (one of the ‫)?בעלי אספות‬: an organizer and transmitter of traditions for those who will come after him.16 In the “anthological” wisdom tradition, then, the scribe is neither an author nor a copyist: rather, he is an inspired, learned collector and teacher who both preserves and renews what has been revealed. This concern with the prolific collection and presentation of traditions is inextricable from his identity as an ideal figure, who exemplifies repentance and piety and strives to leave a legacy beyond his own life. Scribal Activity in Jubilees Jubilees retrojects this ideal onto the patriarchs: ancient heroes are entrusted with concrete scribal tasks, and scribal activity is made present at the distant times and places of divine revelation.17 The heroes of

All biblical translations are freely adapted from the nrsv. This is Kugel’s understanding of ‫ עשות ספרים‬as an anthological, not authorial, enterprise. See “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” 31 n. 4; Kugel translates Qoh 12:12: “There is no end to the collecting of books, and much study wearies a person.” 16 See B. G. Wright, “From Generation to Generation: The Sage as Father in Early Jewish Literature,” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb (eds C. Hempel and J. M. Lieu; JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 309–32. 17 For a discussion of the power of writing in Jubilees, see H. Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999): 379–410, and, on the revelatory power of writing in general, see Najman, “The Symbolic Significance of Writing in Ancient Judaism,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (eds H. Najman and J. H. Newman; JSJSup 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 139–73. M. H. Floyd argues for the longstanding connection between scribalism and revelatory/prophetic experience in “ ‘Write the Revelation!’ (Hab. 2:2),” in Writing and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (eds E. Ben Zvi and M. H. Floyd; Atlanta: SBL, 2000), 103–43. See also E. F. Davis, Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and the Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel’s Prophecy (BLS 21; JSOTSup 78; Sheffield: Almond, 1989); Fishbane, “From Scribalism to Rabbinism,” esp. 66–67; and J. L. Kugel, “Early Interpretation: The Common Background of Late Forms 14 15

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Jubilees are examplars of piety and recipients of revelation, which they must write again and faithfully transmit, from patriarch to patriarch, and down to future generations.18 This begins with the first scribe, Enoch ( Jub. 4:17–19): [Enoch] was the first who learned writing and knowledge and wisdom, from (among) the sons of men, from (among) those who were born upon earth. And who wrote in a book the signs of the heaven according to the order of their months, so that the sons of man might know the (appointed) times of the years according to their order, with respect to each of their months. This one was the first (who) wrote a testimony and testified to the children of men throughout the generations of the earth. And their weeks according to jubilees he recounted; and the days of the years he made known. And the months he set in order, and the Sabbaths of the years he recounted, just as we made it known to him.

As in Ben Sira, scribal activity is connected with knowledge and wisdom. Enoch was a great recipient of divine revelation, and here, as well as in 1 Enoch,19 he is entrusted with textualizing this revelation in a book. Enoch transcribes the heavenly tablets, writes down what the angels tell him, and “recounts” and “sets in order” calendrical matters; like the sage of the Wisdom tradition, his scribal tasks include writing down, arranging, and handing on revelation. Other figures act as scribes in different ways. Abraham “transcribed” his father’s Hebrew books ( Jub. 12:27); even “mere transcription” is performed by great exemplary figures, and is crucially important for posterity, as it revives revelation written in the holy tongue. For another patriarch, Jacob, the scribal commission is connected to a moment of divine revelation at Bethel, which includes an encounter with the

of Biblical Exegesis,” in Early Biblical Interpretation (LEC 3; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 11–106. 18 My juxtaposition of Ben Sira and Jubilees on transmitting written tradition by ideal figures down the generations draws on the observations of B. G. Wright in “Jubilees, Sirach and Sapiential Tradition,” presented at the Fourth International Enoch Conference, “Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees,” 8–13 July, 2007 (forthcoming). 19 Enoch is a wise scribe and copyist in the Book of Watchers (see 1 Enoch 12:3–4, 13:3–7, 15:1), Book of Giants (see 4QEnGiantsa 8:1–4, ii.14–15), and the Epistle of Enoch (see 1 Enoch 92:1); these traditions cannot be addressed in detail here. See Schams, Jewish Scribes, 90–98. P. Mandel, however, has proposed an alternative view of the Aramaic designation “scribe” in some passages in the Enochic corpus as a title unconnected with books or writing, in “When a Scribe Is Not a Scribe: A Second Look at the Enochic Scribal Traditions,” presented at the Tenth Annual International Orion Symposium, “New Perspectives on Old Texts,” Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 10 January, 2005. I thank Prof. James Kugel for this reference.

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heavenly tablets where Israel’s future is inscribed. After his vision ( Jub. 32), he is told to write down everything as he has “seen and read it.” When he protests that he will not remember, he is given assurance of divine help during his textualizing work ( Jub. 32:26): [God] said to him, “I will cause you to remember everything.” And he went up from him and he woke up from his sleep and he recalled everything that he had read and seen and he wrote down all of the matters which he had read and seen.

Here again, revelation happens through an ideal figure’s encounter with a written text, a text that must be written again (with divine aid) and passed down. The textual transmission of revelation continues with Jacob’s progeny ( Jub. 45:16): And [ Jacob] gave all of his books and his father’s books to Levi, his son, so that he might preserve them and renew them for his sons until this day.

The commission of Levi shows that the “preservation and renewal” of written revelation must continuously happen anew. It is not enough that there are “original” heavenly tablets, or that Enoch has already written his book, or that there are books written down by Abraham and Jacob; no, the scribal work of “preserving and renewing” is a chain of revelatory acts repeated in every generation by divinely favoured exemplars of piety who “pour out teaching like prophecy, and leave it for all future generations” (Sir. 24:33). Indeed, in Jubilees, ‫עשות ספרים הרבה אין קץ‬, “to making many books there is no end” (Qoh. 12:12). The Power of Scribalism In Jubilees as in Ben Sira, then, scribal activity is powerful and multivalent. The enthronement of the scribe as an ideal, divinely inspired figure, and the elevation of scribal activity to Sinai, shows that a textcentred tradition does not imply that revelation has ceased.20 Rather, transcribing, collecting, and presenting revelation is itself revelatory, and is not done by just anyone—but by ideal scribes or holy patriarchs who lead righteous lives, receive divine guidance or angelic discourse, and leave a legacy for the future.

20

See n. 17.

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In all these texts, the scribe’s textual activities are embedded in his broader ethical identity: his importance flows out beyond the texts he copies or composes. Although Enoch, for instance, performs scribal tasks, this is part and parcel of his identity as a righteous divine mediator; and although Ben Sira’s scribe collects and re-presents revealed wisdom, this activity is inextricable from his life of prayer and repentance. Thus, the legacy of the ideal scribe is not only a written text, but also an exemplary life. Below, I will try to show how this multifaceted scribal exemplarity functions in the continuing expansion of traditions linked with David and Moses. 2. David and Moses as Ideal Scribes: Ethical Exemplarity and Inspired Textualization I would like to see the figures of David and Moses in light of the concept of this ideal scribe, whose pious example and textual legacy leave a model for future scribes to follow. First, I would like to outline briefly how the exemplary lives of these figures continued to inspire second temple communities, particularly the Qumran ya ad. Both Moses and David are called “man of God,” ‫ איש אלהים‬.21 David is a “man of the pious ones (‫”)איש חסידים‬22 whose “deeds (‫ )מעשי דויד‬were praised”;23 and Moses is an exalted figure,24 “equal in glory to the holy ones” (Sir 45:2). Like Ben Sira’s pious scribe, both are connected to repentance and 21

See e.g. Deut 33:1, where this prophetic title is applied to Moses. David is an

‫ איש האלהים‬in 2 Chr 8:14.

22 4QMMT e frag. 14 II, 1; see E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4.V: Miq at Ma aśe ha–Torah (DJD X; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) 23 CD-A V, 5; see J.M. Baumgarten, Qumran Cave 4.XIII: The Damascus Document [4Q266–273] (DJD XVIII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). On David as exemplar at Qumran, see e.g. C. A. Evans, “David in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran Fifty Years After (eds S. E. Porter and C. A. Evans; JSPS 26; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 183–97, and C. Coulot, “David à Qumrân,” in Figures de David à Travers la Bible (eds L. Desrousseaux and J. Vermelyen; Paris: Cerf, 1999), 315–43. 24 See G. J. Brooke’s contribution to this volume. See also J. E. Bowley, “Moses in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Living in the Shadow of God’s Anointed,” in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation (ed. P. W. Flint: Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 159–81. C. H. T. Fletcher-Louis has argued for the divinization of Moses at Qumran in All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill, 2002) 137; the suggestion of a divine Moses is not thoroughly convincing, although he is endowed with angelic characteristics. (Cf. Sir 45:2. See also Ap. Zeph. 9:4–5, where David appears with Moses, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as a “friend” of the angels; OTP, 514.)

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atonement. David becomes an unlikely ethical model, a paradigmatic forgiven sinner whose prayer was heard, and is invoked as such in the Damascus Document and 4QMMT.25 While David atones for his own failings, Moses takes on the sins of his own people (Exod 30:30–32);26 his atoning work is invoked in a penitential prayer from the Qumran collection The Words of the Luminaries.27 For a community whose penitential life seems to have been so rich, both of these figures must have served as inspiring models for how to pray, atone for sin, and achieve angel-like perfection. David and Moses are also remembered for the legacy they left for the future, at the cost of their own fulfillment. David is denied the Temple, while Moses is denied the land, although they are the ones who do the preparatory work in anticipation of these promises. David prepares the money, materials and personnel for the Temple “in [his] poverty” (‫)בעניי‬, by “denying [him]self ”28 (1 Chr 22:14), and establishes the liturgy for a Temple service he will never see (Sir 47:9–10).29 Moses

CD-A V, 5–6: “And David’s deeds (‫ )מעשי דויד‬were praised, except for Uriah’s blood, 6 and God forgave him those.” 4QMMT e frag. 14 II, 1–2: “1 [forgiv]en (their) sins. Remember David, who was a man of the pious ones (‫)איש חסדים‬, [and] he, too, 2 [was] freed from the many afflictions and was forgiven.” Scrolls translations adapted from F. García Martínez and E. J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols; Leiden: Brill and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000). 26 But cf. David’s utterance in 2 Sam 24: 17//1 Chr 21:17. The rabbinic tradition in the Mekhilta de R. Ishmael to Exod 12:1 cites this text, presenting David and Moses as figures who atoned for the people by offering to sacrifice themselves. 27 4Q504 1–2 II 7–11: O Lord, act, then, according to yourself, according to your great power, you, who forgave 8 our fathers when they made your mouth bitter. You became angry with them in order to destroy them; but you took pity 9 on them in your love for them, and on account of your covenant, for Moses atoned 10 for their sin (‫כיא‬ ‫)כפר מושה בעד חטאתם‬, and so that they would know your great power and your abundant kindness 11 for everlasting generations. See M. Baillet, Qumrân Grotte 4.III [4Q482–4Q520] (DJD VII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 139 28 The JPS rendering of this expression. David does everything short of actually constructing the building; see Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, 229–30. The tradition of David’s preparing the Temple is also reflected in 4QProphecy of Joshua (4Q522), frag. 2 col. II. 29 9 He established (‫ )תיקן‬music before the altar, and the melody of instruments, 10 He added beauty to the feasts, and set the festivals in order for each year (‫)ויתקן מועדים שנה בשנה‬, 25

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leads his people through the wilderness and gives them the laws by which their new polity will be governed, but is allowed only a glimpse of the promised land before he dies (Deut 34:4). And yet, through this denial, their intimacy with the divine and their status as God’s chosen is not compromised. On the contrary, David’s prohibition from building the temple comes as a direct prophetic oracle,30 and he receives a divinely revealed, written blueprint (‫ )תבנית‬for the Temple architecture and liturgy (1 Chr 28:11–19). Moses is the recipient of revelation par excellence:31 God speaks with him “face to face” (Deut 34:10) and gives him the written Law. When he must stay behind, God performs the intimate act of burying him in the wilderness (Deut 34:6). The experiences of David and Moses are poignant examples for the exiled, Temple-less community of Qumran, who nevertheless claimed divine chosenness and strove to live out Mosaic law and Davidic liturgy as perfectly as possible. But to characterize them as ideal scribes and not merely ideal figures in general, I will now turn to the relationship between Moses and David and their textual legacies, and discuss what it means to speak of “Mosaic law” and “Davidic liturgy” in the second temple period. I propose that Moses and David are inspired scribes who receive, collect, arrange, and transmit law and liturgy. These scribal activities form part of their broader, exemplary ethical identity, just as the work of transmitting traditions is inextricable from the pious life of Ben Sira’s sage. In speaking about a scribal, textualizing relationship between the figure and the text, I am challenging the understanding of David and Moses as authors of the Psalms and the Torah for the second temple period.32 What is at stake in calling them scribes, and not authors? The concept of authorship is an obstacle to understanding the proliferation of new “Mosaic” and “Davidic” texts: if we imagine that Moses and David were believed to be the original authors of a text, then we are forced to draw an artificial distinction between “scriptural” Mosaic or So that when his holy name was praised, justice would ring out before daybreak (Sir 47). 30 The formulation placed in the mouth of David is a prophetic one, ‫ויהי עלי דבר־יהוה לאמר‬ (1 Chr 22:8). 31 For this, see e.g. Ben Sira’s paean to Moses in 45:2–5. 32 For the concern with textualization, rather than authorship, in ancient Judaism, see J. Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 49; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), Chapter 1: “The Scribes of the Hebrew Bible.”

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Davidic texts, and “secondary” scribal reworkings. Understanding David and Moses as scribal channels of tradition helps us envision a fluid, open, expanding scribal tradition through which revelation continues to be transmitted and renewed by actual scribes, who emulate the ideal scribal lives and activities of David and Moses. Thus, second temple scribes not only copied what David and Moses wrote: they copied what Moses and David did, which included transmitting perfect, inspired expressions of liturgy and law. Below, I discuss the way in which David and Moses are ideal scribal figures, who receive, write down, collect, arrange, and transmit revelation, in the second temple Jewish imagination. David the Scribe The first step in characterizing David as a “scribe” is to show that our common concept of an authorial link between David and the Psalms does not resonate with second temple thinking. This claim may be surprising, for the argument that David was believed to be the “author” of the Psalter at the time of Qumran has been made again and again.33 The claim is most often made on the basis of a prose text found near the end of the Great Psalms Scroll, 11QPsalmsa. This collection contains about 50 compositions, including ten non-biblical pieces, arranged differently from the proto-Masoretic text and the other psalms scrolls found at Qumran. The prose text in col. 27 of the scroll reads as follows: 2 And David, son of Jesse, was wise, and luminous like the light of the sun, /and/ a scribe (‫)וסופר‬, 3 and discerning (‫)ונבון‬, and perfect (‫ )ותמים‬in all his paths before God and men. And 4 YHWH gave him a discerning and enlightened (‫ )נבונה‬spirit. And he wrote psalms (‫)ויכתוב תהלים‬: 5 three thousand six hundred; and songs to be sung before the altar over the perpetual 6 offering of every day, for all the days of the year: three hundred

33 See e.g. J. A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 [11QPsa] (DJD IV; Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 63–64, 92; P. W. Flint, Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls, 194, 224; A. Cooper, “The Life and Times of King David According to the Book of Psalms,” in The Poet and the Historian: Essays in Literary and Historical Biblical Criticism (ed. R. E. Friedman; HSS 26; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 117–31; J. L. Kugel, “David the Prophet,” in Poetry and Prophecy: the Beginnings of a Literary Tradition (ed. J. L. Kugel; New York: Cornell University Press, 1991), 45–55, esp. 46, 55; B. Z. Wacholder, “David’s Eschatological Psalter: 11QPsalmsa,” HUCA 59 (1988): 23–72.

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eva mroczek 7 and sixty-four; and for the Sabbath offerings: fifty-two songs; and for the offerings of the first days of 8 the months, and for all the days of the festivals, and for the of Atonement: thirty songs. 9 And all the songs which he spoke were four hundred and forty-six. And songs 10 to perform over the possessed:34 four. The total was four thousand and fifty. 11 All these he spoke through prophecy (‫ )דבר בנבואה‬which had been given to him by the Most High.

This text has been read as the earliest assertion of the belief in Davidic authorship of the Book of Psalms. J. A. Sanders, the original editor, says that the final columns “clearly stake a claim for the Davidic authorship of the Psalter as represented by the scroll, the earliest literary evidence of belief in the Davidic authorship of the Psalter.”35 Sanders’ view that the scroll is a scriptural Psalter has been challenged;36 but his claim that this text is about authorial attribution has been widely accepted.

34 Or, the “intercalary days”; on this understanding of ‫ על הפגועים‬see M. Chyutin, “The Redaction of the Qumranic and the Traditional Book of Psalms as a Calendar,” RevQ 63 (1994): 367–95, 370; see also R. Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (trans. D. Louvish; Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005), 50–51. 35 Sanders, DJD IV, 92. See also Psalms Scroll, 11: “The Psalms Scroll was believed, by its scribe and by those who appreciated it, to have been Davidic in original authorship.” See also Elior, The Three Temples, 50, and scholarship cited in n. 33. 36 See the excellent summary of the debate between Sanders his critics in Flint, Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls, 204–17; see also G. Wilson, “The Qumran Psalms Scroll Reconsidered: Analysis of the Debate,” CBQ 47 (1985): 624–42. 11QPsalmsa has been called everything from a “true scriptural psalter” (Flint, Psalms Scrolls, 227; and see the earlier work of Sanders, “Cave 11 Surprises and the Question of Canon,” McCQ 21 [1968]: 1–15; “The Qumran Psalms Scroll [11QPsa] Reviewed,” in On Language, Culture and Religion: In Honor of Eugene A. Nida [eds M. Black and W. A. Smalley; The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1974], 79–99); a “library copy” (P. Skehan, “Qumran and Old Testament Criticism,” in Qumrân. Sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu [ed. M. Delcor; BETL 46; Paris: Duculot; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1978], 163–82, here 168–69); an “incipient prayer book” (S. Talmon, “Pisqah Bexemsa{ Pasuq and 11QPsa,” Textus 5 [1966] 11–21, here 13; see also M. H. Goshen–Gottstein, “The Psalms Scroll [11QPsa]. A Problem of Canon and Text,” Textus 5 [1966]: 22–33); and an “instruction book for budding levitical choristers” (P. Skehan, “The Divine Name at Qumran, in the Masada Scroll, and in the Septuagint,” BIOSCS 13 [1980]: 14–44, here 42). This dizzying variety of definitions shows that although multiformity is a normal feature of second temple writings, it nevertheless puzzles scholars who feel pressed to define and categorize the texts as “scriptural” or “secondary.” On an analogous problem in the scholarship on a “Mosaic” text, 4QRP, see n. 58.

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The composition has been called a “prose insert,”37 a catalogue or “colophon”38 that stands apart from the liturgical collection and intends to assert that David is the author of the psalms in this very scroll.39 But does the text actually make a claim for Davidic authorship? I would like to propose a different reading: this composition is not a colophon asserting Davidic authorship of the Psalter, this scroll, or any texts in particular; rather, it is a text of praise for David’s exemplary scribal activity and identity. The claim for authorship is fraught with difficulties. First, how can David be considered the “author of the Psalter” when the book of Psalms is still in a state of flux and allows varying arrangements and new expansions—indeed, when “the Psalter” does not yet exist? The continuously changing and expanding text, and the existence of multiform versions side by side, makes the idea of a belief in an ancient “author” for the Book of Psalms problematic.40 Second, what is the referent of the statement that David wrote “4,050 songs”? Clearly, this refers neither to this scroll, 11QPsa, or, for that matter, any other scroll that could ever have existed. What, then, is its significance? What exactly did David “author”? To further complicate the assumption that this text is about attribution, no earlier traditions present David as an author. In Samuel, Chronicles and Ben Sira, David sings; plays music; prays; receives revelation; and sets up the musical liturgy for the future Temple. It does not follow from any of this that he authored psalms, or was responsible for composing any particular text at all.41 The association with David 37 Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 133–35. 38 E.g. E. Ulrich, “The Text of the Hebrew Scriptures at the Time of Hillel and Jesus,” in Congress Volume: Basel 2001 (ed. A. Lemaire; VTSup 92; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 85–108, here 104. 39 See, for example, P. Flint, who writes that “the clear implication is that David, whose 4,050 compositions even surpassed Solomon’s 4,005, was responsible for all those in this collection (11QPsa),” Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls, 208. 40 Indeed, Flint is hard pressed to explain how the idea of a belief in Davidic authorship can be reconciled with the inclusion of blatantly non- or post-Davidic pieces in the collection. Flint writes of psalms without a Davidic title, e.g. Ps 119 and Ps 127, which has a Solomonic superscription: “their presence in this Davidic collection indicates that the compilers regarded them as Davidic Psalms, however illogical this may seem”; Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls, 194. 41 See Kugel, “David the Prophet,” 51: [T]here is no reference to David as the composer of the words to be spoken or sung in the Temple . . . It is important to assert that what goes on in the Temple is utterly in keeping with God’s will, even if it had not been spelled out in the

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and a written text is limited to his reception of the divine ‫ תבנית‬for the future Temple, which he received “in writing” from God (‫הכל בכתב‬ ‫ ;מיד יהוה עלי השכיל כל מלאכות התבנית‬1 Chr 28:19). In this Sinailike event, David authors nothing, but he does become a channel for written revelation, and leaves a liturgical legacy that is later consulted in textual form (see 2 Chr 35:4). As we have seen, Ben Sira, too, praises David for his piety, repentance, and liturgical legacy. But while David is credited with arranging the liturgy and introducing music, there is no hint here of the authorship of any text.42 Unlike these earlier traditions, the text in 11QPsa does say that David “wrote psalms.” But the claim is not that he wrote “these Psalms” or “the Psalms,” but only psalms, ‫תהלים‬. This claim is both grammatically and conceptually indefinite. It asserts only that David was engaged in the activity of psalm-writing, not that he authored any particular text. Further, the songs that David wrote were not his original works, but were given to him through prophecy, ‫ ;בנבואה‬the word “to write” does not have the meaning of authorial composition, but rather scribal textualizing work—writing down revelation.43 In fact, David is explicitly called a “scribe,” a ‫סופר‬: while this does not denote authorship, it means much more than mechanical tran-

great corpus of priestly law—hence the insistence on David’s ideal qualities, his status as divinely chosen man, and his role in establishing the Temple music. At the same time, since the actual words spoken or sung in the Temple were not supposed to be utterly standardized . . . there was no stress on David’s authorship of the words spoken or sung there. 42 Some scholars, however, have read authorship in these early texts. See e.g. A. Cooper, who maintains that “we arrive at the positivistic claim that all of the psalms are Davidic (perhaps as early as Ben Sira)” (“Life and Times of King David,” 130), or B. Z. Wacholder, who claims that it is “abundantly clear that the authors of the books of Ezra and Chronicles had before them collections of psalms attributed to David” (“David’s Eschatological Psalter,” 25). I do not see the evidence for such claims in texts that say only that David sang psalms and arranged music. The psalmic superscriptions are also too vague and confusing to tell us much about attribution; see, e.g., the discussion by A. Pietersma “Septuagintal Exegesis and the Superscriptions of the Greek Psalter,” in The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception (eds P. W. Flint and P. D. Miller; VTSup 99; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 443–75. See also B. S. Childs, “Psalms Titles and Midrashic Exegesis,” JSS 16 (1971), 137–50. 43 Cf. B. Baba Bathra 14b–15a, where David “writes (down)” the Book of Psalms, including in it the works of earlier figures. On this text’s concern with textualization rather than authorship, see Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship, Chapter 1: “The Scribes of the Hebrew Bible.”

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scription.44 In language that echoes Ben Sira 39,45 David is praised for his ideal scribal identity in all its fullness and power: he is wise; he is perfect in all his ways; he is favoured with divine inspiration—and he receives, performs and writes down songs; we might say he prolifically “pours [them] forth like prophecy” (Sir 24:33). The scribal activities of David, who arranges songs for the times and seasons, are reminiscent of the work of the scribe Enoch, who also writes down and sets the calendar in order. The only difference, it seems to me, is one of genre— while Ben Sira’s scribe collects and passes down wisdom, and Enoch arranges and transmits the revealed calendrical order, David receives, collects, and writes down prayers and songs. The vast quantity—4,050 songs!—attests to a prolific amassing of revelation, exceeding even the number of proverbs that Solomon knew (1 Kgs 5:12). How does this fit in with earlier traditions about David? While there is no evidence for an assertion of David’s authorship of any psalms in Samuel, Chronicles or Ben Sira, David does have what I want to call scribal potential. In Chronicles, David receives a written ‫תבנית‬. In Ben Sira, we see David’s personal piety and prayerful life, and we also see him collecting and organizing and passing down a legacy—not of text, but of materials for the Temple and the organization of the liturgy. This is clear in Ben Sira’s praise of David (Sir. 47:8–10): 8 In all his deeds he praised God Most High with a word of glory, With all his heart he loved his maker, And praised him constantly all day. 9 He arranged (‫ )תקן‬music before the altar, and the melody of instruments, 10 He added beauty to the feasts, and set (‫ )תקן‬the festivals in order for each year.

Note that the same root word, ‫תקן‬, is used for David’s acts, as for Qohelet’s arranging proverbs. It is not a large conceptual jump for a

44 Cf. Wyrick’s discussion of Davidic authorship vs. textualization in “Chapter 2: Attaching Names to Biblical Books,” The Ascension of Authorship. 45 The resonance of this passage with Ben Sira was mentioned by Sanders in his editio princeps, DJD IV, 92. It is also recognized by C. Schams in her brief two pages on David as scribe in 11QPsalmsa in Jewish Scribes, 124–5. Schams seems to imply that an understanding besides authorship is possible in her cautious reference to David’s activity, “David’s writing and/or authorship of psalms and songs.” She rightly observes that the “passage further reflects the notion that David’s intelligence, wisdom, piety, and his inspiration by God were the source of his literary activity and are closely linked,” 125.

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scribe to extrapolate from such acts—of setting a divine cultic order and calendar down for future use—to the idea of David’s scribal arrangement and transmission of a liturgical text collection that follows the correct calendar. This is his ‫תבנית‬, divine pattern for future practice: David’s life and scribal activity is a model for the pious lives and prolific, inspired work of actual scribes. “David’s Compositions,” then, is not a colophon that stands apart from the rest of the psalm collection, and claims authorship of the book of Psalms (or this very scroll). It is not about the attribution of a specific document; rather, it is about celebrating David’s deeds, ‫מעשי‬ ‫דויד‬, which include his pious life and inspired textualizing activity.46 The 4,050 songs and their calendrical arrangement testify to the importance of the idea of scribal proliferation and proper cultic organization, and exalt David as a scribal ideal for such activities. As an expression of praise, “David’s Compositions” might stand in a similar relationship to the Psalms scroll as Ben Sira’s “Praise of the Ancestors” does to his book: Ben Sira is an anthology of instructive texts concluded by accounts of role models for the contemporary sage; and the Psalms Scroll is an anthology of prayers concluded by compositions about a figure who prayed, preserved and organized prayers—a key exemplar to the praying community and the working scribe. David is a type for the scribal activity of collecting and arranging texts in order to preserve, re-present, and leave a legacy of revealed prayers. This work becomes a “Davidic” activity, emulated by the compiler of this collection, as he, too, attempts to transmit a divinely inspired, correctly ordered text.

46 David is said to “write and speak” prayers, but it does not follow that they are necessarily identical with this collection; by analogy, most characters in Jubilees write books, but these books are not identical with the book of Jubilees itself (see Wright, “Jubilees, Sirach, and Sapiential Tradition,” 7–8). They are also not necessarily identical with any actual text in the writer’s mind—thus, the famed “book of Noah” need not exist as anything but what H. Najman has called a “bibliomorphic” idea (in her response to R. A. Kraft, “Pursuing the Prescriptural by Way of the Pre-biblical,” Seminar for Ancient Judaisms and Christianities, University of Toronto, 11 April, 2007)—an idea that testifies to the importance of book production, and the figure who is invoked. Similarly, the epilogue of Qohelet describes that the sage put together many proverbs, but this, too, need not refer back to any particular document; it simply describes a sage and his praiseworthy, prolific book–making.

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Moses the Scribe Just as David, as a pious scribe, is not an author but a textualizer and arranger of revealed liturgical material, so Moses, as pious scribe, is a textualizer and transmitter of Torah. Indeed, to speak of “Moses the scribe” is to state the obvious. From the Pentateuch itself, it is clear that Moses is not the “author” of the Law, but a codifier and transmitter of revelation. This is not a new claim for either the Pentateuch or the later Mosaic texts. L. Schiffman has stated that a “Moses pseudepigraphon does not claim Moses as the actual author, any more than does the Torah, but rather as the vessel through which God revealed Himself to Israel.”47 But the implications of this idea for the development and expansion of later Mosaic traditions have not been fully explored: “authorship” is still the operative concept for the way the link between Moses and Torah was understood. But in our textual evidence, Moses is envisioned as a scribe. As David is explicitly a ‫סופר‬, “scribe,” in 11QPsalmsa, so targumic traditions call Moses ‫ספרא רבא דישראל‬, “the great scribe of Israel.”48 But even in earlier texts, where he is not so named, he performs a scribal role. In the book of Jubilees, Moses stands in the inspired chain of scribes that begins with Enoch, the first scribe, and continues through the generations of patriarchs who read and copy the heavenly tablets and pass down books to their children.49 First, however, it is not Moses, but God who acts as a scribe ( Jub. 1:1): In the first year of the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, in the third month on the sixteenth day of that month, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Come up to me on the mountain, and I shall give you two stone tablets of the Law and the commandment, which I have written, so that you may teach them.”

47 L. H. Schiffman, “The Temple Scroll and the Halakhic Pseudepigrapha of the Second Temple Period,” in Pseudepigraphic Perspectives, 121–31, here 125. On Moses’ scribal but not authorial role, see also H. Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing,” 403. 48 See e.g. Targ. Onq. to Deut 33:21 (see also Neof.); Moses and Aaron are both named scribes in Targ. Neof. to Num. 21:18. (Cf. the textualizing role of Moses, who writes down not only “his book” but others as well, in B. Baba Bathra 14b–15a.) According to the targums, Moses also sets in order (‫ )סדר‬God’s revelation to Israel; he is an arranger, fulfilling the kind of scribal role discussed above in the context of Ben Sira, Qohelet, Enoch and David. On this expression and its implications, see Robert Hayward’s contribution to this volume, p. 284 and n. 40. 49 Moses, Najman writes, is “one of many bookish heroes charged with the transcription of the heavenly tablets”; “Interpretation as Primordial Writing,” 388; see also the discussion of the patriarchs’ technical/occupational scribal duties in Wright, “Sirach and Jubilees.”

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Moses’ role is to teach the law of God to the children of Israel. But God’s act of writing must be repeated by Moses, who is to be a scribe on Sinai ( Jub. 1:5–7): Set your mind on every thing which I shall tell you on this mountain, and write it in a book so that their descendants might see that I have not abandoned them on account of all of the evil which they have done . . . And you, write for yourself all of the words which I shall cause you to know today, for I know their rebelliousness and their stubbornness . . .

He is told to write yet again, first directly and then through the Angel of the Presence ( Jub. 1.26–2.1): 1.26 And you write down for yourself all of the matters which I shall make known to you on this mountain: what (was) in the beginning and what (will be) at the end, what will happen in all of the divisions of the days which are in the Law and testimony . . . 1.27 And he said to the angel of the presence: “Have Moses write50 from the first creation until my sanctuary is built in the midst forever and ever . . . 2.1 And the angel of the presence spoke to Moses by the word of the Lord, saying, “Write the whole account of creation…”

Moses’ role is faithfully to take dictation and accurately transmit the contents of the heavenly tablets to the Israelites—adding his texts to the growing corpus of written revelation codified by previous scribal figures. But this, of course, is not the earliest occasion where Moses is clothed in scribal garb. If we saw hints of David’s “scribal potential” in Chronicles and Ben Sira, Moses’ “scribal potential” is clear already in the Pentateuch. The characterization of Moses as an exemplary scribe in Deuteronomy is explored by J. Watts, who writes that Moses “exemplifies the ancient scribe who records, teaches, and interprets.”51 Moses fulfills all the requirements of an ideal scribe—he is not only a model of piety, but also a faithful preserver, updater, and transmitter of tradition. Watts writes of Moses’ “scribal voice”: The scribe’s authority depends, of course, on the claim to transmit the text faithfully and is endangered by charges of overt modification (e.g., Jer 8:8, “the lying pen of the scribes”). Yet transmission of law always

Wintermute’s translation altered after J. C. VanderKam, “The Putative Author of the Book of Jubilees,” JSS 26 (1981): 209–17. 51 J. W. Watts, “The Legal Characterization of Moses in the Rhetoric of the Pentateuch,” JBL 117 (1998): 415–426, here 422. 50

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requires its interpretation and application, which is a creative process (as the career of “Ezra the scribe” illustrates). Even in the process of simply reproducing texts, editorial creativity is by necessity involved as well.52

Watts’ characterization resonates with our description of the scribe as simultaneous preserver and renewer of tradition. He underlines that the characterization of Moses as teacher and scribe is able to resolve tensions between the laws of Deuteronomy and the Pentateuch, since “the scribal character of Moses’ voice merges precisely in his mastery of the tradition to present it in a new form.” Moses faithfully records, but also revises and updates the material that has been revealed to him; his inspired scribal authority means that faithful preservation and renewal need not be in conflict with one another, but happen together, as successive expressions of revealed law are written down.53 I have proposed that David and Moses are linked to their texts as ideal scribes, in the multifaceted sense of the figure who is both an example of piety and a channel for textual revelation. Such a relationship between figure and text is richer, more layered, and more open to future emulation and change than the static idea of “authorship.” When we think of David and Moses as scribes, and their revelatory experiences as scribal events, they take their places on a chain of scribal transmission, from Jerusalem or Sinai, down the generations to the scribes of Qumran. The texts linked with them are not closed and fixed. Rather, they are open to continuous development: their inspired textualizing activity, their scribal ‫תבנית‬, is emulated in future communities, where they serve as exemplars in multiple ways. 3. David and Moses as Scribes; Scribes as David and Moses What does it mean to say David and Moses have the status of scribes of liturgy and law in the second temple period? At first glance it would seem as if they had been demoted from their positions as authors. But

Watts, “Legal Characterization of Moses,” 422 n. 34. Expansions and reworkings generate expansions and reworkings of their own. See e.g. M. Himmelfarb on Pseudo-Jubilees in A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 53, and F. García Martínez on 11QT, “Multiple Literary Editions of the Temple Scroll?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (eds L. H. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J. C. Vanderkam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Shrine of the Book, 2000), 364–71. 52

53

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in fact, David and Moses are not dethroned by being called scribes; rather, scribalism is enthroned, raised to the level of a revelatory practice, through its connection with these great heroes and their revelatory experiences. Making Moses a scribe on Sinai and David a scribe in Jerusalem elevates the scribal occupation itself, and bridges the gap between ancient revelatory moments and contemporary scribal work.54 If Moses and David are scribes, scribes can be the counterparts of Moses and David; if Sinai becomes a scriptorium, the scriptorium55 can become a Sinai-like locus of revelation.56 As scribes, Moses and David are figures that can be emulated in their ethical exemplarity, which includes their inspired, prolific work of text production and transmission. This makes it possible to produce “Davidic” liturgy and “Mosaic” law long after David and Moses, in an unfolding, continuous, revelatory scribal chain. Moses and David are typological figures,57 54 G. W. E. Nickelsburg, writing of the Enoch literature, has made a suggestive point about how this gap between ancient and contemporary figures might have been bridged: Within this community there existed the latter day, real-life counterparts of primordial Enoch. . . . The title “Scribe,” applied three times to Enoch (12:4, 15:1, 92:1), may point to a concrete social role, while the title “Scribe of Righteousness/ Truth is also reminiscent of the Qumran sobriquet, ‫מורה־הצדק‬. See “The Nature and Function of Revelation in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and Some Qumranic Documents,” in Pseudepigraphic Perspectives, 91–119, here 99. 55 The question of whether or not a “scriptorium” existed at Qumran and what it was like is beyond the scope of this paper. Here I am using the term in a metaphorical sense, for the locus of scribal activity. 56 This understanding of scribal revelation as a continuing, repeating process has implications for many developing traditions. Some of the most generative discourses in ancient Judaism are tied to figures who are either called scribes or endowed with scribal/sagely characteristics, e.g. Enoch (the material collected in 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch; see e.g. J. C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition [CBQMS 16; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1984] and A. Orlov, The Enoch–Metatron Tradition [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005]); Ezra (see the discussion of the variously named Ezra traditions in R. A. Kraft, “ ‘Ezra’ Materials in Judaism and Christianity,” originally in ANRW II.19.1 (1979): 119-36, available at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/ rak/publics/judaism/Ezra.htm); Baruch (1, 2, 3 and 4 Baruch [Paraleipomena Jeremiou]; for 2 Baruch see the contribution of M. Henze to this volume); and Solomon (the canonical “Solomonic” texts, Proverbs, Qohelet, and the Song of Songs, as well as the Psalms and Odes of Solomon). 57 As Moses and David are scribal types who inspire new scribal activity, so other figures are types for different kinds of activities and roles central to Qumran; one example is Levi, an ideal priestly figure who serves as a model for Qumran priests. See R. A. Kugler, “The Priests of Qumran: The Evidence of References to Levi and Levites,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Technological Innovations, New Texts, & Reformulated Issues (eds D. Parry and E. Ulrich; STDJ 30; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 465–79. The preservation and renewal of traditions is connected to authoritative lineage in other ancient Jewish contexts as well; Zuleika Rodgers offer a congenial discussion of the way such a link functions in Josephus, who places himself at the end

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ideal transmitters of legal and liturgical traditions; in following their example, actual scribes could understand themselves as inspired preservers and renewers of the revelation that they encounter through the text. When we remember that these “authors” of scripture were textualizing channels of revelation—were characterized as ideal scribes—then we can be more open to the idea that scribal intervention into texts does not place them in a separate category from “biblical” material. Rather, we can think of a scribal continuum that started with Enoch and has continued unbroken through generations who received, wrote down, rearranged, and presented revelation anew. In this way, texts like 4QRP—whose status as revelation is called into question because of its extensive scribal reworking seems incompatible with “scriptural” status58—can take its place on this continuum, along with even more radically “renewed” texts like the Temple Scroll or Jubilees. To follow the ethical example of David and Moses might mean to practice humility, self-effacing leadership, or penitential prayer; or to follow their textual ‫תבנית‬, the correct transmission of Torah and liturgy for posterity. This could mean simply copying a text, being a faithful transcriber of revelation. Along the same continuum, it could mean re-arranging or renewing the tradition for a new community, as in a collection like 11QPsalmsa or one of the reworked Pentateuchal of an authoritative chain of priestly succession, thus authorizing his re-presentation and rearrangement of the law of Moses; see “Josephus’ ‘Theokratia,’” esp. 144–147. 58 For the judgment that the scribal intervention into 4QRP was “extensive enough” to put into question its authoritative status, see White Crawford, “The ‘Rewritten Bible’ at Qumran,” 3. White Crawford and Tov, the editors of 4QRP (“Reworked Pentateuch,” Qumran Cave 4. VIII: Parabiblical Texts, Part I [eds H. Attridge et al.; DJD XIII; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994], 187–351, originally asserted that the text was not “biblical”; but Tov is now suggesting that 4QRP should be studied as Hebrew scripture (in “The Many Faces of Scripture: Reflections on the LXX and 4QReworked Pentateuch,” Jonas C. Greenfield Scholars’ Seminar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 12 December 2006, and a forthcoming article). E. Ulrich has long called for reading 4QRP as an alternate edition of the Pentateuch (see e.g. “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical Text,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment [2 vols; eds P.W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 1.88–89. For other views on the status of 4QRP see J. M. Allegro, “Biblical Paraphrase: Genesis, Exodus,” Qumran Cave 4. I [4Q158–186] (DJD V; Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 1–6; M. J. Bernstein, “Whatever Happened to the Laws? The Treatment of Legal Material in 4QReworked Pentateuch,” DSD 15 (2008): 24–49; M. Segal, “4QReworked Pentateuch or 4QPentateuch?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After their Discovery (eds L. H. Schiffman et al.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 391–99; and the earlier position of Tov, “Excerpted and Abbreviated Biblical Texts from Qumran,” RevQ 16 (1995): 581–600. The various assessments and definitions of 4QRP—like those of 11QPsa (see n. 36)—shows that the distinction between the “scriptural” and “secondary” is slippery indeed. I hope to examine this issue in scholarship on both 4QRP and 11QPsa further in future work.

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traditions. 59 The preservation and renewal of text happened together;60 distinctions between “scriptural” and “secondary” are not meaningful when we imagine a continuous scribal chain in which revelation is textually experienced again and again, and scribally transmitted anew in each generation (cf. Jub. 45:15).61 A Scribe Like Moses I have suggested a way that the expanding Davidic tradition and the traditions linked to Moses and the Law can illuminate each other, and how the relationship of both figures to their texts might be understood via the multivalent identity of the ideal scribe. Sinai and Sinai-like events are repeated in the chain of scribal revelation, as scribes emulate the ideal scribal personality of Moses and repeat his scribal law-transmitting activities, not in “secondary” works, but in unfolding traditions that are part of the chain of text transmission. But how is it possible to “repeat” Moses at all, if Moses is the incomparable prophet, the likes of whom was never seen again? For as the book of Deuteronomy tells us (Deut 34:10–12):

59 Perhaps it could also mean producing new texts modeled on the old in a looser way. For Davidic traditions, this might include composing a text such as the Shirot, liturgical compositions which envision a heavenly Temple and follow the solar calendar, which is the way 11QPsalmsa claims David arranged the songs; see Elior, The Three Temples, 50–51. For Mosaic traditions, it might mean composing community rules according to the pattern of the Decalogue; see B. Nitzan, “The Decalogue Pattern in the Qumran Rule of the Community,” presented at 6th IOQS Meeting, Ljubljana, 16–18 July 2007 (publication forthcoming in Proceedings of this meeting; Brill). 60 The idea that a) copying, and b) reworking, supplementing, or interpreting—what I have called, in Jubilees’ words, “preservation and renewal”—were not distinguished from each other is not new. M. Fishbane has pointed out the lack of distinction between lemma and commentary; see Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 12. On the lack of scribal distinctions between “original” and “new” or “rewritten” text, see also S. White Crawford, “The ‘Rewritten Bible’ at Qumran,” 3, and much of the work of E. Ulrich on the scribal continuity between successive “literary editions” (e.g. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible, 99–120). Indeed, firm distinctions between a base text and secondary scribal intervention are also incompatible with what we know about the material limitations of writing on scrolls: see E. Tov, “The Writing of Early Scrolls and the Literary Analysis of Hebrew Scripture,” DSD 13 (2006): 339–47. Tov observes that scribes did not have any way of making additions or revisions on existing base texts—rather, transcription and reworking were done together, as each new scroll was copied. 61 For another way in which revelation is repeated through a participatory encounter with text, see the contribution of Ishay Rosen-Tzvi to this collection.

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10 Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom YHWH knew face to face, 11 for the various signs and portents which YHWH sent him to do in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land, 12 and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.

Moses is unrepeatable. But yet, he is repeated again and again, in figures like Josiah or Ezra or the Teacher of Righteousness. These figures perform the Mosaic activities of leadership, law-giving, and passing on textualized revelation. There may never have been a prophet like Moses, who spoke with God face to face and perfomed great miracles;62 but there certainly were scribes like Moses, whose encounter with revelation also happened through writing, and who were exemplary preservers, renewers and teachers of the law. I have tried to show that the second temple scribes responsible for reworking and rewriting Torah materials should be understood in just this way. As scribes following the model of Moses, they can allow themselves to renew as well as preserve the Sinaitic revelation as they re-present it in their own contexts. When we consider the multivalent identity of the scribal figure, and the scribal character of the revelatory event, as types for the self-understanding of the actual scribe, we find that Sinai becomes a link in a continuous chain of revelatory scribal events—from the first scribe, Enoch, through Moses, down to the copyists/renewers of Torah-like texts at Qumran. There is no dividing line between a “scriptural” and a “secondary” text if both the ancient mediatory figure and the contemporary scribe are imagined as inspired channels for the continuing preservation, renewal and transmission of revealed tradition. Both Sinai and the Qumran scriptorium were the loci of revelatory encounters between a holy text, an inspired scribe, and a blank slate.

62 As G. Knoppers writes in “ ‘There Was None Like Him: Incomparability in the Books of Kings,” CBQ 54 (1992): 411–31, Moses is incomparable in the same limited way that the kings of Israel are incomparable: in terms of some specific characteristics that set them apart. Only Moses spoke with God face to face, and only Moses performed such impressive miracles (431); other aspects of Moses’ identity seem to be fair game.

THE GIVING OF THE TORAH AT SINAI AND THE ETHICS OF THE QUMRAN COMMUNITY* Marcus Tso University of Manchester, England Determining the proper way to live is at the heart of ethics.1 As far as the evidence indicates, ethics seems to be a concern in all cultures throughout history.2 While the precise scope and content of what constitutes ethics in each society or social group may vary, sometimes considerably, whenever a group expresses views about the proper way to live, it is engaging in ethical discourse.3 How the religious community at Qumran formulated its answers to this apparently universal human question merits further study. Ethics at Qumran was not simply the compilation of divine commands as found in authoritative sacred texts, such as those supposedly given at Sinai, nor purely based on a traditional code of norms and values.4 Rather, the sectarians at Qumran formulated their ethics based on a number of interacting factors, or sets of factors. One of these contributing factors was the use of scriptural traditions by the Qumran sectarians, that is, how they understood and * This essay is partly based on my forthcoming doctoral thesis (University of Manchester) under the direction of Professor George Brooke, whom, together with Professors Loren Stuckenbruck and Hindy Najman, the co-organizers of the “Giving of the Torah at Sinai” conference, I would like to thank for inviting me to the conference and including my paper in this volume. I deeply appreciate their generosity, hospitality, friendship, and assistance. 1 I use the word “ethics” here in a broad sense, without insisting on a sharp distinction from its synonym, “morality.” Thus, “ethics” can refer here either to the reflection and study of morality, or to morality itself. For the typical definition of ethics as “moral philosophy,” or “a consideration of the various kinds of questions that arise in thinking about how one ought to live one’s life,” see, e.g., the introductory remarks by Jack Glickman in Moral Philosophy: An Introduction (ed. J. Glickman; New York: St. Martin’s, 1976), 1. 2 The evidence can be found in both the literature and the artefacts from many cultures, suggesting a universal concern for ethics. For a discussion on the universality of ethical concerns, see, e.g., Stanley J. Grenz, The Moral Quest: Foundations of Christian Ethics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 212–14. 3 For a discussion on the variety of the language of ethical discourse from the time of the Qumran community to modern times, especially in the Jewish world, see Chapter Two of my forthcoming PhD thesis. 4 While these aspects are certainly part of the bases of ethics in many religious communities, including that at Qumran, to explain the development of ethics only in these terms is to oversimplify matters.

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appropriated the various genres of their authoritative texts, especially laws and narratives, to determine the demands of God. Another contributing factor was the sectarians’ sense of identity, which highlights for us that ethics was socially constructed at Qumran, as it probably is elsewhere.5 Yet another contributing factor to ethics was their response to their political and cultural contexts, which demonstrates that the formulation of their ethics was not done in a vacuum, but was sensitive and responsive to their political and cultural environments.6 A fourth contributing factor was their eschatology, a salient motivating aspect of their theology. The influence of Qumran eschatology on their ethics shows that it was also theological. While these four contributory factors are not meant to be exhaustive, they are offered here as representative of other factors that may also have contributed to the process of ethical formulation at Qumran. Not only does Qumran ethics have a multifaceted basis, but the four contributing factors identified above also interact with one another in the formulation of ethics at Qumran. In this essay I will illustrate how this worked by focusing on how the Qumran sectarians appropriated the scriptural traditions about the Sinai covenant for their ethics. I will also focus on how this appropriation of scriptural traditions had effects on identity formation at Qumran as well, which in turn had ethical implications. Space does not permit me to explore more fully the other two contributing factors. Nevertheless, hints will be given along the way to suggest that the sectarians’ understanding of the Sinai traditions and their self-identity probably inclined them to certain political stances and reactions to their surrounding cultures, leading to particular views on ethics, and that their eschatology also drew from these traditions in ways that formed their self-understanding, once again with ethical import. Before examining how these contributing factors operated with respect to the use of the Sinai traditions at Qumran, let me first address the more general question of how the scrolls from Qumran speak about

5 For an introduction to social construction as a broader human phenomenon, see Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967). Although not specifically written from a social-scientific perspective or addressing group identity, Eva Mroczek’s essay in this volume, “Moses, David and Scribal Revelation: Preservation and Renewal in Second Temple Jewish Textual Traditions,” 91–116, is a good example of how selfidentity might affect ethics. 6 For an account of how different modern Jewish philosophers formulated divergent approaches to ethics in response to the cultural and intellectual challenge of modernism, see the essay in this volume by Paul Franks, “Sinai after Spinoza: Reflections on Revelation in Modern Jewish Thought,” 333–54.

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ethics. Using the broad understanding of ethics stated earlier, that it concerns the proper way to live, we can observe that ethics was front and centre in the mind of the Qumran sectarians and its wider movement. Already in the Damascus Document we can see the pre-Qumran concern with this crucial issue of how to live properly before God. For example, the voice of a teacher exhorts the members of his community in CD II, 14–16: And now, children, listen to me, so I may uncover your eyes to see and to understand the actions that God demands (‫)מעשי אל‬, to choose what pleases him and to reject what he hates, to walk perfectly in all his ways, not following thoughts of guilty inclination and adulterous eyes.7

This passage, using language that sometimes echoes scriptural traditions,8 nevertheless implies that the ethical demands of God are not completely self-evident in Scripture, but require one to be initiated into a new way of perceiving. The Rule of the Community displays a similar concern for proper living by presenting it as the entry requirement as well as the supreme goal of the Qumran sectarians.9 The constitutional book opens with these words about its purpose of instructing the sectarians: To seek God with all their heart and with all their soul, to do that which is good and upright before Him, just as He commanded through Moses and all His servants the prophets . . . to love everything He chose and to hate everything He rejected, to distance themselves from all evil and to hold fast to all good deeds; to practice truth, justice and righteousness in

7 Translation mine. Although the rendering for ‫ מעשי אל‬here is uncommon and debatable, it fits the context very well. In any case, my argument does not depend on it, as the rest of the quote amply shows the strong concern for ethics. 8 E.g., the injunction “to choose” from Deut 30:19; the phrase “to walk perfectly in all his ways,” which combines allusions to a key moment in the Abrahamic covenant in Gen 17:1 that reverberates through the Psalms (15:2; 84:12; 101:6), with the repeated exhortation to “walk in all his ways” in Deuteronomy (8:6; 10:12; 11:22; 19:9; 26:17; 28:9; 30:16). 9 While the Rule of the Community is a complex document reflecting multiple redactional layers, some of which may predate the settlement at Qumran by the Qumran community, the opening lines of 1QS probably belong to the later and Qumranic stage of redaction. See, e.g., the classic and seminal studies of Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “La genèse littéraire de la Règle de la Communauté,” RB 76 (1969): 528–49, esp. 537–38, and Jean Pouilly, La règle de la communauté de Qumrân, son évolution littéraire (CahRB 17; Paris: J. Gabalda, 1976), 522–51, esp. 550–51. These early redactional theories are generally confirmed, albeit with various adjustments, by more recent studies based on manuscripts from Cave 4, such as Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule (STDJ 21; Leiden: Brill, 1997), esp. 146–48, 154. For a critique of Metso, but not the Qumranic provenance of the beginning of 1QS, see Philip S. Alexander, “The Redaction History of Serek ha-Ya˜ad,” RevQ 17 (1996): 437–56.

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marcus tso the land, and to walk no longer in a guilty, wilful heart and lustful desires, wherein they did every evil thing (1QS I, 1b–7a).10

Further, the instructor “is to induct all who volunteer to live by the laws of God into the Covenant of Mercy, so as to be joined to God’s society and walk faultless before Him, according to all that has been revealed for the times appointed them” (1QS I, 7b–9a). Once again the language of this passage is heavily dependent on scriptural traditions, such as Deut 4:29 and 2 Chr 15:12, for the key opening phrase. Both of these passages illustrate some of the key concepts in the ethical terminology of the Qumran community and its wider movement— ‫משפט‬, ‫צדקה‬, ‫אמת‬, ‫טוב‬, ‫רע‬, ‫שנא‬, ‫אהב‬, ‫מאס‬, ‫בחר‬, ‫עשה הישר‬, ‫דרש‬, ‫התהלך לפני תמים‬, ‫ברית‬, ‫חק‬, ‫עיני זנות‬, ‫לב אשמה‬, and ‫הנגלות‬. Judging by the ethical discourse in these short passages alone, ethical living is of paramount importance and is dictated by God’s standard and will. It is described as walking blamelessly or perfectly in God’s way; it is rejecting evil human inclinations; it is linked with the covenant with God; and it is informed by special divine revelation. As noted, the language of this ethical discourse is highly influenced by scriptural traditions, and the marks of the Sinai traditions, especially as mediated through Deuteronomy, are clearly seen. On this note, let us turn to some examples of how these scriptural traditions were appropriated by the sectarians to formulate their ethics. The Use of the Sinai Traditions to Inform Ethics As mentioned above, the recalling of the Sinai traditions among the Qumran circle was filtered through Deuteronomy, the most attested Torah book from the Qumran caves, and according to Johann Maier, the biblical book with the most citations and allusions by far in the non-biblical scrolls.11 This is evident from the language used, such as “choosing,” “loving and hating,” “walking in his ways,” “all one’s heart

10 Unless otherwise noted, all translations of Qumran texts are from Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg, and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: HarperCollins SanFrancisco, 1996). 11 According to the index in Johann Maier, Die Qumran-Essener: Die Texte vom Toten Meer (Band III: Einführung, Zeitrechnung, Register und Bibliographie) (München: E. Reinhardt, 1996), 161–78, Deuteronomy (at c. 155 times) is the most cited or alluded to biblical book in the Qumran non-biblical manuscripts, followed by Isaiah (c. 110), Leviticus (c. 76), and Psalms (c. 65). At about 28 extant manuscripts, it is also the second most attested biblical book after Psalms.

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and soul,” and “covenant”—language that is clearly more prominent in Deuteronomy than in Exodus.12 Deuteronomy does not only rehearse the giving of the Torah and the establishment of the covenant at Sinai, it also relates the subsequent breach of this covenant by Israel and its renewal under the aged Moses, who took on the role of a sage-prophet.13 This particular perspective of Deuteronomy is especially suited to the sectarian worldview, that they were the community of the renewed covenant after the apostasy of the nation at large. A specific example of how the Sinai traditions from Deuteronomy were used can be found in 1QS I, 16-II, 18, which contains a prescription for the initiation ceremony of the Ya˜ad. Within this passage (1QS II, 1b–18), there is a series of recitations of blessings and curses that is roughly modelled after texts in Deuteronomy 27–29, a section that has to do with a renewal, or ratification, of the Mosaic covenant.14 A more obvious citation appears in 1QS II, 12b–18, where the influence of Deut 29:18–20 is clearly seen.15 If Sarianna Metso’s theory about the relative dates of the various versions of S is correct, namely, that 1QS is a relatively late redaction of several forms of S as represented by 4QSb,d,e,16 and that the material in 1QS I–IV “was brought into the composition at a very late stage,”17 the allusion to Deuteronomy in 1QS II seems to fit generally Metso’s proposal that later redaction of S was meant “to strengthen the self-understanding of the community, and with the aid of Scriptural proof-texts to provide a theological justification of the regulations already in force in the community.”18 Even though we 12 As a rough indicator, e.g., ‫ ברית‬is attested in the MT 13 times in Exodus, but 27 times in Deuteronomy, and ‫ בחר‬is found 3 and 31 times respectively. 13 As George Brooke argues in his essay in this volume, “Moving Mountains: From Sinai to Jerusalem,” 80–84, the use of Deuteronomy allowed the Qumran sectarians to put the specific locus of revelation in the background and hence to relativize its importance. What is more important to the Qumranites is the reception of revelation, which they understood to be repeatable, and part of their experience. For the use of the Sabbath Songs at Qumran as a means to experiencing divine revelation anew independently of its original locale, see Judith Newman’s essay in this volume, “Priestly Prophets at Qumran: Summoning Sinai through the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” 30. 14 Cf. A. Robert C. Leaney, The Rule of Qumran and Its Meaning: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (NTL; London: SCM Press, 1966), 104. 15 E.g., “It shall come to pass, when he hears the words of this Covenant, that he shall bless himself in his heart, saying ‘Peace be with me, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart’” (1QS II, 12b–14). This clearly cites the first part of Deut 29:18, substituting the word “covenant” (‫ )הברית‬for “oath” (‫)האלה‬. Parts of Deut 29:19–20 that pertain to divine anger and curses are also paraphrased in line 15 and 16. 16 Metso, Textual Development, 146–47. 17 Metso, Textual Development, 145. 18 Metso, Textual Development, 144.

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are not dealing with explicit scriptural citations here, using the scriptural model of covenant renewal in nascent Israel for its own initiation ceremony, the Qumran community enhanced its self-understanding as the true heir of the Mosaic covenant and the latter-day embodiment of Israel. In terms of its relevance for ethics, this self-understanding probably added both urgency and freshness to the divine commands in the mind of the sectarians, motivating them, for example, to conform to the code of behaviour that they saw as mandated by the covenant. And having this self-understanding filtered through Deuteronomy could only facilitate their tendency towards stringency, since Deuteronomy was already in several respects more stringent than Exodus.19 The Use of the Sinai Traditions and Identity Formation The enhancement of the self-understanding mentioned above leads to a consideration of identity formation. Remembering the giving of the Torah at Sinai was not a trivial matter in the formation of sectarian identity,20 because included in the sectarian idea of the Torah were at least two special features. First, the Torah was read as prophetic, accurately predicting the persistent unfaithfulness of Israel in general until the Last Days.21 This highlighted the sectarian community’s selfunderstanding as the faithful remnant, coexisting with an apostate nation, and helped them to explain their current experience of disenfranchisement and marginalization. Second, the Torah was seen as containing both the “revealed laws” and the “hidden laws,” the latter of which could only be understood by inspired exegesis, and were the

19 E.g., Deut 19:16–21 extends the principal of jus talionis in Exod 21:12–36 to the case of false witnesses with merely the intent to harm. For a discussion related to parts of these passages, see Bernard S. Jackson, “The Problem of Exod. XXI 22–5 ( Jus Talionis),” VT 23 (1973): 271–304. Further, Deut 22:28–29 tightens the penalty for raping an un-betrothed virgin found in Exod 22:16–17 by stipulating the exact price, removing the possibility of the father’s intervention, and adding a no-divorce clause. Cf. Joe M. Sprinkle, “Law and Narrative in Exodus 19–24,” JETS 47 (2004): 235–52. 20 For an account of how the Sinai traditions shaped self-image at Qumran, as seen especially in 1QS, see James C. VanderKam, “Sinai Revisited,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. Matthias Henze; SDSSRL; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 44–60. However, as suggested by Brooke’s essay in this volume, “Moving Mountains,” 85, VanderKam’s account needs qualification, some examples of which will be given below. 21 Falk, “Moses,” 577.

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basis of the sectarian ordinances.22 In this way, the sectarian remembrance of the Sinai event highlighted for the community members the important role of the Torah for defining who they were, and helped reinforce their identity as the “keepers/doers of the Torah” and as the recipients of the hidden revelation contained therein.23 Aside from remembering the giving of the Torah, the sectarians also remembered Moses as the prophetic lawgiver.24 And this also contributed to the community’s identity formation, albeit in a less direct way. Although the Teacher of Righteousness is not presented as a prophet in the Scrolls,25 his role as the authoritative interpreter of the Torah and the leader of the community of God in the wilderness appears to be modelled in part after Moses.26 Thus, the remembrance of Moses also reinforced for the Qumran community its identity as the true Israel in the wilderness in the Last Days. This identity of the community as the faithful recipients and doers of the Torah from Moses, and as the followers of an inspired leader like him, raised obedience to the Torah, with all its hidden revelation possessed only by the group, to the level of a supreme ethical norm. Another way that social identity was formed at Qumran was through the way the community was organized. Among the diverse scrolls from Qumran, we can discern several models of organization—ways that the sectarians portrayed themselves as a group, ways that they organized themselves as something else, whether in actuality or in their imagination. George Brooke has identified four such models as cosmic, tribal, 22 As noted in Falk, “Moses,” 577: “This too is tied up with the idea of Moses as prophet and recipient of all revelation: inherent in his Torah are the ‘hidden things’ that are discernible only by inspired exegesis.” 23 See, e.g., the phrase ‫ עושי התורה‬in 1QpHab VII, 11; VIII, 1; XII, 4–5; 1QpMic (1Q14) 8–10; 4QpPsa (4Q171) 1–2 II, 14, 22; cf. 4QFlor (4Q174) 1–3 II, 2. For a disputed argument that this phrase is the self-designation of the people in the Qumran community, and is the Hebrew basis the Greek word “Εσσενοι,” see Stephen Goranson, “Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene” (self-published on-line paper, http://www.duke.edu/~goranson/jannaeus.pdf, 2005). 24 For a recent account of the various, sometimes contradictory, ways Moses was remembered at Qumran, see George J. Brooke, “Moses in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Looking at Mount Nebo from Qumran,” in La Construction de la figure de Moïse/The Construction of the Figure of Moses (ed. T. Römer; Supplément à Transeuphratène 13; Paris: Gabalda, 2007), 209–21. 25 George J. Brooke, “Prophecy and Prophets in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Looking Backwards and Forwards,” in Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism (ed. M. H. Floyd and R. D. Haak; LHBOTS 427; London: T & T Clark International, 2006), 151–65. 26 Falk, “Moses,” 577.

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military, and cultic,27 and rightly suggested that self-descriptors implicit in such organizational models necessarily influence behaviour and practice and have an ethical dimension.28 Setting the cosmic model aside for now,29 let us consider how the other three models might have shaped the collective identity of the Qumran community, models that all trace their roots to the Sinai traditions. First, the community organized itself, at least at some point in its history, using the model of the twelve tribes of Israel,30 which reflects how Moses organized Israel along tribal lines at Horeb/Sinai (Deut 1:6–18; cf. Exod 18:13–27, which locates the organization of Israel immediately before the revelation at Sinai, albeit without any explicit reference to the tribes). When the community patterned itself after the twelve biblical tribes of Israel at a time when the tribal system was no longer functional, it was in effect declaring itself to be restored Israel in the Last Days. Such an identity had political and interpersonal implications, as out-groups, even other Jews, were seen as the hostile nations (at least potentially) and in-group members were seen as kinsmen, family, and brothers.31 Being organized as Israel is only a short stretch from being organized as the host of Israel that God brought out of Egypt (Exod 12:51) to encamp before him at Sinai (Exod 19:16–17). The sectarians, in various stages of their history, either imagined themselves or actually organized themselves in a military pattern, modelled after the camp of Israel’s

27 George J. Brooke, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament Ecclesiology,” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament (ed. K. E. Brower and A. Johnson; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 13–16. 28 Brooke, “Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament Ecclesiology,” 13, 15. 29 Other than the lack of space, the cosmic model is neglected here because it needs further development. 30 Brooke, “Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament Ecclesiology,” 16, cites the allusions to tribal organization in 1QM II, 1–4; III, 14; V, 1–2, where the allusions are best understood as imaginary, and in 1QS I, 8 where the tribal model is reflected in the actual organization of the council of the community. 31 Cf. Brooke, “Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament Ecclesiology,” 16: “The tribal model implies a relational view of communities and encourages stress on kinship, whether actual or fictive, and the system of honour and shame that accompanied it.” However, with the exception of the Damascus Document, terminologies of brotherhood or fictive kinship are relatively rare in the Scrolls, especially when compared with the NT.

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army in the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.32 Being organized in this biblical military pattern probably helped the sectarians to identify themselves with the people-army of Yahweh, moving on a holy mission between Sinai and the Promised Land through the wilderness. This military identification also promoted a sense of exigency with extra-stringent purity requirements, and is consistent with the theoretical portrayal that the sectarians at Qumran were probably exclusively male, sexually abstinent, forbidden to relieve themselves inside the settlement, and otherwise under strict discipline. Finally, the military model is closely linked to the cultic model.33 In Exodus and Numbers, the military organization had at its centre the sanctuary and the Levitical and priestly personnel. Indeed, the organization of the cultic personnel was integral to the military organization of Israel on the march from Sinai.34 A cultic model of organization at Qumran naturally reinforced their well-documented priestly orientation, and is entirely consistent with the almost obsessive concerns about requirements of ritual purity, feast days, and calendar found in their texts. Furthermore, this cultic organization model likely advanced at least two group identities. First, it doubtless prompted the community to view itself as a community of priests, perhaps one that fulfils the divine words of covenant, “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6). Second, it appears to have fostered an understanding that the community was in some sense the only legitimate Temple in the present, perhaps until some eschatological Temple is built.35 32 Brooke, “Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament Ecclesiology,” 15, cites texts such as 11QTa LIV, 4-5; 1QM IV, 1-5; 1QSa I, 29-II, 1; and CD XII, 23-XIII, 2 as reflecting this military model. For a fuller argument for how the Qumran community organized itself after the pattern of the military camp of Israel in the wilderness, see Francis Schmidt, How the Temple Thinks: Identity and Social Cohesion in Ancient Judaism (trans. J. E. Crowley; BSem 78; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 146–50. 33 This model is based on the Levitical cultic system which the scriptural narratives present as having been revealed and immediately implemented at Sinai. 34 1QSa I, 29-II, 1, cited by Brooke above, is a good example of how the cultic model of organization is mixed with the military model at Qumran. 35 For the idea that the concentric circles of increasing holiness from the periphery to the centre in the organizational structure of the Qumran community were also modelled after the camp of the wilderness, see Schmidt, How the Temple Thinks, 150–67, esp. fig. 6. Thus, the Qumran community represented through its organization the same ideas about purity and holiness that the physical and spatial arrangements of the sanctuary were supposed to represent. For the use of the Sabbath Songs to enhance a priestly self-understanding and participate in angelic worship in God’s immediate holy presence, see Carol Newsom, “Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” EDSS 2:889, cited

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These self-understandings, which are derived at least partly from the Sinai traditions, all worked together to reinforce each other and, above all, the community’s self-understanding of being Israel. Furthermore, such self-understandings have various ethical implications. Being a priestly community and even a human sanctuary means, among other things, extra-stringent purity requirements, which for the Qumranites went beyond the cultic to the moral realm.36 Being God’s army entails similar purity requirements and also at least rejecting certain claims to worldly comfort, such as possessions and family relationships, for the sake of a struggle, however that was understood, and probably antagonism towards outsiders perceived as enemies. Being Israel in the Last Days implies the need to know certain things in the penultimate age of wickedness, to act in certain ways where they were, and to be a certain kind of people, distinguishing themselves from all outsiders, with boundaries that kept out the many and let in a few. Conclusion As suggested earlier, the four contributing factors of scriptural tradition, identity formation, political and cultural contexts, and theology, especially in the form of eschatology, worked in an interrelated way to help shape the ethics of the Qumran community. Space has permitted me only to highlight the first two in relation to how the Sinai traditions were appropriated at Qumran. Nonetheless, we have already seen hints of how the Sinai traditions may have played a role in their responses to their political and cultural contexts, as well as in their eschatology. For example, their self-identity as true Israel, as reinforced by their organizational models patterned after the tribes of Israel, probably the tribes assembled as one before Mt. Sinai, most likely had an effect on how they viewed the political and religious establishments around them, causing them to develop or nurture separatist tendencies and hostility towards outsiders. Furthermore, their self-understanding as the renewed and faithful covenant community in the Last Days, as prophesied in the Torah, helped inform their eschatology. This escha-

in Judith Newman’s essay in this volume, “Priestly Prophets,” 29. See also Newman’s comments on 40, n. 25. 36 See, e.g., Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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tological self-understanding was conducive both to a sense of urgency and a sense of hope, both of which could motivate ethical behaviours and attitudes.37 We have seen that the Sinai traditions, broadly understood,38 played a noticeable and important role in how the Qumran sectarians formulated their ethics, not only as a part of the scriptural traditions that they appropriated in their own way, but also influencing their identity formation. Further examination will reveal that this is also true in the case of their response to their political and cultural contexts, and their eschatology. Thus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai left its imprints on the ethics of the Qumran community through the jostling together of all four of these contributing factors. What this suggests is that in order to understand the ethics of the Qumran sectarians better, the fourpronged approach outlined above gives a reading that is more faithful to the terminology, thoughts, and contexts of the sectarians, than a retrojection from later ethical systems, be they Christian or rabbinic.

37 For the use of eschatology as a motivator for Torah observance in 2 Baruch, see the essay in this volume by Matthias Henze, “Torah and Eschatology in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,” 201–16. 38 Again, see George Brooke’s essay in this volume for the relative absence of Mt. Sinai in the Qumran literature, while aspects of the Sinai traditions remain important.

JOSEPHUS’ “THEOKRATIA” AND MOSAIC DISCOURSE: THE ACTUALIZATION OF THE REVELATION AT SINAI1 Zuleika Rodgers Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Introduction Notably absent from Josephus’ presentation of the Jewish constitution in Against Apion, the revelation at Sinai plays a major role in Book 3 of the Jewish Antiquities and is the focus for Moses’ prophetic activity. Yet the matter of the superiority of the Jewish constitution and Mosaic Law is central to both Jewish Antiquities and Against Apion. One explanation for the difference focuses on the apologetic context of Against Apion where a treatment of divine authorship of laws would be incongruous. Does this mean that for Josephus apologetic interests inform his conceptualization of the Jewish constitution in Against Apion, and the particular revelation at Sinai is forfeited or subordinated to a universalist worldview? By examining Josephus’ understanding of the transmission of Mosaic Law—and his own role in this—perhaps it is possible to discern a link between the Sinai event as articulated in Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish theocracy of Against Apion. Josephus and the Jewish Constitution Historical method has been the focus of recent trends in Josephan scholarship.2 Demanding that we acquaint ourselves with Josephus’ historical

1 I would like to thank the editors of this volume who invited me to participate in the conference at Durham in 2007. 2 The International Josephus Colloquium as well as the Josephus Group (under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature) have provided a forum for the ongoing development of this field. Two of the most recent of the colloquium meetings (Dublin 2004 and Haifa 2006) specifically focused on historical method. One volume has appeared: Making History: Josephus and Historical Method (ed. Z. Rodgers; JSJSup 110; Leiden: Brill, 2006). There are also translation and commentary projects appearing in Hebrew, German, French, and Italian. The new Brill commentary project is available online (http://pace.cns.yorku.ca).

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method (as well as reflect on our own), we are now compelled to give due regard to his compositional techniques and appreciate the full implications of his Roman context. Sensitivity to the relationship between the micro and the macro with regard to the text (viewing each episode as part of a larger narrative) as well as sensitivity to context (evaluating the literary, historical and philosophical resonances from his immediate first century C.E. Roman surroundings) has facilitated a transformation in the way that scholars use Josephus’ works as a source.3 It has become apparent that Josephus’ method and concerns were not those of a truckling provincial clumsily assembling disparate sources; rather, he must be assessed as an author skilfully controlling his material. The history behind the text, whether that of the Jews or his own personal story, is constructed within Josephus’ own conceptual framework, and how we access the “facts” behind the text is central to methodological discussions: according to one view, “It is not possible to detach even one item or case from ‘Josephus’ framework,’ for that framework is pervasive and fully wrought, animating all of its constituent atoms.”4 Our concern is not methodological per se, but we will depend upon recent scholarship’s identification of certain pervasive themes within Josephus’ work. Focusing on the Roman context has revealed Josephus’ interest in the Judean constitution (πολιτεία). Fundamental to the narrative framework of the Jewish Antiquities is reflection on good governance and justice—its effects (harmony, ἁρμονία and happiness, εὐδαιμονία), the relationship between the character of the state and its individuals, and the virtues of the lawgiver and the ideal statesman—themes central to political and philosophical discourse in the Greco-Roman world.5

3 Treatment of Josephus’ Roman context was the subject for two international conferences and the proceedings have been published as Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome (eds. J. Edmondson, S. Mason, and J. Rives; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond (eds. Joseph Sievers and Gaia Lembi; JSJSup 104; Leiden: Brill, 2005). Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary. Volume 9. Life of Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2000), xix–xxi, xxxiv–l, and “Flavius Josephus in Flavian Rome: Reading on and Between the Lines,” in Flavian Rome (eds. A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 559–89, has been concerned to demonstrate how Josephus’ Roman context informs the narrative; themes of governance—for example, tyranny, succession issues, stasis—relating to the Jewish constitution and Roman political discourse dominate and the values presented as Jewish would find a responsive and sympathetic audience among his Roman elite readers. 4 Steve Mason, “Contradiction or Counterpoint? Josephus and Historical Method,” RRJ 6 (2003): 186. 5 Compositional critical approaches have revealed the pervasiveness of this theme, which is of particular interest when seen against the background of Domitianic Rome.

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This political focus of the Jewish Antiquities incorporates competitive cultural claims and permeates the presentation of Jewish history (e.g., the issue of the antiquity of the nation), including his interpretation of the biblical narrative. Louis Feldman in his extensive studies has demonstrated how Josephus responds to those who slander the Judeans by manipulating the biblical account,6 and how, in presenting the best of Jewish culture to the Greco-Roman world, characterized biblical heroes as exhibiting the virtues that belong to the ideal Greco-Roman statesman, while Steve Mason identifies the ethnographic and political/philosophical as unifying themes of Jewish Antiquities, The Life, and Against Apion.7 The most recent statement on Josephus’ treatment of Roman and Judean values is by John Barclay in his translation of, and commentary on, Against Apion.8 This political theme is set out in the prologue to the Jewish Antiquities: “having taken in hand this present task thinking that it will appear to all the Greeks deserving of studious attention. For it is going to encompass our entire ancient history (ἀρχαιολογία) and constitution of the state (διάταξις τοὗ πολιτεύματος) translated from the Hebrew writings” (Ant. 1.5 [Feldman, FJTC]). The appearance of this constitutional language is not only found in the prologue (Ant. 1.1–26) and the concluding sections (Ant. 20.229, 251, 261), but throughout the work. In the opening passages, the reader is invited to evaluate whether the Jewish lawgiver, Moses, has “comprehended His nature worthily and has always attributed to Him deeds that are befitting His power, preserving the discourse about Him pure from every unseemly mythology

See Steve Mason, “Introduction to the Judean Antiquities,” in Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 3. Judean Antiquities Books 1–4 (ed. Steve Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2004), xxxiv–xxxv, and John M. G. Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion (ed. Steve Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2007) xxxvi–xliv. 6 Feldman’s analysis of Josephus’ portraits of biblical characters highlights the moral and philosophical assessment that would allow the heroes of Jewish history to appeal to a hellenised audience. A number of these studies have been included in two volumes: Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) and Studies in Josephus’ Rewritten Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1998). See also: Christopher T. Begg, Josephus’ Account of the Early Divided Monarchy (AJ 8,212–420): Rewriting the Bible (BETL 108; Leuven: Peeters and Leuven University Press, 1993) and Josephus’ Story of the Later Monarchy (BETL 145; Leuven: Peeters and Leuven University Press, 2000); Paul Spilsbury, The Image of the Jew in Flavius Josephus’ Paraphrase of the Bible (TSAJ 69; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998). 7 Mason, Life of Josephus, xlvii–l, and “Introduction to the Judean Antiquities,” xxiii– xxxiv. 8 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion.

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that is found among others” (Ant. 1.15 [Feldman, FJTC ]). Since Moses comprehended the nature of God, he could invite others to imitate this ideal by directing their thoughts to the divine and the order of the universe rather than simply through a code of laws. As a consequence Josephus’ account of Moses’ teaching about God includes a treatment of the philosophy of nature (φυσιολογία) (Ant. 1.18–24).9 Against Apion further makes the case that the Judean constitution reflects the laws of the universe (Ag. Ap. 2.284). When comparing his legal tradition with the Greek, part of Josephus’ case for its superiority is based on the claim that the Jewish constitution reflects the truth about God and the universe (Ag. Ap. 2.190–198). Moses’ role as lawgiver (νομοθέτης) is central to this philosophical discussion on the law that appears in both the prologue of the Jewish Antiquities and in Against Apion.10 Barclay has commented on this correspondence, noting the absence of any discussion of divine authorship. 11 While the heavenly origin of Jewish law is a feature of Jewish Antiquities 3–4, Barclay suggests that the omission is due to the apologetic and philosophical context: “Josephus knows of claims in the Greek tradition comparable to the Judean belief that the law was God-given; he also knows the difficulty of maintaining such claims in the sphere of history or philosophy.”12 Yet, Moses the lawgiver does function as mediator between God and the people: With such a fine decision, and after the successful outcome of some great deeds, he naturally concluded that he had God as his governor and adviser (ἡγεμὼν καὶ σύμβουλος). Having first come to the conviction that everything he did and thought was in accordance with

9 Louis Feldman, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 3. Judean Antiquities Books 1–4 (ed. S. Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 8, n. 23 and 9, n. 26 suggests that Josephus is attempting to explain why the laws begin with an account of creation, and he compares this with Philo (Opif. 1.1–2) and rabbinic traditions. For a discussion on modern Jewish philosophical approaches to defining the relationship between the Torah revealed at Sinai and natural law, see in this volume Paul Franks, “Sinai Since Spinoza: Reflections on Revelation in Modern Jewish Thought,” 333–54. 10 E.g., Ag. Ap. 2.157–63. The centrality of Moses the lawgiver for those involved in Jewish-pagan dialogue is discussed in this volume by George van Kooten, “Why did Paul include an Exegesis of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3?” 151–54. 11 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 259 n. 620. 12 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 259 n. 620. According to Barclay, in a presentation of the Jewish constitution reference to divine authorship would locate the discussion of the lawgiver in the realm of mythology rather than philosophy. In the opening pasages of Jewish Antiquities (Ant. 1.15, 22) Josephus distinguishes Moses understanding of the divine from the myths of the Greeks, and he further comments on this in Against Apion (Ag. Ap. 2.239–41).

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God’s will, he considered it his prime duty to impress this notion on the masses; for those who believe that God watches over their lives do not allow themselves to commit any sin (Ag. Ap. 2.160 [Barclay, FJTC]).

But the divine source for their law remains oblique in Against Apion and even in Josephus’ treatise on the Jewish theocratic constitution, while stating that it reflects God’s will (κατὰ θεοῦ βούλησιν: Ag. Ap. 2.184) and all Jewish practices are concerned with piety towards God, there is nothing of the revelatory element in this highly philosophical piece (Ag. Ap. 2.145–286). The authority of Jewish law and its constitution is evident in its success and the emulation of other nations not because of its divine provenance.13 Barclay suggests that Josephus subverts GrecoRoman discourse on political theory for his own claims about Jewish traditions, but within this there is no place for the Sinai event, or even statements about the divine origin of the Law of Moses.14 Is the revelatory event at Sinai forfeited for Josephus’ political and philosophical interests? This would explain its absence in the philosophical discussions about the nature of the Jewish constitution where no explicit claims that the laws are divine in origin appear. Even in the opening statement of the Jewish Antiquities, when Josephus compares himself to Eleazar who oversaw the production of the Septuagint, the matter of divine authorship does not appear (Ant. 1.11–12). In the Sinai narrative itself, there are numerous statements regarding the divine origin of this constitution and law: Ant. 3.75, Moses ascends the mountain at Sinai to receive something from God; Ant. 3.84, God provides them with a blessed life and a well-ordered constitution; Ant. 3.87, this constitution is from God who gives the words to the Israelites through his interpreter, Moses; Ant. 3.90, God gives the Decalogue directly to the Hebrews; Ant. 3.93, the Hebrews ask Moses to seek divine laws for them; Ant. 3.93, Moses frequents the Tent in order to receive divine responses.

13 See Ag. Ap. 2.164–286 for the success of the constitution and Ag. Ap 2.255, 257, 281, 293, 295 for the influence of Moses on the Greeks. The reconception of nature in the early modern period posed a challenge to the idea of the creator of nature as the creator of Torah, and Paul Franks, “Sinai Since Spinoza: Reflections on Revelation in Modern Jewish Thought,” 333–54, outlines the way Spinoza presented the Sinai event within the realm of the political with Torah as nomos: Moses is not a recipient of divine revelation but a model of statecraft, and the Torah—a theocratic constitution— while retaining some truths, was no longer applicable as the polity it served no longer existed. The subsequent response that refocused on the revelatory aspect of Judaism did not attempt to re-establish the link between Torah and nature. 14 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 245–47.

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In Jewish Antiquities 3 and 4 there remains an interest in political philosophy (Ant. 3.213), and even the laws themselves are set out in a way that a non-Jewish audience would easily access them,15 but unlike in Against Apion, there is no concern for proving the value of these laws to a Greek or Roman audience.16 Also while the heavenly aspect is diminished, and the lawgiver is the main focus of the discussion, it is still clear that God is the source for the laws of Moses.17 Should we view these two different modes of discussing the laws and constitution— one political and philosophical, the other drawing on biblical ideas of revelation—as belonging to two separate conceptual frameworks for Josephus, albeit united by the idea of good governance? Perhaps there is a way of connecting them, which takes into account the very different narrative contexts, but that does not disconnect completely the Sinai event or the revelatory from the political considerations of the apologetic context. Josephus, while often diminishing the miraculous in his narrative, does include the revelatory material. Looking to how Josephus understood Torah transmission and his own authorial claims might provide a way of linking Sinai and the divine origin of the law with his philosophical and political discourse. Transmission of the Law in Josephus In both Jewish Antiquities and Against Apion, Josephus claims that he presents scripture in its proper order, neither adding additional material nor omitting anything (Ant. 1.17; 10.218; Ag. Ap. 1.42; 2.291). Since it is self-evident that the biblical material has been altered, sometimes significantly, scholars have offered a number of explanations.18 Among ancient historians, particularly of eastern origin, claims regarding

15 Mason, Jewish Antiquities 1–3, xxiv–xxvi, finds comparisons between the constitutional presentation in Jewish Antiquities and Cicero’s On the Republic and On the Laws. 16 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 259 n. 620, on the difference between the presentation of the laws in Against Apion and Jewish Antiquities 3–4. Also, Paul Spisbury, “Contra Apionem and Antiquitates Judaicae: Points of Contact,” in Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its Character and Context (ed. L. H. Feldman and J. R. Levison; AGJU 34; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 348–68. 17 Mason, Jewish Antiquities 1–3, xxvi, observes the emphasis on the lawgiver over the divine. 18 Feldman, Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible, 39–44, presents an outline of these.

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the faithful use of sources and the transmission of traditions are not uncommon.19 Josephus repeats this formula but adds, I safeguarded myself against those who would criticize the content or would find fault, committing only to translate the Hebrew books into the Greek tongue and promising to explain them, neither adding to the content anything of my own nor taking away anything (Ant. 10.218 [trans. Spilsbury, FJTC]).

In this passage Josephus seems to refer to two separate activities: translation (μεταφράζειν) and explanation (δηλώσειν).20 His language here suggests that he does, but elsewhere, his use of various terms implies a far broader understanding of the act of translation that involves an interpretative process. In general μεθερμενεύω and ἑρμενεύω and related terms express much more than translation (Ant. 1.5, 29; 12.20, 39, 48, 49, 108; 20.264) when referring to his own work or the production of the Septuagint.21 Josephus further categorizes his own work with the Septuagint translators insofar as a level of knowledge and training in their traditions is required.22 Feldman observes that “Josephus viewed himself as carrying on the tradition of the Septuagint in rendering the Bible for gentiles,” and this process includes interpretation.23 There is certainly no attempt to separate translation from commentary, to mark out the biblical text from his additions, or to justify omissions. While we are reminded of the parallel Josephus drew with Eleazar (Ant. 1.11), the interpretative method and form of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities is very different from the Septuagint. For the Antiquities, the biblically based part of the text serves the function of the larger historiographical context. It constitutes only part of the larger work, which just over half way through takes up, and devotes almost as much space to, the later history of the Jewish, in particular Herodian and Roman 19 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 31, n. 171, and Tessa Rajak, “Josephus and the ‘Archaeology of the Jews,’” in The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome (AGJU 48; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 241–55, esp. 249–50, on Josephus as part of the oriental tradition. 20 For further discussion, see Christopher T. Begg and Paul Spilsbury, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 5. Judean Antiquities Books 8–10 (ed. Steve Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 288–89, n. 938, 939, 940. 21 Feldman, Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible, 44–46, has collected the various uses of these terms. 22 Feldman, Jewish Antiquities 1–3, 4, n. 4 comments on Josephus’ claim with regard to the training and type of knowledge required for the interpretation of scripture (Ant. 12.49; 20.264; Ag. Ap. 1.54). 23 Feldman, Jewish Antiquities 1–3, 4, n. 4.

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rule.24 Josephus weaves into the translation interpretations and additional material, but in contrast with Jubilees for example, he stays relatively close to the biblical text.25 Comparing him with another Greek writer, Philo, while there are a great many similarities, and he is evidently deeply indebted to the innovations of his Judean predecessors writing in and for the Greek world, his work offers a closer and more comprehensive presentation of scripture.26 Feldman finds a close parallel for Josephus’ biblical account in Jewish Antiquities in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities; this work may also be chronologically close and, like Josephus, includes extra-biblical traditions. Yet Feldman concludes that the very fact that Pseudo-Philo refers to biblical books several times is a clue to the fact that it is not meant to replace the biblical text and, indeed, assumes a knowledge of those portions of the Bible that it chooses not to summarize, whereas Josephus’ paraphrase is meant for the reader who does not know the Bible and who will depend upon Josephus for a careful summary of its contents.27

For his task, Josephus provides credentials: as with those who produced the Septuagint (Ant. 1.10–13), he also belongs to a priestly family and in Against Apion he sets out his qualification for writing both Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities: . . . the Ancient History, as I said, I translated from the sacred writings, being a priest by ancestry and steeped in the philosophy contained in those writings; and I wrote the history of the war having been personally involved in many events, an eyewitness of most of them, and not in the

24 While Antiquities 1–10 covers the period from creation to the Babylonian exile, Antiquities 11–20 focuses on the time between the return under Cyrus to the outbreak of the first revolt. Within the second half, Books 14–17 are concerned with Herodian rule. Mason, “Introduction to the Judean Antiquities,” xx–xxii, examines its structure and content. 25 Feldman, Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible, 14–17 compares Josephus’ rewriting of the biblical account with the Septuagint, Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Qumran Pesharim, Philo, Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, rabbinic midrashim, and targumim; he notes that the author of Jubilees adapts the biblical texts in a far more radical way than Josephus, and of course, functions with a solar calendrical system. 26 On Josephus indebtedness to Philo, see George P. Carras, “Philo’s Hypothetica and Josephus’ Contra Apionem and the Question of Sources,” in SBL Seminar Papers 1990 (ed. D. J. Lull: Atlanta: Scholars, 1990), 431–50. J. M. G. Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 353–61. 27 Feldman, Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible, 16–17. Among the targumim, written in Josephus’ mother tongue, Feldman suggests that we find the closest counterpart for Josephus’ paraphrase, and yet there remain significant divergences.

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slightest deficient in my knowledge of anything that was said or done (Ag. Ap. 1.54 [trans. J. Barclay, FJTC]).

The apologetic tone regarding his account in the Jewish War may well be due to the existence of critics, but Josephus’ emphasis on his priestly credentials belongs not just to his self-presentation, but rests on a larger view of Jewish culture.28 The priesthood occupies a central place in his depiction of Jewish culture and the constitution.29 Jewish Antiquities with its concern for governance proposes priestly aristocracy as the ideal constitution (Ant. 3.188; 4.223–234, 304; 6.36)30 and Against Apion revisits this theme, but restates it: the Jewish constitution is now reformulated as a “theocracy” (θεοκρατία: Ag. Ap. 2.165). Rule is by God.31 This is reiterated in Against Apion 2.185 with an additional explanation of the role of the priests in this system; responsibility for ministering the important affairs lie with the priests (under the charge of the high priest) including education and judicial and punitive matters (Ag. Ap. 2.184–88). The different articulation of the constitution in Jewish Antiquities and Against Apion has given rise to much discussion, but it remains clear that for Josephus, the priests remain at the centre of this superior constitution and their functions are numerous.32 Among these, and the one with which we are currently concerned, is their responsibility with regard to sacred texts and their transmission.

28 For discussions on Josephus’ possible critics, see: Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Compositional-Critical Study (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 322–24; Tessa Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and his Society (London: Duckworth, 1983), 152–53; Per Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, his Works, and their Importance ( JSPSup 2; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), 107–13; and Mason, Life of Josephus, xxvii–l. 29 Mason, Flavius Josephus Judean Antiquities 1–3, xxiv–xxix, reveals Josephus’ programmatic presentation of the Judean constitution and suggests that this characterisation of the priestly Jewish aristocracy as essentially anti-monarchic would correspond with anti-autocratic Roman political traditions and could resonate with those concerned by the increasing monarchical nature of Domitian’s rule. 30 Positive views of priestly aristocracy are combined with a critique of monarchy: Ant 6.33, 39, 60–61, 89, 262–68; 13.300–1; 14.41–42; 19.222–23. 31 “θεῷ τὴν ἂρχὴν καὶ τὸ κράτος ἂναθείς”; Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, translates this as: “ascribing to God the power and the rule.” 32 Most recently Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, xxiii–xxiv, 261–62 n. 635, 262–63 n. 638, has proposed that in spite of the many shared features of Jewish Antiquities and Against Apion, their character and concerns diverge especially on the subject of the constitution. In particular, Against Apion presents a philosophical rather than political presentation of divine rule. Theocracy is further seen as distinct from aristocracy since it describes a metaphysical reality, not a political one. In this way, Barclay observes that the priesthood is not immediately connected with this theological understanding of God’s universal rule.

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Certainly sacerdotal status confers on Josephus personally a special place in Jewish society, one that he is eager to acknowledge (War 1.3; 3.352; Life 1–6; Ag. Ap. 1.54).33 And as priest, he can claim to be part of the process of care for the priestly genealogical lists and marriage records (Ag. Ap. 1.29–30). There seems to be some ambiguity with regard to the priests’ role in the transmission and preservation of the sacred scriptures; Josephus insists that only the prophets through divine inspiration could record history (Ag. Ap 1.37–41) but the accurate (ἂκρίβεια) maintenance of the records is assigned to the chief priests and prophets (Ag. Ap. 1.29) and then to all priests (Ag. Ap. 1.31–36). His claim in Against Apion 1.54 that he translated (μεθερμενεύω) the sacred texts on the account of his priestly status and familiarity with their philosophical content suggests that the priests did have a role in reading and providing interpretations of holy scripture. If among their tasks is the administration of justice and education, surely they must have expertise in the exposition of the Law.34 This indicates an important role in the transmission and interpretation of the Torah, which is further suggested by Moses’ entrusting to the care of the priests the Law (as well as the Ark and the Tent) (Ant. 4.304). The high priestly line, established at Sinai, has remained pure and unbroken for two thousand years (Ant. 20.224–236, 261; Ag. Ap. 1.30, 36), unlike that of the prophets (Ag. Ap. 1.41).35 Maintenance of these sacred records belongs also with the prophets, and here Josephus introduces a particular prophetic Jewish historiographical tradition in which he seems to situate his own historical endeavour (War 1.18; Ant. 1.17; Ag. Ap. 1.47–57).36 This prophetic self-perception has important implication for how Josephus perceived the status of his work.37 33 On Josephus as priest, see: Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus,” JJS 25 (1974): 239–62; Daniel R. Schwartz, “Priesthood and Priestly Descent: Josephus’ Antiquities 10, 80,” JTS 32 (1981): 129–35; Daniel R. Schwartz, “Josephus on the Jewish Constitutions and Community;” P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome, 189–91; L. H. Feldman, “Prophets and Prophecy in Josephus,” JTS 41 (1990): 419–21; Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, 270–71. 34 In this volume, Matthias Henze, “Torah and Eschatology in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,” 201–15, provides an outline of a near contemporary view of the relationship between Torah exegesis and communal authority. 35 On Josephus’ computation of the high priesty line, see Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 27–28, n. 146, who observes that here Josephus offers a conception of prophetic history writing that is unique in Greek and Roman culture. 36 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 28 n. 152. 37 For discussions on the issues of his prophetic self-designation: Blenkinsopp, “Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus,” 239–62; David Daube, “Typology in Jose-

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The consequence of the broken line of prophetic succession at the time of Artaxerxes is that since “every event has been recorded, but this is not judged worthy of the same trust (Ag. Ap. 1.41 [ Barclay, FJTC]).38 This seems to clarify that while Josephus may possess prophetic skills, the authority of his texts cannot be equated with sacred scripture.39 According to Josephus, the number of books belonging to this category of authoritative works is limited to twenty-two.40

phus,” JJS 31 (1980): 18–36; Schwartz, “Priesthood and Priestly Descent: Josephus’ Antiquities 10, 80,” 135 n. 2; Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Josephus, Jeremiah, and Polybius,” History and Theory, 21 (1982): 366–81; Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome, 189–91; Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 35–79; Steve Mason, “Josephus, Daniel, and the Flavian House” in Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith (eds. F. Parente and J. Sievers; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 161–91; Per Bilde, “Contra Apionem 1.28–56: An Essay on Josephus’ View of his own Work in the Context of the Jewish Canon,” in Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its Character and Context with a Latin Concordance to the Portion Missing in Greek (eds. L. H. Feldman and J. R. Levison: AGJU 34; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 94–113. 38 Both Blenkinsopp, “Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus,” 246–55, and Sid Z. Leiman, “Josephus and the Canon of the Bible,” in Josephus, The Bible and History (ed. L. H. Feldman and G. Hata: Leiden: Brill, 1989), 55–56, interpret Josephus as meaning that there was a difference between pre- and post-Artaxerxes prophecy because Josephus does allow for a type of later prophetic activity. However, Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine, and Bilde, “Contra Apionem 1.28–56: An Essay on Josephus’ View of his own Work in the Context of the Jewish Canon,” 103, read this passage as stressing that simply the line of exact succession was broken, as opposed to the end of biblical type prophecy. See also Steve Mason, “Josephus and his Twenty-Two Book Canon,” in The Canon Debate (eds. L. M. McDonald and J. A. Sanders; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 16–19. 39 Blenkinsopp, “Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus,” 239–62, Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine, 35–79, and Bilde, “Contra Apionem 1.28–56: An Essay on Josephus’ View of his own Work in the Context of the Jewish Canon,” 94–113, discuss Josephus’ self-perception as a priest and a prophet and how these qualifications enable him to interpret the scriptures and write Jewish history. P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome, 191, views these comments in Against Apion against War 1.18 where Josephus describes the recording of events by historians when the Jewish prophets ceased. Bilde concludes that “there is reason to assert that Josephus sees himself as a continuer of the prophetic Jewish ‘writing of history’, and sees his writings as a parallel to and continuation of the sacred Jewish scriptures, divinely inspired as they are.” In describing his own predictive abilities, however, Josephus assiduously avoids calling himself a prophet; in terms of his history writing credentials, he is qualified by virtue of being a priest (War 1.3; 3.352; Life 1–6; Apion 1.54) as are those who produce the LXX (Ant. 1.10–13). The biblical prophets share an ability to predict the future, but all those who predict the future in Josephus’ narrative are not deemed prophets. A further difference lies with the fact that the prophets of the past did not simply record events but were involved in mediating between the divine and humanity (Ant. 8.324–329). 40 Recent discussions of the composition of this twenty-two book “canon” can be found in Leiman, “Josephus and the Canon of the Bible”; and Mason, “Josephus and his Twenty-Two Book Canon,” 110–27.

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At the same time, Josephus suggests that his interpretation of these sacred scriptures depends on his priestly training and knowledge. It is in his role as priest rather than prophet that he understands his special qualifications to interpret sacred scripture. Belonging to the tradition that produced the inspired translation at Alexandria, Josephus could claim that he also provided a translation that preserved the philosophy of the text. Since the law is interpreted by those decreed by Moses to do so, and whose origins go back uninterrupted to Sinai, then the constitution as interpreted by the priests must also be of divine provenance, even if not explicitly stated? Barclay explains Josephus’ refocusing of his constitutional discussion in Against Apion: “In shifting his discourse into philosophical mode, Josephus transmutes the traditional claim about a divine origin of the Law into the value of its truths about God, specifically God’s universal rule and transcendence.”41 Does this philosophical discourse present a different or conflicting view of the origin of the constitution as set out in Jewish Antiquities, or can we trace an internal logic that links these different modes of discussion? “Rewritten” Bible and Mosaic Discourse Post-biblical Judaism saw the development of a tradition of reworking or rewriting the Bible in various forms, languages and contexts, with each reflecting different degrees of modification and exegetical techniques.42 Assessing these literary productions in terms of how their relationship with the original text was viewed contemporaneously is essential for understanding the phenomenon of pseudonymity, as well as how the authors perceived this act of re-writing.43 It has been observed that modern notions of authorship, forgery, and plagiarism impose anachronistic standards and obscure the world-view of the creators of these texts.44

41 Barclay, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10. Against Apion, 259–60, n. 622. 42 Philip S. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture. Essays in Honour of Barnabas Linders, SSF (eds. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 99–121, addresses the problem of defining the parameters for identifying rewritten Bible as a genre in terms of literary characteristics. 43 Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism ( JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 2–10. 44 Burton Mack, “Under the Shadow of Moses: Authorship and Authority in Hellenistic Judaism,” SBL Seminar Papers 1982 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 299–318,

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These interpretative reworkings are not intended to replace the original and their authority is derived from their relationship with the biblical text. Hindy Najman has observed that Deuteronomy provided a model for these reworkings with regard to Moses and Mosaic Law.45 Understanding the ongoing development of the authority and attributes of the figure of Moses and Mosaic Law in the literature of the period of the Second Temple as a form of discourse, which links the tradition to the founder, provides a conceptual framework for understanding the practice of rewriting and pseudonymity:46 “On this understanding of a discourse tied to a founder, to rework an earlier text is to update, interpret and develop the content of that text in a way that one claims to be the authentic expression of the law already accepted as authoritatively Mosaic.” Establishing this connection with the tradition authorizes the new interpretation by its link to the Mosaic: “the only passable roads to textual authority led through the past. Mosaic discourse was one such route.”47 For Mosaic discourse to take place four conditions must be present, or if missing, compensated for in some way:48 first, to gain authorized status, a text must find a link or connection to the tradition it claims to belong to; secondly the text is presented as an authentic expression of Torah; thirdly, Sinai is actualised in order to facilitate access to the revelation; finally, it is seen either to be produced by Moses or is associated with him. The presence of these features provides the means by which the text can be reworked and at the same time retain its authority. Mosaic discourse facilitates the authentic expression of Mosaic Law by extending this authority to the interpretative community. The transformation of a particular law laid down in an earlier text does not have to be considered as among the actual words of the historical Moses, but “It is rather to say that the implementation of the law in question would enable Israel to return to the authentic teaching associated with draws on Harold Blooms’s theory of the anxiety of influence to examine how Hellenistic Jewish authors developed various strategies for their authorial self-understanding in light of the growing dominance of the figure of Moses and his books. See also Najman, Seconding Sinai, 1–10. 45 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 19–36, 39–40. 46 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 10–14, 19–39. In this volume, an alternative to this model of discourse is proposed by Eva Mroczek, “Moses, David and Scribal Revelation: Preservation and Renewal in Second Temple Textual Traditions,” 91–115, in which the scribal activities of both David and Moses become central to the transmission and preservation of revelation. 47 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 15. 48 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 16–17.

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the prophetic status of Moses.”49 Najman assesses the establishment of Mosaic Discourse in Deuteronomy, and then looks outside the biblical texts to Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, and Philo for later expressions of this tradition.50 Philo’s Greco-Roman context provided the dynamic behind a new development in Judaism for understanding the role of the author, in which he claims responsibility for his allegorical interpretations, even if considered inspired.51 Yet, Najman does see Philo participating in Mosaic Discourse. In light of Josephus’ authorial claims, his GrecoRoman context, and as a close contemporary of Philo’s, perhaps a (necessarily brief ) consideration of Philo’s reworking of the Bible may help us to understand if Josephus understood his own relationship when rewriting the Bible as Mosaic Discourse. Writing for a predominately non-Jewish audience, it might seem erroneous for Philo to be concerned with Mosaic discourse, and the authentic expression of the Law of Moses; written law was deemed to be flawed and charges of Jewish exclusivism could only find justification with claims about the divine authorship for a special law for the Jews.52 Yet in the atmosphere of cultural competition in Roman Alexandria, Philo transforms the features of Mosaic discourse so that the particularism of Sinai and the Law of Moses has universal significance.53 Moses remains central as the authority-conferring figure, but the transmission of the law, and the law itself, is conceived of in a different way. Philo’s Moses, radically Hellenized, embodies the virtues idealised by the Greeks, and life—like those of the pre-Sinai patriarchs—is

Najman, Seconding Sinai, 13. Najman, Seconding Sinai, on Deuteronomy, 19–36; on Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, 41–69; on Philo, 70–107; and for later examples, 108–37. 51 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 18–19. Burton Mack, “Under the Shadow of Moses: Authorship and Authority in Hellensitic Judaism,” 316–18, on how Philo constructs his own authorial authority in relation to the person of Moses. Philip Alexander’s criteria for rewritten Bible excludes the writings included in The Expositions of the Laws of Moses from this genre (“Retelling the Old Testament,” 117–18), but Peder Borgen, Philo of Alexandria: An Exegete for his Time (NTSup 86; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 65, 78–79, challenges this view and suggests that the criteria need to be expanded. 52 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 71–73. On the flawed character of written law, see 76–77. 53 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 70–71. John W. Martens, One God, One Law: Philo of Alexandria on the Mosaic and Greco-Roman Law (Studies in Philo of Alexandria 2; Leiden: Brill, 2003), analyzes how Philo transformed Greek concepts of law in his reconception of the status of Mosaic law by combining the three aspects of “higher law”—ἄγραφος νόμος (unwritten law), νόμος φύσεως (law of nature), and νόμος ἔμψυχος (embodied or living law)—and defining their relationship with the Law of Moses. 49 50

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exemplary and provides a model of the virtuous life (e.g., Abr. 5, 16, 276; Prob. 6.2; Mos. 1.162).54 They achieved this by living in accordance with the Law of Nature, of which the Law of Moses is a copy (Mos. 2.48).55 In this way, Najman shows how Philo represents the written Law of Moses as a copy of the perfect Law of Nature and as a result confers on it a significance beyond the Jewish context; the God who created the world, created the Law of Nature (Mos. 2.48; Sec 2.129; Sacr. 131; Det. 68) and so too is the source for the copy, the Law of Moses:56 for this reason the Law is presented after the creation account (Opif. 3; Mos. 2.47–48). As the non-legal part of the Pentateuch is also Mosaic, the Law of Moses is not simply a collection of ordinances: established at creation, it can be accessed through reason as well as by the revelation to Moses.57 Najman notes that while Philo draws on the Greek tradition of writing exemplary lives and is also aware of the practice of legitimising Roman rule through idealized biographies, he combines this with the Jewish tradition of interpreting the foundation document of the Pentateuch within an authorised interpretative community.58 This interpretative community is legitimised by the links with Moses. The act of interpretation belongs within a tradition, and Philo sees himself as part of that tradition.59 In this way, he participates in and contributes to

54 E.g., “Having related in the preceding treaties the lives of those whom Moses judged to be men of wisdom, who are set before us in the Sacred Books as founders of our nation and in themselves unwritten laws . . .” (Philo, Dec. 1 [Colson, LCL]): Najman, Seconding Sinai, 82, 86, 88–98. On Moses as philosopher, king, prophet, and embodied law: Mos. 1.148 1.162; 2.2–3, 2.4. 55 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 81–82. Martens, One God, One Law, 95–99, 118–21 on Mosaic law as a copy; 13–30, 151–58 on the Stoic conception of the law of nature. 56 E.g., Philo, Opif. 89–128; Mos. 2.14, on the cosmic relevance of the Sabbath. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 80. Borgen, Philo of Alexandria, 144–48 examines the relationship between Mosaic law and cosmic law in Philo’s writings. Martens, One God, One Law, 95–99, outlines the argument for Philo’s claim for the divine origin of law. 57 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 98–99. Rival claims about Moses’ special access to revelation appear in the Enochic tradition, which presents Enoch’s reception of revelation as chronologically and qualitatively superior: Andrei Orlov, “In the Mirror of the Divine Face: The Enochic Features of the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian,” 183–99 shows how the author of the Exagoge met this challenge by furnishing Moses with Enochic attributes. 58 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 99–100. Philo positions himself within a community tradition, claiming to: “. . . tell the story of Moses as I have learned it, both from the sacred books, the wonderful monuments of his wisdom which he left behind him; for I always interwove what I was told with what I read, and thus believed myself to have a closer knowledge than others of his life history” (Mos. 1.4 [Colson, LCL]). 59 Spec. 3.6.

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Mosaic discourse.60 For Philo, as interpreter of the text, is drawing out the hidden meaning of the law and so reveals it for his audience.61 As such then, while not claiming Torah status, the interpretation is presented as Mosaic in origin. In this way, Philo transforms the first feature of Mosaic discourse and ignores the second condition. The third, the present-ness of the Sinai event is not explicitly central for Philo. Sinai is replaced both by the creation with the establishment of the Law of Nature, and by Pharos when the inspired translation of the Law of Nature was made available to everyone:62 . . . and taking the sacred books, stretched them out towards heaven with the hands that held them, asking of God that they might not fail in their purpose. And He assented to their prayers, to the end that the greater part, or even the whole, of the human race might be profited and led to a better life by continuing to observe such wise and truly admirable ordinances (Mos. 2.31–40 [Colson, LCL]).63

Sinai, however, retains a significance insofar as Moses achieved divine comprehension there, and this is present in the Pentateuch and its interpretations: “Sinai . . . becomes omnipresent, since Moses’ divine vision pervades both the Pentateuch and its correct interpretation, underwriting its authority.”64 Finally, how does Philo treat the fourth feature of Mosaic discourse, attribution to Moses? As Moses functioned within his prophetic role as divine interpreter, so Philo’s act of interpretation emulated that of Moses.65 While some similarities with Josephus’ understanding of Mosaic Law and its interpretation can be observed, does it follow that Josephus can be said belong to this tradition of Mosaic discourse, and in particular does he claim authorised status for his work? And if Josephus considered the revelatory event at Sinai as ongoing, would the God-given Law of Moses be actualised through the Jewish constitution? Najman, Seconding Sinai, 100–6. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 100–6. For Philo’s inspired exegetical experience, see Spec. 3.1–6; Cher. 27–29; Migr. 34–35. 62 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 102–6. Borgen, Philo of Alexandria, 143, situates Pharos in the mind of Philo as “. . . a decisive event in revelatory history, the goal of which is recognition of these Laws of Moses by all nations.” 63 See also Mos. 2.26–27. 64 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 105. 65 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 105–6 and 106, n. 67 notes the parallels between Philo’s terminology for his own inspired mediating activity that he uses for Moses as God’s interpreter (Mos. 1.188). Borgen, Philo of Alexandria, 143, on Philo’s self-understanding of continuing the task of the Septuagint translators. 60 61

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Josephus and Mosaic Discourse Josephus’ statement that his undertaking in Jewish Antiquities emulated Eleazar places him within the undisputed authorised trajectory of the Septuagint. Furthermore, we saw that he established his authority to translate these texts through his priestly status. The eternal priesthood of Aaron is announced by God to Amran in Ant. 2.216, and throughout Book 3, Aaron’s role as priest is justified;66 he is chosen because of his virtue (3.188, 192), and due to his gift of prophecy (3.192) he can be spokesman for Moses. The direct line of priestly succession from Sinai to their central place in the maintenance of Jewish tradition and its constitution confers on the priests a link to that original act of interpretation. They are responsible for the teaching and implementation of the constitution and as such guard its interpretation.67 Accordingly, if there is a link to sanction Josephus’ interpretation, is his text an authentic expression of Torah, one condition for inclusion in Mosaic Discourse? Insofar as Josephus places himself with a tradition of transmitting to a Greek audience (Ant. 1.9–11), and by inviting his readers to turn their thoughts to God and to judge (δοκιμάζειν) whether our lawgiver comprehended His nature worthily and has always attributed to Him deeds that are befitting His power, preserving the discourse about Him pure from every unseemly mythology that is found among others (Ant. 1.15 [Feldman, FJTC]),

he is taking it upon himself to inform his audience about the divine.68 He even claims that he reordered the laws since they were not given

66 Ant. 2.216; 3.188, 192. On Josephus’ portrait of Aaron, see Feldman, Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible, 386–87. 67 Cf. texts of the Second Temple period that elevated scribal activity—originating at Sinai—to a central place in the ongoing interpretation of revelation: Mroczek, “Moses, David and Scribal Revelation: Preservation and Renewal in Second Temple Textual Traditions,” 91–115. 68 Different views of Josephus’ audience in Rome are offered by Louis H. Feldman, “Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in the Writings of Josephus,” in Mikra, Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (eds. J. Mulder and H. Sysling; CRINT 2.1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988), 470–71, and Steve Mason, “Of Audience and Meaning: Reading Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum in the Context of a Flavian Audience,” in Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond (eds. J. Sievers and G. Lembi; JSJSup 104; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 71–100, and Jonathan J. Price, “The Provincial Historian in Rome,” in Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond, 101–18.

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to Moses in a uniform way (Ant. 4.197). Stating that it is through this constitution—set out in his own work—that one can achieve happiness, Josephus invites his readers to consider this way of life, just as Moses had invited the Hebrews to emulate him, since he understood the divine will. For Josephus, it would seem that it is not his text as such that is the authentic expression of Torah, but the Jewish constitution, and his work provides a means of accessing it. As for the actualising of the Sinai event, in line with Philo, Josephus equates the Law of Moses with natural law (Ant. 1.24), and Moses through his understanding of the nature of God emulated this best model possible (Ant. 1.19). Likewise, prior to Sinai, the patriarchs were able to live according to the law of God. Josephus prefaces the Decalogue with a brief overview of God’s care for the Hebrews even before the Law of Moses is instituted (Ant. 3.86–88). For this reason, like Philo, Josephus is clear that the Law does not simply consist of ordinances (Ant. 1.21). The God of creation who ordered the universe is the source of the Law of Moses. This ordering according to nature is reflected in the constitution, and also informs the construction of the Tent in the desert in accordance with divine instruction (Ant 3.100; War 5.212–14). The symbolic interpretation of the Tent, the priests clothing and the sacred vessels (Ant 3.180–87), which are presented as a reflection or representation of the universe confers universal relevance to what might be perceived as exclusively Jewish.69 Moses could comprehend the divine nature, but the Sinai event provides the setting for Moses’ interpretations of God’s Law.70 In Josephus’ narrative, Moses’ role is increased significantly, and his function as mediator between God and the people becomes further emphasized.71 Sinai provides the defining moment for Moses’ prophetic role.

Feldman, Judean Antiquities Books 1–4, 280, n. 474, comments on this passage and notes the parallels in Jewish tradition, and in particular with Philo. 70 For a detailed analysis of Moses’ portrayal in the Jewish Antiquities, see Louis H. Feldman, “Josephus’ Portrait of Moses. Part One,” JQR 82 (1992): 285–328; “Josephus’ Portrait of Moses. Part Two,” JQR 83 (1992): 7–50; and “Josephus’ Portrait of Moses. Part Three,” JQR 83 (1993): 301–30, repr. in Josephus’ Interpretation of the Bible, 374–442. In this volume, an analysis of Josephus’ portrayal of Moses at Sinai in the context of sophistic discourse is offered by George van Kooten, “Why did Paul include an Exegesis of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3?” 168–71. 71 Moses is not only a priest, but also a prophet (Ant. 2.377; 4.320) who predicts future events (Ant. 4.303, 320, 307), and his part in divine revelation is significantly increased (Ant. 3.75, 78, 87, 93, 107, 212). 69

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While for Josephus, the revelation at Sinai is not explicitly present in his discussions of the constitution, it is not completely absent; Josephus does not adopt a different world-view in which belief in divine origin of the Mosaic constitution is absent. In Book 3, the divine presence is transferred from Sinai to the Tent (3.93, 100, 202–203) and here Moses receives further instruction: He wished a Tent to be set up for Himself, into which He would descend to them when He was with them, “in order that when we move to another place we may take it with us and no longer have need to ascend to Sinai, but that He Himself, frequenting the Tent, may be present at our prayers” (Ant. 3.100 [Feldman, FJTC]).

As the Tent becomes the Temple, the one Temple of the Jewish people that is central to the ordering of the constitution (Ag. Ap. 2.193), then Sinai is recreated through the Temple and the priesthood (Ag. Ap. 2.193–94). Finally, we must consider the association with Moses; as outlined, Josephus’ priestly credentials grants him special access to the Law of Moses and authorize his interpretation. Through this priestly interpretative community, Josephus is linked with Moses and so too is his interpretation. Josephus participates in Mosaic discourse and provides a way in which the interested gentile can access the Jewish constitution. Conclusion Hindy Najman challenges the understanding of “rewritten” Bible since “the distinction between the transmission and interpretation of biblical traditions was not as sharp as the term Rewritten Bible implies.”72 Our examination of Josephus’ claims with regard to his own interpretative reworking suggests that we cannot judge his modifications to the biblical text as egregious hypocrisy, rather he belongs to a Jewish tradition which established authorial authority by its relationship to the Bible. One way of defining that relationship is through Mosaic Discourse. Josephus’ participation in this discourse provides a way of viewing his presentation of the Jewish constitution as theocracy in Against Apion within the same conceptual framework as Mosaic Law in Jewish Antiquities. While the apologetic interests of Against Apion and its highly

72

Najman, Seconding Sinai, 8.

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metaphysical presentation of the Jewish constitution may preclude the treatment of the Sinaitic revelation and the heavenly origin of Mosaic Law, Sinai is present in the priestly administration of the constitution. As a priest, Josephus’ exposition of the Law of Moses and the theocratic constitution provides his readers with a link to the ongoing revelation that began at Sinai.

WHY DID PAUL INCLUDE AN EXEGESIS OF MOSES’ SHINING FACE (EXOD 34) IN 2 COR 3? Moses’ Strength, Well-being and (Transitory) Glory, according to Philo, Josephus, Paul, and the Corinthian Sophists George H. van Kooten University of Groningen, The Netherlands Introduction: Why does Paul draw on Exod 34 in 2 Cor 3? The question I shall deal with in my paper is why Paul drew so extensively on an episode of the Giving of the Torah in his Second Letter to the Corinthians.1 In chapter 3 he makes abundant use of Exod 34, the story about the second giving of the Torah and Moses’ shining face, which reflects God’s glory. Although Paul does not even mention the fact that the first tablets of the law were replaced, Exod 34 is terribly important to him because of a particular feature of the Old Testament narrative. The question is: why did Paul consider Exod 34 so important? One might point out that the narrative of the giving of the Torah would have been of importance to any Jew. Indeed, in another letter, too, Paul refers to the way the Law was handed down to Moses. In his Letter to the Galatians, as part of an intense polemic against Judaizing parties within Christianity which wish to uphold the Law in every respect, Paul emphasizes the secondary nature of the Law: it only arrived on the scene of Israel fairly late on, 430 years after Abraham, the founding father of Judaism (Gal 3:17); its secondary nature is also evident from the fact that “it was ordained through angels by a mediator” (Gal 3:19). Here, Paul applies Jewish traditions about the association of angels in the giving of the law.2 Yet, for all his criticism of the Mosaic law in Galatians, Paul is very brief about the actual

1 I wish to thank the participants in the conference for their useful and stimulating suggestions and criticism. Dr Maria Sherwood-Smith kindly corrected the English of this paper. 2 James D. G. Dunn, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (Black’s New Testament Commentaries; London: Black, 1993), 191.

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giving of the Torah. In this light, the sheer length of Paul’s passage on the giving of the law in 2 Cor 3 requires further explanation and might have to do with the specific setting of 1–2 Cor. Indeed, Paul has already alluded to specific narratives about the journey of Israel through the wilderness in 1 Cor. In chapter 10 Paul writes about Israel’s escape through the Red Sea and talks about the Israelites’ itinerary through the desert: I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:1–4).3

Paul draws on these narratives because he wants to counter his opponents’ experience of the sacraments, which leads them to regard themselves as invincible. Partaking in the same baptism, spiritual food, and spiritual drink, Paul explains, did not render the Israelites invulnerable to God’s judgement: Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did (1 Cor 10:5–6).

In this case, it is very likely that Paul himself draws on the narrative of Israel’s journey through the wilderness in order to criticize his opponents’ way of life. In line with this, it could be assumed that in 2 Cor, too, Paul continues to allude to this story, now commenting on the giving of the Law. Yet, this time there are clear signs that it is not Paul himself, but his opponents within the Christian community at Corinth who were the first to refer to this episode of Moses on Mt. Sinai. There may have been a simple reason for Paul’s opponents in Corinth to focus on Moses. They were Christians of Jewish background, as 2 Cor 10–13 makes clear, but their approach seems to have been very different from the Judaizing Christians among the Galatians, because in

3 Biblical translations are taken from the NRSV; Classical translations either from the Loeb Classical Library or from Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism: Edition with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (3 vols; Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Section of Humanities = Fontes ad res Judaicas spectantes; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984), with minor alterations when necessary.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 151 2 Cor there is neither ethnocentric Jewish discourse nor straightforward commendation of the Jewish law.4 The Corinthians seem simply to have brought up the issue of Moses as legislator, whose writings would also have been read as Scripture in the Christian community. As we shall see, in a pagan context, with pagan outsiders being introduced to the meetings of the Christian community (1 Cor 14.16, 23), there was abundant reason to talk about Moses, since his image among the pagans was ambiguous and not necessarily positive and, for that reason, stood in need of clarification. 1. Moses in Pagan-Jewish Relations One of the first pagan Greeks to draw a negative portrayal of Moses as a lawgiver is Hecataeus of Abdera (3rd cent. b.c.e.). Although his overall attitude to the Jews is not unsympathetic, the following features in his account are critical about Moses’ legislation for the Jews: In addition [Moses] (. . .) instituted their forms of worship and ritual, drew up their laws and ordered their political institutions. (. . .) The sacrifices that he established differ from those of other nations, as does their way of living, for as a result of their own expulsion from Egypt he introduced an unsocial and intolerant mode of life. (. . .) And at the end of their laws there is even appended the statement: “These are the words that Moses heard from God and declares unto the Jews” (Hecataeus apud Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 40.3.3–6; Stern, No. 11).

The Jewish legislation is explicitly linked with the name of Moses, who is understood to have presented his own words as the word of God. His institutions are characterized as “unsocial” and “intolerant.” The passage from Hecataeus just quoted is preserved in a work by Diodorus Siculus, who is equally critical about Moses’ law elsewhere in his writings. According to Diodorus (1st cent. b.c.e.), Moses is just one of the many lawgivers who have claimed divine origins for their own legislation. Other examples include Mneves, among the Egyptians, and Zathraustes, among the Arians: And among the Jews Moyses referred his laws to the god who is invoked as Iao. They all did it either because they believed that a conception

4 Cf. also Dieter Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 248: “The fact that the concept of νόμος is wholly lacking from 2 Cor. 3 argues against a conflict with Jewish nomism.”

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Tacitus (56–120 c.e.) is even more critical about the giving of the Jewish law. He draws a sharp contrast between the Jewish law and the laws of “all other religions”: To establish his influence over this people for all time, Moses introduced new religious practices, quite opposed to those of all other religions. The Jews regard as profane all that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they permit all that we abhor (Tacitus, Historiae 5.4.1; Stern, No. 281).

This opposition between Jewish and other religious laws is also emphasized by Juvenal (60–130 c.e.), all the more since he has noted that some pagans are attracted by Judaism: Having been wont to flout the laws of Rome, they learn and practise and revere the Jewish law, and all that Moses handed down in his secret tome, forbidding to point out the way to any not worshiping the same rites, and conducting none but the circumcised to the desired fountain (Saturae 14.100–104; Stern, No. 301).

In this light it becomes understandable that Jewish Christians at Corinth would feel the need to come to Moses’ defence and portray him in a positive way, partly with a view to the pagan outsiders who, as we have seen, visited the Christian meetings (1 Cor 14:16, 23). That is not to say that pagan outsiders would only have encountered a negative portrayal of Moses among their fellow pagan authors. The negative views outlined above contrast with more favourable views, such as those of Strabo, who is quite positive about Moses himself, his peaceable reputation and his non-oppressive legislation and governmental organization, and only blames Moses’ successors of later days for corrupting his legacy: Moses, instead of using arms, put forward as defence his sacrifices and his Divine Being, being resolved to seek a seat of worship for Him and promising to deliver to the people a kind of worship and a kind of ritual which would not oppress those who adopted them either with expenses or with divine obsessions or with other absurd troubles. Now Moses enjoyed fair repute with these people, and organised no ordinary kind of government (. . .). His successors for some time abided by the same course, acting righteously and being truly pious toward God; but afterwards, first superstitious men were appointed to the priesthood, and then tyrannical people (Geography 16.2.36–37; Stern, No. 115).

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 153 We find unambiguously positive views on Moses in Numenius (2nd cent. c.e.), who likened Plato to Moses, as is captured in the muchquoted one-liner “What is Plato but Moses talking Attic?”5 This kind of perspective, in which Plato is even dependent on Moses, is shared by Jewish authors such as Aristobulus (2nd cent. b.c.e.), who claims that even prior to the Septuagint parts of the Jewish writings, including the detailed account of Moses’ entire legislation, had already been translated into Greek, so that the Greeks begin from the philosophy of the Hebrews; from the (books) of Aristobulus dedicated to King Ptolemy: It is evident that Plato imitated our legislation and that he had thoroughly investigated each of the elements in it. (. . .) So it is very clear that the philosopher mentioned above [Plato] took many things (from it). For he was very learned, as was Pythagoras, who transferred many of our doctrines and integrated them into his own system of beliefs (Aristobulus, frag. 3; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 13.12.1–2).

These different voices, both negative and positive, provide sufficient indication that the figure of Moses was an issue in pagan-Jewish relations and that, for this reason, Jewish Christians, too, would have wanted to present a positive picture of Moses wherever possible. This necessity is also emphasized by Philo. In the introduction to his biography of Moses, Philo explains that whereas the Jewish laws are well known, the giver of these laws, Moses, seems to be largely neglected: While the fame of the laws which [Moses] left behind him has travelled throughout the civilized world and reached the ends of the earth, the man himself as he really was is known to few. Greek men of letters have refused to treat him as worthy of memory, possibly through envy, and also because in many cases the ordinances of the legislators of the different states are opposed to his (Life of Moses I.1–2).

This complaint resembles that of Origen, some time later, when he censures Celsus for having omitted Moses from the list of wise men (Celsus apud Origen, Contra Celsum I.16; Stern, No. 375). Although this background may explain why Jewish Christians in Corinth felt a need to repaint a pagan picture of Moses,6 there is more at issue here.

5 Numenius, frag. 8.13 (edn Des Places). On Numenius and Moses, see Myles F. Burnyeat, “Platonism in the Bible: Numenius of Apamea on Exodus and Eternity,” in The Revelation of the Name YHWH to Moses: Perspectives from Judaism, the Graeco-Roman World, and Early Christianity (ed. G. H. van Kooten; TBN 9; Leiden: Brill), 139–168. 6 On this see further John G. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (SBL Monograph Series 16; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972); and George H. van Kooten, “Moses/

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It seems that, in their attempts to defend Moses, they have depicted him in terms of a powerful, glorious kind of sophist whose reputation and success should not be ignored by the pagans. Not only can this Moses compete with the pagan sophists in the Mediterranean world, but should also provide a role-model for rhetoric and performance within the Christian communities, it seems. It is this picture of Moses which Paul attempts to redress in 2 Cor. Such an interpretation of the polemics in Corinth does full justice to the fact that Paul’s re-reading of the episode of Moses on Mt. Sinai in 2 Cor 3 is firmly anchored in an anti-sophistic setting. 2. 2 Cor 3 in its Anti-Sophistic Setting The extensive passage on Moses is embedded in Paul’s criticism of his opponents at Corinth who—as Bruce Winter has convincingly argued— behave like sophists. At the end of 2 Cor 2 Paul openly criticizes them and distances himself by emphasizing that he is not like “the many who sell the word of God by retail”: For we are not like so many who sell God’s word by retail—οὐ γάρ ἐσμεν ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence (2 Cor 2:17).

As has been noted by scholars such as Ralph Martin, Dieter Georgi and Bruce Winter, the phrase οὐ γάρ ἐσμεν ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, “For we are not like so many who sell God’s word by retail,” is an echo of Plato’s criticism of the sophists in the Protagoras.7 In this dialogue Socrates urges Hippocrates: We must see that the sophist in commending his wares does not deceive us, like the wholesaler and the retailer who deal in food for the body. (. . .) So too those who take the various subjects of knowledge from city to city, and sell them by retail (οἱ τὰ μαθήματα περιάγοντες κατὰ τὰς πόλεις

Musaeus/Mochos and his God YHWH, Iao, and Sabaoth, Seen from a Greek Perspective,” in The Revelation of the Name YHWH to Moses, 107–138. 7 Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians (Word Biblical Commentary 40; Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1986), 50; Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, 234; and Bruce W. Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement (2nd edition; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002), 168, cf. 91, 167.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 155 καὶ πωλοῦντες καὶ καπηλεύοντες) to whoever wants them, commend everything that they have for sale (313d–e).

This image is used in the context immediately preceding 2 Cor 3 (in 2 Cor 2:17), and straight after 2 Cor 3 Paul resumes this theme as a kind of “inclusio” (in 2 Cor 4:2). Instead of tampering with God’s word, Paul portrays himself as interested in truth: But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word (μηδὲ δολοῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ), but by the open statement of the truth (ἀλλὰ τῇ φανερώσει τῆς ἀληθείας) we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience (συνιστάνοντες ἑαυτοὺς πρὸς πᾶσαν συνείδησιν ἀνθρώπων) in the sight of God (2 Cor 4:2).

In this way the entire passage devoted to the giving of the Torah to Moses in 2 Cor 3 appears to be embedded right in the middle of antisophistic polemics. Moreover, it is not only the periphery of 2 Cor 3 that belongs to this setting; the contents of 2 Cor 3 can also be shown to arise gradually from this debate. In order to demonstrate this, I shall divide 2 Cor 3 into four parts and comment upon them. I shall argue (1) that the entire chapter evolves from a reference to “letters of recommendation,” which were part of sophistic practice in real life and provided the incentive for Paul to write the chapter (see [a] below); (2) that the pivotal terms around which the entire passage subsequently revolves are “letter” ( gramma; see [b]) and “splendour, radiance, fame, renown” (doxa; see [c]); (3) that the specifically Pauline antithesis between letter and spirit is not simply inserted into, or applied to this passage but is being construed throughout it (see [b]; and (4) that it is in this context that Paul draws on the narrative of Exod 34 (see [c] and [d]). 2 Cor 3, then, does not contain an autonomous, unsolicited exegesis of Exod 34. On the contrary, the exegesis is deliberately drawn into a specific polemical context and is wholly intertwined with this situation. I shall now pay close attention to the composition of the chapter, with a focus on how its train of thought reveals the underlying discussion. (a) 2 Cor 3:1–3: Reference to written letters of recommendation and a slow development towards an implicit antithesis between “letter” and “spirit” Having stated that he is not selling the word of God by retail but speaks from sincerity (2 Cor 2:17), Paul subsequently criticizes the practice of employing συστατικαὶ ἐπιστολαὶ, letters of recommendation (2 Cor

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3:1). Introductory, commendatory letters were not confined to sophistic circles. Aristotle already remarks that personal appearance is a better introduction than any letter (Aristotle apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 5.18), apparently referring to a widespread phenomenon (cf. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 8.87). Interestingly, this testimony of Aristotle in Diogenes Laertius also demonstrates criticism of this phenomenon at the hands of philosophers. Similar criticism is recorded in Epictetus, who has a chapter addressed “to those who recommend persons to the philosophers.” He refers with approval to Diogenes the Cynic, who critically questions a man who requests γράμματα συστατικὰ, a written recommendation: That is an excellent answer of Diogenes to the man who asked for a letter of recommendation from him (πρὸς τὸν ἀξιοῦντα γράμματα παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαβεῖν συστατικὰ): “That you are a man,” he says, “he [i.e. the prospective addressee of this letter] will know at a glance; but whether you are a good or a bad man he will discover if he has the skill to distinguish between good and bad, and if he is without that skill he will not discover the facts, even though I write him thousands of times” (Epictetus, Dissertationes 2.3).

Such letters also very much fit the sophistic atmosphere of appraisal, repute and self-commendation criticized by Paul, who writes: (3:1) A ̓ ρχόμεθα πάλιν ἑαυτοὺς συνιστάνειν; ἢ μὴ χρῄζομεν ὥς τινες συστατικῶν ἐπιστολῶν πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἢ ἐξ ὑμῶν; (2) ἡ ἐπιστολὴ ἡμῶν ὑμεῖς ἐστε, ἐγγεγραμμένη ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν, γινωσκομένη καὶ ἀναγινωσκομένη ὑπὸ πάντων ἀνθρώπων· (3) φανερούμενοι ὅτι ἐστὲ ἐπιστολὴ Χριστοῦ διακονηθεῖσα ὑφ’ ἡμῶν, ἐγγεγραμμένη οὐ μέλανι ἀλλὰ πνεύματι θεοῦ ζῶντος, οὐκ ἐν πλαξὶν λιθίναις ἀλλ᾽ ἐν πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? (2) You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; (3) and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts (2 Cor 3:1–3).

The passage starts off with a reference to letters of recommendation, συστατικαὶ ἐπιστολαὶ (3:1). Paul criticizes this phenomenon, employed by his opponents, and refers to the Corinthian community as his letter, written in his heart (ἡ ἐπιστολὴ ἡμῶν ὑμεῖς ἐστε, ἐγγεγραμμένη ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν; 3:2), written not with ink but with the Spirit (ἐγγεγραμμένη οὐ μέλανι ἀλλὰ πνεύματι θεοῦ ζῶντος; 3:3b), not on tablets of stone but on the tablet of the human heart (οὐκ ἐν πλαξὶν λιθίναις ἀλλ’ ἐν

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 157 πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις; 3:3c). Although the word “letter” (ἐπιστολὴ) is now used as a metaphor (“You yourselves are our letter”), its characterization as “written” (ἐγγεγραμμένη) is still meant, within the imagery, in a literal sense, with reference to the writing of actual letters, and not yet with reference to gramma in the sense of the written Mosaic law. It only acquires the latter meaning as the chapter unfolds. This sense— the gramma of the Mosaic law—is only implicitly present in this first section, when Paul draws an antithesis between “written with ink” and “written with the Spirit.” The direct opposition is still between “ink” and “Spirit,” not yet between “letter” ( gramma) and “Spirit.” It shows that the full-blown antithesis between the gramma of the Mosaic law and the Spirit develops out of an earlier reference to a letter which is written (ἡ ἐπιστολὴ . . ., ἐγγεγραμμένη) in 2 Cor 3:2, which alludes to a reality behind the text, the letters of recommendation mentioned in 3:1. The antithesis is not yet between two nouns, gramma and Spirit, but between a past participle (ἐγγεγραμμένη) and a noun (πνεῦμα). The undeveloped status of the antithesis in question is also confirmed in the last phrase of the first section. The letter is explicitly said to be written “not on tablets of stone” (ἐγγεγραμμένη. . . . οὐκ ἐν πλαξὶν λιθίναις; 3:3). Here the way is being paved for the gramma in the sense of the Torah, written on tablets of stone; but the law is still not unambiguously mentioned, only alluded to. The point of departure for the entire passage is still the practice of giving letters of recommendation, which is contrasted with Paul’s metaphorical letter writing, on the hearts of his community.

(b) 2 Cor 3:4–6: The antithesis between “letter” and “spirit” becomes explicit It is not until the second section of 2 Cor 3 that the implicit antithesis between gramma and Spirit is rendered explicit and develops into the pair of opposites for which Paul has become famous (see, besides 2 Cor 3:6, Romans 2:29 and 7:6): (4) Πεποίθησιν δὲ τοιαύτην ἔχομεν διὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. (5) οὐχ ὅτι ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν ἱκανοί ἐσμεν λογίσασθαί τι ὡς ἐξ ἑαυτῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ ἱκανότης ἡμῶν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ, (6) ὃς καὶ ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς διακόνους καινῆς διαθήκης, οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος· τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ. (4) Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. (5) Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, (6) who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:4–6).

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After mentioning the “letters of recommendation” in 3:1, and contrasting them in 3:2–3 with the metaphorical letter made up by the community, written in Paul’s heart and legible for all (ἡ ἐπιστολὴ . . ., ἐγγεγραμμένη . . ., γινωσκομένη καὶ ἀναγινωσκομένη), written not with ink (ἐγγεγραμμένη οὐ μέλανι) but with the Spirit of the living God, now, in 3:6, Paul goes on to express the full antithesis between “letter” (γράμμα) and “Spirit” (πνεῦμα). The new covenant and its ministers are characterized as a covenant and as ministers “not of letter but of spirit” (3:6ab). These features are further elaborated in two short sentences: “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”—τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ (3:6cd). Because this phrase sounds so quintessentially Pauline,8 it is important to be aware of the fact that this Pauline theologoumenon is not dropped into the text but develops naturally from the reference to the “letters of recommendation” in 3:1. In the course of 2 Cor 3:1–6 Paul’s thought crystallizes into the statement of 3:6 about the antagonism between letter and Spirit. The letters of recommendation have now become (almost intrinsically) linked to the Mosaic “gramma.” The reason for this equation will be explored later, but already we can conclude that the term “letter” (γράμμα) is indeed a pivotal term in 2 Cor, but only because it serves Paul’s criticism of the practice of letters of recommendation. In the following section of 2 Cor 3 Paul describes the most important feature of this “gramma,” its temporary, transient glory.

8 The link between Spirit and giving life had already been established in 1 Cor 15:45. But the statement that the letter kills is now added and seems to reflect a general psychological experience, also attested in Classical sources. According to Dio Chrysostom, the written law “by threats and violence maintains its mastery” and may be likened “to the power of tyranny, for it is by means of fear and through injunction that each measure is made effective”; “the written law is harsh and stern” and “the laws create a polity of slaves . . . For the laws inflict punishment upon men’s body” (Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 76.1–4). In the same way as Paul contrasts Spirit and the written Mosaic law, Dio sets off customs against written laws: “while laws are preserved on tablets of wood or of stone, each custom is preserved within our own hearts” (76.3). Paul’s differentiation between written law and Spirit comes close to that between the letter and the intention of the lawgiver (Libanius, Declamations 31.35; both texts in G. Strecker & U. Schnelle (with the cooperation of G. Seelig), Neuer Wettstein: Texte zum Neuen Testament aus Griechentum und Hellenismus, vol. 2.1: Texte zur Briefliteratur und zur Johannesapokalypse (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 425–427.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 159 (c) 2 Cor 3:7–11: Moses’ “gramma”: glorious, but only transient glory The most remarkable feature of Moses’ “gramma” is its glorious nature, its δόξα, the second key term in 2 Cor 3. Though on closer reflection, this glory relates not to the law, but the law-giver himself, Moses. In this, Paul clearly draws upon Exod 34, which talks about Moses’ radiance. Paul is surprisingly positive about Moses and does not deny his glory, but merely contrasts it with the still greater glory of the new covenant. The glory of Moses’ gramma is only temporary, yet undoubtedly radiant: (7) Εἰ δὲ ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐντετυπωμένη λίθοις ἐγενήθη ἐν δόξῃ, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς I̓ σραὴλ εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ τὴν καταργουμένην, (8) πῶς οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ἡ διακονία τοῦ πνεύματος ἔσται ἐν δόξῃ; (9) εἰ γὰρ ἡ διακονία τῆς κατακρίσεως δόξα, πολλῷ μᾶλλον περισσεύει ἡ διακονία τῆς δικαιοσύνης δόξῃ. (10) καὶ γὰρ οὐ δεδόξασται τὸ δεδοξασμένον ἐν τούτῳ τῷ μέρει εἵνεκεν τῆς ὑπερβαλλούσης δόξης· (11) εἰ γὰρ τὸ καταργούμενον διὰ δόξης, πολλῷ μᾶλλον τὸ μένον ἐν δόξῃ. (7) Now if the ministry of death, chiselled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, (8) how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? (9) For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! (10) Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; (11) for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory! (2 Cor 3:7–11).

We now have the fullest explication that the “gramma” is indeed the Mosaic law, “chiselled in letters on stone tablets” (3:7). Paul characterizes this “gramma” as glorious and tells us that “the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face” (3:7). For this characterization and anecdote, Paul alludes to Exod 34. There we find the story that Moses, after the second reception of the law, came down from Mt. Sinai. While he was descending, (29) Μωυσῆς οὐκ ᾔδει ὅτι δεδόξασται ἡ ὄψις τοῦ χρώματος τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ λαλεῖν αὐτὸν αὐτᾧ̔ (30) καὶ εἶδεν Ααρων καὶ πάντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι Ισραηλ τὸν Μωυσῆν καὶ ἦν δεδοξασμένη ἡ ὄψις τοῦ χρώματος τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν ἐγγίσαι αὐτοῦ (31) καὶ ἐκάλεσεν αὐτοὺς Μωυσῆς καὶ ἐπεστράφησαν πρὸς αὐτὸν Ααρων καὶ πάντες οἱ ἄρχοντες τῆς συναγωγῆς καὶ ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς Μωυσῆς (32) καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα προσῆλθον πρὸς αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ καὶ ἐνετείλατο αὐτοῖς πάντα ὅσα ἐλάλησεν κύριος πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ὄρει Σινα (33) καὶ

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george h. van kooten ἐπειδὴ κατέπαυσεν λαλῶν πρὸς αὐτούς ἐπέθηκεν ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ κάλυμμα (34) ἡνίκα δ’ ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο Μωυσῆς ἔναντι κυρίου λαλεῖν αὐτῷ περιῃρεῖτο τὸ κάλυμμα ἕως τοῦ ἐκπορεύεσθαι καὶ ἐξελθὼν ἐλάλει πᾶσιν τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ ὅσα ἐνετείλατο αὐτῷ κύριος (35) καὶ εἶδον οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ τὸ πρόσωπον Μωυσῆ ὅτι δεδόξασται καὶ περιέθηκεν μωυσῆς κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἑαυτοῦ ἕως ἂν εἰσέλθῃ συλλαλεῖν αὐτῷ.

(29) . . . Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified, when God spoke to him. (30) And Aaron and all the elders of Israel saw Moses, and the appearance of the skin of his face was made glorious, and they feared to approach him. (31) And Moses called them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the synagogue turned towards him, and Moses spoke to them. (32) And afterwards all the children of Israel came to him, and he commanded them all things, whatsoever the Lord had commanded him in the mount of Sinai. (33) And when he ceased speaking to them, he put a veil on his face. (34) And whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak to him, he took off the veil till he went out, and he went forth and spoke to all the children of Israel whatsoever the Lord commanded him. (35) And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that it was glorified; and Moses put the veil over his face, till he went in to speak with him (LXX Exod 34:29–35; trans. L. C. L. Brenton).

This narrative—which describes how Moses descends from Mt. Sinai, unaware of his radiant appearance, and meets with the fearsome elders, rulers and children of Israel to transmit to them the commandments of God—contains a striking inconsistency. According to Exod 34:33, when Moses “ceased speaking to them, he put a veil on his face.” In Exod 34:34–35, however, Moses is said to put the veil over his face as soon as he communicates with the Israelites: “whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak to him, he took off the veil till he went out. . . .; and Moses put the veil over his face, till he went in to speak with him.” It seems that the narrative describes two different instances. The first time, when Moses came down from the mountain, he first addressed the Israelites without a veil. Only afterwards, once he had ceased talking, did he put on a veil (34:33). Thereafter, however, when Moses goes into the tabernacle, which from now on replaces Sinai as the place of the revelation of God’s commands, he covers himself with a veil as soon as he leaves the tabernacle (34:34). The report in Exod 34 is somewhat awkward as it concludes as follows: “And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that it was glorified; and Moses put the veil over his face, till he went in to speak with him” (34:35). The first part seems to summarize the first experience of the Israelites, when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai; only on that occasion did they see

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 161 Moses’ face glorified. The second part then summarizes the normal procedure when Moses used the tabernacle for further encounters with God; on those occasions he was equally unveiled, but he put on a veil as soon as he left the tabernacle to communicate with the Israelites. (d) 2 Cor 3:12–18: The superiority of the Lord’s permanent, inward glory This slight inconsistency or ambiguity in the text is now fully exploited by Paul in the next and final section of 2 Cor 3. The fact that the first time Moses only covered himself after he had ceased talking to the Israelites suggests—in Paul’s view—that they must have seen the glory on Moses’ face gradually fading away. It was in order to protect them, not against fear of Moses’ glory, but against the painful awareness that Moses’ glory was only transitory, that Moses covered himself. This temporary, transitory glory contrasts with the permanence of the glory of the Lord himself, into which all believers are being transformed: (12) Ἔχοντες οὖν τοιαύτην ἐλπίδα πολλῇ παρρησίᾳ χρώμεθα, (13) καὶ οὐ καθάπερ Μωϋσῆς ἐτίθει κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου. (14) ἀλλὰ ἐπωρώθη τὰ νοήματα αὐτῶν. ἄχρι γὰρ τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας τὸ αὐτὸ κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώσει τῆς παλαιᾶς διαθήκης μένει μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον, ὅτι ἐν Χριστῷ καταργεῖται· (15) ἀλλ᾽ ἕως σήμερον ἡνίκα ἂν ἀναγινώσκηται Μωϋσῆς κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν αὐτῶν κεῖται· (16) ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα. (17) ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν· οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου, ἐλευθερία. (18) ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν κυρίου κατοπτριζόμενοι τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν, καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος.

(12) Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, (13) not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. (14) But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. (15) Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; (16) but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. (17) Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (18) And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit (2 Cor 3:12–18).

Whereas in the previous section Paul has explained the reason for (or rather the consequence of) Moses’ veil as ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι ἀτενίσαι

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τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ—“so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of it of his face” (3:7), the reason given now in the last section of 2 Cor 3 is πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου—“to keep the people of Israel from gazing at it that was being set aside” (3:13). This temporary glory is subsequently contrasted with the permanence of the Lord’s glory, which Moses himself experienced in a direct, immediate, unveiled way: “when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (3:16)—ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα. This is an almost verbatim quotation from Exod 34:34: ἡνίκα δ’ ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο Μωυσῆς ἔναντι κυρίου λαλεῖν αὐτῷ περιῃρεῖτο τὸ κάλυμμα—“whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak to him, he took off the veil.” However, the small differences between the LXX and 2 Cor 3:16 are very revealing. By dropping the name “Moses,” Paul is able to generalize the subject of “went in before the Lord.” Not Moses, but everyone who goes in before (or rather: turns to) the Lord experiences the Lord’s glory. In this way, the stress shifts from Moses’ exclusiveness to Moses as an example for the possibility of direct acquaintance with God. As, in Paul’s view, this possibility comes about through conversion, it is noteworthy that Paul also drops the phrase ἡνίκα δ’ ἂν εἰσεπορεύετο . . . ἔναντι κυρίου, “whenever [he] went in before the Lord,” and replaces it with the phrase ἡνίκα δὲ ἐὰν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα: “but when one turns, or converts to the Lord, the veil is removed,” the verb ἐπιστρέφειν expressing the conversion involved (cf. 1 Thess 1:9; Gal 4:9). Everyone is eligible for such a conversion. It is no longer that Moses alone has the privileged position of direct contact with God’s transforming glory, but ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν κυρίου κατοπτριζόμενοι τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν.

All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (3:18).9

In rabbinical sources this emphasis that all see God, and not just Moses alone, surfaces in Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 12.25 (edn Mandelbaum): “R. Levi (ca. 300) said: The Holy One, blessed be He, appeared to them as a statue with faces on every side, so that though a thousand men might be looking at the statue, [it would seem as though] it was looking at them all. So too when the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke, each and every 9

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 163 This passage highlights both the similarity between Christian believers and Moses in Paul’s mind and, at the same time, the difference. The similarity consists in the fact that Christians resemble Moses insofar as they, like Moses in his contact with God, do not need to cover their faces (ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ). The dissimilarity, however, has to do with the permanent and still increasing nature of the glory into which the Christians are transformed. Whereas the glory on Moses’ face was only temporary and diminished, and was only refreshed for a time after a new encounter with God, the transformation which the believers experience does not diminish, but, on the contrary, gradually increases: “all of us . . . are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες . . . τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν). There is a further important difference, which Paul brings out in the following chapter, 2 Cor 4; this transformation only concerns the inner man, and not the outer man (4:16): “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day”—∆ιὸ οὐκ ἐγκακοῦμεν, ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ ὁ ἔξω ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος διαφθείρεται, ἀλλ’ ὁ ἔσω ἡμῶν ἀνακαινοῦται ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἡμέρᾳ. Whereas Moses’ glory was visible on his face, the Spirit-worked glory is not visible on the outside. This is an important issue which will bring us to the heart of the polemics in Corinth; I shall return to this in due course. So far, we have seen that Paul’s exegesis of Exod 34 in 2 Cor 3 hinges on two key words, “gramma” and “glory.” The first term “gramma” emerges from a description Paul gives of the practice, current among his sophistic opponents, of using written letters of recommendation. Strangely, these written letters somehow develop into the Mosaic grammata, which are characterized as “glorious” because of the “glory” of their author, Moses. Here a link is being forged between sophistic letters of recommendation and a particular understanding of Moses and his grammata. But what exactly is this link? Why does Paul choose to link Moses with “glory”? The train of thought running through 2 Cor can be apprehended more easily, I shall suggest, if we compare this to the way in which Moses was understood as a glorious, powerful

person in Israel would say, ‘The Divine Word is addressing me.’ Note that Scripture does not say, ‘I am the Lord your (plural) God,’ but ‘I am the Lord thy (singular) God’ (Exod 20:20)”; see Steven Fraade’s contribution to this volume, 263–64.

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figure by authors such as Philo and Josephus. This approach has already been taken in some respects by Ludwig Bieler (1935–36), Wayne Meeks (1967) and Dieter Georgi (1987),10 but I believe some further progress can be made. In other Jewish texts, too, Moses is portrayed as a powerful, almost divine figure. In Ezekiel the Tragedian—as is highlighted in a separate contribution to this volume by Andrei Orlov—Moses, in a dream, appears to be worshipped on God’s throne by the whole of creation (ll. 68–89; cf. Gen 37). And among the Dead Sea Scrolls, 4Q Apocryphon of Moses A emphasizes that Moses was made like God: “And he made him like God for the powerful ones, and a fright for the Pharaoh” (4Q374, frag. 2, col. II.6),11 showing dependence on the biblical text of Exod 7:1 which reads “The LORD said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh.’” Although such passages show the high estimation which Moses often received, Philo and Josephus, especially, show what kind of discourse was involved in the positive representation of Moses in the Graeco-Roman world. Let us now turn to them. 3. Philo and Josephus on Moses the Legislator 3.1

Philo—Moses’ strength and well-being

In Philo’s biography of Moses, De vita Mosis, in which he aims to show that “Moses is the best of all lawgivers in all countries” (2.12), he includes the following description of Moses’ descent from Mt. Sinai. This passage shows important similarities to and differences from with 2 Cor 3 and provides the setting in which the figure of Moses featured in contemporary debate. Moses’ descent is described in the following way: As for eating and drinking, he had no thought of them for forty successive days, doubtless because he had the better food of contemplation, through whose inspiration, sent from heaven above, he grew in grace, first of mind, then of body also through the soul (τὴν μὲν διάνοιαν τὸ πρῶτον, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὸ 10 Ludwig Bieler, Theios anēr: Das Bild des “göttlichen Menschen” in Spätantike und Frühchristentum (2 vols; Wien: Buchhandlung Oskar Höfels, 1935–36), vol. 2 (1936), chap. 1.1, 3–36, esp. 25–36; Wayne A. Meeks, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology (SNT 14; Leiden: Brill, 1967), chap. 3, 100–175, esp. 100–131: Philo, and 131–146: Josephus; and Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, chap. 3, 229–313, esp. 254–258. 11 Cf. George Brooke’s contribution to this volume, section 3 B.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 165 σῶμα διὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐβελτιοῦτο), and in each singly so advanced in strength and well-being (καθ’ ἑκάτερον πρός τε ἰσχὺν καὶ εὐεξίαν ἐπιδιδούς) that those who saw him afterwards could not believe their eyes. For we read that by God’s command he ascended an inaccessible and pathless mountain, the highest and most sacred in the region, and remained for the period named, taking nothing that is needed to satisfy the requirements of bare sustenance. Then, after the said forty days had passed, he descended with a countenance far more beautiful than when he ascended (κατέβαινε πολὺ καλλίων τὴν ὄψιν ἢ ὅτε ἀνῄει), so that those who saw him were filled with awe and amazement; nor even could their eyes continue to stand the dazzling brightness that flashed from him like the rays of the sun (καὶ μηδ’ ἐπὶ πλέον ἀντέχειν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς δύνασθαι κατὰ τὴν προσβολὴν ἡλιοειδοῦς φέγγους ἀπαστράπτοντος) (De Vita Mosis 2.69–70).

In their retelling of the giving of the Law to Moses and his descent from Mt. Sinai, both Philo and Paul agree that Moses’ appearance was indeed dazzling and bright, and that the Israelites were incapable of looking at him. Both also allude to the inward, spiritual process. According to Paul, Moses, when unveiled, was caught in a process of spiritual transformation, a process which is now experienced by all believers (3.18) and comprises a growth in their “inner man” (4.16). Philo, similarly, emphasized that “Moses grew in grace, first of mind (διάνοια), then of body (σῶμα) also through the soul (ψυχή)” (2.69). Yet, at the same time Philo’s characterization of this process reveals an important difference. Implicit in Philo’s depiction of Moses’ spiritual growth in mind (or spirit), soul and body, is the anthropological trichotomy, known from Greek philosophy, of mind, soul and body. As I have argued elsewhere, Paul’s anthropology is also best understood as trichotomous.12 The difference, however, is that according to Paul the spiritual transformation only affects the inner man, whereas the outer man, the body, decreases in strength. Only after the resurrection,

12 George H. van Kooten, “The Two Types of Man in Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus: The Anthropological Trichotomy of Spirit, Soul and Body,” in Philosophische Anthropologie in der Antike (ed. Ch. Jedan and L. Jansen; Themen der Antiken Philosophie/ Topics in Ancient Philosophy; Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2008), forthcoming; a shorter version, entitled “The Anthropological Trichotomy of Spirit, Soul and Body in Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus,” is published in Anthropology in Context: Studies on Ideas of Anthropology within the New Testament and its Ancient Context (ed. M. Labahn and O. Lehtipuu; Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium; Louvain: Peeters, 2008), forthcoming. See also George H. van Kooten, Paul Anthropology in Context: The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), chap. 5.

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as Paul has explained in 1 Cor 15, does the Spirit also transform the human body into a spiritual body (1 Cor 15.44–49). According to Philo, however, Moses’ growth in mind and soul already affects his body during his lifetime: “Moses grew in grace, first of mind, then of body also through the soul”—τὴν μὲν διάνοιαν τὸ πρῶτον, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὸ σῶμα διὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐβελτιοῦτο (2.69). The mind influences the soul which, in turn, changes the body. In Philo’s view, the physical effect of Moses’ growth in mind, soul and body is perceptible inasmuch as he “in each singly so advanced in strength and well-being (καθ’ ἑκάτερον πρός τε ἰσχὺν καὶ εὐεξίαν ἐπιδιδούς) that those who saw him afterwards could not believe their eyes” (2.69). Moses’ inward growth affects his outward condition; he increases in strength (ἰσχύς) and well-being (εὐεξία).13 As a result, he “descended with a countenance far more beautiful than when he ascended (κατέβαινε πολὺ καλλίων τὴν ὄψιν ἢ ὅτε ἀνῄει)” (2.70). Moses is not only a spiritual hero; he is also a physical superstar and makes a powerful impression. The Israelites are simply overwhelmed by Moses’ strength and well-being; they cannot “believe their eyes.” It is the beauty of his face which makes an impact on them. Philo describes the effect as follows: “those who saw him were filled with awe and amazement; nor even could their eyes continue to stand the dazzling brightness that flashed from him like the rays of the sun” (2.70). In this respect, the difference from Paul could not be greater. In his Corinthian polemics, Paul is critical of this language of strength and bodily well-being, hallmarks of sophistic rivalry. According to his opponents, Paul’s letters may be powerful, but his bodily appearance is weak: Aἱ ἐπιστολαὶ μέν, φησίν, βαρεῖαι καὶ ἰσχυραί, ἡ δὲ παρουσία τοῦ σώματος ἀσθενὴς καὶ ὁ λόγος ἐξουθενημένος (2 Cor 10:10). In their emphasis upon strength and bodily well-being, Paul’s Corinthian opponents seem to constitute the opposite end of the scale,14 with Philo balancing the scales in the middle. The latter seems to combine philosophical and sophistic values. Moses’ growth affects not only his mind and soul, but also his body. The sophists, at one extreme, emphasize the importance of strength and well-being, while Paul, at the other extreme, denies the importance of outward well-being and draws attention to inward, spiritual growth. Cf. Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, 254–255. On the importance of physiognomy and bodily performance in the Second Sophistic, see, e.g., Tim Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic (Greece & Rome—New Surveys in the Classics 35; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 2, 23–40, esp. 26–32. 13 14

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 167 This debate about strength (ἰσχύς) is already present in 1 Cor. The term ἰσχυρός, “strong,” is important in the polemics of (a) 1 Cor 1:25: “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”—τὸ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ θεοῦ ἰσχυρότερον τῶν ἀνθρώπων; (b) 1 Cor 1:27: “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong”—τὰ ἀσθενῆ τοῦ κόσμου ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεὸς ἵνα καταισχύνῃ τὰ ἰσχυρά; and (c) 1 Cor 4:10: “We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute”—ἡμεῖς μωροὶ διὰ Χριστόν, ὑμεῖς δὲ φρόνιμοι ἐν Χριστῷ· ἡμεῖς ἀσθενεῖς, ὑμεῖς δὲ ἰσχυροί· ὑμεῖς ἔνδοξοι, ἡμεῖς δὲ ἄτιμοι. In 2 Cor, this polemic reaches its zenith in the opponents explicitly criticizing Paul’s weak physical and rhetorical performance which is in sharp contrast with the strength they detect in his letters (2 Cor 10:10). What seems to be at issue in 2 Cor 3, when understood in such a polemical setting, is the nature of Moses’ body, which is healthy, dazzling and resplendent and, as such, provides an exemplar for the Corinthian sophists: this perfect physical appearance contrasts with Paul’s weak stature. It seems very likely, then, that the strength and glory of Moses, as described in Exod 34, was understood as an example of sophistic strength. Paul’s sophistic opponents, who were of Jewish background (2 Cor 11:22), and manifested themselves in the largely ex-pagan Christian community of Corinth, might easily have been tempted into a sophistic appreciation of the importance of physiognomy. Indeed in Judaism, too,—as Mladen Popović’s recent monograph has shown15—, physiognomics was not uncommon. The similarities between Jewish and sophistic physiognomics may well have facilitated the adoption of pagan sophistry by Paul’s Jewish-Christian opponents in Corinth.16 By shedding sophistic light on the strength and glory of Moses, Jews— Christian and non-Christian alike—could not only defend Moses in their encounter with pagans, but also compete with the sophistic ideals 15 Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 67; Leiden: Brill, 2007). 16 I owe this observation to Prof. George Brooke. Paul would have been able to adopt a critical stance towards ( Jewish) physiognomics because of the enduring influence of Jesus’ compassion for the physically unwell and impaired. On this, see Hector Avalos, Health Care and the Rise of Christianity (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999); John J. Pilch, Healing in the New Testament: Insights from Medical and Mediterranean Anthropology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000); and, for a comparative research into Qumran and the New Testament, Kathell Berthelot, “La place des infirmes et des ‘lépreux’ dans les textes de Qumrân et les évangiles,” Revue biblique 113 (2006): 211–241.

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beyond the Jewish and Christian community. As we shall see, Josephus was very much involved in the same struggle. 3.2

Josephus—Moses’ glory, honour and rivals

According to Josephus, at the Burning Bush already God predicted to Moses “the glory (δόξα) and honour (τιμή) that he would win from men, under God’s auspices” ( Jew. Ant. 2.268). When, however, glory and honour started to materialize, Moses’ integrity did not diminish. Josephus is keen to give several examples. When Raguel, Moses’ fatherin-law, invented a legal system, Moses did not claim it as his own, but openly avowed the inventor to the multitude. Nay, in the books too he recorded the name of Raguel, as inventor of the aforesaid system, deeming it meet to bear faithful witness to merit, whatever glory (δόξα) might be won by taking credit for the inventions of others. Thus even herefrom may one learn the integrity of Moses ( Jew. Ant. 3.74).

In a similar vein, Moses even paid due homage to Balaam, the pagan prophet, and did not claim Balaam’s glory for himself: This was the man to whom Moses did the high honour of recording his prophecies (μεγάλως ἐτίμησεν ἀναγράψας αὐτοῦ τὰς μαντείας); and though it was open to him to appropriate and take the glory for them himself (σφετερίσασθαι τὴν ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς δόξαν καὶ ἐξιδιώσασθαι), as there would have been no witness to convict him, he has given Balaam this testimony and deigned to perpetuate his memory ( Jew. Ant. 4.158).

Whereas Moses is an example of integrity, others did become envious of Moses’ glory and honour. Josephus describes this rivalry in terms of sophistic in-fighting. He takes Korah’s rebellion against Moses, as narrated in Numbers 16, as an example and depicts Korah as Moses’ rival in establishing honour and glory. From Korah’s perspective Moses was “hunting round to create glory for himself ”: Korah, one of the most eminent of the Hebrews by reason both of his birth and of his riches (τις Ἑβραίων ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα καὶ γένει καὶ πλούτῳ), a capable speaker and very effective in addressing a crowd (ἱκανὸς δ᾽ εἰπεῖν καὶ δήμοις ὁμιλεῖν πιθανώτατος), seeing Moses established in the highest honours (ἐν ὑπερβαλλούσῃ τιμῇ), was sorely envious; for he was of the same tribe and indeed his kinsman, and was aggrieved at the thought that he had a greater right to enjoy all this glory (δόξα) himself, as being richer than Moses without being his inferior in birth. So he proceeded to denounce him among the Levites, who were his tribesmen, and especially among his kinsmen, declaring that it was monstrous

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 169 to look on at Moses hunting round to create glory for himself (λέγων Μωυσῆν δόξαν αὑτῷ θηρώμενον κατασκευάσαι) and mischievously working to attain this

in the pretended name of God ( Jew. Ant. 4.14–15).

Josephus depicts Korah as a sophist rival to Moses and represents him in terms also used in the Corinthian rivalry in which Paul is engaged: (1) Korah is “one of the most eminent of the Hebrews by reason both of his birth and of his riches” (τις Ἑβραίων ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα καὶ γένει καὶ πλούτῳ). Similarly, Paul warns the Corinthians that not many of them are wise by worldly standards, not many are powerful, not many are of noble birth—οὐ πολλοὶ σοφοὶ κατὰ σάρκα, οὐ πολλοὶ δυνατοί, οὐ πολλοὶ εὐγενεῖς (1 Cor 1:26). (2) According to Josephus, Korah is competent (ἱκανὸς) to speak (δ’ εἰπεῖν) and very persuasive (πιθανώτατος) in addressing a crowd (δήμοις ὁμιλεῖν). (a) The whole issue of “competence” is also central to the dispute in 2 Cor 2–3. As regards the dissemination of God’s knowledge, Paul rhetorically asks himself, probably mirroring the ongoing debate between himself and his rivals: “Who is competent for these things?”—καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα τίς ἱκανός; (2 Cor 2:16, cf. 2:6). And in 2 Cor 3 he brings up the issue once again; this passage is saturated with the language of competence and uses it in the adjectival, substantival and verbal forms: οὐχ ὅτι ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν ἱκανοί ἐσμεν λογίσασθαί τι ὡς ἐξ ἑαυτῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ ἱκανότης ἡμῶν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὃς καὶ ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς διακόνους καινῆς διαθήκης, οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος.

Not that we are competent (ἱκανοί) of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence (ἱκανότης) is from God, who has made us competent (ὃς καὶ ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς) to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:5–6).

The theme of “competence” permeates 2 Cor 2–3 and is very similar to the issue which Josephus describes between Korah and Moses. (b) Josephus also describes Korah as “very persuasive (πιθανώτατος) in addressing a crowd.” This word, “persuasive” (πιθανός) is especially used of popular speakers.17 Paul, too, employs this semantic field in his polemics with the Corinthians when he denies that his speech and proclamation are filled “with plausible words of wisdom”: καὶ ὁ λόγος 17 H. G. Liddell, R. Scott & H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996 (= LSJ), 1403 s.v. πιθανός.

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μου καὶ τὸ κήρυγμά μου οὐκ ἐν πειθοῖ[ς] σοφίας [λόγοις] (1 Cor 2.4; cf. Gal 1.10).18 Unlike Paul, however, Josephus is eager to draw Moses into this competition with the sophists and stress Moses’ glory and honour. Not only Korah’s competence in rhetoric and public performance is described, but that of Moses as well: his glory and honour have already been predicted by God, he is established in the highest honours and, although less wealthy than Korah, by no means his inferior in birth. The distinctive features of Moses, in comparison with Korah, are his integrity and the fact that he, “having declined every honour which he saw that the people were ready to confer on him, devoted himself solely to the service of God” ( Jew. Ant. 3.212). At the same time, however, Moses is portrayed as meeting sophistic standards. In his final encomium of Moses in Jew. Ant. 4.327–331, Josephus heralds Moses as “having surpassed in understanding all men that ever lived and put to noblest use the fruit of his reflections. In speech and in addresses to a crowd he found favour in every way” (4.328). Particularly the last description portrays him as not inferior to figures such as Korah, who, as we have seen, is also “a capable speaker and very effective in addressing a crowd” (ἱκανὸς δ’ εἰπεῖν καὶ δήμοις ὁμιλεῖν πιθανώτατος; 4.14). Josephus also draws this picture of a powerful, glorious Moses in his description of Moses’ ascent of, and descent from Mt. Sinai: Moses ascends Mt. Sinai although it is beyond men’s power to scale (3.76), and when he returns he is radiant (γαῦρός) and high-hearted (3.83). An extensive eulogy on Moses is also found at the very end of book III of the Jewish Antiquities. According to Josephus, “the admiration in which that hero [i.e. Moses] was held for his virtues and his marvellous power (ἰσχύς) of inspiring faith in all his utterances were not confined to his life-time” (3.317). Subsequently, Josephus remarks that it is possible to adduce many “proofs of his superhuman power”—τεκμήρια τῆς ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπόν ἐστι δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ (3.318). Moses’ powerful authority is still felt to the present day: “to this very day the writings left by Moses (τὰ καταλειφθέντα ὑπὸ Μωυσέος γράμματα) have such power (ἰσχύς) that even our enemies admit that our constitution was established by God himself, through the agency of Moses and of his merits” (3.222). Josephus’ last remark contrasts sharply with Paul’s remark at the end

18

LSJ 1353 πειθός = πιθανός.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 171 of 2 Cor 3, that “to this very day whenever Moses is read” he is misunderstood (3:15). Josephus’ remark about the acknowledgement of Moses’ merits by non-Jews also draws attention to the (alleged) impact of the power and authority of Moses’ writings among the Greeks. As we have seen in §1, the evaluation of the figure of Moses was indeed an issue in paganJewish relations and also seems to have played a role in the Corinthian controversy. Josephus’ attempt to raise awareness for Moses and depict him in a favourable way is also part of this debate. In order to achieve this aim, Josephus also emphasizes that Moses could hold his own in the face of sophistic rivalry and that he was in no way the inferior of his competitors. For this reason, Josephus stresses Moses’ glory, honour, power and superhuman identity as among his chief merits. In so doing, however, he runs the risk of turning Moses himself into a kind of sophist. This will become clear as we now briefly study the language of power, glory and superhuman identity among the sophists. It seems that the same debate is going on here, dominated by the same concerns and obsessions. 4. The Power, Glory and Theios Anēr-Character among the Sophists 4.1

Power

To show the sophistic nature of this debate, I shall limit myself here mainly to Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists. Here the semantic fields of power, glory and the superhuman are the natural territory of the sophists. For instance, Philostratus mentions the sophist Carneades of Athens. He was also enrolled among the sophists, for though his mind had been equipped for the pursuit of philosophy, yet in virtue of the power (ἰσχύς) of his orations he attained to an extraordinarily high level of eloquence (Lives of the Sophists 1.486).

The inner-sophistic tensions come to the fore in rivalries such as those between the sophists Polemo and Dionysius. The latter attended a speech in court by the former, and Philostratus narrates their ensuing confrontation as follows: Dionysius heard Polemo defend the suit, and as he left the court he remarked: “This athlete possesses strength (ἰσχύς), but it does not come from the wrestling-ground.” When Polemo heard this he came to

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george h. van kooten Dionysius’ door and announced that he would declaim before him. And when he had come and Polemo had sustained his part with conspicuous success, he went up to Dionysius, and leaning shoulder to shoulder with him, like those who begin a wrestling match standing, he wittily turned the laugh against him by quoting: “Once O once they were strong, the men of Miletus” (Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.525).

This anecdote shows how in daily life the sophists confronted one another and were engaged in continuous wrangling, demonstrating their power and readiness to compete. Polemo quotes an iambic response of Apollo which has become proverbial (cf. Aristophanes, Plutus 1003) as a reference to degeneration, thus challenging his rival sophist. This is the atmosphere at Corinth, in which Moses too is turned into a powerful competitor, who “in speech and in addresses to a crowd (. . .) found favour in every way” ( Josephus, Jew. Ant. 4.328). In this way, Moses also functions as a role model for performance within the Jewish-Christian community. Quotation from his writings should be apt, and declamations about his life fresh and persuasive.19 Another story about inner-sophistic struggles relates to the sophists Alexander and Herodes. Alexander, born at Seleucia in Silicia, exercised his profession in cities such as Antioch, Rome and Tarsus, indicating that the sophists were very much part of life in the cities which Paul, too, visited. Alexander, having already performed in Athens before the arrival of Herodes, outdid the latter in the following way: he made a further wonderful display of his marvellous power (θαυμασίαν δὲ ἰσχὺν ἐνεδείξατο) in what now took place. For the sentiments that he had so brilliantly expressed before Herodes came he now recast in his presence, but with such different words and different rhythms, that those who were hearing them for the second time could not feel that he was repeating himself (Lives of the Sophists 2.572).

Again we experience the atmosphere of sophistic competence and performance, the command of which is described by Philostratus as a “marvellous power.” Many other passages could be adduced which mention the erudition, force and powerful eloquence of particular sophists (e.g. 1.483; 2.585). One of these figures is lauded for “his natural display of sophistic power”—φύσεως δὲ ἰσχὺν σοφιστικωτάτην ἐνδεικνύμενος (2.585).

19 For the importance of improvisations in the Second Sophistic, see Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 496, 499, 511.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 173 4.2

Glory and physical appearance

The language of power often overlaps with that of “glory.” Public speakers and sophists, according to Plutarch, are often “led on by glory (δόξα) and ambition (φιλοτιμία) (. . .) to competition (ἀγωνίζεσθαι) in excess of what is best for them” (De tuenda sanitate praecepta 131A). This sophistic striving for glory is explicitly criticized by Dio Chrysostomus, in a way very similar to Paul. According to Dio, sophists “are lifted aloft as on wings by their glorious fame (δόξα) and disciples” (Orations 12.5). He complains, however, that “not one of the sophists is willing to take me on” (12.13). In deliberate contrast to the sophists, Dio presents himself to his audience at Olympia “as neither handsome in appearance nor strong, and in age (. . .) already past his prime, one who has no disciple, who professes (. . .) no ability as a prophet or a sophist” (12.15). This anti-sophistic talk clearly resembles Paul’s. Like Dio, Paul stresses that he is not concerned with the outward man but only with the inward man (2 Cor 4:16); he himself is not strong but weak and vulnerable: ἐν παντὶ θλιβόμενοι ἀλλ᾽ οὐ στενοχωρούμενοι, ἀπορούμενοι ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐξαπορούμενοι, διωκόμενοι ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐγκαταλειπόμενοι, καταβαλλόμενοι ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἀπολλύμενοι, πάντοτε τὴν νέκρωσιν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι περιφέροντες, ἵνα καὶ ἡ ζωὴ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι ἡμῶν φανερωθῇ.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies (2 Cor 4:8–10).

Indeed, Paul is not ashamed to repeat his opponent’s judgment that his bodily, physical appearance is weak (2 Cor 10:10). Yet he rejoices in his weakness (2 Cor 11:30; 12:5, 9–10; cf. 1 Cor 2:3). In this catalogue of afflictions and in his acknowledgement of being weak,20 Paul shows the same philosophical, anti-sophistic pride as Dio. His statements are not naïve, but deliberately construed to counter sophistic talk of strength, glory and repute.

20 Cf. John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence (SBL Dissertation Series 99; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1988).

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george h. van kooten Superhuman identity

Apart from the vocabulary of power, glory and physical performance, sophists also apply the concept of superhuman beings. This is nicely illustrated by a report in Philostratus about the sophist Hippodromus the Thessalian. According to Philostratus, on one occasion when the Greeks were acclaiming him with flatteries, and even compared him with Polemo, “Why,” said he, “do you liken me to immortals?” (Homer, Odyssey 16.187). This answer, while it did not rob Polemo of his reputation for being a divine man (οὔτε τὸν Πολέμωνα ἀφελόμενος τὸ νομίζεσθαι θεῖον ἄνδρα), was also a refusal to concede to himself any likeness to so great a genius (Lives of the Sophists 616).

This anecdote shows that sophists indeed claimed divine inspiration for their competence (cf. also Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 521, 554, 570, 590; Lucian, Philopseudes sive incredulus 16); they even regarded themselves as “divine men,” θεῖοι ἄνδρες. This background to the Corinthian dispute was already highlighted by Dieter Georgi,21 but he did not yet integrate his remarks about the concept of the θεῖος ἀνήρ into what Bruce Winter has noted about the sophistic setting of Paul’s polemics in 1 and 2 Cor.22 As regards the concept of θεῖος ἀνήρ, Josephus also uses it twice to characterize Moses.23 On both occasions, it is noteworthy that he employs it in an apologetic context, once in his Jewish Antiquities, and once in his Against Apion.24 In the former he states: One may well be astonished at the hatred which men have for us and which they have so persistently maintained, from an idea that we slight the divinity whom they themselves profess to venerate. For if one reflects

21 Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, chap. 3, 229–313, esp. 236, 254–255, 258, 274. 22 Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists; cf. David L. Tiede, “Aretalogy,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, (1992) 1.372–373 at 373. Georgi only mentions the sophists in his comments on 2 Cor 2:17; see Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, 234. 23 For Philo’s portrayal of Moses as divine, see Meeks, The Prophet-King, 103–105; Meeks, “Moses as God and King,” in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (ed. J. Neusner; Studies in the History of Religions; Suppl. to Numen 14; Leiden: Brill, 1968), 354–371; and David T. Runia, “God and Man in Philo of Alexandria,” JTS 39 (1988): 48–75 at 53–63; also published in Runia, Exegesis and Philosophy: Studies on Philo of Alexandria (Collected Studies 332; Hampshire: Variorum, 1991), chap. 12, 53–63. 24 Cf. David S. Du Toit, Theios anthropos: zur Verwendung von theios anthrōpos und sinnverwandten Ausdrücken in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit (WUNT 2.91; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), chap. 14.3, 382–399.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 175 on the construction of the tabernacle and looks at the vestments of the priest and the vessels which we use for the sacred ministry, he will discover that our lawgiver was a divine man (τόν τε νομοθέτην εὑρήσει θεῖον ἄνδρα) and that these blasphemous charges brought against us by the rest of men are idle ( Jew. Ant. 3.180).25

Given the ambiguous evaluation of Moses in the pagan Graeco-Roman world, outlined in §1 above, there was clearly a perceived need to defend the powerful, superhuman stature of Moses.26 And, as Dieter Georgi rightly remarks, “the biblical accounts of Moses’ glorification, especially Exod. 34:29–35, lent themselves well to the full presentation of the Apologetic conception of the θεῖος ἀνήρ.”27 The same defence is offered in Against Apion, where Josephus claims that the Egyptians regarded Moses as a marvellous, admirable, divine man: Λοιπόν μοι πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν περὶ Μωυσέως. τοῦτον δὲ τὸν ἄνδρα θαυμαστὸν μὲν Aἰγύπτιοι καὶ θεῖον νομίζουσι, βούλονται δὲ προσποιεῖν αὐτοῖς μετὰ βλασφημίας ἀπιθάνου, λέγοντες Ἡλιοπολίτην εἶναι τῶν ἐκεῖθεν ἱερέων ἕνα διὰ τὴν λέπραν συνεξεληλαμένον.

It remains for me to say a word to Manetho about Moses. The Egyptians, who regard that man as remarkable, indeed divine (τοῦτον δὲ τὸν ἄνδρα θαυμαστὸν μὲν Aἰγύπτιοι καὶ θεῖον νομίζουσι), wish to claim him as one of themselves, while making the incredible and calumnious assertion that he was one of the priests expelled from Heliopolis for leprosy (Against Apion 1.279).

The apologetic setting of Josephus’ use of the concept of θεῖος ἀνήρ emerges clearly. It is in this setting that I would understand the incentive experienced by Paul’s Corinthian opponents. Like Philo and Josephus, these Jewish Christians felt the need to defend Moses and show his strength and glory. Yet by taking up the challenges of the Graeco-Roman world they, to a significantly higher degree than Philo and Josephus, surrendered to the standards of their sophistic environment, adopted them, and even implemented them as benchmarks for performance within the Christian community. By so doing, they changed the figure of Moses and—as I shall explain briefly—as a further consequence, also that of Christ.

25 26 27

Cf. Meeks, The Prophet-King, 138. Cf. Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, 257; cf. 126, 133. Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, 257–258.

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george h. van kooten 5. Concluding Observations: Paul’s Definitive Answer to the Corinthian Sophists

Paul needs to confront the portraits of Moses current among Christian sophists at Corinth, designed as they are to compete with general Greek culture. There might be a justifiable apologetic concern behind those portraits. Yet, in Paul’s view, they are very dangerous inasmuch as they also—implicitly and perhaps only inadvertently—change the attitudes within the Christian communities with regard to the importance of outward, rhetorical competence and bodily, physical strength and performance. For this reason, it is vital for Paul to discuss Moses’ glory after his descent from Mt. Sinai as narrated in Exod 34. As we have seen, this passage is discussed right in the middle of anti-sophistic polemics in 2 Cor and evolves from Paul’s reference to letters of recommendation, a sophistic practice which has been adopted to recommend powerful rhetoricians to other Christian communities. Because of this, Paul’s view of Moses differs significantly from those of both Philo and Josephus. According to Philo, Moses’ spiritual growth in mind and soul is reflected in his body. It affects his outward condition; Moses increases in strength (ἰσχύς) and well-being (εὐεξία) (De vita Mosis 2.69). Paul, on the contrary, denies that strength and physical well-being are the result of spiritual metamorphosis. Similarly, where Josephus emphasizes the ongoing strength of Moses’ writings—“to this very day the writings left by Moses (τὰ καταλειφθέντα ὑπὸ Μωυσέος γράμματα) have such power (ἰσχύς) that even our enemies admit that our constitution was established by God himself, through the agency of Moses and of his merits” ( Jew. Ant. 3.322)—Paul highlights their possible relative obscurity. He points out that to this very day, when they [the people of Israel] hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil—which keeps them ‘from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside’ (3.13)—is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds (2 Cor 3.14–15).

Paul needs to qualify the glory and strength of Moses (and his writings) because he fears their shortcomings and temporariness are being overlooked. Paul not only criticizes his opponents’ image of Moses. It is clear that their portrayal of Moses also has consequences for their view on Jesus. Dieter Georgi has already paid attention to the opponents’ false Christol-

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 177 ogy in this respect.28 Although Georgi is right about the Christological nature of Paul’s controversy with his opponents, which resulted from a theios anēr-interpretation of Moses, we need Bruce Winter’s analysis if we are to be more specific about the identity of these opponents. They are not just protagonists of a theios anēr-movement; their views, as is evident from 1–2 Cor, have clearly sophistic overtones. It is against this background that Paul emphatically denies, in 2 Cor 5:16, that their claim about the character of the historical Jesus is correct: Ὥστε ἡμεῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν οὐδένα οἴδαμεν κατὰ σάρκα· εἰ καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν κατὰ σάρκα Χριστόν, ἀλλὰ νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκομεν

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.

And in 2 Cor 11 he asserts that their gospel is a different gospel because their Jesus is a different Jesus: εἰ μὲν γὰρ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἄλλον Ἰησοῦν κηρύσσει ὃν οὐκ ἐκηρύξαμεν, ἢ πνεῦμα ἕτερον λαμβάνετε ὃ οὐκ ἐλάβετε, ἢ εὐαγγέλιον ἕτερον ὃ οὐκ ἐδέξασθε, καλῶς ἀνέχεσθε. λογίζομαι γὰρ μηδὲν ὑστερηκέναι τῶν ὑπερλίαν ἀποστόλων· εἰ δὲ καὶ ἰδιώτης τῷ λόγῳ, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ τῇ γνώσει.

For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge (2 Cor 11:4–6).

This passage shows that the opponents’ view on and proclamation of Jesus (4:4) have to do with their stress on being not “untrained in speech” (4:6a). Their image of Jesus and of Moses would have been very similar, highlighting these figures’ powerful rhetorical performance. In some ways, their theios anēr-type of Christology might be reflected in Josephus’ testimony of Jesus ( Jew. Ant. 18.63–64).29 This passage, in portraying Jesus as “a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man” (σοφὸς ἀνήρ, εἴγε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή) stops short of calling

Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, 271–277, 278. On the question of the authenticity of Josephus’ testimony, see, among others, Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times (Studies in Biblical Literature 36; New York: Lang, 2003); see also Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (2nd edition; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 225–236. 28 29

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him a theios anēr, a divine man. Yet the phrase “if indeed one ought to call him a man” seems to imply this meaning. In this sense, this characterization of Jesus comes very close to Josephus’ explicit depiction of Moses as a theios anēr. As we have already seen, Josephus claims that if his anti-Jewish opponents would but spare a moment, they would be able “to discover that [Moses] is a divine man” ( Jew. Ant. 3.179–180) and that indeed the Egyptians did regard “that man as remarkable, indeed divine” (Against Apion 1.279). Although it initially seems remarkable that Josephus should depict Jesus in the same way as he depicted Moses, against the background of the contemporary interest in theioi andres, divine men, this assertion becomes less astounding. This part of Josephus’ testimony of Jesus might well be authentic insofar as it gives a theios anēr-interpretation of Jesus, who “wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly” (ἦν γὰρ παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής, διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδονῇ τἀληθῆ δεχομένων; 18.63). This portrayal of a powerful and rhetorically skilled Jesus, a wise, divine man, may well have been very similar to the Christology of Paul’s opponents in Corinth; we know that, at least from an outside perspective, some pagans viewed Jesus as a sophist, albeit a crucified, i.e. unsuccessful one (Lucian, On the Death of Peregrinus 13). Although Paul is convinced that the heavenly Christ, the second Adam, possesses full glory, he has a very different understanding of the earthly Jesus. This Jesus, according to Paul, defies description in the sophistic language of powerful strength, physiognomic perfection and competitive glory. In a very philosophical way, Paul counters his opponents’ emphasis on rhetoric with the claim that, although untrained in speech, he possesses knowledge (2 Cor 11.6b). To strengthen his case, he also deliberately resorts to the Platonic notion of the inner man in his criticism of his opponents. This notion of ὁ ἔσω or ὁ ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπος is found in Plato’s Republic (589a).30 Paul’s application of this notion of the inner 30 See Theo K. Heckel, Der Innere Mensch: Die paulinische Verarbeitung eines platonischen Motivs (WUNT 2.53; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 19930; Christoph Markschies, “Die platonische Metapher vom ‘inneren Menschen’: Eine Brücke zwischen antiker Philosophie und altchristlicher Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 105 (1994): 1–17 (also published in: International Journal of the Classical Tradition 1.3 [1995]: 3–18); cf. also “Innerer Mensch,” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 18 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1998), 266–312; Walter Burkert, “Towards Plato and Paul: The ‘Inner’ Human Being,” in Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture. Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz (ed. A. Y. Collins; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 59–82; and Hans D. Betz, “The Concept of the “Inner Human Being” (ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος) in the Anthropology of Paul,” New Testament Studies 46.3 (2000): 315–341. See also van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context, §§ 7.2.2–7.2.3.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 179 man following his criticism of the sophists’ stress on outward performance seems deliberately chosen. For the sophists, such an inner being was altogether unimportant. As Tim Whitmarsh emphasizes, “Identity was not an inner being fixed inside the sophist: it was, rather, linked to his public persona, and shifted with his fortunes.”31 Paul’s use of the Platonic notion of the inner man is the logical next step, then, in his debate with the Corinthian sophists.32 Paul applies it in the following manner. Whereas his Corinthian opponents sell the word of God by retail (2 Cor 2:17), Paul stresses the need to experience an inward transformation which affects the inner man and puts him through a process of a steady, glorious growth by which he gradually turns more and more into the image of God, Christ (2 Cor 3:18–4:4; 4:16). In marked contrast with a sophisticizing emphasis on Moses’ bodily well-being, Paul holds the view that the condition of the outward man is altogether irrelevant. The outward man is wasting away, whereas only the inner man is being progressively renewed: “Even though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day”—εἰ καὶ ὁ ἔξω ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος διαφθείρεται, ἀλλ’ ὁ ἔσω ἡμῶν ἀνακαινοῦται ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἡμέρᾳ (2 Cor 4:16). This progressive renewal of the inner man is synonymous with man’s transformation into God’s εἰκών, Christ. Christ is portrayed here as Adam, the second Adam that is. Already in 1 Cor, Paul has designated man as being the “image (εἰκών) and glory (δόξα) of God”: εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα θεοῦ ὑπάρχων (1 Cor 11:7), and has explained that “Just as we have borne the image (εἰκών) of the man of dust, we will also bear the image (εἰκών) of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). As we learn from 2 Cor, this bearing of the image of the second Adam is not only an eschatological event, but rather involves a transformational process in the present, based on transformation into the image of Christ in his capacity as the heavenly man (2 Cor 3:18–4:4). The glory of this Christ (2 Cor 3:18, 4:4), thus, is the glory of the second Adam, just as the first Adam was God’s image and glory (1 Cor 11:7). This notion of the glory of Adam reminds us of the importance of this notion in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The language of Adam, whom God “fashioned in the likeness of [his] glory” and destined to “walk in Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic. This has not been noted by Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists, perhaps mainly because he focuses on 1 Cor. Paul’s criticism of the sophists and his resort to the Platonic notion of the inner man supplement one another very effectively and reveal Paul’s full strategy. 31

32

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a land of glory” (4Q504 frag. 8 4–7), is applied to the members of the Qumran community: “to them shall belong all the glory of Adam” (1QS 4.23; cf. CD-A 3.20, 1QHa 4.15). Adam’s glory is being re-established in their community. Something similar is happening in the Christian community, according to 2 Cor 3–4. If people convert to Christ, the second Adam, and reflect his glory (2 Cor 3:16, 18; 4:4), they experience a transformation ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν, “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). Despite this similarity between Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Paul is different in that he moves beyond the Jewish terminology of the image or likeness of God and the glory of (the second) Adam. In the course of 2 Cor 3–4, the language of image (εἰκών) is supplemented with the notion of the ἔσω ἄνθρωπος, the inner man: man’s transformation into the εἰκών of the second Adam, the heavenly ἄνθρωπος (1 Cor 15:47–49), results directly in a gradual and progressive renewal of the inner ἄνθρωπος (2 Cor 4:16). In this way, Paul recasts the Jewish terminology of the image of God in terms of a Platonic anthropology.33 To his sophistic opponents, Paul admits that the wasting away of the outer man causes affliction, but only momentarily as the growth of the inner man prepares him for “an eternal weight of glory (αἰώνιον βάρος δόξης) beyond all measure” (2 Cor 4.17). This eternal glory is the final outcome of the steadily increasing glory which results from man’s metamorphosis into the εἰκών of the second Adam; it is his glory into which man is changed. If this lasting glory of the second Adam is contrasted with the transitory glory of Moses, Paul’s thinking very much resembles the kind of Moses-Adam polemics present in 2 Enoch.34 In this writing, Enoch,

33 After this turn at the end of 2 Cor 4 in 4.16, Paul’s anthropology and eschatology in 2 Cor 5.1–10 are thoroughly Hellenistic, according to Imre Peres, Griechische Grabinschriften und neutestamentliche Eschatologie (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 157; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), chap. IV.2.2.3, 155–162; and Manuel Vogel, Commentatio mortis: 2Kor 5,1–10 auf dem Hintergrund antiker ars moriendi (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 214; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). 34 I owe this suggestion to Dr. Andrei Orlov. On Adam-Moses polemics, see Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (TSAJ 107; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), chaps 5 and 6, esp. 279–283 and 289–291; Idem, From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism: Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha ( JSJSup 114; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 327–343; and Silviu Bunta, “One Man (φῶς) in Heaven: Adam-Moses Polemics in the Romanian Versions of The Testament of Abraham and Ezekiel the Tragedian’s Exagoge,” JSP 16 (2007): 139–165. See also Orlov’s essay in this volume, “In the Mirror of the Divine Face: The Enochic Features of the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian,” 183–99, for a specific discussion of Moses’ or Enoch’s glorious face in this context.

why did paul include an exegesis of moses’ shining face? 181 appearing before the face of God in the highest heaven, is extracted from his earthly clothing and dressed in the clothes of God’s glory (22.8), similar to that of the angels (22.10) and the glorious figure of Adam (30.10–11). In the understanding of the author of 2 Enoch, Enoch’s newly achieved glory competes with that of Moses. This becomes clear from what happens when Enoch is sent back to earth after completing his transcriptions from God’s heavenly books of wisdom (22.11), which Enoch is to reveal to mankind (33.5, 8; 47.2; 48.6–7). God calls one of the senior angels and orders him to chill Enoch’s face with ice, because, God tells Enoch, “if your face had not been chilled here, no human being would be able to look at your face” (37.2). This clearly recalls the setting of Exod 34.35 In this way, the author of 2 Enoch contrasts the figures of Moses and Enoch, as well as their respective revelations. Whereas Moses needs to veil his head to cover his glory, the heat of Enoch’s Adam-like glory is cooled down by an angel. A similar antithesis is clearly discernible in 2 Cor 3–4 in the antagonism between Moses’ transient glory, misunderstood and overrated by Paul’s Corinthian sophistic opponents, and the true, permanent glory of the second Adam. Paul’s opponents seem to have found the portrayal of Moses’ glory in Exod 34 very apt for their apologetic purposes. For this reason Paul has to focus at length on Exod 34; this chapter is pivotal for a glorious interpretation of Moses. Involved in a competition with sophistic outsiders, as they sold their wares at the religio-philosophical market of Antiquity, Paul’s opponents overemphasized Moses’ strength and bodily well-being. It is this picture which Paul sets out to rebalance.

35

Cf. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, 289–290.

IN THE MIRROR OF THE DIVINE FACE: THE ENOCHIC FEATURES OF THE EXAGOGE OF EZEKIEL THE TRAGEDIAN Andrei Orlov Marquette University, USA . . . The Lord of all the worlds warned Moses that he should beware of his face. So it is written, ‘Beware of his face’. . . . This is the prince who is called . . . Metatron. Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur §§396–397.

Introduction One of the important compendiums of Jewish mystical lore, a composition known to scholars as 3 Enoch or the Book of the Heavenly Palaces (Sefer Hekhalot) offers a striking re-interpretation of the canonical account of Moses’ reception of Torah. In this text the supreme angel Metatron, also associated in Sefer Hekhalot with the seventh antediluvian patriarch Enoch, is depicted as the one who reveals Torah to the Israelite prophet by bringing it out of his heavenly storehouses.1 The account portrays Moses passing the revelation received from Enoch-Metatron to Joshua and other characters of Israelite history representing the honorable chain of transmissions of the oral law, known to us also from the mishnaic Pirke Avot, the Sayings of the Fathers. The Hekhalot writer, however, revises the traditional mishnaic arrangement of prophets, rabbis, and sages by placing at the beginning of the chain the figure of Enoch-Metatron, viewed as the initial revealer. This choice of the primordial mediator competing with the primacy of Moses is not

1 “Metatron brought Torah out from my storehouses and committed it to Moses, and Moses to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, the Prophets to the Men of the Great Synagogue, the Men of the Great Synagogue to Ezra the Scribe, Ezra the Scribe to Hillel the Elder. . . .” P. Alexander, “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of ) Enoch,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; ed. J. H. Charlesworth; New York: Doubleday, 1985 [1983]), 1.315; P. Schäfer, with M. Schlüter and H. G. von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ, 2; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1981), §80.

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coincidental and in many ways serves as an important landmark in the long-lasting theological tradition that began many centuries earlier when the Second Temple was still standing. This development points to the theological competition between two heroes, the son of Jared and the son of Amram, which had ancient roots traced to the sacerdotal debates of the second temple era. Recent scholarship has become increasingly cognizant of the complexity of the social, political, and theological climate of the late second temple period when the various sacerdotal groups and clans were competing for the primacy and authority of their priestly legacy. This competitive environment created a whole range of ideal mediatorial figures that, along with traditional mediators like Moses, also included other characters of primeval and Israelite history, such as Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Melchizedek, and Abraham. Scholars now are well aware that in the late Second Temple period the sacerdotal legacy of Mosaic revelation came under fierce attack from various mediatorial trends that sought to offer a viable ideological alternative to the Mosaic stream through speculation on the pre-Mosaic protological traditions. One such development, which has its roots in the early Enochic materials, tried to portray the seventh antediluvian patriarch as the custodian of the more ancient cultic revelation that had existed long before Moses. In this rival paradigm, Enoch was depicted as an ancient mediator who received from God revelations superior to those received many centuries later by the son of Amram in the wilderness. The use of such a protological figure as Enoch does not seem coincidental, since this primeval hero had been endowed with divine disclosures long before the Israelite prophet received his revelation and sacerdotal prescriptions on Mount Sinai. It is apparent that the circumstances surrounding the patriarch’s reception of revelation described in the second temple Enochic booklets were much loftier than the circumstances of the Mosaic encounter in the biblical narrative. While Moses received Torah from the Lord on earth, the Enochic hero acquired his revelation in the celestial realm, instructed there by angels and God. In the biblical account the Lord descends to Moses’ realm to convey his revelation to the seer, while Enoch is able to ascend to the divine abode and behold the Throne of Glory. The advantage here is clearly on the side of the Enochic hero. Within the context of an ongoing competition, such a challenge could not remain unanswered by custodians of the Mosaic tradition. The non-biblical Mosaic lore demonstrates clear intentions of enhancing the exalted profile of its hero. This tendency detectable in the non-

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biblical Mosaic materials, of course, was not provoked solely by the rival Enochic developments, but rather was facilitated by the presence of a whole range of competitive exalted figures prominent in second temple Judaism. Still, the challenge of the pseudepigraphic Enoch to the biblical Moses cannot be underestimated, since the patriarch was the possessor of an alternative esoteric revelation reflected in the body of extensive literature that claimed its supremacy over Mosaic Torah.2 The aforementioned set of initial disadvantages in the fierce rivalry might explain why the Mosaic tradition, in its dialogue with Enochic lore and other second temple mediatorial developments, could not rest on its laurels but had to develop further and adjust the story of its character, investing him with an angelic and even divine status comparable to the elevated status of the rivals. One of the significant early testimonies of this polemical interaction between Mosaic and Enochic traditions has survived as a part of the drama Exagoge,3 a writing attributed to Ezekiel the Tragedian that depicts

2 On the interaction between Enochic and Mosaic traditions, see: P. Alexander, “From Son of Adam to a Second God: Transformation of the Biblical Enoch,”Biblical Figures Outside the Bible (ed. M. E. Stone and T. A. Bergren; Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998), 102–11; idem, “Enoch and the Beginnings of Jewish Interest in Natural Science,” in: The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiental Thought (ed. C. Hempel et al., BETL 159; Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 223–43; G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways Between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (TSAJ, 107; Tübingen: Mohr/ Siebeck, 2005), 254–303; J. VanderKam, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (Columbia: South Carolina, 1995); idem, “The Interpretation of Genesis in 1 Enoch,” in: The Bible at Qumran (ed. P. W. Flint and T. H. Kim; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 129–48. As well, for two different discussions of Moses-like figures and their function and transformations, see in this volume: Matthias Henze, “Torah and Eschatology in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,” 201–16 and Zuleika Rodgers, “Josephus’ ‘Theokratia’ and Mosaic Discourse,” 129–48. 3 On the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian, see S. N. Bunta, Moses, Adam and the Glory of the Lord in Ezekiel the Tragedian: On the Roots of a Merkabah Text (Ph.D. Dissertation; Marquette University, 2005); J. J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 224–25; M. Gaster, The Samaritans. Their History, Doctrines and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1925); I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (AGJU, 14; Leiden: Brill, 1980); Y. Gutman, The Beginnings of Jewish-Hellenistic Literature (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1958–1963) [in Hebrew]; C. R. Holladay, “The Portrait of Moses in Ezekiel the Tragedian,” SBLSP 10 (1976) 447–452; idem, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors: Vol. II, Poets (SBLTT, 30; Pseudepigrapha Series 12; Atlanta: Scholars, 1989), 439–49; P. W. van der Horst, “De Joodse toneelschrijver Ezechiel,” Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 36 (1982): 97–112; idem, “Moses’ Throne Vision in Ezekiel the Dramatist,” JJS 34 (1983): 21–29; idem, “Some Notes on the Exagogue of Ezekiel,” Mnemosyne 37 (1984): 364–65; L. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 58ff; H. Jacobson, “Mysticism and Apocalyptic in Ezekiel’s Exagoge,” ICS 6 (1981): 273–93; idem, The Exagoge of Ezekiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983);

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the prophet’s experience at Sinai as his celestial enthronement. The text seeks to enhance the features of the biblical Moses and attribute to him some familiar qualities of the exalted figure of the seventh antediluvian patriarch Enoch. Preserved in fragmentary form in Eusebius of Caesarea’s4 Praeparatio evangelica,5 Exagoge 67–90 reads: Moses: I had a vision of a great throne on the top of Mount Sinai and it reached till the folds of heaven. A noble man was sitting on it, with a crown and a large scepter in his left hand. He beckoned to me with his right hand, so I approached and stood before the throne. He gave me the scepter and instructed me to sit on the great throne. Then he gave me a royal crown and got up from the throne. I beheld the whole earth all around and saw beneath the earth and above the heavens. A multitude of stars fell before my knees and I counted them all. They paraded past me like a battalion of men. Then I awoke from my sleep in fear. Raguel: My friend (ὦ ξένε), this is a good sign from God. May I live to see the day when these things are fulfilled. You will establish a great throne, become a judge and leader of men. As for your vision of the whole earth, the world below and that above the heavens—this signifies that you will see what is, what has been and what shall be.6

K. Kuiper, “De Ezekiele Poeta Iudaeo,” Mnemosyne 28 (1900): 237–80; idem, “Le poète juif Ezéchiel,” Revue des études juives 46 (1903): 48–73, 161–77; P. Lanfranchi, L’Exagoge d’Ezéchiel le Tragique: Introduction, texte, traduction et commentaire (SVTP, 21; Leiden: Brill, 2006); W. A. Meeks, “Moses as God and King,” in: Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (ed. J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1968), 354–71; idem, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology (SNT 14; Leiden: Brill, 1967); A. Orlov, “Ex 33 on God’s Face: A Lesson from the Enochic Tradition,” SBLSP 39 (2000): 130–47; idem, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (TSAJ, 107; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2005), 262–68; R. G. Robertson, “Ezekiel the Tragedian,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; ed. J. H. Charlesworth; New York: Doubleday, 1985 [1983]), 2.803–819; K. Ruffatto, “Raguel as Interpreter of Moses’ Throne Vision: The Transcendent Identity of Raguel in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the SBL, Philadelphia, 22 November 2005); idem, “Polemics with Enochic Traditions in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian,” JSP 15 (2006): 195–210; E. Starobinski-Safran, “Un poète judéo-hellénistique: Ezéchiel le Tragique,” MH 3 (1974): 216–24; E. Vogt, Tragiker Ezechiel ( JSHRZ, 4.3; Gütersloh, 1983); M. Wiencke, Ezechielis Judaei poetae Alexandrini fabulae quae inscribitur Exagoge fragmenta (Mümster: Monasterii Westfalorum, 1931); R. Van De Water, “Moses’ Exaltation: Pre–Christian?” JSP 21 (2000): 59–69. 4 Eusebius preserves the seventeen fragments containing 269 iambic trimeter verses. Unfortunately, the limited scope of our investigation does not allow us to reflect on the broader context of Moses’ dream in the Exagoge. 5 The Greek text of the passage was published in several editions including: A.-M. Denis, Fragmenta pseudepigraphorum quae supersunt graeca (PVTG, 3; Leiden: Brill, 1970), 210; B. Snell, Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971) 288–301; Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, 54; Holladay, Fragments, 362–66. 6 Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, 54–55.

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Wayne Meeks observes that, given its quotation by Alexander Polyhistor (ca. 80–40 b.c.e.), this Mosaic account can be taken as a witness to traditions of the second century b.c.e.7 Several characteristics of the narrative suggest that its author was familiar with Enochic traditions and tried to attribute some features of the story of the seventh antediluvian hero to Moses.8 This article will investigate the possible connections between the Exagoge and the Enochic tradition. Oneiromantic Dreams In the study of the Enochic features of the Exagoge, one must examine the literary form of this account. The first thing that catches the eye here is that the Sinai encounter is now fashioned not as a real life experience “in a body,” as it was originally presented in the biblical accounts, but as a dream-vision.9 This oneiromantic perspective of the narrative immediately brings to mind the Enochic dreams-visions,10 particularly

Meeks, The Prophet-King, 149. See also Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, 2.308–12. 8 Alexander, Gutman, Holladay, Meeks, Robertson, Ruffatto, and van der Horst point to various Enochic parallels in the Exagoge. For a preliminary analysis of the “Enochic” features of the Exagoge, see also A. Orlov, “Ex 33 on God’s Face,” 142–43; idem, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, 262–68. 9 The text unambiguously points to the fact that Moses acquired his vision in a dream. In the Exagoge 82 the seer testified that he awoke from his sleep in fear. 10 Scholars have previously noted that already in early Enochic materials the patriarch is depicted as an oneiromantic practitioner who receives his revelations in dreams. Thus, when in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 13:7–9a), Enoch describes one of his dream experiences, it vividly recalls the model often attested in similar cases of oneiromantic practices. The text reads: “And I went and sat down by the waters of Dan in Dan which is south-west of Hermon; and I read out the record of their petition until I fell asleep. And behold a dream (˜elm) came to me, and vision fell upon me, and I saw a vision of wrath. . . .” M. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments (2 vols; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 1.45; 2.94. Other booklets of 1 Enoch also attest to the patriarch’s visions as mantic dreams. Thus, when in 1 Enoch 83 and 85, the seventh antediluvian patriarch describes his revelations, the text makes explicit that these visions are received in dreams. These passages also point to the fact that Enoch’s oneiromantic experiences occurred throughout his lifetime, possibly even from his early days, which the seer spent in the house of his grandfather Malalel. Later developments of this tradition reflected in the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Giants also highlight dreams as important media for the patriarch’s revelations. Thus, Jub. 4:19 alludes to a vision that Enoch received in a sleep-dream in which he saw all the history of humankind until its eschatological consummation: “While he [ Enoch] slept he saw in a vision what has happened and what will occur—how things will happen for mankind during their history until the 7

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1 Enoch 14, in which the patriarch’s vision of the Kavod is fashioned as an oneiromantic experience.11 Additional proof that Moses’ dream is oneiromantic in form and nature is Raguel’s interpretation, which in the Exagoge follows immediately after Moses’ dream-vision. The interpretation represents a standard feature of a mantic dream where the content of the received dream must be explained by an oneirocritic. Raguel serves here as such an oneirocritic—he discerns the message of the dream, telling the recipient (Moses) that his vision was positive. It is also significant that the dream about the Sinai encounter in the Exagoge is fashioned as a vision of the forthcoming event, an anticipation of the future glorious status and deeds of Moses. This prophetic perspective is very common for Enochic accounts where the Sinai event is often depicted as a future event in order to maintain the antediluvian perspective of the narration. Thus, in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85–90) Enoch receives a disclosure in his dream in which primeval and Israelite history is unfolded through distinctive symbolic descriptions involving zoomorphic imagery. In the course of the unfolding revelation Enoch beholds the vision of the sheep ascending on the lofty rock which, in the zoomorphic code of the Animal Apocalypse, symbolizes the future ascent of the Israelite prophet on Mount Sinai to receive Torah from God. Heavenly Ascent Another Enochic detail of the Exagoge is that Moses’ ascension in a dream allows him not simply to travel to the top of the earthly mountain but, in imitation of the seventh antediluvian hero, to transcend the orbis terrarum, accessing the various extraterrestrial realms that include the regions “beneath the earth and above the heavens.” The ascension vividly recalls the early Enochic journeys in dream-visions to the upper heavens, as well as the lower regions, where Enoch learns about the

day of judgment.” J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (2 vols.; CSCO 510–11, Scriptores Aethiopici 87–88; Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 2.26–27. 11 Although dreams are not uncommon in classic Greek drama, the content of the dream—vision suggests a Jewish rather than Greek background. On the use of dreams in Greek drama in connection with the Exagoge, see: Starobinski-Safran, “Un poète judéo-hellénistique: Ezéchiel le Tragique,” 216–24; Jacobson, “Mysticism and Apocalyptic in Ezekiel’s Exagoge,” 273–93; Holladay, Fragments, 2.437.

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upcoming judgment of the sinners.12 This profile of Moses as a traveler above and beneath the earth is unknown in biblical accounts and most likely comes from the early Enochic conceptual developments. It should be noted that the imagery of celestial travel to the great throne on the mountain recalls Enoch’s journeys in the Book of the Watchers to the cosmic mountain, a site of the great throne of the divine Kavod.13 Scholars have previously noted terminological similarities in the throne language between the Enochic accounts and the Exagoge.14 Angelus Interpres The visionary account of the prophet, which is now fashioned as a celestial journey, also seems to require the presence of another character appropriate in such settings, the angelus interpres, whose role is to assist the seer in understanding the upper reality. This new visionary dimension appears to be reflected in the figure of Raguel.15 His striking interpretive omniscience recalls the expertise of the angel Uriel of the Enochic accounts, who was able to help the seventh antediluvian patriarch overcome initial fear and discern the proper meaning of the revealed things.16 That Raguel might be understood as a supernatural helper in the Exagoge is shown in his role of a direct participant in the vision whose knowledge of the disclosed things, rather unexpectedly, surpasses that of the seer and allows him to initiate the visionary into the hidden meaning of the revealed reality.

See, for example, 1 Enoch 17–18. The imagery of the divine throne situated on the mountain is widespread in the Book of the Watchers and can be found, for example, in 1 Enoch 18:6–8 “And I went towards the south—and it was burning day and night—where (there were) seven mountains of precious stones. . . . And the middle one reached to heaven, like the throne of the Lord, of stibium, and the top of the throne (was) of sapphire;” 1 Enoch 24:3 “And (there was) a seventh mountain in the middle of these, and in their height they were all like the seat of a throne, and fragrant trees surrounded it;” 1 Enoch 25:3 “And he answered me, saying: ‘This high mountain which you saw, whose summit is like the throne of the Lord, is the throne where the Holy and Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal King, will sit when he comes down to visit the earth for good.’ ” Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.104; 2.113. 14 Holladay, Fragments, 2.440. 15 On the figure of Raguel as a possible angelic interpreter, see also Ruffatto, “Raguel as Interpreter of Moses’ Throne Vision.” 16 Exagoge 82: “Then I awoke from my sleep in fear.” The awaking of a seer from a vision-dream in fear is a common motif in the Enochic literature. See 1 Enoch 83:6–7; 90:41–42; 2 Enoch 1:6–7 (shorter recension). 12 13

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Another fact suggesting that Raguel might be an angelic interpreter is that it is very unusual in Jewish traditions that a non-Jew interprets dreams of a Jew. Howard Jacobson observes that in the Bible nowhere does a non-Jew interpret a symbolic dream for a Jew. . . . Such dreams when dreamt by Jews are usually assumed to be understood by the dreamer (e.g. Joseph’s dreams) or else are interpreted by some divine authority (e.g. Daniel 8).17

It is, however, not uncommon for a heavenly being to discern the proper meaning of an Israelite’s visions. It is therefore possible that Raguel is envisioned here as a celestial, not a human, interpreter. In light of these considerations, it is possible that Raguel’s address, which occupies the last part of the account, can be seen, at least structurally, as a continuation of the previous vision. One detail that might support such an arrangement is that in the beginning of his interpretation Raguel calls Moses ξένος,18 a Greek term which can be rendered in English as “guest.”19 Such an address might well be interpreted here as an angel’s address to a human visitor attending the upper celestial realm which is normally alien to him. Esoteric Knowledge It has already been noted that the polemics between the Mosaic and the Enochic tradition revolved around the primacy and supremacy of revealed knowledge. The author of the Exagoge appears to challenge the prominent esoteric status of Enochic lore and the patriarch’s role as an expert in secrets by underlining the esoteric character of Mosaic revelation and the prophet’s superiority in the mysteries of heaven and earth. In Exagoge 85 Raguel tells the seer that his vision of the world below and above signifies that he will see what is, what has been, and what shall be.20 Wayne Meeks notes the connection of this statement of Raguel with the famous expression “what is above and what is below; what is before and what is behind; what was and what will be,” which Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, 92. Jacobson and Robertson render the Greek word ξένος as “friend.” 19 Robertson suggests this rendering as one of the possible options. He writes that “in addition to the more common meaning of the term, there are various levels of usage, among which is the meaning ‘guest.’ ” Robertson, “Ezekiel the Tragedian,” 812, note d2. See also Holladay, Fragments, 2.446. 20 Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, 54–55. 17 18

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was a standard designation for knowledge belonging to the esoteric lore.21 Meeks draws attention22 to m. Æag. 2:1 where the prohibition of discussing the esoteric lore,23 including the Account of the Creation ( ‫ )מעשה בראשית‬and the Account of the Chariot ( ‫)מעשה מרכבה‬, is expressed through the following formula that closely resembles the description found in the Exagoge: “Whosoever gives his mind to four things it was better for him if he had not come into the world—what is above? what is beneath? what was beforetime? and what will be hereafter.”24 It is possible that the formulae expressed in m. Æag. 2:1 and the Exagoge 85 might have their early roots in the Enochic lore, where the patriarch’s mediation of esoteric knowledge encompasses the important spatial dimensions of the realms above and beneath the earth as well as the temporal boundaries of the antediluvian and eschatological times.25 In the Enochic materials one can also find some designations of esoteric knowledge that might constitute the original background of the later mishnaic formulae. Thus, in the section of the Book of the Similitudes (1 Enoch 59–60) dealing with the secrets of the heavenly phenomena, the angelus interpres reveals to Enoch the secret that is “first and last in heaven, in the heights, and under the dry ground” (1 Enoch 60:11).26 These enigmatic formulations pertaining to the patriarch’s role as a

Sifre Zutta 84. See also 3 Enoch 10:5; 11:3. Meeks, The Prophet-King, 208. See also van der Horst, “Moses’ Throne Vision in Ezekiel the Dramatist,” 28; C. Fletcher-Louis, “4Q374: A Discourse on the Sinai Tradition: The Deification of Moses and Early Christology,” DSD 3 (1996): 236–52, esp. 246. 23 G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1954), 74. 24 H. Danby, The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 213. 25 The patriarch’s mediating duties comprise a whole range of spatial and chronological dimensions. His functions as mediator are not confined to a particular realm or a particular petitioner, since his clients include a range of divine, angelic, human, and composite creatures situated in the underworld as well as in heaven. In the Book of the Watchers faithful angels of heaven ask him to assist their brethren in the lower realm. In the same text he mediates on behalf of the rebellious group which includes the fallen Watchers and the Giants. Enoch’s mediating activities are also not limited by specific chronological boundaries. He mediates in the generation of the Flood, but he is also expected to be a mediator and a witness of divine judgment in the eschatological period. It appears that the patriarch is predestined to mediate judgment in two significant temporal loci. One of them is the historical locus associated with the generation of the Flood; in this locale Enoch acts as an intercessor and a writer of testimonies to the Watchers, Giants and humans. The second locus is eschatological and involves Enoch’s future role as witness of eschatological divine judgment. 26 Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.144. 21

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possesor of esoteric wisdom27 would never be forgotten in the Enochic lore and could be found even in the later rabbinic compositions dealing with the afterlife of the seventh antediluvian hero, including the already mentioned Sefer Hekhalot, which would depict Enoch-Metatron instructed by God in “the wisdom of those above and of those below, the wisdom of this world and of the world to come.”28 In light of the passage found in the Exagoge, it is possible that its author, who shows familiarity with the earlier form of the Mishnaic formula, attempts to fashion the Mosaic revelation as an esoteric tradition, similar to the Enochic lore.29 Heavenly Counterpart The placement of Moses on the great throne in the Exagoge account30 and his donning of the royal regalia have been often interpreted by 27 On the role of the seventh antediluvian hero as an expert in the esoteric lore, see: Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, 31–34; 48–50; 101–104; 188–200. 28 Alexander, “3 Enoch,” 264. 29 The insistence of some extra-biblical Mosaic accounts on the fact that the prophet ascended to heaven might be directed towards constructing the Mosaic disclosure as an esoteric tradition in order to secure the superiority of his revelation. Wayne Meeks observes that “the most common function of ascension stories in literature of the period and milieu we are considering is a guarantee of esoteric tradition. In the apocalyptic genre the ascension of the ‘prophet’ or of the ancient worthy in whose name the book is written is an almost invariable introduction to the description of the secrets which the ascendant one ‘saw.’ The secrets, therefore, whose content may vary from descriptions of the cosmic and political events anticipated at the end of days to cosmological details, are declared to be of heavenly origin, not mere earthly wisdom. This pattern is the clear sign of a community which regards its own esoteric lore as inaccessible to ordinary reason but belonging to a higher order of truth. It is clear beyond dispute that this is one function which the traditions of Moses’ ascension serves.” Meeks adds that in the later rabbinic accounts “the notion that Moses received cosmological secrets led to elaborate descriptions of his ‘heavenly journeys,’ very similar to those attributed elsewhere to Enoch.” Meeks, “Moses as God and King,” 367–68. 30 The imagery of Moses’ enthronement is not confined solely to the Exagoge account but can be found also in other extra-biblical materials. Thus, Crispin Fletcher-Louis draws attention to a parallel in the Jewish Orphica: an exalted figure, apparently Moses, is also placed on the celestial throne. C. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 42; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 137; M. Lafargue, “Orphica,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; ed. J. H. Charlesworth; New York: Doubleday, 1985 [1983]), 2.796–7. Orphica 26–41 reads: “. . . a certain unique man, an offshoot from far back of the race of the Chaldeans . . . yes he after this is established in the great heaven on a golden throne. He stands with his feet on the earth. He stretches out his right hand to the ends of the ocean. The foundation of the mountains trembles within at [his] anger, and the depths of the gray sparkling sea. They cannot endure the mighty power. He is entirely heavenly, and he brings everything to completion on

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scholars as the prophet’s occupation of the seat of the Deity. Pieter van der Horst remarks that in the Exagoge Moses become “an anthropomorphic hypostasis of God himself.”31 The uniqueness of the motif of God’s vacating the throne and transferring occupancy to someone else has puzzled scholars for a long time.32 An attempt to deal with this enigma by bringing in the imagery of the vice-regent does not, in my judgment, completely solve the problem. The vice-regents in Jewish traditions (for example, Metatron) do not normally occupy God’s throne but instead have their own glorious chair, which sometimes serves as a replica of the divine Seat. It seems that the enigmatic identification of the prophet with the divine Form can be best explained not through the concept of a vice-regent but through the notion of a heavenly twin or counterpart. Before investigating this concept in the Exagoge, we need to provide some background for this tradition in Enochic materials. Scholars have previously observed33 that Chapter 71 of the Book of Similitudes seems to entertain the idea of the heavenly twin of a visionary in identifying Enoch with the son of man, an enthroned messianic figure.34 For a long time scholars have found it puzzling that the son of man, distinguished in the previous chapters of the Similitudes from

earth, being ‘the beginning, the middle, and the end,’ as the saying of the ancients, as the one water-born has described it, the one who received [revelations] from God in aphorisms, in the form of a double law. . . .” Lafargue, “Orphica,” 2.799–800. 31 van der Horst. “Some Notes on the Exagoge,” 364. 32 van der Horst, “Throne Vision,” 25; Holladay, Fragments, 444. 33 See J. VanderKam, “Righteous One, Messiah, Chosen One, and Son of Man in 1 Enoch 37–71,” in: The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity: The First Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins (ed. J. H. Charlesworth et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 182–83; M. Knibb, “Messianism in the Pseudepigrapha in the Light of the Scrolls,” DSD 2 (1995): 177–80; J. Fossum, The Image of the Invisible God: Essays on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christology (NTOA 30; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz; Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 144–5; Fletcher-Louis, Luke-Acts, 151. On a heavenly double see also W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter (3d ed.; HNT 21; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1966), 324; A. Orlov, “The Face as the Heavenly Counterpart of the Visionary in the Slavonic Ladder of Jacob,” in: Of Scribes and Sages (2 vols.; ed. C. A. Evans; T&T Clark, 2004), 2.59–76; idem, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, 165–76. 34 It is important to note that in the Similitudes, the son of man is depicted as the one seated on the Throne of Glory. See 1 Enoch 62:5, 1 Enoch 69:29. Jarl Fossum observes that “in the ‘Similitudes’ the ‘Elect One’ or ‘Son of Man’ who is identified as the patriarch Enoch, is enthroned upon the ‘throne of glory.’ If ‘glory’ does not qualify the throne but its occupant, Enoch is actually identified with the Glory of God”. Fossum further suggests that “. . . the ‘Similitudes of Enoch’ present an early parallel to the targumic description of Jacob being seated upon the ‘throne of glory.’ ’’ Fossum, The Image of the Invisible God, 145.

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Enoch, is suddenly identified with the patriarch in 1 Enoch 71. James VanderKam suggests that this paradox can be explained by the Jewish notion, attested in several ancient Jewish texts, that a creature of flesh and blood could have a heavenly double or counterpart.35 As an example, VanderKam points to Jacob’s traditions in which the patriarch’s “features are engraved on high.”36 He observes that the theme of the visionary’s ignorance of his higher celestial identity is also detectable in the pseudepigraphic text the Prayer of Joseph where Jacob is identified with his heavenly counterpart, the angel Israel. VanderKam’s reference to Jacob lore is not coincidental. Conceptions of the heavenly image or counterpart of a seer take their most consistent form in Jacob traditions.37 In view of the aforementioned traditions about the heavenly twins of Enoch and Jacob, it is possible that the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian also attests to the idea of a heavenly counterpart of the seer when it identifies Moses with the glorious anthropomorphic extent. We may recall that the text depicts Moses’ vision of “a noble man” with a crown and a large scepter in the left hand installed on a great throne. In the course of the seer’s initiation, the attributes of the “noble man,” including the royal crown and the scepter, are transferred to Moses who is instructed to sit on the throne formerly occupied by the noble man. The visionary is clearly identified with his heavenly counterpart in the 35 VanderKam, “Righteous One, Messiah, Chosen One, and Son of Man in 1 Enoch 37–71,” 182–83. 36 The metaphor of “engraving” on the Kavod might signify here that the seer’s identity became reflected in the divine Face, as in a mirror. 37 Besides the biblical account, the traditions concerning Jacob’s celestial double are also presented in the pseudepigraphical materials such as the Prayer of Joseph and the Ladder of Jacob and in several targumic texts, including Tg. Ps.-J., Tg. Neof., and Frg. Tg. In Tg. Ps.-J. to Gen 28:12, the following description can be found: “He [ Jacob] had a dream, and behold, a ladder was fixed in the earth with its top reaching toward the heavens . . . and on that day they (angels) ascended to the heavens on high, and said, ‘Come and see Jacob the pious, whose image is fixed (engraved) in the Throne of Glory, and whom you have desired to see.’ ” Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis (tr. M. Maher, M.S.C.; The Aramaic Bible 1B; Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 99–100. A distinctive feature of this description is that the heavenly counterpart of Jacob, his “image,” is engraved on the Throne of Glory. Engraving on the Throne indicates here an association with the Kavod since the Throne is the central part of the Kavod imagery—the seat of the anthropomorphic Glory of the Lord. Besides the tradition of engraving on the Throne, some Jewish materials point to an even more radical identification of Jacob’s image with the Kavod. Jarl Fossum’s research demonstrates that in some traditions about Jacob, his image or likeness is depicted, not simply as engraved on the heavenly throne, but as seated upon the throne of glory. Fossum argues that this second tradition is original. See Fossum, The Image of the Invisible God, 139–42.

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narrative, in the course of which the seer literally takes the place and the attributes of his upper identity. The account also underlines that Moses acquired his vision in a dream, by reporting that he awoke from his sleep in fear. Here, just as in the Jacob tradition, while the seer is sleeping on earth his counterpart in the upper realm is identified with the Kavod.38 Stars and Fallen Angels The Exagoge depicts Moses as a counter of the stars. The text also seems to put great emphasis on the prophet’s interaction with the celestial bodies that fell before Moses’ knees and even paraded past him like a battalion of men. Such “astronomical” encounters are unknown in the biblical Mosaic accounts. At the same time preoccupation of the seventh antediluvian patriarch with astronomical and cosmological calculations and lore is well known and constitutes a major subject of his revelations in the earliest Enochic booklets, such as the Astronomical Book and the Book of the Watchers, in which the patriarch is depicted as the counter of stars.39 The later Enochic and Merkabah materials also demonstrate that the patriarch’s expertise in counting and measuring celestial and earthly phenomena becomes a significant conceptual avenue for his future exaltation as an omniscient vice-regent of the Deity40 who knows and exercises authority over the “orders of creations.”41 The depiction of stars falling before Moses’ knees also seems relevant for the subject of this investigation, especially in view of the symbolism 38 It cannot be excluded, though, that the Exagoge authors might have known the traditions of the patriarch’s enthronement in heaven, similar to those reflected in the Similitudes. Also, it cannot be excluded that the Mesopotamian proto-Enochic traditions, in which the prototype of Enoch, the king Enmeduranki, was installed on a throne in the assembly of gods, might have influenced the imagery found in the Exagoge. Pieter van der Horst in his analysis of the Exagoge entertains the possibility that “. . . in pre-Christian times there were (probably rival) traditions about Enoch and Moses as synthronoi theou; and . . . these ideas were suppressed (for obvious reasons) by the rabbis.” van der Horst, “Throne Vision,” 27. 39 1 Enoch 33:2–4. 40 See Synopse §66 (3 Enoch 46:1–2). 41 See 2 Enoch 40:2–4: “I know everything, and everything I have written down in books, the heavens and their boundaries and their contents. And all the armies and their movements I have measured. And I have recorded the stars and the multitude of multitudes innumerable. What human being can see their circles and their phases? For not even the angels know their number. But I have written down all their names. . . .” Andersen, “2 Enoch,” 1.164.

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found in some Enochic booklets where the fallen angels are often portrayed as stars. Thus, for example, the already mentioned Animal Apocalypse depicts the descent of the Watchers as the vision of stars falling down from heaven: “. . . I saw heaven above, and behold, a star fell from heaven . . . and again I saw in the vision and looked at heaven, and behold, I saw many stars, how they came down. . . .” (1 Enoch 86).42 If we assume that in the Exagoge stars indeed signify angels and even more precisely fallen angels, the vision of the fallen angels genuflecting before Moses’ feet might again invoke the memory of some Enochic developments, since the motif of angelic veneration of a seer by the fallen angels plays a significant role in some Enochic materials. The memory of this important motif is present even in the later “Enochic” compositions of the rabbinic period, for example in Sefer Hekhalot, where the following tradition of Enoch’s veneration by the fallen angels can be found: R. Ishmael said: I said to Metatron: “. . . You are greater than all the princes, more exalted than all the angels, more beloved than all the ministers . . . why, then, do they call you ‘Youth’ in the heavenly heights?” He answered, “Because I am Enoch, the son of Jared . . . the Holy One, blessed be he, appointed me in the height as a prince and a ruler among the ministering angels. Then three of the ministering angels, {Uzzah, {Azzah, and {Azaxel, came and laid charges against me in the heavenly height. They said before the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘Lord of the Universe, did not the primeval ones give you good advice when they said, Do not create man!’ . . . And once they all arose and went to meet me and prostrated themselves before me, saying ‘Happy are you, and happy your parents, because your Creator has favored you.’ Because I am young in their company and mere youth among them in days and months and years—therefore they call me ‘Youth’.” Synopse §§5–6.43

It is striking that in this passage, Enoch-Metatron is venerated by angelic beings whose names ({Uzzah, {Azzah, and {Azaxel) are reminiscent of the names of the notorious leaders of the fallen angels found in the early Enochic lore that are rendered by the zoomorphic code of the Animal Apocalypse as the stars. The tradition of angelic veneration has rather early roots in the Enochic lore and can be found in 2 Enoch 22 where the patriarch’s transformation into the heavenly counterpart, like in the Exagoge, is accompanied by angelic veneration. In this account

42 43

Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.196–97. Alexander, “3 Enoch,” 1.258–59.

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the Lord invites Enoch to stand forever before His Face. In the course of this initiation, the Deity orders the angels of heaven to venerate the patriarch.44 Another account of angelic veneration is found in 2 Enoch 7 where the patriarch is venerated not simply by celestial angels but the fallen ones. 2 Enoch 7:3 depicts Enoch carried by angels to the second heaven. There the patriarch sees the condemned angels kept as prisoners awaiting the “measureless judgment.” Enoch’s angelic guides explain to him that the prisoners are “those who turned away from the Lord, who did not obey the Lord’s commandments, but of their own will plotted together and turned away with their prince and with those who are under restraint in the fifth heaven.”45 The story continues with angelic veneration. The condemned angels bow down to Enoch asking for his intercession: “Man of God, pray for us to the Lord!”46 It should be noted that, although the motif of angelic veneration has its roots in the Adamic lore,47 the theme of veneration by the fallen angels might be a peculiar Enochic development. Moreover, it seems that the initial traits of this theological development in which the fallen angels “fall before the knees” of the seventh antediluvian patriarch can be already found in the earliest Enochic booklets, including the Book of the Watchers, where the fallen Watchers approach the patriarch begging him for help and intercession.

Andersen, “2 Enoch,” 1.138. Andersen, “2 Enoch,” 1.114. 46 Andersen, “2 Enoch,” 1.114. 47 On the Adamic background of the motif of angelic veneration, see M. E. Stone, “The Fall of Satan and Adam’s Penance: Three Notes on the Books of Adam and Eve,” JTS 44 (1993): 143–56; G. Anderson, “The Exaltation of Adam and the Fall of Satan,” in: Literature on Adam and Eve. Collected Essays (ed. G. Anderson, M. Stone, J. Tromp; SVTP 15; Brill: Leiden, 2000), 83–110; A. Orlov, “On the Polemical Nature of 2 (Slavonic) Enoch: A Reply to C. Bottrich,” JSJ 34 (2003): 274–303. On the motif of angelic veneration in rabbinic literature see, also A. Altmann, “The Gnostic Background of the Rabbinic Adam Legends,” JQR 35 (1945): 371–91; B. Barc, “La taille cosmique d’Adam dans la littérature juive rabbinique des trois premiers siècles apres J.-C.,” RSR 49 (1975): 173–85; J. Fossum, “The Adorable Adam of the Mystics and the Rebuttals of the Rabbis,” Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag (2 vols; ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger and P. Schäfer; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1996), 1.529–39; G. Quispel, “Der gnostische Anthropos und die jüdische Tradition,” Eranos Jahrbuch 22 (1953): 195–234; idem, “Ezekiel 1:26 in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosis,” VC 34 (1980): 1–13; A. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (SJLA 25; Leiden: Brill, 1977) 108–15. 44 45

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In the second temple Jewish materials, the transformation of a seer into his heavenly counterpart often involves the change of his bodily appearance. It may happen even in a dream as, for example, in the Similitudes’ account of the heavenly counterpart where, although Enoch’s journey was “in spirit,” his “body was melted” and, as a result, he acquired the identity of the son of man.48 A similar change of the visionary’s identity might be also discernible in the Exagoge where the already mentioned designation of Moses as ξένος occurs. Besides the meanings of “friend” and “guest,” this Greek word also can be translated as “stranger.”49 If the Exagoge authors indeed had in mind this meaning of ξένος, it might well be related to the fact that Moses’ face or his body underwent some sort of transformation that altered his previous physical appearance and made him appear as a stranger to Raguel. The motif of Moses’ altered identity after his encounter with the Kavod is reflected not only in Exod 34, but also in extra-biblical Mosaic accounts, including the tradition found in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities 12:1. The passage tells that the Israelites failed to recognize Moses after his glorious metamorphosis on Mount Sinai: Moses came down. (Having been bathed with light that could not be gazed upon, he had gone down to the place where the light of the sun and the moon are. The light of his face surpassed the splendor of the sun and the moon, but he was unaware of this). When he came down to the children of Israel, upon seeing him they did not recognize him. But when he had spoken, then they recognized him.50

The motif of the shining countenance of Moses is important for our ongoing discussion of the polemics between Enochic and Mosaic traditions that were striving to enhance the profiles of their main characters with features borrowed from the hero of the rival trend. This distinctive mark of the Israelite prophet’s identity, his glorious face, which served in Biblical accounts as the undeniable proof of his encounter with God,

1 Enoch 71:11. Robertson points to this possibility in “Ezekiel the Tragedian,” 812, note d2. 50 H. Jacobson, A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum with Latin Text and English Translation (AGAJU 31; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 1.110. For a discussion of the significance of Moses’ altered face in Jewish and Christian exegesis, please see in this volume: George van Kooten, “Why Did Paul Include an Exegesis of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3?” 149–82. 48 49

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later became appropriated in the framework of Enochic51 and Metatron52 traditions as the chief distinguishing feature of the Enochic hero. In this new development Moses’ shining face became nothing more than the later imitation of the glorious countenance of Enoch-Metatron. Thus, in Sefer Hekhalot 15B, Enoch-Metatron tells Moses about his shining visage: “Son of Amram, fear not! For already God favors you. Ask what you will with confidence and boldness, for light shines from the skin of your face from one end of the world to the other.”53 Here, as in the case of very few distinctive visionaries who were predestined to encounter their heavenly counterparts and to behold the Divine Face like their own reflection in a mirror, Moses too finds out that his luminous face is a reflection of the glorious face of the deity. Yet, there is one important difference: this Divine Face is now represented by his long-lasting contender, Enoch-Metatron.54

51 In 2 Enoch the motif of the luminous face of the seer was transferred for the first time to the seventh antediluvian patriarch. The text tells that the vision of the divine Face had dramatic consequences for Enoch’s appearance. His body endures radical changes as it becomes covered with the divine light. In Enoch’s radiant metamorphosis before the divine Countenance, an important detail can be found which links Enoch’s transformation with Moses’ account in the Book of Exodus. In 2 Enoch 37 one learns about the unusual procedure performed on Enoch’s face at the final stage of his encounter with the Lord. The text informs us that the Lord called one of his senior angels to chill the face of Enoch. The text says that the angel was “terrifying and frightful,” and appeared frozen; he was as white as snow, and his hands were as cold as ice. With these cold hands he then chilled the patriarch’s face. Right after this chilling procedure, the Lord informs Enoch that if his face had not been chilled here, no human being would have been able to look at him. This reference to the dangerous radiance of Enoch’s face after his encounter with the Lord is an apparent parallel to the incandescent face of Moses after the Sinai experience in Exodus 34. 52 Synopse §19 (3 Enoch 15:1) depicts the radiant metamorphosis of Enoch–Metatron’s face: “When the Holy One, blessed be he, took me to serve the throne of glory, the wheels of the chariot and all the needs of the Shekinah, at once my flesh turned to flame, my sinews to blazing fire, my bones to juniper coals, my eyelashes to lightning flashes, my eyeballs to fiery torches, the hairs of my head to hot flames, all my limbs to wings of burning fire, and the substance of my body to blazing fire.” Alexander, “3 Enoch,” 267. 53 3 Enoch 15B:5. Alexander, “3 Enoch,” 304. 54 Scholars have observed that in the Merkabah tradition Metatron is explicitly identified as the hypostatic Face of God. On Metatron as the hypostatic Face of God, see A. De Conick, “Heavenly Temple Traditions and Valentinian Worship: A Case for First-Century Christology in the Second Century,” The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism (ed. C. C. Newman, J. R. Davila, G. S. Lewis; JSJSup 63; Brill: Leiden, 1999), 329; D. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (TSAJ 16; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1988), 424–25.

TORAH AND ESCHATOLOGY IN THE SYRIAC APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH * Matthias Henze Rice University, USA 1. Torah and Eschatology The Syriac (Apocalypse of ) Baruch, or 2 Baruch, purports to be written by Baruch, scribe and loyal supporter of the prophet Jeremiah. In it he tells of the sixth century b.c.e. Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem and of the destruction of the Solomonic Temple. The reader knows all the while, however, that Baruch is the pseudonym of an otherwise unknown Jewish intellectual who wrote in the late first century c.e. in the aftermath of the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Syriac Baruch, one of a number of writings that have come down to us from this pivotal moment in early Jewish history, succinctly captures the Zeitgeist of the period, a time of mental reorientation and religious reconstruction. Syriac Baruch concludes with an epistle sent by Baruch to the Jews in exile, known as the Letter to the Nine and a Half Tribes (2 Baruch 78–87). Speaking in the voice of Baruch, our author provides the following, somewhat sobering assessment of his own time: Know, then, that in former times and former generations, our fathers had righteous helpers and holy Prophets. What is more, we resided in our land, and they helped us when we were sinning. They implored our Creator on our behalf, because they trusted in their works. The Mighty One heard their prayers and was gracious unto us. Now, however, the righteous have been gathered and the Prophets have fallen asleep. We have departed from our land, and Zion has been taken away from us. We have left nothing at all except for the Mighty One and His Torah. If, therefore, we direct our hearts and set them aright, then we will receive everything that we have lost—indeed, much better things than we have lost, many times over. For what we have lost was subject to corruption, whereas what we are about to receive is incorruptible (85:1–5).1 * I would like to thank Professors George Brooke, Hindy Najman, and Loren Stuckenbruck for having organized a focused and productive conference in the beautiful surroundings of Durham. 1 All translations of 2 Baruch are mine. The Syriac text, with the exception of the Epistle, has been edited by Sven Dedering, “Apocalypse of Baruch,” The Old Testament

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This passage brings up a few theologumena that are central to 2 Baruch as a whole. I mention four. The first is the dire statement that the present is a time of loss: the land, the temple, the kingdom—everything has been lost. Even prophecy in its traditional form has ceased to exist, as the Prophets have fallen asleep. What remains is God and the Torah: “We have left nothing at all except for the Mighty One and His Torah.”2 The author of 2 Baruch is a strong advocate of a Torah–centered Judaism, and the admonition to observe Torah is a constant theme in his book. “Your Torah is life, your wisdom is rectitude” (38:2), Baruch exclaims. Those who live by the Torah will be amply rewarded. The Torah is a source of wisdom and trust in God, and the possession of the Torah is the distinguishing characteristic between Israel and the nations. Earlier in the book Baruch concludes a prayer with the words, In you we put our trust because your Torah is with us. We know that we will not fall as long as we observe your statues. Always we are blessed, because we did not mingle with the people. For we are all One people, renowned, who have received One Torah from the One [God ]. That Torah, which is in our midst, is our helper; the surpassing wisdom that is among us will sustain us (48:22–24).

The second theologumenon that is brought up in our passage is the apocalyptic promise of a complete restoration, the promise of a better reality, the World to Come, which is thought to be imminent. For the author of 2 Baruch, the losses of the present were so grave, and the situation so dire, that a full restoration within the bounds of history had become too much to hope for. To be sure, Baruch is confident that all losses will eventually be recovered, in fact many times over, and, even better, what is corruptible now will be incorruptible then. But this can only happen with God’s intervention at the inauguration of a new aeon. The book is drenched with expectation, a pervasive sense that something great is about to happen. Our author has a developed interest in the eschaton, not for the sake of predicting the future, but rather in order to spell out how such knowledge about the End Time has an immediate effect on the Mean Time, i.e., the time of the author and his original audience. After all, the apocalyptic promise is just that, a promise that in Syriac (Leiden: Brill, 1973), par. 4, fasc. 3. My translation of the Epistle follows the Syriac text in Robert H. Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch Translated from the Syriac (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896). 2 Robert H. Charles, “II Baruch,” in APOT 2.525, observed that land, sanctuary and David’s kingdom were conditional, whereas the “law was Israel’s everlasting and unconditional possession.”

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seeks to motivate and to encourage the faithful. In some of the book’s most poignant passages our author describes what lies in store for the righteous who look to the World to Come: The expanses of Paradise will be spread out before their eyes, and they will be shown the majestic beauty of the living creatures which are beneath the throne, as well as all the angelic hosts, those now held by my word, lest they reveal themselves, and those held by [my] command, so that they stay in their places until the arrival of their advent (51:11).

Third, the language in the passage quoted above is explicitly Deuteronomic. “If we direct our hearts and set them aright, then we will receive everything we have lost.” Syriac Baruch is steeped in Deuteronomic theology. The destruction and loss Israel is presently experiencing are signs of God’s anger and punishment for Israel’s sin. Our author follows the basic Deuteronomic scheme of sin, punishment, repentance and restoration, and fully embraces traditional Deuteronomic categories.3 Torah observance stands at the center of the book; the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked severely punished; and, most patently, Baruch, the hero of our book, is depicted throughout Syriac Baruch as a latter-day Moses, whose task is to guide what is left of Israel not into the promised land, but into the World to Come.4 How closely the figure of Baruch is modeled after that of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the final command Baruch receives from God. “Ascend to the top of this mountain. All the places of this earth will file past you, the likeness of the inhabited world, the top of the mountains, the depth of the valleys, the depths of the sea, and the number of the rivers. You will see what you are leaving and where you are going. This will happen after forty days” (76:3–4; cf. Deut 32:48–52).

George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Torah and the Deuteronomistic Scheme on the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament: Festschrift für Christoph Burchard zum 75. Geburtstag (ed. D. Sänger and M. Konradt; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Fribourg: Academic Press, 2006), 222–35; the classic study on the subject remains, of course, Ed P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM Press, 1977), 233–428. 4 Matthias Henze, “From Jeremiah to Baruch: Pseudepigraphy in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb (ed. C. Hempel and J. Lieu; JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 157–77. For other discussions of Moses-like figures and their functions and transformations in the unfolding tradition, see in this volume: Eva Mroczek, “Moses, David, and Scribal Revelation,” 91–115, esp. 109–15; Andrei Orlov, “In the Mirror of the Divine Face,” 183–200; and Zuleika Rodgers, “Josephus’ ‘Theokratia’ and Mosaic Discourse,” 129–48. 3

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Fourth and finally, 2 Baruch is a storehouse of diverse traditions, an inter-textual wonderland. Like very few other Jewish Pseudepigrapha (the Book of Parables in 1 Enoch 37–71 readily comes to mind), Syriac Baruch is an amalgam of diverse and at times contradictory traditions which are here woven together into the fabric of our text. Two of these traditions, each highly diverse in itself, are the call to Torah obedience and the strong eschatological outlook of 2 Baruch. This, it seems to me, is the most original contribution of Syriac Baruch to the theme of this volume, namely the way in which our author integrates Torah and eschatology. In 2 Baruch, Deuteronomic theology, particularly the call on Israel to live in accordance with the Mosaic Torah and to choose life over death, has become the central aspect of the book’s apocalyptic world view.5 Our author manages to harmonize two distinct strands of early Jewish thought which, by modern literary standards, are not harmonious but appear to be mutually exclusive, to the extent that they are normally kept in segregation: the Deuteronomic promise to those who follow Torah that they will be rewarded with a long and prosperous life, and the apocalyptic promise that this life will soon come to an end. The author of 2 Baruch sees no contradiction here but finds the two to be fully compatible. Students of 2 Baruch have long wondered what the “central theme” of our book is—Torah and the temple, theodicy, and the failure of God’s promises to come true have all been candidates.6 Instead of looking for a single unifying theme, however, we may learn even more about the book when we appreciate its diverse character and observe how the author was able to conflate such remarkably disparate theological traditions in one coherent book. How, then, was he able to do this in the case of Torah and eschatology?

5 It is not difficult to find in the Book of Deuteronomy passages that express a strong hope for the future and therefore readily lend themselves to an eschatological reworking of the kind we find in 2 Baruch. On one of these passages, Deut 30:1–10, see Mark Z. Brettler, “Predestination in Deuteronomy 30.1–10,” in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (ed. L. S. Schearing and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 171–88. For a discussion of eschatological interpretation in other Jewish contexts, see in this volume, Diana Lipton, “God’s Back!” 287–311, for the rabbinic context, and Marcus Tso, “The Giving of the Torah and the Ethics of the Qumran Community,” 117–128, esp. 126–27, for eschatology and community identity at Qumran. 6 George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction (2nd edition; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), 277–83; Gwendolyn B. Sayler, Have the Promises Failed? A Literary Analysis of 2 Baruch (SBLDS 72; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984).

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For the author of 2 Baruch, Torah observance is Israel’s only way to righteousness. The idea is expressed repeatedly in a number of memorable passages. Early in the book Baruch recalls how Moses “brought the Torah to the descendants of Jacob and lit the lamp for the people of Israel” (17:4), “that light in which nothing can err” (19:3). At another point he speaks eloquently of “the perfume of righteousness that comes from the Torah” (67:6). Exactly what the author has in mind when he calls on Israel to observe the Torah remains somewhat nebulous. The reader looks in vain for any concrete references to certain legal positions or halakhic disputes, say, regarding the Temple, the calendar or the holidays. The call to heed the Torah in Syriac Baruch is not designed to advocate a certain halakhic position or to take a firm stand on a matter of legal dispute. Instead, it remains somewhat general. What matters to our author is the observance of Torah as such, and that this leads to good works. This, he emphasizes, was already true for the Prophets. In the passage quoted at the beginning of the paper, Baruch remembers the Prophets who have now fallen asleep. They are missed sorely because they were intercessors before God on Israel’s behalf. The Prophets were able to stand before God because of the confidence they had in their works. “They implored our creator on our behalf, because they trusted in their works” (85:2). The same, Baruch asserts, will also be true in the End Time, only that the award for the faithful will be even greater. God responds to Baruch’s probing questions with the following promise: Miracles will appear at their own time to those who are saved by their works, to those for whom the Torah is hope, intelligence, expectation, and for whom wisdom is trust. They shall see that world which is now invisible to them, and they will see a time now hidden from them (51:7–8).

While keeping the Torah and doing good works is a constant in Israel’s history that ought to prevail beyond the year 70 c.e., Baruch insists that now there is an added eschatological urgency. Torah observance versus rejection of the Torah is the only factor that will decide over who enters into the kingdom and who does not. The author of Syriac Baruch substituted the eschatological reward for earthly prosperity as the blessing for those who keep the covenant.7 Those who “are now found righteous in [God’s] Torah” will “receive the world that does not die” (51:3). Yet Baruch also prays, “Justly do they perish who 7 Frederick J. Murphy, The Structure and Meaning of Second Baruch (SBLDS 78; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 9.

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have not loved your Torah; torment of judgment awaits those who have not subjected themselves to your power” (54:14). A little Ramiel explains, “the lamp of the eternal Torah enlightened all who sat in darkness; it informs the believers of their reward and the apostates of the fiery torment that is reserved for them” (59:2). Indeed, Baruch has harsh words for the wicked. “[T]heir end shall convict them, and your Torah, which they have transgressed, will exact vengeance from them on your day” (48:47). This is Deuteronomic theology propelled to its eschatological extreme. 2. The Place of Syriac Baruch in Early Judaism We could go on and cite more examples in order to flesh out further the place of the Torah in 2 Baruch, but I trust the overall picture would not change much: as a result of the recent Roman aggression Israel has lost everything; all that is left are God and the Mosaic Torah; Israel is now living in anticipation of the End; for post-70 c.e. Judaism, therefore, Torah observance is of eschatological significance; and finally, those found to be righteous will be amply rewarded in the World to Come. Instead, I would like to step back for a moment and examine in somewhat more general terms where 2 Baruch is coming from and who could have penned it. The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, it is commonly agreed, was composed during the late first century c.e. in response to the Roman sacking of Jerusalem. The precise date of composition eludes us for lack of any specific historical data in the text.8 However, we can narrow down the period of its composition with some confidence to the half century between the two failed Jewish revolts, the Jewish War and the fall of Jerusalem (66–73 c.e.), which is “predicted” in chapter 32, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–35 c.e.), which is never mentioned in 2 Baruch, presumably because the author did not know of it. The sincere grief over the destruction of Zion, and the setting of much of the book on the very ruins of the Temple, suggest that not much time had elapsed 8 The attempt to date Syriac Baruch with any degree of accuracy is further complicated by the fact that the book as we have it may not have been written in one sitting. Given the highly complex nature of 2 Baruch as a literary composition, it seems rather more likely that its compositional history involved several intersecting processes of rewriting and the joining of source materials; note the recent distinction by Robert A. Kraft between “evolved” and “composed” literature in his “Para-mania: Beside, Before and Beyond Bible Studies,” JBL 126 (2007): 5–27 (here pp. 18–22).

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in between the fall of the city in the year 70 c.e. and the composition of 2 Baruch, but such inferences are, of course, tentative.9 It has become customary among many modern scholars to think of apocalyptic authors per se as renegades, quintessential outsiders, who are disillusioned and feel powerless, and who, in response, create their own view of reality, which is emphatically utopian and which projects whatever hope they have left into the eschatological future. What gives the apocalyptically minded a sense of purpose is their opposition to “mainstream” religion.10 According to this model, which tends to think of Judaism in binary terms, “mainstream” Judaism at the time of 2 Baruch would be rabbinic Judaism. If Syriac Baruch stands for the marginalized, then rabbinic Judaism stands for “normative” Judaism. One is esoteric, subversive and deeply skeptical of organized religion, the other exoteric, constructive and concerned with establishing more permanent religious structures. One is visionary and derives its authority from fanciful claims to revelation, the other textual and bases its authority on the tradition as it was received by Moses on Mount Sinai and subsequently handed down through the Prophets to the men of the Great Synagogue (m. xAbot 1:1). One is a conventicle of self-proclaimed Prophets, masquerading as authoritative figures from the biblical past and critiquing the status quo,11 the other consists of legitimate authorities, properly identified by their name and organized in traditional schools of learning. One is sectarian and heretical, the other “normative” and “orthodox”. One left us with writings which are, to a certain degree, visionary, elusive, and obscure, books that were soon considered heretical and hence were soon forgotten, the other with books which became foundational for Judaism throughout the ages. According to this view, 2 Baruch stems from an author—or authors— who operated on the margins of society, disenfranchised as it were by 9 Other students of 2 Baruch have been less reluctant to assign a specific date; see, most recently, Nicolae Roddy, “ ‘Two Parts: Weeks of Seven Weeks’: The End of the Age as Terminus ad Quem for 2 Baruch,” JSP 14 (1996): 3–14, and Antti Laato, “The Apocalypse of the Syriac Baruch and the Date of the End,” JSP 18 (1998): 39–46. I remain skeptical that such mathematical calculations do justice to the nature of the text. 10 A leading proponent of this model is Paul D. Hanson; see, e.g., his “The Matrix of Apocalyptic,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume 2: The Hellenistic Age (ed. W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 524–33. 11 Annette Yoshiko Reed, “ ‘Revealed Literature’ in the Second Century b.c.e.: Jubilees, 1 Enoch, Qumran, and the Prehistory of the Biblical Canon,” in Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (ed. G. Boccaccini; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 94–98 (here p. 97).

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the destruction of the Second Temple and withdrawn. The apocalypse is thus best understood as a theological pamphlet against the ideas we find expressed in “mainstream” Jewish literature. In the modern reception history of Syriac Baruch, and indeed of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha in general, the considerable scholarly appetite for such bifurcations, for reading non-canonical texts in opposition to canonical texts, has had a significant influence on how we interpret the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. It appears to me that this model regarding the origins of early Jewish apocalyptic literature is problematic, especially when applied to 2 Baruch. The traditional view that soon after the year 70 c.e. the Rabbis took on the role of the preservers of “normative” Judaism in more recent scholarship has increasingly given way to the view that the nature of early rabbinic authority initially was rather limited in scope and only gradually took hold.12 In the words of Martin Goodman, “It seems likely that the acceptance of rabbinic authority by Jews in Palestine was gradual and perhaps not even far advanced by a.d. 132 when the outbreak of revolt seems to have had no connection with the rabbinic leadership.”13 Exactly when the Rabbis—and, if we want to draw that parallel, the Church Fathers—were holding the dominance to which they laid claim has recently been a matter of considerable debate, with some scholars wanting to push that date forward to the second, third, or even to the fourth century c.e. What appears to be certain, however, is that it happened long after 2 Baruch was composed. The larger question here is what happened to the diversity of Judaism and, specifically, to the Jewish sects that constituted second temple Judaism, after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, particularly during the years 70 c.e. to 135 c.e., the time during which 2 Baruch was composed.14 The issue cannot possibly be resolved here, if only because the

For a cogent discussion, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), esp. ch. 4, “The Parting of the Ways? Enoch and the Fallen Angels in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity,” pp. 122–59. 13 Martin Goodman, “Judea,” in The Cambridge Ancient History. Volume XI: The High Empire, A.D. 70–192 (ed. A. K. Bowman; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 664–78 (here p. 668). 14 In addition to the important work of Annette Yoshiko Reed already mentioned, see Daniel Boyarin, “A Tale of Two Synods: Nicaea, Yavneh, and Rabbinic Ecclesiology,” Exemplaria 12 (2000): 21–62, and his Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo —Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1–86; and Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 12

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investigation of a single text such as Syriac Baruch is obviously insufficient. We would have to cast our textual and historical net much wider to get a clear reading of the situation. What we can do, however, is turn to our text—one of the few extant sources of the period—and consider whether we find in it any clues about the self-understanding of its author and how, in his own perception, his views relate to those expressed in other, contemporary writings. Turning to 2 Baruch, then, we find that there is nothing in it to suggest that our author felt disenfranchised, marginalized, or that he was writing out of a sense of opposition, let alone an opposition to “mainstream” Judaism. It is, of course, true that some early Jewish apocalyptic texts stem from sectarian circles and foster a social dualism that seeks to drive a wedge between “insiders” and “outsiders”, or, in theological parlance, the “saved” and the “sinners”. But not all of apocalyptic literature fits the pattern. There is nothing sectarian or esoteric in 2 Baruch. The author makes no effort to distinguish between a Baruchian group of the chosen and the rest of Israel which is rejected. To the contrary, he repeatedly shows his sincere concern for the wellbeing of Israel as a whole. This concern comes through clearly in several passages. In chapters 41–42, for example, Baruch inquires from God what will happen to the most recent converts to Judaism (“those who have forsaken their vanity and have fled under your wings”; 2 Baruch 41:4) at the time of judgment, given that they have carried “the yoke of [God’s] Torah” (41:3) only for a short while, to which God replies that they, too, will receive their reward.15 Here again, Baruch’s aim is to convince all of Israel to follow the Torah, not to single out a special group whose identity derives from a sectarian ideology. Another group of texts that provide important clues about the author’s concern for Israel as a whole are Baruch’s public speeches. Three times over the course of the book the narrative is interrupted and Baruch assembles all of Israel in order to instruct them.16 The Deuteronomic overtones and the Mosaic model are unmistakable. On the occasion of his first public speech, for example, Baruch asks the people to assemble all the elders. He then begins his

2001), 103–10, though Schwartz gives only scant attention to the half century under consideration here. 15 See the commentary by Pierre Bogaert, L’Apocalypse Syriaque de Baruch: introduction, traduction du syriaque et commentaire (2 vols; SC 144–45; Paris: Cerf, 1969), 2.75. 16 The texts in question are 2 Baruch 31–34, 44–47, and 77.

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address with the following words, “Hear, O Israel, and I will speak to you; give ear, o seed of Jacob, and I will instruct you” (31:3; cf. 77:2; also 4 Ezra 9:30; 14:28). The Deuteronomic model alludes to the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai17 and suggests that the author wanted to reach all of Israel. One could object that the assembled “Israel” here is merely a cipher which stands for the Baruchian community which understands itself as the true Israel. But this seems rather unlikely. If the speeches were indeed intended for a closed circle of insiders only, then one would expect to find in them the core of the sectarian beliefs, which would undoubtedly include a more extensive treatment of 2 Baruch’s apocalyptic teachings. Instead, we find the opposite to be the case. In these sections, apocalyptic speculations play only a limited role. The author of Syriac Baruch uses the speeches to call on the people to observe the Mosaic Torah and reserves his more detailed apocalyptic speculations for other parts of his book. The public addresses, which are sermonic in character, articulate in condensed form what the author wants to communicate to Israel as a whole. My assertion, then, is that Syriac Baruch does not understand itself as a sectarian document, and that it was not written in opposition to any other form of Judaism. I find no critique here of the reigning religious or philosophical traditions. To the contrary, it seems to me that by combining the call to observe Torah (which 2 Baruch shares with rabbinic Judaism, as it begins to constitute itself right around the time when Syriac Baruch was composed) with the eschatological zeal of Jewish apocalypticism (here understood both as a literary genre and as a distinct worldview, both of which 2 Baruch inherits from pre-rabbinic Judaism), our author seeks to overcome the sectarian divisions that had increasingly plagued second temple Judaism. In this sense 2 Baruch is an inclusive text that seeks to rid apocalyptic literature of its sectarian stigma by arguing that an apocalyptic awareness does not preclude one from leading a faithful life according to the Torah. Once the post-70 C.E. community comes to realize that they are living in the End Time, they cannot but observe Torah, and they will proclaim, “We have left nothing at all except for the Mighty One and his Torah” (85:3). The lack of any clear sign of sectarianism becomes even more poignant when we compare 2 Baruch with its contemporary sister apocalypse, 4 Ezra. Towards the end of 4 Ezra, Ezra calls the people together in order to address them one last time (4 Ezra 14:27–28). 17

Michael E. Stone, Fourth Ezra (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 308.

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The language of the convocation is nearly identical to the language in 2 Baruch at the beginning of the speeches. In the book’s final scene, after the convocation is over and the crowd is dismissed, Ezra and five other scribes sit down and write incessantly over a period of forty days and forty nights what God dictates to them. They end up producing a library of ninety-four books (4 Ezra 14:37–44). Of these writings Ezra is told to make public twenty-four, an obvious reference to the books of the Hebrew Bible, yet he is also ordered to keep the remaining seventy books secret, “in order to give them to the wise among your people. For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge” (4 Ezra 14:46–47). Once again, the language has a close parallel in 2 Baruch. In ch. 59 we find a long list of things that were revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. Included in the list are “the root of wisdom, the riches of understanding, and the font of knowledge” (2 Baruch 59:7). But the difference between the two texts is obvious. In 4 Ezra understanding, wisdom and knowledge are gained not from the biblical but from the secret writings. Indeed, these are the very attributes that define “the superiority of the esoteric revelation” over the exoteric teachings that can be derived from Scripture.18 By contrast, 2 Baruch does not know of any group of writings that is withheld from the general public. The origins of wisdom, understanding and knowledge were revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is telling that the last thing that was revealed to Moses was “the earnest study of Torah” (59:11). 3. Baruch’s Three Public Speeches With these reflections in mind, I would like to return one more time to Syriac Baruch in order to gain a more focused understanding of its theological program, particularly as it relates to the role of the Torah in the formation of group leadership in post-70 C.E. Judaism.19 I will focus on Baruch’s three public speeches already referred to above, since it is here that Baruch calls on Israel most explicitly to follow the Torah. Like many great writers before him—the Deuteronomist in the biblical realm, for example, or Homer and Thucydides in Greek

Stone, Fourth Ezra, 442, who lists further parallels in cognate literature. Wofgang Harnisch, Verhängnis und Verheissung der Geschichte: Untersuchungen zum Zeit- und Geschichtsverständnis im 4 Buch Esra und in der syr. Baruchapokalypse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 208–22. 18 19

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literature—the author of 2 Baruch puts speeches into the mouth of the protagonist and uses them effectively as a means of articulating some of his most cherished theological thoughts. The speeches take the form of farewell discourses and follow closely the Mosaic model, since Baruch is preparing for his departure from the community.20 Their function is strictly parenetic, that is, to exhort the community. Baruch begins his first public address (2 Baruch 31–34) with a stern admonition, “If you prepare your hearts to sow into them the fruits of Torah, the Mighty One will protect you at that time when he will shake up the whole creation” (32:1). He then goes on to “predict” the destruction of the First and of the Second Temple, a period that will transform straight into the New Creation (2 Baruch 32). Baruch then asks the people not to approach him for a few days until he returns to them. Greatly distressed by the possibility that Baruch might leave them for good the people plead with him to stay. He, however, puts their fears to rest and replies, Far be it from me that I should leave you or withdraw from you. I only go as far as the Holy of Holies to inquire from the Mighty One about you and Zion; perhaps I will be enlightened. Afterwards I shall return to you (34:1).

And so he leaves them to recite a lament while sitting on the Temple ruins. The setting of the second public address (2 Baruch 44–47) is similar. The scene begins with Baruch announcing his departure, though this time it is clear that he is talking about his death. He then goes on to exhort the people not to abandon the Torah: See, I will go to my fathers, as is the destiny of all the world. You, on the other hand, do not withdraw from the way of Torah, but watch over the people who are left [with you] and admonish them not to withdraw from the commandments of the Most High (44:2–3).

As soon as Baruch has finished his address, the people again respond in fear and express their anxiety over Baruch’s departure. It is important to notice what exactly it is that upsets them. The people see in Baruch not only their community leader but also the principal exegete and interpreter of the Torah on whom they depend. 20 Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker, “Apocalypses and Related Subjects,” in New Testament Apocrypha (ed. W. Schneemelcher; 2 vols; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989), 2.542–68 (here p. 549).

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The Mighty One is humiliating us to such an extent that he will take you away from us so soon! We shall truly be in darkness, as there will be no light for the people who are left behind. Where shall we seek Torah, and who will distinguish for us between death and life? (46:1–3).

Baruch responds that he is not leaving them of his own will and at the same time reassures them that there will be other community leaders. “The throne of the Mighty One I cannot withstand. Nonetheless, Israel is not in want of a sage, and the tribe of Jacob of a son of Torah” (46:4). The third address (2 Baruch 77), finally, is Baruch’s farewell speech to Israel, closely modeled after the biblical death scene of Moses. God has just told Baruch to ascend the mountain to “leave this world, though not to death, but to be preserved temporarily” (76:2), and so Baruch turns to the people one last time. Again he begins by reminding them of the gift of Torah. “To you and to your fathers the Lord gave the Torah, [preferring you] over all the nations” (77:3). But Israel transgressed the commandments and hence was punished. The people respond by promising that they will try to recall all the good things God has done for them. Then they ask Baruch for one last favor: Write to our brothers in Babylon a letter of instruction, a scroll of hope, so that you might strengthen them, too, before you no longer walk among us. For the shepherds of Israel have perished; the lamps that gave light are extinguished; and the springs from which we used to drink have dried up. We have been left in darkness, in the thick of the forest, in the drought of the desert (77:12–14).

Baruch agrees to write the letter and has the following to say about the dearth of leadership: Shepherds and lamps and springs come from the Torah. Even though we are passing on, the Torah abides. If, therefore, you consider the Torah and remain prudent in wisdom, the lamp will not be wanting, the shepherd not be taken, and the spring will not be dry (77:15–16).

A common theme in the three public speeches is the anxiety in the Jewish community over Baruch’s imminent departure. “Where do you go, Baruch, away from us? Do you leave us, like a father leaves his orphan children and abandons them?” (32:9) The people are concerned about their leadership, or lack thereof. The three public announcements nicely reflect the development in Baruch’s understanding of his own leadership and of his thoughts about what should happen after his death. In the first scene the people’s fear is merely the result of a

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misunderstanding. In the second, Baruch hints at the possibility that he will be replaced by another Torah centered leader. In the third scene, finally, it becomes clear that the Torah plays a major role in continuing the leadership after Baruch’s departure. Now Baruch states explicitly that it is the Torah that produces Israel’s new leaders. What creates continuity in leadership are no longer Israel’s religious institutions but the holy text itself; “Shepherds and lamps and springs come from the Torah. Even though we are passing on, the Torah abides” (2 Baruch 77:15). Shepherds, lamps and springs—most likely, these stand for the Prophets, seers and sages21—are all subordinate to the Torah. 4. Conclusion When judged by its reception history, 2 Baruch and the theological program it advocates must be considered a failure. Shortly after its composition the work suffered a fate most dreaded by every writer—the apocalypse was condemned to damnatio memoriae. Scribes ceased to copy it and, as a result, the text was soon forgotten. No Jewish manuscript of the text survives, and there are no undisputed references to, let alone quotations of it in ancient literature, Jewish or Christian.22 2 Baruch was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century in a Syriac biblical manuscript, though the Syriac version of our text is only the daughter translation of a no longer extant Greek version.23 The original version has been lost. Syriac Baruch has hardly fared much better in modern times, where it is still widely ignored. It is true, then, that 2 Baruch was written by a “historical loser.” At the time of its composition in the late first century C.E., however, this may not have been so clear. There is nothing in the text to suggest that the author himself felt marginalized, that he wrote from the perspective of a self-imposed exile, imagined or real, that he represented what he considered the view of a minorHarnisch, Verhängnis und Verheissung, 213. Bogaert, L’Apocalypse Syriaque de Baruch, 1:55–56. 23 On the manuscript evidence, see Bogaert, L’Apocalypse Syriaque de Baruch, 1:34–55, and Dedering, “Apocalypse of Baruch,” ii–iv. Recently, an Arabic version has come to light; see F. Leemhuis, A. F. J. Klijn and G. J. H. van Gelder, The Arabic Text of the Apocalypse of Baruch: Edited and Translated with a Parallel Translation of the Syriac Text (Leiden: Brill, 1986); Albertus F. J. Klijn, “The Character of the Arabic Version of the Apocalypse of Baruch,” in Jüdische Schriften in ihrem antik-jüdischen und urchristlichen Kontext (ed. H. Lichtenberger and G. S. Oegema; Studien zu den Jüdischen Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit 1; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002), 204–8. 21 22

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ity group. Similarly, he shows no signs of feeling defeated or on the losing side of a debate. Instead, he developed an apocalyptic program for post-70 c.e. Judaism that is focused on Torah obedience, generously draws on past traditions, seeks to overcome social isolation, and vigorously looks to the future—or to what is left of it, until the advent of the eschaton.

CAN THE HOMILISTS CROSS THE SEA AGAIN? REVELATION IN MEKILTA SHIRATA1 Ishay Rosen-Zvi Tel-Aviv University, Israel The Bible’s time is important, while the present is not; and so it invites the reader to cross over into the enterable world of scripture. James L. Kugel2

The Mishnah presents Torah study, even in its most mundane manner, as generating a divine presence: “If two people sit together and occupy themselves in the words of Torah, the divine presence rests among them” (‫ ;שנים שיושבים ועסוקים בדברי תורה שכינה ביניהם‬m. Abot 3:2, cf. 3:6). But how literal should we take this declaration to be? Is it only a figurative phrase or do the Rabbis (or some of them) really

1 Quotes from Mek. are from MS Oxford 151. I will refer to other manuscripts, as well as to the Geniza Fragments (found in Menahem I. Kahana, Kitxei Midreshei haHalakha min haGeniza [ Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006]) whenever there is a significant difference in meaning. On the textual witnesses of Mek. see Louis Finkelstein, “The Mekilta and Its Text,” PAAJR 5 (1934): 3–54; Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: a Critical Edition on the Basis of the Manuscripts and Early Editions (Schiff Library of Jewish Classics; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933) and Menahem I. Kahana, HaMekhiltot leParshat Amalek: le-rishoniyuteha shel ha-masoret ba-Mekhilta de Rabi Yishma‘’el behash·va’ah la-ma·kbiltah ba-Mekhilta de-Rabi Shim{on ben Yo·hai ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999). On the importance of the Geniza fragment “A Copy” on this portion of Mek. (Hereafter “Geniza”) see L. Elias, The MdRI according to an Excellent Copy from the Geniza (MA Thesis, The Heberw University of Jerusalem, 1996), Menahem I. Kahana, Manuscripts of the Halakhic Midrashim, An Annotated Catalogue ( Jerusalem: 1995), 41, and Menahem I. Kahana, “Halakhic Midrashim” in The Literature of the Sages Part 2 (CRINT IV; S. Safrai et al. eds.; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 70 n. 313. Translations for Tractate Shirata are based on Judah Goldin, The Song at the Sea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) and to other parts of Mek. on Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. Both are modified for the sake of more literal translations as well as according to better textual evidence. Where no volume is mentioned, vol. 2 of Lauterbach’s edition is implied. The page numbers conveniently refer to Lauterbach’s edition only. References to other midrashim are according to the following editions: Jacob Neusner, Sifre to Numbers: An American Translation and Explanation (2 vols.; BJS 118–119; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), Reuven Hammer, Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (Yale Judaica Series 24; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 2 James L. Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” in Midrash and Literature (eds. G. H. Hartman and S. Budick; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 89.

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believe that Torah study involves a revelatory event? If the latter is true, what might be the nature of this revelation? Rabbinic exegetical and legislative activities, unlike many of their predecessors, do not rest on any revelatory claim;3 but does this necessarily mean that there is also no claim for divine presence in the house of study? These broad issues touch on very basic questions of rabbinic selfreflection and historiosophic conceptualization, as well as on the nature of some enigmatic “entities” such as Shekhinah and Bat Kol, which are believed to appear, from time to time, among Torah students and in the study house.4 In what follows I will concentrate on one specific aspect of this wide-ranging revelatory question: Rabbinic attitude(s) towards the Biblical theophanies in the Sinai desert. Was divine revelation a one-time event, or did it in any way continue in the Rabbis’ own reality? How can revelation reappear whenever one is “occupied with the words of Torah”? Two great collective revelations are narrated in the book of Exodus: the first at the Red Sea (Exodus 15) and the second on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19–24). The Rabbis read these two events as closely connected,5 ascribing to both a revelatory nature greater then that of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel (Shirata 3, 24, Ba˜odesh 3, 212). The tannaitic running commentary on Exodus, the Mekilta, differs, however, in its treatment of these chapters. Masekta DeBa˜odesh, on Exodus 19–20,6 concentrates mainly on the content of the Sinaitic revelation (Torah study and the fulfillment of the commandments) and its covenantal implications,7 while the nature of the revelatory event itself appears only on its margins.8 3 Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (SUNY Series in Judaica; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 15–21. 4 On the Shekhina see Peter Schaefer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah ( Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 79–102. On Bat Kol see Peter Kuhn, Offenbarungsstimmen im Antiken Judentum: Untersuchungen zur Bat Qol und verwandten Phanomenen (TSAJ 20; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1989). 5 See Saul Lieberman, “Mishnat Shir haShirim,” in Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (ed. G. Scholem; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1965), 119–122. 6 Mek. does not include a commentary on Exodus 24, and the reconstructed midrash on the first ten verses of Exodus 24 in MRS, 220–221 is doubtful: See Kahana, “Halakhic Midrashim,” 75. 7 See for example Parasha 1, which discusses the refusal of the nations to accept the Torah. See Marc Hirschman Torah for the Entire World (Tel Aviv: Ha-·Kibuts Ha-me’u·had, 1999), 39–42. 8 The nature of revelation at Sinai appears in but a few homilies in Ba˜odesh 3–4 (see

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219

Most of the direct discussions on the character of divine revelation appear a few tractates earlier in the Mekilta’s homilies on Exodus 15. Since the revelation at the sea, unlike that of Sinai, does not have any specific content other then the revelatory act itself—fighting the Egyptians and rescuing the Israelites—it is there that the Rabbis choose to discuss divine revelation and its relevance for the homilist and his audience. It is thus in these homilies of Mekilta Shirata that we should start looking for an answer to our questions. In what follows we will analyze the midrashic attitude towards the Red Sea theophany using both the explicit statements in this regard, and the rhetorical and interpretive strategies taken by the Mekilta, when engaging the biblical song. The first section will discuss the homilists’ imitation of biblical language and the second their playful use of tenses. The third and last section will synthesize these two close readings to offer a new understanding of the way rabbinic midrash adapts, adopts and ultimately reclaims the biblical revelatory experience. Imitatio Scriptura: The Midrashic Celebration of the Biblical Victory A victory hymn greater and more self-assured than the Song at the Sea is hard to come by.9 From its beginning, “I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously, horse and driver He has hurled into the sea” (v. 1), until its very end: “the Lord will reign for ever and ever” (v. 18),10 the poet praises the God of Israel for his unlimited and incomparable might. Over nineteen verses the biblical poet does not only praise God, but goes into great detail to describe the defeat of esp. the homilies on ‫[ לעיני כל העם‬212], ‫[ ויהי קולות‬218], and ‫[ משה ידבר‬223]), some of which specifically emphasize the limits of the revelatory event. See for example the claim that the Divine glory did not actually come down to earth (Ba˜odesh 4, 224); on rabbinic and other ancient interpretations of the nature of Sinaitic Revelation see the papers of Steven Fraade (on the Tannaitic Midrashim, 247–68) and Robert Hayward (on the Aramaic Targums, 269–85) in this volume. 9 On Victory Hymns see Frank M. Cross and David N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry (Biblical Resource Series; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 31, Umberto Cassuto, The Book of Exodus ( Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1987), 120, Propp, Exodus 1–18 (AB; New York and London: Doubleday, 1999), 2.507. Interestingly enough, the two great biblical victory hymns: Exodus 15 and 2 Samuel 22, are read together in public, according to rabbinic liturgy, on the last day of Passover (n. 82 below). 10 On v. 19 as an appendix, see Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical Theological Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 248.

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the Egyptians (cf. v. 4–5, 9–10) as well as all other enemies (cf. v. 14–16), before God. It is this specific description of the divine might that allows the poet to end with the assurance that: “the Lord shall reign for ever and ever” (v. 18). The attraction of the Rabbis to this song is anything but surprising. Unlike other war hymns, which celebrate earthly victories (gained, to be sure, with divine assistance),11 this war was exclusively divine, leaving the people, men and women alike, with the sole task of singing God’s praise.12 This picture fits the rabbinic concept of God as the (sole) warrior of Israel perfectly.13 For the early Rabbis nothing was more understandable then God’s promise ‫ה' ילחם לכם ואתם תחרישון‬ (“The Lord will battle for you; you hold your peace,” Exod 14:14).14 Indeed, the Mekilta contrasts this song, dedicated exclusively “to the Lord” (15:1),15 to the one chanted to David and Saul after the defeat of Goliath (1 Sam 18:6–7): ‫כמה שנאמר "ותצאנה הנשים המחוללות‬

11 E.g. Jud 5:20, 2 Sam 22:40. See Cross and Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, 3. 12 Typically a woman’s role, as is well exemplified in Miriam’s song in vv. 20–21 (Propp, Exodus 1–18, 547; compare 508: “the act of singing a victory song arguably feminizes Moses and the men”). See also Shirata Parasha 1: ‫שכל השירות שעברו קרויות‬ ‫“( בלשון נקבה‬For all songs referring to past events the noun used is in the feminine,” 1), and Menahem Kasher, Torah Shelemah (43 vols.; Jerusalem: Mechon Torah Shelema, 1992) 14:97; Judah Goldin, “This Song,” in Studies in Midrash and Related Literature (ed. B. Eichler and J. Tigay; JPS: Philadelphia, 1988), 151–161. 13 See below, next to n. 74 Compare also Sif. Num. 102: ‫כשהוא יוצא למלחמה אינו‬ ‫“( יוצא אלא יחידי שנאמר ה' איש מלחמה‬when He [God] goes out to war, He goes out only alone, as it says, ‘The Lord is a man of war, The Lord is His name,’ ” 121). 14 See Mek., Vayehi, 3: ‫“( ה' ילחם לכם—לא לשעה אלא לעולם ה' ילחם לכם‬Not only at this time but at all times He will fight against your enemies,” 1:215). It is only the second part of the verse: “you will hold your peace,” that the midrash finds problematic, as it contradicts not only the actual events but also the rabbinic doctrine of prayer itself. The Mekhilta suggests two possible solutions. According to R. Meir the verse only says that God will save you even if you remain silent, but “how much more so if you render praise to Him,” while Rabbi reads the whole verse as a rhetorical question: “Shall God perform miracles and mighty deeds for you and you be standing there silent?” Compare the long section on the potency of prayer, at the very beginning of Parasha 3 (206–9, Kahana, Kit’ei Midreshei haHalakha min haGeniza, 45) commenting on the words: ‫“( ויצעקו בני ישראל אל ה‬The Israelites cried out to the Lord,” Exod 14:10), as well as Parasha 2 (203–4) on the words: ‫( יוצאים ביד רמה‬on “high hand” as prayer see Max Kadushin, A Conceptual Approach to the Mekilta [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969], 263). 15 Compare the idiom repeated, almost verbatim, three times (!) in tractate Vayehi:

‫אתם תהו מרוממים ומפארים ומשבחין ונותנין שיר ושבח וגדולה ותפארה ונצח והוד‬ ‫“( למי שהמלחמות שלו‬But you shall exalt, glorify, praise, and utter songs of praise and adoration, of laudation and glorification to Him in whose hands are the fortunes of war,” 1:203, 215, 223).

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‫ ולא אמרוה לבשר ודם‬,‫[ אבל כאן לה' אמרוה‬. . .] "‫מכל ערי ישראל וג‬ (“As in the other passage, ‘And the women came out of all the cities of Israel etc.’ [. . .] In the present instance, however, it was in praise of the Lord they recited it and they did not recite it in praise of flesh and blood”, Shirata 1,7). But how does the tannaitic homilist read this song of divine potency and power? What is he to do with such a victory hymn, in a period so remote from what is celebrated by the song? How can he relate to such a fancy description of divine heroism? Wouldn’t a dirge or a lamentation fit his condition better than a lavish celebration? Two homilies in the Mekhilta seem indeed to indicate such a transition from celebration to grief. The first appears in a series of homilies on the phrase ‫מי כמוך‬ '‫“( באלים ה‬Who is like you among the gods, O Lord,” v. 11). The homilies read the word ‫ אלים‬as referring to various entities,16 which are not actually gods (thus avoiding the trap of polytheism) but are nevertheless referred to as “gods”: angles, sovereigns, statues, etc.17 One homily, however, stands out in contrast: ‫מי כמוך באלים ה'—מי כמוך‬ ‫ מי כמוך רואה בעלבון בניך ושותק‬,'‫“( באילמים ה‬Who is like Thee, O Lord, among the elim—Who is like Thee, O Lord, among the mute ones [. . .], who like Thee sees Thy children disgraced and yet keep still,” 60).18 One cannot think of a greater contrast between the biblical Lord

16 Here, as in many other places along the tractate, the midrash takes advantage of the fact that “throughout the Song, mixed metaphors and ambivalent language provoke multiple interpretations” (Propp, Exodus 1–18, 507). In this paper I use the word ‘homily’ to refer to a single midrashic unit (and thus ‘homilist’ as its implied author) and ‘midrash’ for the composition as a whole. 17 The first homily is not entirely clear: ‫ באלם‬:‫מי כמוך באילים ה' ]כ"י אוקספורד‬ ‫ מי כמוכה בניסים וגבורות שעשית על הים‬,'‫ מי כמוכה באלמים ה‬,[‫[( כתיב‬cod. Oxford adds: “Note the spelling ‘lm”] who among those capable of mighty deeds is like unto Thee, who can be the likes of Thee in the miracles and mighty deeds Thou didst on the sea,” 60). According to this version (attested in all textual witnesses of Mek.) it seems that the homily is based on reading ‫ אלים‬as ‫( אלם‬powerful, violent). However in a Geniza fragment of an abridgement of MRS, 236 (T-S Misc. 36.132), we find the version: ‫בא עלי ים‬, according to which the homily may have interpreted ‫באלים‬ as ‫( בעל ים‬the master of the sea, or: the sea God). This explains the verses cited from Psalms 106, which refer to God’s rebuke (‫ )ויגער‬of the sea (Horowitz’s note in his edition, 142 line 7). 18 The homily placed the past (‫)לשעבר‬, in which God kept silent (‫)אחריש אתאפק‬, against the expected future, which will bring this silence to an end (‫מכאן ולהלן כיולדה‬ ‫)אפעה‬. The tenses reflect Isaiah’s alleged prophetic point of view, for which the present is past, and the future is: “from now on.” From this perspective, the divine muteness (‫ )מי כמוך באילמים‬is reinterpreted as a silence which speaks volumes. Instead of being a testimony of divine impotency, it is reread as deliberate self restraint, like a woman

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of war, and the silent (impotent?) God, as experienced by the homilist. What is more, the appearance of such a statement in the midst of a series of homilies of praise, has a clear ironic effect; subverting, even ridiculing, all the outspoken glorifications surrounding it. A similar transformation appears in a series of homilies on ‫זה אלי‬ ‫“( ואנוהו‬this is my God, and I will glorify/enshrine19 Him” v. 2). The opening move of the midrash is a rejection of the reading which it considers to be the most literal, but, at the same time, theologically unacceptable: ‫ וכי איפשר לו לבשר ודם להנוות‬,‫ואנוהו—ר' ישמעאל אומר‬ ‫לקוניו‬.20 Lauterbach’s translation: “and is it possible for a man to add glory to his creator” (25) does not reveal the depth of the theological problem.21 A more literal translation, however, articulates the theological scandal well: “can one of flesh and blood beautify his maker?”22 Such a reading also clarifies R. Ishmael’s midrashic solution: ‫אלא אנוה לו‬ ‫ אעשה לפניו לולב נאה וכו‬,‫“( במצוות‬I will beautify Him by means of the religious acts: I prepare for His sake a handsome lulab, etc.,” 25).

heavy with child, holding up as much as possible. The divine silence becomes thus itself a preview of the great yell (see v. 13: ‫ )יריע אף יצריח‬which is due shortly. 19 n. 25 below. 20 Although the question is posed by R. Ishmael as part of his specific homily, its location at the very beginning, together with the fact that no other question is posed in the next homilies, presents it as an introduction for all the interpretations which follow. 21 Similarly Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 113: “Is it then possible for flesh and blood to bestow glory on its creator.” 22 Although being a rare verb, the meaning of ‫ להנווות‬can be easily deduced from the nouns which follow: ‫ אעשה‬,‫וכי איפשר לבשר ודם להנוות לקוניו אלא אנוה לו במצוה‬ ‫ תפילה נאה‬,‫ ציצית נאה‬,‫ סוכה נאה‬,‫לפניו לולב נאה‬. on ‫נאה‬/‫ נוה‬see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “ ‘Even if One Found a More Beautiful Woman”: An Analysis of Grounds for Divorce in Rabbinic Literature,” JSIJ 3 (2004): 1–11. Compare the reading of the Geniza fragments: ‫( וכי איפשר לבשר ודם להתנאות לקוניו‬Kahana, Kit’ei Midreshei haHalakha min haGeniza, 63), which seem to convey a reflective meaning (not necessarily however; on non-reflective hitpael see Kahana, HaMekhiltot leParshat Amalek, 73, 263): beatifying oneself before (or: for the sake of ) God. Similar forms appear also in R. Ishmael answer according to the Geniza: ‫( אלא א>י<נאה לו‬on medial ‘Hiriq’ for hitpael form see Elias, MdRI according to an Excellent Copy from the Geniza, 23, Shlomo Naeh, “The Tannaic Hebrew in the Sifra According to Codex Vatican 66” [PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989], 326–27); compare also the reading in ed. princ. ‫אתנאה לפניו‬ (MRS: ‫)היה נאה לפניו‬. However, since the Geniza text here is explicitly corrected, we should consider a ‘pious’ emendation, softening the daring picture of beautifying God himself (directly or indirectly).

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One should thus beautify God’s (objects of ) Mizvot (commandments),23 instead of beautifying Him directly.24 A series of alternative readings of ‫ ואנוהו‬then follows:25 be like Him,26 proclaim His glory,27 or: make Him a beautiful temple.28 Among these, however, appears also R. Akiva’s famous homily which presents martyrdom (‫ )שכך אתם מתים עליו‬as the way to proclaim God’s glory before the nations.29 Is there a greater distance than the one between the biblical praise ‫ ואנוהו‬and its lethal translation by the martyrs? Here, as in ‫מי כמוך באלמים‬, the homily appears to be a direct inversion of the self-assured biblical victory song. These two homilies, however, are clear exceptions in the midrashic landscape, isolated subversive moments in the midst of joyful celebration of victory and defeat. More than a testimony for the general attitude of the early rabbis toward the song, these homilies are a testimony to the existence (inevitable, as cultural critics would teach us)30 of cracks

23 On Mitzvah objects as ornaments see Sif. Deut. 36 (Hammer, Sifre, 69), in a homily on Phylacteries, mezuzot and zizit: ‫ הוי מתקשטת‬.[‫משל למלך בשר ודם שאמ' לאשת]ו‬ ‫ היו מצויינין במצוות‬.‫ כך אמר להן הקב"ה לישראל‬.‫בכל תכשיטה כדי שתהא רצוייה לי‬ ‫“( כדי שתהיו רצויין לי‬A parable: A king of flesh and blood said to his wife, “Deck yourself out with all your jewelry so that you would look desirable to me.” Thus also the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel, “My children, be marked by the commandments, so that you would look desirable to me”). Consider also the fact that a ‫טוטפת‬ is a women’s ornament in m. Shabb. 6:1, and that phylacteries appear subsequently in 6:2, and compare R. Eliezer’s statement in Mishnah 4 regarding weapons: ‫תכשיטין‬ ‫“( הן לו‬they are [a man’s] jewels”). 24 On the decoration of idols see m. Sanh. 7.6, ARN, 66 (version B chap. 30). 25 The rabbis are in good company. Modern commentators also differ significantly regarding the meaning of this Hapax (Propp, Exodus 1–18, 514). 26 Read ‫ ואנוהו‬as ‫אני הוא‬. Compare the imperative form in the Geniza: ‫הידמי לו‬. 27 As most modern commentators suggest. 28 From ‫=נוה‬tent, house, compare v. 13: ‫( נוה קודשך‬Propp, Exodus 1–18, 532, Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 6). On these homilies see also Kasher, Torah Shelemah, 14:110. 29 See Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 117–29. 30 Mieke Bal’s analysis of subversive moments in the biblical patriarchal discourse demonstrates this claim well. “Dominance is, although present and in many ways obnoxious, not unproblematically established [. . .] It is the possibility of dominance itself, the attractiveness of coherence and authority in culture, that I see as the source, rather then consequences of sexism” (see Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories [ Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1987], 3). Bal’s followers reveal the artificialness of (any given) dominance through: “search for lapses in ideological coherence of a text [. . .] moments of disturbance in the overall dominant ideology of a text” (Charlotte E. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000], 9). Without questioning the importance of such ‘readings against the grain’, the present project is an attempt to unpack exactly this ‘dominant

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in any given discourse; cracks from which, willingly or unwillingly, the present pops up. In order to analyze the more typical moments of the rabbinic treatment of the Song, we thus should look at Masekta deShirata in the Mekilta as a whole. Masekta deShirata (“the tractate of the songs”)31 stands at the center of the aggadic (non legal) section of the Mekilta, a running commentary on the biblical narrative from Exod 13:17 (the Exodus from Egypt) to Exod 19:25 (the revelation at Sinai). Menahem Kahana has convincingly shown that the aggadic material in the tannaitic midrashim was not formed in any specific midrashic school, but is shared by both the schools of R. Akiva and R. Ishmael. However, as Kahana has also shown, the version in the “Ishmaelian” Mekilta (Mek.) is earlier and preserves a more primary form of the aggada than the “Akivan” Mekilta, MRS (attributed to Rabbi Shim’on).32 Besides being part of the aggadic section, however, Shirata has specific literary-redactional traits,33 which distinguish it from other tractates in the Mekhilta, and allow for its reading as an independent unit. In what follows I will thus concentrate on the homilies of tractate Shirata,34 according to the more primary version of Mek. A survey of Shirata as a whole reveals a picture quite removed from the one presented by the two individual homilies discussed above. Most of the homilies join the biblical poet’s praise wholeheartedly and ideology’ of Mekhilta Shirata, decoding (and therefore also historicizing and de-reifying) its basic discourse of time and history. Admittedly, gender analysis of the Mekhilta’s concept of God as “a man of war,” still needs to be done. 31 Hereafter simply: Shirata. On the division of the Mekhilta into nine tractates see Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 429, Kahana, “Halakhic Midrashim,” 68–69. On the Name ‘Shirata’ (in the plural!) see Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 440, Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 3 n. 1 (who prefers the reading shirta, in the singular). On the division of Shirata into ten chapters (as preserved in the Geniza fragments as well as in cod. Oxford and Munich), see Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 452–53; Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 5–8. 32 Kahana, HaMekhiltot leParshat Amalek. 33 See Louis Finkelstein, “Sources of Tannaitic Midrashim,” JQR 31 (1941): 211–43; 223–27. The term ‫( לעתיד לבא‬n. 58 below) and the concept of “measure for measure” (n. 52), might be added to his list, as both are exceptionally dominant in this tractate. There is no need, however, to go as far as Goldin’s statement that “the Mekhilta is [. . .] an assembly of treatises” and thus “Shirta is a whole tractate in itself ” (The Song at the Sea, 10–11). On this question see also Jacob N. Epstein, Prolegomena ad litteras Tannaiticas (ed. E. Z. Malamed; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1957), 572, and Kahana, HaMekhiltot leParshat Amalek, 27. 34 Comparative material from other tractates (especially Vayehi, which narrates the scene before the Israelites has crossed the sea, when “the Hiroth were on the one side, and Migdol on the other, the sea before them and Egypt behind them,” 188), as well as other midrashic compilations will be cited occasionally.

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225

unquestioningly.35 In some cases the homilist even creates his own hymn, which develop and intensify the biblical one. Thus, for example, on the words '‫ אשירה לה‬the homilist cites a hymn of his own,36 inspired by biblical verses,37 but not identical to them:38

35 This phenomenon was celebrated by Goldin: “Shirta statements on a number of occasions get infected by a quality of the very source being interpreted and its theme and themselves become poetic expressions” (Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 16), “even in the midst of a perfectly prosaic observation thereof, Shirta will suddenly be inspired” (18). Indeed, already in the biblical hymn one can detect this kind of sudden inspiration, especially in v. 11, which appears as “an ecstatic interjection into the historical resume of vv. 10 and 12” (Propp, Exodus 1–18, 528). 36 Note the triple repetition and the exact word structure (3:3:4), both lacking from the biblical sources (see also next note). Compare the beautiful song appearing at the very last homily on the song (I quote from cod. Munich): ‫אבל על עמך עדרך צאנך‬

‫צאן מרעיתך זרע אברהם אוהבך בני יצחק יחידך עדת יעקב בנך בכורך גפן שהיסעתה‬ ‫ממצרים וכנה אשר נטעה ימינך‬. (“But verily over Thy people/Thy flock, Thy sheep/

The sheep of Thy pasture/The seed of Abraham who loved Thee/The children of Isaac Thy favorite, The community of Jacob Thy first-born son/ The vine Thou didst pluck out of Egypt/And the stock which Thy right hand hath planted,” 80). The context of this hymn in the homily not entirely clear (See Horowitz ad loc.); most likely it is a closing hymn to the Song as a whole (in Mek. there is another short homily after that, but in MRS it appears at the very end of the song). For the similar phenomenon of “commentary approaching the idiom of liturgy” (Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 18) see Targum Neofiti on v. 3 (similar expressions appear in other Palestinian Aramaic Targums: Pseudo-Jonathan and the Fragment Targum): ,‫ה' גוברא עבד קרביא ה' שמיא‬ ‫ יהא שמיה מבורך לעולמי עלמין‬,‫“( כשמיה כן גבורתיה‬The Lord is a brave wager of wars; the Lord is his name. According to his name, so is his power. Blessed be his name forever and ever”). Cf. the targums on v. 18 (Etan Levine, “Neofiti 1: A Study of Exodus 15,” Biblica 54 (1973): 317–318). Compare also the Samaritan poem “Al Tehomei Maayan Eden” v. 38: ‫מי כמוך באילים ה‘—מי כמוך אה עשה כל המאומות ומאום לא‬ ‫“( ידמי לך‬Who is like You, O maker of all things, to whom nothing compares?”; see Zeev Ben Hayyim, ed., Tibat mar·keh: ·ve-hi asupat midrashim Shomroniyim [ Jerusalem: ha-A·kademiyah ha-le’umit ha-Yisre’elit le-mada‘im, 1988], 138). 37 The homilist combines ‫( ואנוהו‬read as ‫ )נאה‬with 1 Chronicles 29:11. The midrash continues a long tradition of biblical verses, Psalms (e.g. Isa 12:2, Ps 118:14, see Propp, Exodus 1–18, 511) and hymns (e.g. Tobit cap. 13, see Judith Newman, Praying by the Book: The Scripturalization of Prayer in the Second Temple Judaism [ Early Judaism and Its Literature 14: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999] 120), which imitates and paraphrases verses from Shirat Hayam. Compare the homily cited above n. 15, and the Baraita in b. Ber. 58a, which read the verse from 1 Chron. 29:11 as a list of God’s wars, From Exodus to “Gog and Magog.” 38 This phenomenon becomes even clearer in the next homily, which is a long repetitive hymn of God’s qualities: . . . ‫ אשירה לה' שהוא‬. . . ‫'אשירה לה' שהוא גיבור‬ ‫ אשירה לה' שהוא רחמן וכו‬. . . ‫ אשירה לה' שהוא חכם‬. . . ‫“( עשיר‬I will sing unto the Lord for he is mighty . . . I will sing unto the Lord for he is rich . . . I will sing unto the Lord for he is wise . . . I will sing unto the Lord for he is merciful, etc.”). The homilist goes on to gather different verses proving that God is indeed heroic, rich, wise, merciful, a judge and handsome, as he is praised (see esp. the poetic coda: ‫)אשירה לה' שהוא‬ [‫ ואין כערכו‬:‫נאה שהוא הדור שהוא משובח ]דפו"ר נוסף‬. See Goldin, The Song at the

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,‫לה' נאה גרולה‬

,‫לה' נאה גבורה‬

.‫לה' התפארת הנצח וההוד‬ To-the-Lord To-the-Lord To-the-Lord

greatness is-comely power is-comely glory, victory and majesty are-comely (8).39

Thus writes Judah Goldin, in a chapter aptly titled “Past made Present”: no reader of Shirta’s (sic!) ten chapters can fail to recognize that what is astir in the minds of the tannaite savants is not only—one may dare to say, not mainly—the event in ancient history, but also the immediate and poignant reflections produced by historical reminiscence, itself recurrently revived by the experiences in their, the Sages’, times.40

This phenomenon is most evident in the first two verses of the Song, reiterated in the first person singular: “I will sing to the lord . . . the Lord in my strength,” and so on.41 The homilies on these verses consistently preserve the direct speech.42 Thus, on the words ‫ ויהי לי‬,‫עזי וזמרת יה‬ ‫“( לישועה‬The Lord is my strength and might; He is become my deliverance,” v. 2) the homilist says: ‫ אבל‬,‫עוזר וסומך אתה לכל באי העולם‬ ‫“( לי ביותר‬Thou art the helper and sustainer43 of all the inhabitants of the world, but mine above all”; 23). This manner of imitating the biblical poet’s direct speech is not uncommon in the aggadic portions of the tannaitic midrashim,44 and it seems that its implications—especially Sea, 81, for a possible reconstruction of the rabbinic hymn (“poetic doxology”) which stands behind this homily. Note that none of these traits appear in the biblical song, which refers only to God’s might and dedication to his people. This homily can thus be read as part of the rabbinic effort to recontextualize the biblical hymn, so as to include divine justice and mercy in it as well (see n. 52 below). 39 Compare the opposite structure (but same metre) in cod. Munich and Vatican: '‫ נאה התפארת והנצח וההוד לה‬,'‫ נאה גבורה לה‬,'‫נאה גדולה לה‬. On Poetry in rabbinic literature in general see Aaron Mirsky, The Origin of Forms in Early Hebrew Poetry ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985), Michael D. Swartz, “Patterns of Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism,” in Society and Literature in Analysis (ed. P. Flescher; New Studies in Ancient Judaism 5; Landham, MD: University Press of America, 1990). 40 Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 13. 41 on this opening style see Childs, The Book of Exodus, 250; Propp, Exodus 1–18, 509. 42 For two exceptional homilies see below n. 85. 43 In Geniza these are clear adjectives: ‫עזר ומסמך‬. 44 The same holds true for verses appearing in the second person: ‫מי כמוך נאדר‬ ‫“( בקודש—נאה אתה ואדיר בקדש‬How comely Thou art, how majestic in holiness”; 62). This is quite a common style in non-legal portions of the tannaitic midrashim. See for example: ‫“( ואני אברכם—אני אברך את עמי ישראל‬I will bless them—I am the one who will bless my people Israel,” Sif. Num. 43, Neusner, Sifre to Numbers, 201). Compare the homilies on the Song of Moses (Deut 32) which preserve the first person style of

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227

with regard to proximity to the so-called ‘Rewritten Bible’ genre—are yet to be studied. For the present, however, the crucial question is: who exactly is referred to in this first person singular. Who is the ‫ לי‬in ‫ ?אבל לי ביותר‬Is the homilist simply taking his cue from the biblical style, referring, like it, specifically to the ancient Israelites, or can the first person refer to the homilist and his audience? Perhaps it is some kind of trans-historical entity (a sort of ‫ )כנסת ישראל‬the homilist is addressing?45 The answer is not unequivocal. While in some cases the first person seems to refer specifically to the Israelites in the desert,46 other cases cannot possibly be interpreted so narrowly. Thus, for example, on the words ‫ ויהי לי לישועה‬the homilist says: ‫היה לי לשעבר ויהיה לי לעתיד‬ ‫“( לבוא‬He was my [salvation] in the past, and He will be my [salvation] in the future”; 24). It is clearly the same “me” who is referred to both in the context of the (biblical) past and in the days to come.47 In most cases, however, the homilies lack any specification, which makes the grammatical subject of the homily simply indeterminable. To whom is the homilist referring, for example, in ‫ישועה אתה לכל באי‬ ‫“( העולם אבל לי ביותר‬Thou art the salvation of all the inhabitants of the world, but mine above all”; 24) or even ‫“( אני מלכה בת מלכים‬I am

the divine narrator himself, e.g. ‫“( לי נקם ושילם—משלם אני שכר מעשיהם‬Vengance is Mine, and recompense—I will requite it of them,” 337). In some cases, especially when the paraphrases are attributed to a named sage, they are preceded by a title: ‫אמר‬ ‫ אמר להם‬,‫הקב"ה‬, and the like. In these unattributed homilies of Shirata, however, no introduction is given to the direct speech. This “imitatio-scriptura” style somewhat shakes the neat division, so popular in current scholarship, between midrash, which distinguishes itself clearly from the biblical language, and the paraphrase-style of rewritten Bible. I intend to return to this neglected issue in a separate paper. 45 Such a phrase was indeed added in the printed editions of the Mekhilta at the end of Parasha 3: ‫“( אלהי אבי וארוממנהו—אמרה כנסת ישראל לפני הקב"ה‬My Father’s God and I will exalt him—The community of Israel said before the Holy One, blessed be he,” 29 and ed. Horowitz, 128). Compare the transformation of the singular ‫אשירה‬ to the plural ‫ נודי ונשבח‬in the Aramaic Targums. 46 See for example ‫“( עמי נהג במידת רחמים ועם אבותי נהג במדת הדין‬with me He dealt according to the rule of mercy, while with my fathers He dealt according to the rule of Justice,” 28), which seem to compare the experience of the Israelites in the desert with that of their fathers in Egypt. See also ‫“( גאני וגיאיתיו‬He exalted me and I exalted him,” 12) which than refers explicitly to occurrences in Egypt and at the Red Sea. 47 See also ‫והרי כל אומות שבעולם אומרים שבחו של הקב"ה אבל שלי נעים ונאה לפניו יותר‬ (“For all the nations of the world proclaim the Lord’s praise, but mine is more pleasant for Him”; 23). From what follows it is clear that “mine” in this homily refers to all the Jews who recite the ‘Shema’ (‫)ישראל אומרים שמע ישראל‬, including, off course, the homilist and his audience.

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a queen, the daughter of kings”; 28). I would suggest that this lack of specification is very telling in itself, and that it is exactly this indeterminacy that allows the homilist to present his realm as an undisturbed continuation of the biblical one.48 The lack of separation between the biblical Song and the homilist is most evident in those cases which the homilist deduces the very nature of divine providence from the biblical verses; unquestionably assuming that this nature is equally relevant for him as it was for the biblical poet.49 Thus, on the words ‫“( ה' איש מלחמה ה' שמו‬The Lord is a man of war, Lord is his name,” v. 3) the homilist presents a series of differences between God and a human emperor,50 which become an opportunity for him to present some of the unchanging ways of the divine.51 Such inferences are based on the most fundamental rabbinic conception of biblical omnisignificance. “The rabbis saw in the Bible not 48 In one case the transformation from the biblical period to the homilist’s is revealed in the homilitical act itself: ‫ עד שאבוא עמו לבית מקדשו‬,‫ואנוהו—חכמים אומרים אלוינו‬ (“anvehu—The sages say: alavenu. I shall be in His company until I arrive with Him at His temple”; 27). The homily continues to describe the experience of the Israelites in the desert, during their long journey to the promised land (and temple). The whole description is in past tense: ‫ ירדו‬. . . ‫כך כשירדו ישראל למצרים שכינה ירדה למצרים עמהם‬ ‫ עד שבאו עימו לבית מקדשו‬. . . ‫ יצאו למדבר שכינה עמהם‬. . . ‫“( לים שכינה עמהם‬So here: when Israel went down to Egypt, the shekhina was with them . . . when they got down to the seam the shekhina was with them . . . when they set forth into the wilderness, the shekhina was with them . . . until they came with Him to His holy Temple; 27; On this Geniza version, also confirmed by MRS, see Elias, The MdRI, 161). Thus, the experience of the ancient Israelites in the desert serves the homilist as a precedent for his own hope to a future revival of the great journey and the restoration of divine presence: ‫עד שאבוא עמו לבית מקדשו‬. Compare Mek. Pischa 14 (and parallels): ‫וכן את מוצא‬ ‫ גלו‬. . . ‫ גלו למצרים שכינה עמהם‬.‫שכל מקום שגלו ישראל כביכול גלתה שכינה עמהם‬ :‫ וכשהן חוזרין ]כ"י מינכן ודפוס ראשון‬. . . ‫ גלו לעילם שכינה עמהם‬. . . ‫לבבל שכינה עמהם‬ ‫“( וכשעתידין לחזור[ שכינה חוזרת עמהן‬Likewise you find that wherever Israel were exiled, in a way the Shekhinah was exiled with them. When they went into exile to Egypt, the Shekhina went into exile with them [. . .] When they were exiled to Babylon, the Shekhina went into exile with them [. . .] and when they return [Cod. Munich and ed. Prin.: in the future] the Shekhinah will return with them,” 114–15). 49 In some cases this inference is explicitly stated: ‫ה' ילחם לכם—לא לשעה אלא‬ ‫ לעולם ה' ילחם לכם‬215. 50 The recurring phrase is: ‫ [ אבל הקב"ה אינו כן‬. . .] ‫“( מלך בשר ודם‬A king of flesh and blood [. . .] but The Holy One, Blessed be He is not so,” 33–34). 51 See e.g.: ‫[ שהוא שומע צעקת כל באי‬. . .] ‫עשו תשובה מיד הוא מחזירה ריקם‬ ‫‘( העולם‬but when Israel repents, He immediately repeals it [. . .] that he hears the cries of all the inhabitants of the world,” 33–34). Compare also Parasha 5: ‫'אבל אתה חסדך‬ ‫וטובך ורחמיך הרבים וימינך שהיא פשוטה לכל באי העולם וכו‬. (“But as for Thee, Thy compassion, and Thy goodness, and Thy manifold mercies, and they right hand is extended to all the inhabitants of the world [. . .],” 39). Since this statement does not paraphrase any specific verse from the Song, it is clear that it does not refer to the biblical period specifically, but to the everlasting ways of divine providence.

can the homilists cross the sea again ?

229

only an archive of past history, but an unearthing of the structure of history itself [. . .] the historical writings in the Bible seemed to the rabbis powerful enough to elucidate and explain every future historical development.”52 Thus, the elucidation of the Bible is, in and of itself, the elucidation of the divine guidance, revealed all throughout history. There are, to be sure, significant thematic differences between the Bible’s praise and the praise invoked by the Tannaim. The Rabbis systematically rework the image of God as a mighty warrior, to present him as an impartial, yet merciful, judge, who metes out just punishment on the Egyptians. While the biblical hymn concentrates almost solely on God’s uncontested might, the major theme in the midrash is the nature of divine justice, returning over and over to the theme of “measure for measure.”53 We would, however, be mistaken to let these 52 Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Jewish History and Jewish Memory (2nd ed.; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989) 42–43. Compare: “For the Rabbis Scripture represented the perfect description of reality, which if probed deeply enough could yield information concerning Israel’s past, present and future as an eternal construct” (Herbert Basser, Midrashic Interpretations of the Song of Moses [American University Studies 7; Theology and Religion 2; New York: P. Lang, 1984], 284). 53 See Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Measure for Measure as a Hermeneutic Tool in Tannaitic Literature,” JJS 57 (2006): 269–86. On measure for measure in the Aramaic Targums see Levine, “Neofiti 1: A Study of Exodus 15,” 306. See also Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 24 for possible hints to the idea of lex talionis in the biblical song itself (which however does not lessen the rabbinic innovation of making this idea into the key for their exegesis). Another theme which appears in the midrash, but totally absent from the biblical hymn, is that of the merciful warrior: ,‫ה' איש מלחמה—שהוא נלחם במצרים‬ ‫ [ שהוא זן ומפרנס לכל בריותיו‬. . .] ‫“( ה' שמו—שהוא שומע צעקת כל באי העולם‬The Lord is a man of war, for He makes battle against Egypt; His name is the Lord, in that he hears the petitions of all the inhabitants of the world [. . .] in that he sustains and provides for all his creatures,” 33–34). Compare: ‫אבל אתה חסדך וטובך ורחמיך‬ ‫( הרבים וימינך שהיא פשוטה לכל באי העולם‬39). Note that both homilies are based on duplications (the alleged redundancy of ‫[ ה' שמו‬v. 3] in the first, and the double appearance of ‫[ ימינך‬v. 6] in the second) which are interpreted as indicating the divine ability to act mercifully to all creatures, even while fighting the enemies. On the term ‫ באי העולם‬as expressing rabbinic universalistic ideas, see Hirschman, Torah for the Entire World, 61–71. The universalistic statements here stand in sharp contrast to the verses they interpret, e.g. ‫ [ שנתת ארכה לדורו של מבול לעשות‬. . .] ‫נאדרי בכח‬ ‫“( תשובה‬Majestic in Power [. . .] For the generation of the flood Thou gave a grace period to repent”; 39; the homily reads ‫ נאדרי‬as a combination of two words ‫ נאה‬and ‫אדיר‬, which are interpreted as balancing each other: power restrained by justice, See also Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 146–47). Compare also the critical homily about the resistance of the sea to accept the Egyptians’ blood (68; cf. the Palestinian Targums on v. 12; Compare “Al Tehomei Maayan Eden” v. 12 [Ben Hayyim, Tibat mar·keh, 120], where the sea’s resistance come from concerns for its purity rather then moral considerations). On the combination of divine might and mercy in rabbinic literature in general see Efraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (2nd ed.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 80–96.

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admittedly significant thematic differences cover the very basic gesture of Imitatio Scriptura. The rabbinic homilist joins the biblical poet in the act of singing God’s praise, and he does so in the first person, as part of a trans-historical collective; positing the relevance of God’s might to him just as it was to the biblical poet.54 Succession vs. Sandwich: Tenses in the Mekilta The adoption of direct speech in the midrash is only one aspect of the story. Another, which reveals more about the logic of the midrash, while complicating matters further, is the transition between different tenses.55 Our homilies present a fascinating use of, and shift between, a variety of tenses. The relatively free use of tenses in the biblical song56 becomes a playful variety when being translated into the rabbinic tense 54 Note that most of tractate Shirata deals with the verses which describe the divine war on the sea, while the later verses (13–17), describing the journey to the promised land, received very limited treatment (only part of Parashot 9,10). Had the midrash had an interest in downplaying the war celebration, the ratio would have been reversed. 55 In the rabbinic tense system the perfect (‫ )פעל‬refers always to the past, while future is usually expressed with the nominal auxiliary: ‫( עתיד ל‬since the regular imperfect has a modal meaning). The participle (‫)בינוני‬, however, may refer both to the present and the future (as well as, in some cases, to the past, see Azar, Tahbir Leshon HaMishnah [ Jerusalem: ha-A·kademyah la-lashon ha-‘Ivrit, 1995], 2–3 and n. 6). See for example the homilies on ‫( עושה פלא‬v. 11), which read it as referring to all three tenses: ‫ [ עושה פלא עם אבות ועתיד לעשות‬. . .] ‫עשה עמנו פלא ועושה עמנו בכל דור ודור‬ ‫“( עם בנים‬He has done wondrous things for us and he performs these for us in every generation [. . .] Doing wonders for the fathers and will, in the future, do them for the sons,” 66; Compare the homily on ‫ ויהי לי לישועה‬according to the Geniza version [Kahana, Kit’ei Midreshei haHalakha, 62]: ‫היה לי לשעבר והווה לי לעתיד לבוא‬, “He was for me in the past, and he is [i.e. will be] for me in the future). The imperfect is likewise used in multiple contexts. Compare for example the homilies which read the biblical imperfect as future (‫לעתיד לבא‬, n. 61 below), to the one reading it as “always” (‫לעולם‬, n. 14 above). In most cases, however, the meaning can be easily deduces from accompanying adjectives (e.g. ‫ לעתיד‬,‫ לשעבר‬,‫ להבא‬,‫ עכשיו‬,‫ עם אבותי‬,‫ עימי‬,‫לי‬ ‫ בכל דור ודור‬,‫)לבוא‬, or explicit oppositions (e.g. ‫עשה עמנו פלא ועושה עמנו בכל‬ ‫)דור ודור‬. On the tense system in rabbinic Hebrew see Shimon Sharvit, “Maarechet Hazmanim Bilshon HaMishnah,” in Studies in Hebrew and Semitic Languages Dedicated to the Memory of Prof. Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher (ed. G. B. Sarfatti et al.; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1980), 110–25; Mordechay Mishor, “Maarechet Hazmanim Bilshon Hatanaim” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984), Azar, 1–27 (and the bibliography cited 1 n. 2). 56 So much so that “we sometimes cannot tell whether the writer is recalling the past, describing the present or predicting the future” (Propp, Exodus 1–18, 506–7). On the biblical tense system see Alviero Niccacci, The Syntax of the Verb in Classical Hebrew Prose ( JSOTSupp 86; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990).

can the homilists cross the sea again ?

231

system.57 Let us compare, for example, two homilies on the words ‫( ויהי לי לישועה‬v. 2): .‫ישועה את לכל באי העולם אבל לי ביותר‬ .‫ ויהי לי לישועה—היה לי לשעבר והווה לי לעתיד לבוא‬,‫דבר אחר‬ Thou art the salvation of all the inhabitants of the world, but mine above all. Another Interpretation: He was my [salvation] in times past, and He will be my [salvation] in the age to come (24).

Both homilies imitate the biblical use of direct speech, and both refer to a collective trans-historical figure of some kind. Nonetheless, the tenses they use seem to suggest different historical conceptualizations (or, perhaps, different conceptualizations of history). The first homily appears in a present continuous form, with which, we may assume, both the biblical poet and the homilist are associated. The second, although representing a trans-historical figure as well, unmistakably speaks from the perspective of the present, for which the biblical song is a past, expected to return in the future. A similar diversity appears in the homilies discussing the second part of the verse: ‫ אני מלכה בת מלכים אהובה בת‬:‫ אלוהי אבי וארוממהו‬,‫זה אלי ואנוהו‬ [. . .] ‫אהובים‬ ‫לא על ניסים שעשית עמי אומר לפניך שבח וזימרה אלא על ניסים‬ .‫שעשית עמי ועם אבותי ועשה עמי בכל דור ודור‬ My father’s God, and I will exalt him: I am a queen the daughter of kings, beloved the daughter of beloved [. . .] Not for the miracles You have wrought for me, I recite songs and hymns before Thee, but for the miracles which You have wrought for me and my Fathers, and continue to perform for me in every single generation (29).

Both homilies discus the repetition (and thus possible redundancy) of the divine name in the verse (‫ אלי‬and ‫)אלהי אבי‬. The first reads it as referring to a lineage: “a queen the daughter of kings,” without clarifying whether “me” refers to the homilist’s audience or to the Israelites in the desert.58 The second refers more clearly to the desert experience

57 Such translation is a normal process in rabbinic midrash, not only in the context of grammar, but also of syntax and vocabulary. See Isaac Heinemann, Darkhe Ha’aggadah (3rd ed.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1970), 112–17. 58 As might be hinted in the phrase: ‫( בת מלכים‬e.g. Gen 17:6). The importance of lineage is presented here through the metaphor of Israel as God’s bride (a metaphor totally absent from the biblical hymn as Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 121, correctly notes).

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(thus the miracles!), but then explicitly extends it to “every single generation.” This indeed seems to be the whole point of the second homily, in which the repetition in the verse is taken as a sign that one should not read it as referring to a specific historical moment, but as a paradigm of history as a whole. These two models reappears throughout the whole tractate: on the one hand ‫לשעבר ולעתיד לבוא‬59 and on the other ‫;בכל דור ודור‬60 “sandwich” vs. “succession.” They differ not only in the manner they conceptualize history, but also in the ways they make the song relevant for the present. According to the first model the song is a promise for 59 See: ‫“( אז ישיר משה—יש אז לשעבר ויש אז לעתיד לבא‬sometimes ‘then’ refers to what is past, and sometimes to what will come in the future”; 1); ‫כי גאה גאה—גאה‬ ‫“( ועתיד להתגאות‬He is exalted and will be exalted in the future to come”; 12); ‫היה‬ ‫“( לי לשעבר ויהיה לי לעתיד לבוא‬He was [my salvation] in times past, and He will be in the future to come”; 24); ‫“( הוא לשעבר הוא לעתיד לבוא‬the same in the past, the same in the future to come”; 31); ‫“( עושה פלא עם אבות ועתיד לעשות עם בנים‬doing wondrous things for the fathers and in the future continuing to do them for the sons”; 66); ‫ וכן‬,‫כיון שראו ישראל שרה של מלכות נופל התחילו נותנין שבח לכך נאמר רמה‬

‫את מוצא שאין המקום עתיד להיפרע מן המלכיות לעתיד לבא עד שיפרע משריהם‬ ‫“( תחילה‬when Israel beheld the Prince of the Empire fall, they began to proclaim

praises. That is why it is said rmh. You find the same true of the future to come, that not until haMaqom first brings their princes to account will He bring the empires to account”; 20). The term ‫ לעתיד לבא‬can refer both to simple future (e.g. m. Ber. 9.4, m. Eruv. 9.3, m. RH 1.6) as well as to the Eschaton (e.g. m. Eduy. 2.10, m. MQ 3.9, m. Tam. 7.4). Here it clearly refers to the second (note ‫להיפרע מן המלכויות‬, and compare ‫“[ אז ישיר—נמצאנו למדים שתחיית המתים מן התורה‬Then will sing, Moses—thus from the Torah we derive the ressurection of the dead” 1]). Compare the homilies on the Song of Moses, Sif. Deut. Piska 315, 321–22, and piska 333, 342–33 (all in ed. Hammer), and see also below n. 62. 60 The phrase ‫ בכל דור ודור‬appears twice: ‫עושה פלא—עשה עמנו פלא ועושה‬ ‫“( עמנו בכל דור ודור‬He did wonders for us and still does wonders for us in every generation”; 66); ‫אלהי אבי וארוממנהו—לא על ניסים שעשית עמי אומר לפניך שבח‬ ‫ אלא על ניסים שעשית עמי ועם אבותי ועשה עמי בכל דור ודור‬,‫“( וזימרה‬My Father’s God and I will exalt Him—It is not for the miracles You have done for me that I require songs and hymns before You, but for the miracles which You have done for my fathers and for me and continue to perform for me in every single generation”; 29). In the first case the derasha is prompted by the duplication ‫ אלהי אבי‬,‫אלי‬, while in the second by the present form: ‫עושה‬. Since, however, both techniques function also to deduce the opposite model, of ‫לעתיד לבוא‬, it is clear that the two models are not simply the result of different hermeneutic methods. Note that the midrash does not (and cannot) acknowledge the phenomenon of parallelism characterizing biblical poetry, and thus have to account for a long series of redundancies in the Song, many of which are explained according to one of these models: ‫ אני מלכה בת מלכים‬or ‫לשעבר ולעתיד לבוא‬. On “parallelism” in biblical poetry, and the conscious “forgetfulness” of it in rabbinic literature, see James L, Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). Many homilies in Shirata are indeed based on this kind of “forgetfulness” (see esp. the homilies on ‫גאה גאה‬, ‫ ה' איש מלחמה‬and ‫)עזי וזמרת יה‬.

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the future, a “preview”61 of what is still expected to come, while according to the second it is a paradigm of history in general, uncovering the basic ways of divine providence. In a few cases the two models actually appear side by side, commenting on the same biblical words. Thus on the words: ‫( עושה פלא‬v. 11) we find the following homilies: ‫שנאמר לכן הנה ימים באים נאם ה' ולא לעתיד לבוא עשה פלא אין כתיב‬ .'‫—עושה פלא יאמרו עוד חי ה' וגו‬,‫אלא עושה פלא‬62 ‫כאן‬ ‫ שנאמר‬,‫ עושה פלא—עשה עמנו פלא ועושה עמנו בכל דור ודור‬,‫דבר אחר‬ [. . .] ‫נפלאים מעשיך ונפשי יודעת מאוד‬ ‫ עושה פלא—עושה פלא עם אבות ועתיד לעשות עם הבנים שנאמר‬,‫ד"א‬ ‫ אראנו מה שלא הראיתי‬.[‫כימי צאתך מארץ מצרים ]אראנו נפלאות‬ .‫לאבות‬ “Doing Wonders”—The verse does not say “who did wonders,” but “doing wonders,” in the future, as it is said: “Therefore, behold, the days come, say the Lord, that it shall no more be said: As the Lord lives that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt” ( Jer. 16:14). Another interpretation “Doing Wonders”: He did wonders for us and still does wonders for us in every generation, as it is said: “Wonderful are Your works; and that my soul knows right well” (Ps. 139:14) [. . .] Another interpretation “Doing Wonders”: Doing wonders for the fathers and will in the future do wonders for the children, as it is said: “As in the days of your coming out of Egypt I will show him marvelous things” (Mic 7:15), I will show him what I have not shown the fathers (66)

While the first and last homilies refer to the past and the future only,63 the second presents a clear model of succession. How are we to account 61 This term is taken from Goldin, The Song at the Sea, 13–20, who however does not distinguish between these two models, therefore leaving open the question how can “the past made present” (as the title of this chapter) when “for the Tannaim history is a preview of that future which arrives with the end of time” (idem, 14). 62 Similar inferences (X is not written, but Y) appear in regard to biblical words in the imperfect form (e.g. the homilies on ‫תרעץ אויב‬, 42 and on ‫תהרוס קמיך‬, 42). The original reference of these verbs is not clear enough (n. 55 above). Notwithstanding this, Goldin is perfectly right that “a cue for prophetic interpretation of the song is already in the song itself ” (The Song at the Sea, 22–23, Cf. Childs, The Book of Exodus, 249), most evidently with regard to vv. 16–17. 63 The difference between the two homilies (the first refers to the future only, while the second presents a “sandwich” model), does not seem to convey a debate between opposing opinions. Rather, it represents a basic dialectic regarding this model—the great past serve as the precedent (and thus promise) for the future, which at the same time is expected to exceed (and even erase) it. See: ‫כל השירות שעברו קרואות בלשון נקבה‬ ‫ [ כשם שאין הזכר יולד כך התשועה‬. . .] ‫[ אבל התשועה העתידה קרויה לשון זכר‬. . .] ‫העתידה לבוא אין אחריה שעבוד‬. (“For all the songs referring to past events the noun

234

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for the appearance of these two models side by side? What might be the relationship between them? Why does the past/future model outnumber the successive one,64 and how does it relate to the phenomenon of Imitatio Scriptura discussed above? One simple possibility is to assume a debate. Such a debate might indeed be reflected in the following homily: ‫ ה' מלך‬:‫ אלו אמרו ישראל על הים‬,‫ה' ימלוך לעולם ועד—ר' יוסי אומר‬ ‫ אלא‬,‫ לא היתה אומה ולשון שולטת בהן לעולם‬,(‫טז‬,‫עולם ועד )תהלים י‬ ‫יח(—לעתיד לבא‬,‫ ה' ימלוך לעולם ועד )שמות טו‬:‫אמרו‬ The Lord Will Be King For Ever and Ever: Rabbi Yose said: If only at the Sea Israel had proclaimed, “The Lord is king forever and ever” (Ps 10:16), not a nationality or empire would ever after have ruled over them! But they said: “The Lord will be kind for ever and ever” (Exod. 16:18), in the age to come (80).

In his paper on the martyrs of Massada, David Flusser reads this homily as a polemical statement of the zealots, aimed against those who were waiting passively for eschatological redemption.65 A historical reconstruction of two opposing camps, however, can hardly explain the larger picture of Shirata. These models appear together quite often, without a sign to an awareness of the alleged contradiction (See especially the homilies on: ‫ עושה פלא‬,‫ זה אלי‬,‫)ויהי לי לישועה‬. It does not, moreover, explain the majority of the homilies, which do not lend themselves to any specific model, but simply discuss the divine permanent attributes (e.g.—‫ )שהוא שומע צעקת כל באי העולם‬or God’s relationships with “us” (e.g. ‫)עוזר וסומך אתה לכל באי העולם אבל לי ביותר‬. Debates over political activism cannot account for the most basic phenomenon of the tractate: the very gesture of joining the biblical song in first

used is in the feminine [. . .] but for the salvation which is yet to be the noun used in the masculine [. . .] just as no male gives birth, so the salvation which is to come will not be succeeded by subjugation”; 6–7), As well as: ‫ "עושה פלא"—עושה פלא‬.‫ד"א‬ ‫ אראנו מה‬.'‫ שנ' "כימי צאתך מארץ מצרים" וגו‬.‫עם אבות ועתיד לעשות עם הבנים‬ ‫“( שלא הראיתי לאבות‬another interpretation. Doing Wonders: doing wonders for the Fathers and in the future doing them for the sons, as it is said: “As in the days of the coming out of the land of Egypt I will show unto him wondrous things” (Mic 7:15). I will show him what I did not show the fathers; 66). Cf. also the discussion in Mek. Pischa 16 (135), t. Ber. 1.10 whether the salvation from Egypt will be remembered at all ‫לעתיד לבוא‬. 64 Compare notes 58 and 59 above. 65 See David Flusser, “Harugei Massada Beeinihem uBe’einei Bene Doram,” in Judaism of the Second Temple Period: Sages and Literature (ed. S. Ruzer; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2002), 79–80.

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235

person.66 What allows the homilist to join the song? What makes it into his own? What let him see the victory at the sea as relevant for him and his audience? Back to the Future: Biblical Promises and Midrashic Reading Strategies If we wish to understand these homilies we need tools other than political history (or any history, for that matter); we have to analyze them as homilies, to be attentive to their hermeneutic and rhetorical dimensions, and not only to their direct content; to examine what they do and not only what they say. I would like to exemplify this point with a close reading of one homily in Parasha 4, which discusses the locus classicus of the Poet’s praise of divine potency: ‫( ה' איש מלחמה‬v. 3).67 68 69 70 ‫ ה' שמו"—ר' יהודה אומר הרי זה מקרא עשיר במקומות‬,‫"ה' איש מלחמה‬ '‫ שנ‬,‫ נגלה עליהם כגבור חגור חרב‬.‫ מגיד שנגלה עליו בכל כלי זיין‬.‫הרבה‬ ‫ שנ' "וילבש‬,‫ נגלה עליו בשירין וכובע‬.(‫ד‬,‫"חגור חרבך וג' " )תהלים מה‬ "‫ נגלה עליו בחנית שנ' "ולנוגה ברק חניתך‬.(‫יז‬,‫צדקה כשריין" )ישעיה נט‬ ‫ נגלה עליו בקשת‬.(‫ג‬,‫ וכת' "הרק חנית וסגור" )תהלים לה‬,(‫יא‬,‫)חבקוק ג‬ ‫ "וישלח חיציו ויפיצם‬,(‫ט‬,‫ובחיצים שנ' "עריה תעור קשתך וגו' " )חבקוק ג‬ "‫ נגלה עליהם בצינה ובמגן שנ' "צנה וסוחרה אמתו‬.(‫טו‬,‫וגו' " )תהלים יח‬ .(‫ב‬,‫ "החזק מגן וצנה וגו' " )שם לה‬,(‫ד‬,‫)שם צא‬ ‫ תלמוד לומר "ה' איש‬,‫או שומע אני שהוא צריך לאחת ממידות הללו‬ .‫ ה' שמו"—בשמו הוא נלחם ואינו צריך לאחת מכל מידות הללו‬,‫מלחמה‬ ‫ אלא שאם‬.‫ לפרט כל אחד ואחד בפני עצמו‬68[‫ואם כן למה צריך ]הכתוב‬ ‫ אי להם לאומות העולם‬69.‫ להן לישראל המקום עושה להם מלחמה‬70‫צרכו‬ .‫ שהרי מי שאמר והיה העולם עתיד להלחם בם‬,‫מה הם שומעים באזניהם‬

66 Similarly, Adiel Schremer, “Midrash and History: God’s Power and Hopes for Redemption in the world of the Tannaim, Under the Shadow of the Roman Empire,” Zion 72 (2007): 5–36, has offered recently to read these homilies as directed against Rome, and as a polemic against the zealots’ military activism. He also suggested a thorough analysis of the militant, vengeful, nature of the future redemption, as reflected in these homilies. He too, however, ignores the “succession model,” ‫בכל דור‬ ‫ודור‬, which appear, as we have seen, side by side with the “sandwich model,” ‫לשעבר‬ ‫ולעתיד לבוא‬. 67 The meaning (and thus also translation) of this verse is highly debated; see Propp, Exodus 1–18, 515. 68 Note 79 below. 69 Geniza: ‫ניסין ומלחמות וגבורן‬. 70 Geniza: (Kahana, Kitxei Midreshei haHalakha, 65): ‫יצטרכו‬.

236

ishay rosen-zvi The Lord is a Man of War, The Lord is His Name: Rabbi Judah said: here is a verse made rich in meaning by many passages, for it declares that He revealed himself to them with every manner of weapon: He revealed Himself to them as a warrior girt with his sword, as it is said: “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O warrior” (Ps 45:4); He revealed Himself to them in coat of mail and helmet, as it is said: “and He put on righteousness as a coat of mail” (Isa 59:17); He revealed Himself to them with a spear, as it is said, “At the shining of Thy glittering spear” (Hab 3:11), and it says: “draw out also the spear and the battle-ax” (Ps 35:3); He revealed Himself to them with bow and arrows, as it is said, “Thy bow is made quite bare” (Hab 3:9), and it says “and he sent out arrows and scattered them” (Ps 18:15); He revealed himself to them in buckler and shield, as it is said, “His truth is a shield and a buckler” (Ps 91:4), and it says “Take hold of shield and buckler” (Ps 35:2). Shall I deduce that He is in need of any of these means? The verse says “The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is His name”: by means of His name He makes battle, and has no need of any one of these means! If so, why need [scripture] specify every single one of them? For if Israel is in need of them God fights their battle. And woe to the nations of the world at what they hear with their own ears! For lo, He Who Spoke and the World Came to Be will battle against them in the future (30–31).

The Homily begins in the past tense: “it [the verse] tells that He appeared (‫ )נגלה‬to them with all weapons,” and ends in the future: “He Who Spoke and the World Came to Be will battle against them in the future (‫)עתיד להלחם‬.” The structure, thus, seems clear: the revelations of the past serve as a promise for their return in the future. In between the homilist gathers various verses which describe God as a great warrior, armed with horse, sword, helmet, spear, bow and arrow and shield.71 Indeed, it is this very act of bringing the verses together, their “co-citation,”72 which has the force to create this promise; for only this index of verses reveals the fact that it is not a description of a onetime event, but of a pattern. God is a man of war, as is revealed again and again in the scripture, and so we may expect him to reappear in such a way once more in the future.73

On the order of the verses see Elias, The MdRI, 172. Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, 29–30. 73 Another example of this process can be found in the work of Mary Callaway, Sing, O Barren One: A Study in Comparative Midrash (SBLDS 91; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), which analyzes the rabbinic homilies on barren women in the Bible. Many of these homilies, as Callaway shows, group together various biblical stories of barren women (Sarah, Rebbeca, Rachel, Anna, etc.), in order to decode the general pattern appearing in all of them; a pattern which, according to the homilist, continues to be 71 72

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237

Citing all of these verses together creates an image of a super-soldier: a hoplite combined with a horseman and an archer. Since a human being, heroic as he might be, cannot possibly combine all these functions together; it actually presents God not as a mighty warrior, but as a one-man-army.74 The necessity for such a picture is clear: our God has to function as a complete army, for he is expected to fight entire armies,75 all by himself: ‫ה‘ ילחם לכם ואתם תחרישון‬. However, one should not forget that all this fantasy refers, according to our homily, to the expected future only. As one critic put it: “God acted (in the past), will act (in the eschatological future), but is not acting in between.”76 Or isn’t he? The neat past/future structure of the homily is disturbed by one phrase which explicitely speaks of the present: “woe unto the nations of the world” says the homilist “what do they hear (‫)שומעים‬ with their own ears, Behold, He Who Spoke and the World Came to Be will battle against them in the future (‫)עתיד להלחם‬.” God will fight in the future, but the nations hear this now, in the very present,77 with

valid even in his own time. This last point is proven by the fact that many of these lists end with none other than Zion, the barren nation, itself, which is expected to be remembered and saved just like her sisters, the biblical heroines. This last item (which, unlike all the other items in the list, appears in future, rather than in past, tense), seems to be the real telos of these homilies which gives them their relevance and make them a source of consolation. 74 The homilist thus gains twice by citing these verses together: presenting God as an army of one man and, at the same time, proving they represent a pattern rather then a one-time event. This midrashic sophistication was not noticed by Goldin (The Song at the Sea, 124), who simply notes: “Six examples will now be given of how warrior is equipped, and so when our verse speaks of God as warrior, we are to understand how well equipped he was.” 75 The rabbis of course have one specific army in mind, with which they have intimate familiarity. On the explicit association of Egypt with Rome in the Mekilta, see Kadushin, A Conceptual Approach to the Mekilta, 254, 259, 268, 280. On the detailed rabbinic knowledge of the Roman army see the classic study of Samuel Krauss, Paras ve-Romi ba-Talmud uva-Midrashim ( Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook, 1948), as well as Shmuel Safrai, “The Roman Army in the Galilee,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992). 76 Daniel Patte, Early Jewish Hermeneutics in Palestine (SBL Diss. Series 22; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975), 72, cited by Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, 90. Compare Kugel’s own wording: “the Lord ‘is king’ but not, in external political terms, ‘kinging’ ” (102 n. 21). 77 Generally speaking, the participle can refer either to the present or to the future. In our case, however, the present tense is encoded in the opposition between the participle ‫שומעים‬, and the nominal auxiliary ‫עתיד ל‬, which follows. Compare Shirata Parasha 2 (according to cod. Munich, Vatican and Casantanza): - ‫כי גאה גאה‬ ‫“( )!( גיאה ועתיד להתגאות‬He is exalted and He will be exalted in the future,” 12), and see also Mishor, “Ma’arechet Hazmanim,” 320–23.

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their very own ears. How can the nations hear now, that God “will fight against them,” in the future? What exactly do they hear “with their own ears”? In order to answer this, let us look more closely at the structure of our homily. After interpreting the first part of the verse: ‫ה' איש מלחמה‬, by gathering various verses which detail God’s military functions, the homily turns to the second part: ‫ה' שמו‬. The possible redundancy of this phrase is solved in the homily by reading it as a reservation to the first part: God has all these weapons, but he is not really in need of them, for he can fight with his name only.78 In its next move the homily returns to the first part of the verse and asks again: if God can actually fight with his name alone, why does he hold all these weapons. The answer, however, is rather perplexing: “for if Israel is in need of them, God fights their battle.” How does this statement solve the question? Why won’t God “fight their battle” with his name only?79 The problem disappears when we recognize a simple fact: the question is not about weapons at all, but, from the very beginning, about verses: “why need [scripture]80 specify every single one of them,” meaning, of course, the verses.81 Thus, the story is clear: God does not need the weapons, but we need the verses, for it is they, the verses, that the nations hear with their own ears and become fearful.82 78 The homily below quotes several prooftexts: 1 Sam 17:45, Ps 20:8, 2 Chron 14:10. The homilist might have also Hos 1:7 in mind. 79 Goldin’s explanation that the homily refers to war which will be fought by the Israelites themselves, with God supplying their weapons (The Song at the Sea, 125–6) is refuted by the next sentence: ‫שהרי מי שאמר והיה העולם עתיד להלחם בם‬. 80 ‫ הכתוב‬is missing from MS Oxford, but appears in all other MS as well as in the Geniza fragment (Kahana, Kit’ei Midreshei haHalakha, 65). The meaning, however, is the same. 81 Compare also Parasha 8: ‫וכן את מוצא שעתידין אומות העולם לכפור בעבודה‬ ‫“( זרה שלהן‬you also find that in the future likewise the nations will renounce their idols”; 60). The nations had renounced their idols after hearing the miracle at the Sea, and they will do so again in the future. In between the midrash has only the verses, from which it reconstruct (or “find,” ‫ )מוצא‬both the great past and the promises of the future. 82 The concept of the Nation’s “hearing” is based of course on v. 14 ‫שמעו עמים‬ ‫“( ירגזון‬The peoples hear, they tremble”). Compare also: ‫כיון ששמעו אומות העולם‬ ‫ [ כפרו כולם בעבודה זרה שלהם‬. . .] ‫“( שאבד פרעה בים‬as soon as the nations of the world heard that Pharoh perished in the sea [. . .] they all renounced their idols”; 59–60). In our homily, however, no possibility of repentance is mentioned. For different models of redemption in rabbinic and medieval literature (conversion vs. revenge) See Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages (trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 93–114.

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How do the Nations hear these verses? One could offer synagogue sermons as a possible source,83 or even speculate about some kind of public recitation of the Song, but it seems reasonable to suggest that behind this colorful description of terrifying the nations, lays a less heroic, but no less important, function of encouraging us. It is the students, after all, who actually hear the verses, which the homilist skillfully gathers, with their own ears. The verses teach them that they are not alone, for there is a whole army with them, if only they know how (and where) to look. When the Mekilta (Vayehi 3, 211–12) wishes to exemplify the deep despair of the Israelites when squeezed between the Egyptians and the sea (‫)הים סוגר ושונא רודף‬, it cites the story of Elisha the prophet and his servant, who find themselves suddenly surrounded by the entire Aramaean army (2 Kgs 6:16–17). The servant’s desperate call to Elisha is answered by a surprising, miraculous, event: ‫ אל תירא כי רבים‬:‫ויאמר‬ ‫ ה' פקח נא את עיניו‬:‫ ויתפלל אלישע ויאמר‬.‫אשר אתנו מאשר אותם‬ ‫ ויפקח ה' את עיני הנער וירא והנה ההר מלא סוסים ורכב אש‬.‫ויראה‬ ‫“( סביבות אלישע‬Have no fear, he replied, there are more on our side than on theirs. Then Elisha prayed, Lord, open his eyes and let him see. And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw the hills all around Elisha covered with horses and chariots of fire”). The Mekhilta imagines a similar event on the shore of the Red Sea:84 ‫ אמרו‬.‫ למחר‬:‫ אמר להם משה‬.‫ אימתי‬:‫ "התיצבו וראו"—אמרו לו‬,‫דבר אחר‬ ‫ נתפלל משה באותה‬.‫ אין בנו כח לסבול‬,‫ רבינו משה‬:‫לו ישראל למשה‬ ‫ טורמיות של מלאכי השרת עומדין‬84‫שעה והראה להם המקום טורמיות‬ .‫לפניהם‬ Another Interpretation: “Stand Still and See”—They said to him: ‘when?’ Moses answered them: ‘tomorrow’. The Israelites said to Moses: ‘Moses, our Master, we have not the strength to endure’. At that moment Moses prayed and God caused them to see squadrons upon squadrons of ministering angels standing before them.

83 See Epstein, Prolegomena ad litteras Tannaiticas, 549, who claims that the aggadic portion of the Mekhilta discusses only those units which were read publicly in rabbinic period. Num 15 was read on the last Yom Tov of Passover (b. Meg. 31a). However, even in older periods “it seems probable that the poem was recited on such occasions as the Passover and accompanied with dancing” (Cross and Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, 34). On the tradition that the Israelites crossed the sea on the last day of Passover see Seder Olam Raba cap. 5 (ed. Ratner 24). 84 See the gloss added in the Geniza (Kahana, Kit’ei Midreshei haHalakha, 46): ‫כתות‬ ‫כתות‬.

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Note that while this homily narrates the miraculous event, the homily in Shirata 4 actually reconstructs it, presenting to us the great heavenly arsenal of weapons. In the homilist’s case, however, there is no direct divine intervention, and so the verses alone (with the correct midrashic treatment, of course) must serve as the eye openers; the tool which teaches the audience that, truly, “there are more on our side than on theirs.” This vivid picture of clusters of angels being revealed to the whole people at the seashore, illuminates yet another point. It is not enough to possess knowledge regarding the divine power; God’s potency has to be actually revealed (thus: “He revealed himself [‫ ]נגלה‬to them with every manner of weapon”). Indeed, the Tannaim saw the episode of the Sea first and foremost as a narrative of divine revelation, exceptional even in biblical terms: ‫ ר' אליעזר אומר מנין אתה אומר‬-‫זה אלי‬ ‫ [ כיון שראוהו‬. . .] ‫שראתה שפחה על הים מה שלא ראה ישעיה ויחזקאל‬ ‫ זה אלי ואנוהו‬:‫ פתחו כולן פיהן ואמרו‬,‫“( היכירוהו‬This is my God— Rabbi Eliezer says: How can you tell that at the Sea a bondswoman could see what neither Isaiah nor Ezekiel ever saw? [. . .] As soon as they saw Him they recognized Him, and they all opened their mouths and said: This is my God and I will glorify Him,” 24).85 Note, however, that this is the only homily which does not preserve the biblical direct speech, but transforms it into a narrative of past event (‫)ראתה‬.86 The homilist moves the biblical praise into the present, but not the revelation which generates it. The revelatory act itself remains a one-time event: “He revealed himself to them.” Thus it is the verses alone that bear the responsibility, not only for telling the divine potency, but for actually revealing it. It is these verses which allow the homilist to experience divine presence, as well as potency, in a post-revelatory era. 85 See Lieberman, “Mishnat Shir haShirim.” See also Urbach’s claim that the rabbis’ conception of the revelation at the Sea (as well as at Sinai) as exclusively past events, distinguishes them from the (contemporaneous) Hekhalot mystic, who claims for reconstructing these revelation in his own visionary experience of the celestial palace: Efraim Urbach, “The Traditions about Esoteric Wisdom in Tannaitic Period,” in The World of the Sages: Collected Studies (2nd ed.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2002), 504. On the tight connection between vision and liturgy in Hekhalot literature see Peter Schäfer, Hekhalot-Studien (TSAJ 19; Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 286–89; see also Judith Newman’s paper in this volume, 29–72, discussing revelatory claims in Qumran and especially their use of liturgy to summon revelation. 86 There is only one additional homily which does not preserve the direct speech of the first two verses in the Song: ‫אלהי אבי וארוממנהו—ר' שמעון בן אלעזר אומר‬ ‫“( כשישראל עושין רצונו של מקום שמו מתגדל בעולם‬The God of my Fathers, and I shall exalt Him—Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar says: When Israel do the will of God His name is magnified in the world,” 28). It, however, does not refer to the past, like our homily, but reads the verse as referring to a general principle. Note also that both these homilies are attributed.

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The tense shift in the middle of the homily thus conveys a meaningful message: God will only fight in the future, but the verses already fight for “us” now, for it is they which reveal our hidden weapons. Between the great past, narrated in the Bible, and the even greater future, in which God is expected to fight our enemies again, the present pops up. It is in the present that the students gather the verses, in the house of study, and it is these verses which work for them here and now, generating fear, and, more importantly, encouragement. Thus, the text has a double role: it tells of a great past, which promises an even greater future, but it also mediates between the two, and substitutes for their absence. Most importantly, it is the midrashic practice itself that bridges the gap between the past and the future, thus allowing the homilist to join the Bible’s praise in the present. An explicit account of the way the verses combines these different tenses, appears in the Sifre to Deuteronomy, referring to the Song of Moses (Shirat Ha’azinu) in Deut 32. The long commentary on this song ends with a general remark, which does not refer to any specific verse, but instead reflect on the special traits of biblical poetry in general, and its potential for midrashic exegesis: ‫ גדולה שירה שיש בה עכשיו‬,‫אמרת‬

‫ויש בה לשעבר ויש בה לעתיד לבא ויש בה לעולם הזה ויש בה לעולם‬ ‫“( הבא‬you may well say: How great is song,87 for it contains references

to the present, to the past and to that which will come, as well as to this world and the world to come”).88 In a later midrash we find a beautiful description of the dynamic which transforms textual interpretive practices into a method of survival for the present: '‫כא(—ר' אבא בר כהנא בשם ר‬,‫זאת אשיב אל לבי על כן אוחיל )איכה ג‬ ‫ וכתב לה כך וכך חופות‬,‫ למשל שנשא אשה וכתב לה כתובה מרובה‬:‫יוחנן‬ ‫ כך וכך כסף וזהב אני‬,‫ כך וכך תכשיטין אני עושה ליך‬,‫אני עושה ליך‬ ‫ והיו שכנותיה מקנטרות‬.‫ והניחה שנים רבות והלך לו למדינת הים‬.‫נותן ליך‬ ‫ והייתה בוכה‬.‫ לא בעליך שביק יתיך?! זילי סבי לך גבר אחרן‬:‫אומרות לה‬ .‫ ואחר כך היתה נכנסת לתוך חופתה וקוראת כתובתה ומתנחמת‬.‫ומתאנחת‬ ‫ תמיה אני ממך איך המתנת לי‬:‫לאחר ימים ושנים בא המלך ואמר לה‬ ‫ אילולי כתובתך מרובה שכתבת לי‬,‫ אדוני המלך‬:‫ אמרה לו‬.‫כל השנים הללו‬ ‫ כך אומות העולם מונים את ישראל ואומרים‬.‫כבר הטעו אותי שכינותיי‬ ‫ בואו אצלינו ואנו‬,‫ שביק יתכון וסליק שכינתיה מעליכון‬,‫ לא בעי לכון‬:‫להם‬ ‫ וישראל נכנסין לבתי כניסיות‬,‫ממנים מכם דוכסין ואפרכין ואיסטרטליטין‬

87 “Song,” and not “this song,” as was glossed in several medieval midrashim (see ed. Finkelstein ad loc.). 88 Hammer, Sifre, 343. For parallel statements in Philo and Josephus, see Basser, Midrashic Interpretations, 259.

242

ishay rosen-zvi ‫ ופניתי אליכם והפרתי אתכם והרבתי‬:‫ולבתי מדרשות שלהן וקורין בתורה‬ ‫ למחר כשהגאולה‬.‫ ומתנחמין‬,(‫יב‬-‫ט‬,‫אתכם ולא תגעל נפשי אתכם )ויקרא כו‬ ‫ בניי תמיה אני היאך המתנתם לי כל השנים‬:‫ הקב"ה אומר לישראל‬,‫באה‬ ‫ אילולי תורתך שכתבת לנו שהיינו‬,‫ רבון העולמים‬:‫ והן אומרים לפניו‬.‫הללו‬ ‫ ופניתי אליכם והפריתי אתכם‬:‫נכנסין לבתי כנסיות ובתי מדרשות וקורין בה‬ :‫ הדא הוא דכתיב‬.‫ כבר הטעו אותנו אומות העולם ממך‬,‫והרבתי אתכם‬ 8989 .(‫ צב‬,‫לולי תורתך שעשועי אז אבדתי בעניי )תהלים קיט‬ This I call to my mind, therefore I have hope (Lam 3:21): R. Abba bar Kahana said: It is like a king who married a woman and wrote her a large marriage settlement (ketubah). He wrote her: this many bridal chambers I am building for you; this much jewelry I make for you; this much gold I give you. Then he left her for many years and journeyed to the provinces. Her neighbors used to taunt her and say to her: Hasn’t your husband abandoned you? Go! Marry another man. She would weep and sigh, and afterward she would enter her bridal-chamber and read her marriage-settlement and would be comforted. Many years and days later the king returned. He said to her: I am amazed that you have waited for me all these years! She replied, My master, O king! If not for that large wedding-settlement that you wrote me, my neighbors long ago would have led me astray. Likewise: The nations of the world taunt Israel and say to them: Your God does not want you. He has left you. He has removed his presence from you. Come with us, and we will appoint you to be generals, governors and officers. And the people of Israel enter their synagogues and houses of study, and there they read in the Torah “I will look with favor upon you, and make you fertile” (Lev 26:9,11), and they are comforted. In the future, when the redemption comes, the Holy One, blessed be He, will say to Israel: My children! I am amazed at how you have waited for me all these years! And they will say to him: Master of the universe, were it not for the Torah You gave us, in which we read when we entered our synagogues and houses of study, “I will look with favor upon you, and make you fertile,” the nations of the world would have led us away from you. That is what is written: “Were not your Torah my delight, I would have perished in my affliction” (Ps 119:92)90

Many aspects in this fascinating text deserve our attention,91 but for the present context suffice it to notice one major phenomenon: the King’s

Lamentations Rabbati, 3.21, MS Parma Palatina 2559, cited according to the critical edition of Parahsa 3 appended to Paul Mandel, Midrash Lamentations Rabati, Dissertation: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997, vol. 2:102–16. On the dating of this midrash to approximately the sixth century see idem, 1:14. 90 Adapted from David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 57. 91 For a literary reading of this homily see Stern, Parables in Midrash, 56–62. For a reconstruction of the Jewish-Christian polemics behind the parable, see Galit HasanRokem, Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies 4; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 40–42. 89

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243

wife literally survives by reading the marriage settlement.92 It is the text alone which serves as the bridge between the great promises (‫כתב‬ ‫ )לה כתובה מרובה‬of the past and their fulfillment in the future (‫למחר‬ ‫)כשהגאולה באה‬. The promises written in the Torah thus become a tool for survival even in the bleak present, when the king is gone. Reading the function of scripture in this parable merely as a promise for the future misses the complex way it acts in the actual present as both a consolation in the king’s absence (‫)ומתנחמת‬, and as the tool to resist the neighbor’/nations’ temptation. The gap between the great promises and the poor reality is bridged by the very act of reading, which functions, at one and the same time, both as a guarantee and as a substitute to the king’s present: ‫לולי תורתך שעשועי אז אבדתי‬ ‫בעניי‬, indeed.93 In light of all this, the above presentation of two distinct models appears to be all too dichotomous. The past points to the future, but at the same time it acts in the present. Undoubtedly, the dominant structure of these homilies is that of past and future,94 but this does not exhaust the homilist’s license to join the biblical praise in the first person. Indeed, it is the house of study itself which makes the future present here and now, through the very act of gathering the biblical verses. This explains how all these seemingly contradictory statements can live so well together in Shirata: the past/future model, along with the accompanied recognition that things are very different in the present, when God is silent, side by side with praise in the first person and the concept of God as wonder maker “in each and every generation.” God’s mighty revelation at the Sea becomes a promise for the future, but at the same time a paradigm to history, due to the homilist activity itself.95 The contradiction between the two models, in other words, disappears when we read ‫ בכל דור ודור‬not as simply an opinion (thus contradicting

Note the similarity between the neighbors’ seduction here and in R. Akiva’s martyrdom’s homily above. 92 See David Stern’s remark: “How many other texts in Rabbinic literature—for that matter, in all ancient literature—portray a woman who literally survives through reading, or who reads to survive?” (Parables in Midrash, 57). Indeed, the king himself is surprised by his wife’s ability to remain faithful. 93 As Stern, Parables in Midrash, 59, observes, the homily does exactly what it preaches for: it comforts the hearers with its homiletic activity. 94 See note 63 above. 95 This of course does not mean that these statements cannot be used for political debate, but it seems to be secondary to the homiletic discourse itself.

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the more common model of ‫ )לשעבר ולעתיד לבוא‬but as a discursive practice,96 which itself makes the revelation present here and now. A clear example of such a practice appears in the ritual of the Seder, the annual celebration of the redemption from Egypt.97 Both of the historical models discussed above, appear clearly in the Seder. On the one hand: ‫ בו עתידין להיגאל‬,‫[‘( בו נגאלו‬Israel] were redeemed at this time, and are set to be redeemed at the same time in future to come”),98 and on the other: ‫בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא‬ ‫“( יצא ממצרים‬In every generation a person should see himself as if he [ himself ] left Egypt”),99 and these two apparently opposing models are combined in the Haggadah100 as well as in the description of the Seder in the Mishnah.101 It seems, moreover, that the tannaitic ritual itself, as described in the Mishnah (m. Pes. 10), functions exactly as the bridge which connects the past memories and future expectations with the experience of the present.102 The myth and ritual of the Exodus are

96 Treating midrash as practice is an old trick (see e.g. the reference to Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash above). The most nuanced analysis of the relationship between hermeneutics and practice, I know of, appears in: Elliot R. Wolfson Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 74–124. 97 In rabbinic (and maybe also earlier) times the song at the sea was recited on the last day of Passover (n. 82 above). Compare Philo’s description of the Therapeutae singing in their feast as “a copy of the choir set up of old beside the Red Sea” (Contempl. 85, 165). 98 Mek., Pischa 14 (ed. Horowitz, 52); bRH 11b, in the name of R. Yehoshua. On this Homily (and the opposing homily of R. Eliezer: ‫)לעתיד לבוא אין נגאלין אלא בתשרי‬ See Aharon Shemesh, “What is this Pesach for?” AJSR 21 (1996): 4–5. Compare also R. Akiva’s version of the salvation benediction in m. Pesa˜ 10.6, beginning with the salvation from Egypt and ending with the hope for rebuilding the temple (‫ )ביניין עולם‬and renewal of the Paschal sacrifice (‫ )לוכל מן הפסחים ומן הזבחים‬in the future to come. 99 This statement was taken from the Haggadah into the printed editions of m. Pes. 10.6. See Shmuel Safrai and Ze’ev Safrai, Haggadat Hazal ( Jerusalem: Carta 1988), 36. Similar statements, however, do appear in M (e.g. note 100). 100 Although there is no consensus regarding the date of the Haggadah, we can fairly assume its roots are tannaitic. See Judith Hauptman “How old is the Haggadah?” Judaism 51 (2002): 5–18. 101 See for example the mixture of “us” and “our fathers” in M 5: ‫לפיכך אנו חייבים‬ ‫[ למי שעשה לנו ולאבותינו את כל הניסים האילו‬. . .] ‫“( להודות‬Therefore we are obligated to thank [. . .] he who performed all these miracles for us and for our fathers”), as well as in the salvation benediction in M 6: ‫אשר גאלנו וגאל את אבותינו ממצרים‬ (“who hath redeemed us and redeemed our fathers from Egypt”). Compare Mek. cited above: ‫( אלא על ניסים שעשית עמי ועם אבותי ועושה עמי בכל דור ודור‬29). 102 This phenomenon is evident in the structure of the “freedom feast” in the Mishnah, which demand several elements, usually appearing only in voluntary, luxurious, meals (reclining and multiple glasses of wine; m. Pes. 10.1); as well as in the midrash of ‫ארמי אובד אבי‬, which retells the story of the exodus anew each year

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combined in the midrashic act itself, which makes the future redemption appear in the very present in every Jewish dining room. To sum up: this paper is an attempt to decipher the different ways in which time is conceived, narrated and (ultimately) constructed in Mekhilta Shirata. I began with a simple yet troubling question: what allows the homilist to join the biblical victory song? The question becomes more disturbing in light of the past/future model which prevails in this tractate. After considering the possibility of two rival models: “succession” vs. “sandwich,” I have tried to show that there is no real contradiction between the two. Through a close reading of one homily I have suggested that the homiletical activity itself as the mechanism that allows the homilist to transcend the past/future model and join himself the biblical hymn. Beyond the specific thematic analysis, this paper can be seen as an exercise in comparative methodology to tannaitic midrash.103 Where scholars of rabbinic philosophy (‫ )מחשבת חז"ל‬detect various discrete themes (the merciful warrior, measure for measure, etc., cf. n. 52 supra), and the historians see different reactions to post-destruction reality,104 a hermeneutical-rhetorical analysis, concentrating on the midrashic process itself, reveals the mechanism that enables the very act of joining the biblical song wholeheartedly.

(m. Pes. 10.4). My (nut shell) analysis differs from that of Baruch Bokser The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 48, who reads the Mishnah as an assertion “that the Passover celebration can and should continue even without the paschal lamb,” see also Joseph Tabori, The Passover Ritual Throughout the Generations (Tel Aviv: Ha-·Kibuts ha-me’u·had, 1996). On the midrash of ‫ ארמי אובד אבי‬see David Henshke, “Midrash Arami Oved Avi,” Sidra 4 (1988): 33–52. 103 For a more explicit discussion, see Steven Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric be Disentangled?,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman and J.H. Newman; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 399–422. 104 Cf. e.g. Flusser, “Harugei Masada.”

HEARING AND SEEING AT SINAI: INTERPRETIVE TRAJECTORIES Steven D. Fraade Yale University, USA 1. Introduction: The Scriptural Backdrop The English term “theophany,” often used of the revelation at Mt. Sinai, is made up of two Greek components, theo- (θeός) and -phany (φαίνω), together meaning the “appearance of God,” suggesting that it was an event in which God physically manifested himself in the sight of Israel. As any reader of the biblical account of Sinai is aware, however, the central aspect of the revelation is not of God himself, but of his words, instructions, or commandments. That is not to say that the Sinaitic revelation is without fantastic visual effects (as any viewer of the classic movie, “The Ten Commandments,” can attest), but rather that at the center of the revelation is not the appearance of God, but the giving and receiving of his words. Whether they are directly, divinely conveyed or indirectly, humanly meditated,1 they are not just to be recorded, but to be heard by the whole people, at Sinai and in the successive loci of revelation. God is revealed through the revelation of his Torah, Sinai becoming identified, in rabbinic parlance, with ‫( מתן תורה‬the “giving of Torah”). As some of our earliest rabbinic midrashim awkwardly express this idea, ‫כשנגלה הקב"ה ליתן‬ ‫תורה לישראל‬. . ., translated literally, “When the Holy One, blessed be He, was revealed to give Torah to Israel . . .”2 Nevertheless, auditory and ocular modes of revelatory reception at Sinai both accompany and remain in tension with one another.3 With 1 See Steven D. Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric Be Disentangled?” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman and J. H. Newman; JSJSup 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 399–422. 2 See Mek. of R. Shim{on bar Yo ai Exod 19:4 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 138); Sifre Deuteronomy 314 (ed. Finkelstein, 356); 343 (ed. Finkelstein, 395, 395–96, 397); Midr. Tanna im Deut 32:11; 33:2 (ed. Hoffmann, 192, 209, 210). 3 While modern critical Bible scholars might attribute these differences to distinct authorial or editorial literary strands, canonical interpreters would seek either to

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all of the emphasis on hearing the words of an incorporeal God, and with the anxious recognition that visual manifestations of God could easily lead to idolatry (Deut 4:12, 15–19), “seeing is believing.” While, on the one hand, “Man may not see me and live,” ‫לֹא־יִ ְראַנִ י ָה ָא ָדם וָ ָחי‬ (Exod 33:20; cf. Gen 32:31), on the other, God instructs Moses to prepare the people, “for on the third day the Lord will come down, ִ ‫ִכּי ַבּיּוֹם ַה ְשּׁ ִל‬ in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai,” '‫ישׁי יֵ ֵרד ה‬ ‫ל־הר ִסינָ י‬ ַ ‫ל־ה ָﬠם ַﬠ‬ ָ ‫( ְל ֵﬠינֵ י ָכ‬Exod 19:11). Moses is authorized as supreme prophet by the fact that to him alone God speaks “face to face, as one man speaks to another,” ‫וְ ִד ֶבּר‬ ‫ל־ר ֵﬠהוּ‬ ֵ ‫ל־פּנִים ַכּ ֲא ֶשׁר ַיְד ֵבּר ִאישׁ ֶא‬ ָ ‫( ה' ֶאל־מ ֶֹשה ָפּנִים ֶא‬Exod 33:11).4 After the golden calf incident, Moses, needing a booster shot of prophetic selfconfidence, desires, on the one hand, for God to reveal to him his ְ ‫הוֹד ֵﬠנִ י נָ א ֶא‬ ִ (Exod “ways” so that he may know him, ‫ת־דּ ָר ֶכָך וְ ֵא ָד ֲﬠָך‬ 33:13), while, on the other, for God to reveal to him his “glory,” ‫ַה ְר ֵאנִ י‬ ‫ת־כּב ֶֹדָך‬ ְ ‫( נָ א ֶא‬33:18), that is, God’s physical self-manifestation, with, here as elsewhere, God’s glory being the object of sight, even if it blocks seeing God himself.5 God grants the former (Exod 34:6–7), while only

harmonize them or to apprehend their intra-textual interplay. In what follows, I attend to the relation between hearing and seeing as modes of revelatory reception only with respect to Sinai, and not within the Hebrew Bible and among its ancient interpreters more broadly. 4 For Moses’s exceptional prophetic status in this regard, see Deut 34:10 (“Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom the Lord singled out face to ָ ‫א־קם נָ ִביא עוֹד ְבּיִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל ְכּמ ֶֹשׁה ֲא ֶשׁר יְ ָדעוֹ ה' ָפּנִ ים ֶא‬ ָ ֹ ‫ ;)וְ ל‬and Num 12:6–8 face,” ‫ל־פּנִ ים‬ (“. . . . Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout My household. With him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the likeness of the ַ ‫ל־פּה ֲא ַד ֶבּר־בּוֹ‬ ֶ ‫ ֶפּה ֶא‬:‫יתי נֶ ֱא ָמן הוּא‬ ִ ‫ל־בּ‬ ֵ ‫א־כן ַﬠ ְב ִדּי מ ֶֹשׁה ְבּ ָכ‬ ֵ ֹ‫ל‬ Lord,” ‫וּמ ְר ֶאה וְ לֹא ְב ִחיד ֹת‬ ‫וּת ֻמנַ ת ה' ִיַבּיט‬ ְ ). On the latter, see Sifre Numbers 103, cited below at n. 21. Compare this with Deut 5:4, where Moses addresses the people, “Face to face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire,” ‫ ָפּנִ ים ְבּ ָפנִ ים ִדּ ֶבּר ה' ִﬠ ָמּ ֶכם‬, which is generally understood here to be figurative (cf. 5:5), without denoting that Israel as a whole saw God’s face. See Jeffrey Tigay, JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 61. However, a literal understanding remains an interpretive possibility. Note how a barayta in the Babylonian Talmud (Yebam. 49b) modifies the contrast between Moses’s direct seeing of God and that of the other prophets in Num 12:6–8: Moses saw God through a clear speculum (‫)באספקלריא המאירה‬, while the other prophets saw him through an unclear speculum (‫)באספקלריא שאינה מאירה‬. Compare Lev. Rab. 1:14 (ed. Margulies, 1:31), as well as 1 Cor 13:12. For the continuing development of this dialectical motif, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 5 See Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 213–14, 261 nn. 13, 14; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 201–5. See Exod 24:17, to be cited shortly. For a thorough examination of Paul’s radical reconfiguring of revelatory divine and

hearing and seeing at sinai

249

partly granting the latter: “You will see My back; but My face must ָ ‫ת־אח ָֹרי‬ ֲ ‫ית ֶא‬ ָ ‫( וְ ָר ִא‬33:23). Even so, Moses not be seen,” ‫וּפנַ י לֹא יֵ ָראוּ‬ has come a long way since, in God’s first self-disclosure to him at the burning bush, when “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at ִ ‫ל־ה ֱא‬ ָ ‫( וַ יַּ ְס ֵתּר מ ֶֹשׁה ָפּנָ יו ִכּי יָ ֵרא ֵמ ַה ִבּיט ֶא‬Exod 3:6).6 God,” ‫ֹלהים‬ Just as the people had previously basked in the sight of God’s glory at Mt. Sinai (“Now the Presence of the Lord appeared in the sight of ַ the Israelites as a consuming fire on the top of the mountain,” ‫וּמ ְר ֵאה‬ ‫ [ ְכּבוֹד ה' ְכּ ֵאשׁ א ֶֹכ ֶלת ְבּרֹאשׁ ָה ָהר ְל ֵﬠינֵ י ְבּנֵ י יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל‬Exod 24:17]),7 they are only too happy for the resumption of God’s physical manifestation in their sight after the Golden Calf incident (which, after all, was the consequence of their desire for a visual representation of God in Moses’s absence [ Exod 32:1, 8]). Less dramatically, but more sustainedly, God’s glory is now visually present to them as the pillar of cloud at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting: “When all the people saw the pillar of cloud poised at the entrance of the Tent, all the people would rise ַ ‫ל־ה ָﬠם ֶא‬ ָ ‫וְ ָר ָאה ָכ‬ and bow low, each at the entrance of his tent,” ‫ת־ﬠמּוּד‬ ‫ל־ה ָﬠם וְ ִה ְשׁ ַתּ ֲחוּוּ ִאישׁ ֶפּ ַתח ָא ֳהלוֹ‬ ָ ‫( ֶה ָﬠנָ ן ע ֵֹמד ֶפּ ַתח ָהא ֶֹהל וְ ָקם ָכּ‬33:10). The biblical scene that most challenges the Torah’s own strictures against seeing God follows the ratification of the covenant at Sinai, in which Moses reads ‫“( ֵס ֶפר ַה ְבּ ִרית‬the book of the covenant”) in the ears of the people, to which they acclaim, “All that the Lord has spoְ ֹ ‫וַ יִּ ַקּח ֵס ֶפר ַה ְבּ ִרית וַ יִּ ְק ָרא ְבּ ָאזְ נֵ י ָה ָﬠם וַ יּ‬ ken we will faithfully do!” ‫אמרוּ‬ ‫ר־דּ ֶבּר ה' נַ ֲﬠ ֶשׂה וְ נִ ְשׁ ָמע‬ ִ ‫כֹּל ֲא ֶשׁ‬. However, hearing was insufficient, at least for Israel’s leaders, for immediately thereafter we are told that “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel ascended; and they saw the God of Israel . . . Yet He [God ] did not raise His hand against the leaders of the Israelites; they beheld God, Mosaic “glory” for purposes of inner-Christian dispute, see George van Kooten’s contribution to this volume. 6 Here, as elsewhere as we shall see, there may be a play on the two verbs ‫( ירא‬to fear) and ‫( ראה‬to see), which in some forms are morphologically identical. See below, n. 14. The burning bush pericope (Exod 3:1–4:17), like that of the revelation at Mt. Sinai, appears ambivalent as to the relation between ocular and auditory means of God’s self-disclosure and communication with Moses (3:2–6), of God’s perception of Israel’s suffering (3:7, 9), and of God’s charge to Moses to communicate with Pharaoh and the Israelites (3:11–4:17). For the variety of interpretations of Moses’s viewing of God’s “back,” see Diana Lipton’s essay in this volume. 7 Cf. 1 En. 89:30: “And after that, I saw the Lord of the sheep who stood before them, and his appearance was majestic and fearful and mighty, and all those sheep saw him and were afraid before him.” George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation Based on the Hermeneia Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 126. For the connection between seeing and fear, see above, n. 6, and below, n. 14.

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ֲ ְ‫וַ יַּ ַﬠל מ ֶֹשׁה ו‬ and they ate and drank”, ‫אַהר ֹן נָ ָדב וַ ֲא ִביהוּא וְ ִשׁ ְב ִﬠים ִמזִּ ְקנֵ י‬ ‫ל־א ִצ ֵילי ְבּנֵ י יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל לֹא ָשׁ ַלח יָ דוֹ‬ ֲ ‫ וְ ֶא‬. . . . ‫ֹלהי יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל‬ ֵ ‫יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל וַ יִּ ְראוּ ֵאת ֱא‬ ‫ֹאכלוּ וַ יִּ ְשׁתּוּ‬ ְ ‫ֹלהים וַ יּ‬ ִ ‫ת־ה ֱא‬ ָ ‫וַ יֶּ ֱחזוּ ֶא‬: (Exod 24:9–11). Medieval rabbinic

commentators, feeling uncomfortable with such an explicit instance of visual theophany, seek to explain it away. For example, Ibn Ezra says, “This is not with the seeing of the eye, but [seeing] in the manner of prophecy,” ‫ כי אם בדרך נבואה‬,‫אין זה במראה העין‬, that is, they did not actually see God with their eyes, but only received a prophetic vision, as did the later prophets.8 Similarly, Maimonides avers that whatever they “saw” was not with the physical sense of sight, but with the intellect.9 To Rashi, their seeing of God was, indeed, prohibited, but God delayed their punishment to a more propitious time. None of these, however, should be confused with the plain sense of the passage.10 2. Hearing and Seeing in Early Rabbinic and Philonic Interpretations of Sinai

Against this biblical backdrop, we shall look at a few early rabbinic interpretations that conceive of the relation between the hearing and seeing of Sinaitic revelation in striking ways, but with some very interesting antecedents. Our entry point will be a midrashic set of comments to Exod 20:15 ַ ‫ל־ה ָﬠם ר ִֹאים ֶא‬ ָ ‫וְ ָכ‬ (18), which verse may first be cited in its entirety: ‫ת־הקּוֹֹלת‬ ‫ת־ה ָהר ָﬠ ֵשׁן וַ יַּ ְרא ָה ָﬠם וַ יָּ נֻ עוּ וַ יַּ ַﬠ ְמדוּ ֵמ ָרחֹק‬ ָ ‫ת־ה ַלּ ִפּ ִידם וְ ֵאת קוֹל ַהשּׁ ָֹפר וְ ֶא‬ ַ ‫וְ ֶא‬, which is translated in the NJPS as: “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw [it], they fell back and stood at a distance.” Note that a single verb of seeing (‫)ר ִֹאים‬, here (as in the NRSV) translated as “witnessed,” governs the thunder, the lightning, the blare of the 8 Between his “long” and “short” commentaries, Ibn Ezra refers to the following cases of prophetic visions of God: 1 Kgs 22:19; 2 Chr 18:18; Isa 6:1–5; Ezek 1:1, 26–28; 10:20; Amos 9:1. See also Ps 17:15. 9 Guide, 1.4, 64; also for Exod 33:18. 10 There is a long prior history to such attempts to avoid the text’s plain sense, beginning already with the Septuagint’s rendering: καὶ εἶδον τὸν τόπον, οὗ εἱστήκει ἐκεῖ ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ισραηλ·. . . . καὶ ὤφθησαν ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τοῦ θεοῦ, “And they saw the place where the God of Israel stood. . . . and they appeared in the place of God. . . .” There is a similarly (although not equally) long intellectual history, deeply infused with Christian anti-Semitism and Jewish apologetic response, of contrasting the emphasis of “Hellenism” on seeing (and space) with that of “Hebraism” on hearing (and time), and the resulting characterization of Jews and Judaism as being “aniconic.” See especially Kalman P. Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

hearing and seeing at sinai

251

horn, and the mountain smoking. Our earliest rabbinic commentary to this verse, comprising two opposing views, is stunningly deceptive in its brevity and seeming simplicity: ‫ דברי‬.‫ רואין את הנראה ושומעין את הנשמע‬.‫״וכל העם רואים את הקולות   ״‬ 11 [‫ )ואין( ]רואין‬.‫ רואין ושומעין את הנראה‬.‫ רבי עקיבא אומר‬.‫רבי ישמעאל‬ ‫ שנאמר ״קול יי חוצב‬.‫דבר של אש יוצא מפי הגבורה ונחצב על הלוחות‬ 12 .‫להבות אש    ״‬ “And all the people saw the thunder”: They saw what was visible and heard what was audible—These are the words of R. Ishmael. R. Akiba says: They saw and heard that which was visible. They saw the fiery word/commandment coming out from the mouth of the Almighty as it was struck upon the tablets, as it is said, “The voice of the Lord hewed out flames of fire” (Ps 29:7).

The biblical textual barb that generates these two interpretations is the use of the verb ‫ראה‬, to see, for that which is audible: thunder. In the present biblical context the word for thunder (‫)קול‬, is also that for “voice,” in particular, the voice of God (as well as for the blare of the horn).13 Thus, whereas we might have expected the text to say “they heard the thunder and saw the lightning,” with different verbs for that which is audible and for that which is visible, a single verb of seeing is instead employed for both. The simplest solution, as expressed in many modern translations, is to understand the verb ‫ ראה‬here as denoting not just the physical sense of seeing, but its broader meaning of cognizance and comprehension, allowing it to govern both the thunder and the lightning (as well as the blare of the horn and the smoking mountain).14 Thus, we may compare, as do ancient exegetes, this use of the verb

11 Although ‫ ואין‬is the reading in the best manuscripts (Oxford and Munich), as well as the first printing, ‫ רואין‬and ‫ ראו‬are found in other witnesses, with the former preferred by the Academy of the Hebrew Language data base and the latter (from Yal. Shim oni ) adopted by Lauterbach and Horovitz-Rabin in their editions. 12 Mek. Ba odesh 9 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 235; ed. Lauterbach, 2:266). The text as I have presented it follows mainly MS Oxford, according to the data base of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. For late parallels, see Pirqe R. El. 41 (Warsaw, 98a) and Midr. Samuel 9:4 (ed. Buber, 74), as well as below, n. 20. 13 For ‫ קול‬as the divine voice, in the immediate context, see Exod 19:5, 19. 14 For “seeing” as representing all five senses combined, see Ibn Ezra to Exod 5:21; 20:15; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (trans. Israel Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), 252. The emphasis on the verb ‫ ראה‬also allows for a word play between “seeing” and “fearing” (‫)ירא‬, which verbs in certain forms can be morphologically identical. Thus, ‫וַ יַּ ְרא ָה ָﬠם‬, “the people saw,” in the latter half of our verse, has been understood to mean “the people feared,” represented by ‫ ויראו‬in the Samaritan Pentateuch and by φοβηθέντες in the Septuagint. See the use of ‫ ירא‬twice in 20:17 (20), as well as above, nn. 6, 7.

252

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‫ ראה‬with that in Exod 20:19 (22): “You yourselves saw that I spoke to ַ ‫יתם ִכּי ִמ‬ ֶ ‫אַתּם ְר ִא‬ ֶ . you from the very heavens,” ‫ן־ה ָשּׁ ַמיִ ם ִדּ ַבּ ְר ִתּי ִﬠ ָמּ ֶכם‬

Thus, returning to Exod 20:15 and our midrash, we may understand R. Ishmael’s interpretation as one that fills out a presumed ellipsis in that verse, whereby seeing is shorthand for hearing and seeing, with the former applying to the audible thunder and the latter to the visible lightning.15 The recognition of this elliptical presumption and its exegetical solution is much older than R. Ishmael (early second century c.e.), as evidenced in the version of this verse in the Samaritan Pentateuch (ca. 100 b.c.e.), which both supplies the missing verb of hearing and reorders the verse accordingly: ‫וכל העם שמע את הקולות ואת קול השופר וראים‬ ‫את הלפידים ואת ההר עשן‬,16 “The whole people heard the thunder and the blare of the horn, and saw the lightning and the smoking mountain.”17 Quite plainly, what is auditory is heard and what is visual is seen. Similarly, Josephus, in his “retold” account of revelation (Ant. 3.81), in what is certainly an exegetical paraphrase of our verse sates: “As for the Hebrews, the sight that they saw and the din that struck their ears sorely disquieted them,” τούς γε μὴν Ἑβραίους τά τε ὁρώμενα καὶ ὁ ταῖς ἀκοαῖς προσβάλλων ψόφος δεινῶς ἐτάραττεν.18

15 Whether this was in fact the historical Rabbi Ishmael’s understanding or one that was editorially attributed to him is immaterial to my argument. 16 Avraham Tal, The Samaritan Pentateuch Edited According to MS 6 (C) of the Shekhem Synagogue (Texts and Studies in the Hebrew Language and Related Subjects 8; Tel Aviv: Chaim Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1994), 76. 17 In this particular case, the Samaritan Pentateuch would appear to be an “improvement” to the MT (that is, to its antecedent), rather than an independent witness. 18 Josephus (or his source) may be dependent on the Septuagint’s rendering of ‫וַ יַּ ְרא‬ (“[the people] saw”) as φοβηθέντες (“feared”), or at least a similar understanding. See above, n. 14. The association of divine speech with fire at Mt. Sinai is also found in Deut 5:20–24, following the Deuteronomic decalogue, but there it is clear that while the divine voice issues out of fire, the voice itself is to be heard and not seen. For a similar separation of senses, and valorization of hearing, see Deut 4:36. The Book of Deuteronomy, in reworking the Covenant Code (as well as the Priestly document), like the Samaritan Pentateuch and Josephus, removes any confusion caused by the Book of Exodus’s mixing of auditory and visual perceptions. Note especially Deut 4:12: “The Lord spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape—nothing but a ָ ‫וּתמוּנָ ה ֵאינְ ֶכם ר ִֹאים‬ ְ ‫אַתּם שׁ ְֹמ ִﬠים‬ ֶ ‫וַ ַיְד ֵבּר ה' ֲא ֵל ֶיכם ִמתּוְֹך ָה ֵאשׁ קוֹל ְדּ ָב ִרים‬. voice,” ‫זוּל ִתי קוֹל‬ Although this most likely means that you saw nothing, but only heard a voice (see Ibn Ezra ad loc.; compare 4:15–19), it could be construed to mean that you saw nothing but a voice. This is precisely how Philo interprets the verse in Migration 48, treated below. For further discussion of Deut 4’s reworking of the Sinaitic narratives of Exodus (and their traces in Deut 5) so as to eliminate or downplay the ocular experience, see most recently Stephen A. Geller, “Fiery Wisdom: Logos and Lexis in Deuteronomy 4,” Proof 14 (1994): 103–39; Michael Carasik, “To See a Sound: A Deuteronomic Rereading

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By contrast, Rabbi Akiba’s interpretation19 applies both faculties of sight and hearing to what is visual, and by implication also to what is audible, refusing a simple division of labor between the two senses. To him, therefore, Scripture’s locution of the people having seen what is normally thought to be audible (thunderings/voices) is to be taken literally, and not to be circumvented as an ellipsis in need of filling, precisely as is done by the Samaritan Pentateuch, Josephus, and some modern translators. Whether to strengthen or to extend this interpretation, he (or an editor) invokes, in truncated form, a tradition that is found in several other exegetical locations in the tannaitic midrashim: what issued from God’s mouth at Sinai were not simply words as sounds, but hypostatized divine utterances in the form of flying flames, that burned themselves into the tablets of the decalogue.20 While the divine words/commandments at Sinai could be experienced as both sight and sound, in R. Akiba’s extended interpretation the emphasis (following the lemma understood literally) is on their having been seen. This understanding of Exod 20:15 is intertextually secured (or extended) with the citation of Ps 29:7, a Psalm generally associated with Sinai in rabbinic interpretation, wherein God’s voice (‫ )קול‬is associated with hewing flames. According to this tradition, prior to the divine voice being inscribed as writing, so as to be perpetually read and heard, it enjoys an iconic fiery presence in Israel’s sight. Paraphrasing another tannaitic midrash, we might say that the experience of revelation is one of ‫מראה‬

of Exodus 20:15,” Proof 19 (1999): 257–76; both of which cite previous scholarship; as well as Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 198–208; idem, The Anchor Bible: Deuteronomy 1–11. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 204; 212–13. On the Book of Deuteronomy’s favoring of the auditory over the ocular experience at Sinai, see Mark Brettler’s contribution to this volume, especially 24–25. 19 Whether this was in fact the historical Rabbi Akiba’s interpretation or one that was editorially attributed to him is immaterial to my argument. 20 For a fuller version of this tradition, in which each word (‫דבר‬/‫)דיבור‬, upon issuing from God’s mouth, would encircle the whole camp of the Israelites, before being engraved on the tablets, see Sifre Deuteronomy 343 (ed. Finkelstein, 399), commenting on Deut 33:2, ‫ ֵא ְשׁ ָדּת‬, “lightning flashing,” or “fiery law” (according to the Masoretic note, dividing the word into two). For fuller treatment, with references to other locations and permutations of this tradition, some of which are even more physical (and erotic), and in which the hypostasization is carried further, see Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 45, 207 nn. 91–92, 224 n. 198. For other texts, see Hans Bietenhard, “Logos-Theologie im Rabbinat: Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Worte Gottes im rabbinischen Schrifttum,” ANRW, Part 2, Principat 19.2 (1979): 580–618.

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‫דיבור‬, the appearance (viewing) of the divine utterance, rather than one of ‫מראה פנים‬, the appearance of the divine “face.”21 Much the same interpretation of Exod 20:15 (18) is found in the Mekilta of R. Shim on bar Yo ai (a prominent student of R. Akiba’s), but unattributed: ‫ בנוהג שבעולם אי אפשר לראות את הקול‬.‫״את הקולות ואת הלפידים   ״‬ ‫ כשם שראו את הלפידים כך ראו את‬.‫אבל כן ״את הקולות ואת הלפידים   ״‬ ‫ ר' אליעזר אומר מנין שראתה‬.‫ מה ראו כבוד גדול ראו‬.‫״וירא העם   ״‬.‫הקולות‬ .‫ תלמוד לומר ״וירא העם   ״‬.‫שפחה בישראל מה שלא ראה גדול שבנביאים‬ 22 .‫מה ראו כבוד גדול ראו‬ “The thunder and the lightning” (20:15a): Normally it is impossible to see the thunder, but here “[all the people saw] the thunder and the lightning.” Just as they saw the lightning, so too they saw the thunder. “And when the people saw” (20:15b): What did they see? They saw the great glory [of God]. R. Eliezer said: From whence [do we know] that an Israelite maidservant saw that which the greatest of prophets did not see?23 Scripture says, “And when the people saw”: What did they see? They saw the great glory [of God].24

See Sifre Numbers 103 (ed. Horovitz, 101), interpreting Num 12:8 (on God’s having communicated with Moses ‫“[ במראה‬visually”], instead of MT ‫“[ ומראה‬plainly”], the former also being evidenced in the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Peshi¢ta, and the targumim) in light of Exod 33:20: '‫ אתה או‬.‫ זה מראה דיבור‬.‫״במראה    ״‬ ‫ שנ' בו ״ויאמר לא תוכל לראות את פני    ״‬.‫ או אינו אלא מראה פנים‬.‫זה מראה דיבור‬, “ ‘In appearance’: This is the appearance of the divine utterance. You say this is the appearance of the divine utterance. But perhaps it is none other than the appearance of [the divine] face. [This cannot be, since] Scripture teaches in this regard, ‘But, He said, you cannot see My face, [for man may not see Me and live.]’ ” This is the text chosen by the Academy of the Hebrew Language for its data base, mainly following MS Vatican. However, ‫ מראה פנים‬here follows MS Oxford and Yal. Shim oni, while Horovitz and other printed editions (beginning with that of Venice, 1526) have ‫מראה‬ ‫שכינה‬, “the appearance of the divine indwelling,” as does MS London. MS Vatican has ‫ מראה דיבור‬followed by ‫ מראה‬alone, presumably a scribal omission. MS Berlin has [‫ מראה ]דיבור‬followed by ‫מראה אלהים‬, “the appearance of God.” R. Hillel ad loc. explains: ‫דהיינו שהיה רואה ומבין בדבורו של הב"ה בפי' לא כעין משל וחידה‬, “Meaning, that he [Moses] would see and understand the word of the Holy One, blessed be He, meaning, not in the manner of a parable and riddle.” Note also the comment of Zayit Ra anan to Yal. Shim oni (r. 739) on ‫מראה דיבור‬: ‫שהיה רואה הקול‬ (“for he [Moses] would see the voice”). 22 Mek. of R. Shim{on bar Yo ai Exod 20:15 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 154–55). For text and translation, see also Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yo{ai (ed. and trans. W. David Nelson; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2006), 253. The following translation, while consulting Nelson’s, is my own. 23 A similar statement is made, also in the name of R. Eliezer, with regard to the Israelites’ visionary experience at the Reed Sea: Mek. of R. Shim{on bar Yo ai Exod 15:2 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 78). 24 In the Hebrew of Exod 20:15 (18), there is no direct object to the phrase ‫וַ יַּ ְרא‬ ‫ ָה ָﬠם‬, “and the people saw,” allowing for the present question and for the possibility 21

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255

Once again, consistent with the view of R. Akiba in the Mekilta of R. Ishmael, the visionary experience of Israel at Mt. Sinai was exceptional, in that all of the people saw what is normally only heard. However, here that interpretation of Exod 20:15 is not connected to the tradition of seeing the divine utterances as fire (via Ps 29:7), but to that of seeing the glory of God (via the latter half of Exod 20:15).25 Just as we discovered antecedents to R. Ishmael’s interpretation in the version of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the paraphrase of Josephus, we will examine antecedents to R. Akiba’s understanding of the verse in the writings of Philo of Alexandria (early-mid-first century c.e.).26 In Decalogue 32–49, Philo discusses various aspects of the divine voice at Sinai, contrasting it to the human voice, and repeatedly stressing that the former is seen rather than heard in the normal way of hearing. It warrants citing at length: [32] The ten words or oracles, in reality laws or statutes, were delivered by the Father of All when the nation, men and women alike, were assembled together. Did He do so by His own utterance in the form of a voice? Surely not; may no such thought ever enter our minds, for God is not as a man needing mouth and tongue and windpipe. [33] I should suppose that God wrought on this occasion a miracle of a truly holy kind by bidding an invisible sound to be created in the air more marvelous than all instruments and fitted with perfect harmonies, not soulless, nor yet composed of body and soul like a living creature, but a rational soul full of clearness and distinctness, which giving shape and tension to the air and changing it to flaming fire, sounded forth like the breath through a trumpet an articulate voice so loud that it appeared to be equally audible to the farthest as well as the nearest. . . . [35] But the new miraculous voice was set in action and kept in flame by the power of God which breathed upon it and spread it abroad on every side and made it more illuminating in its ending than in its beginning by creating in the souls of each and all another kind of hearing far superior to the hearing of the ears. For that is but a sluggish sense, inactive until aroused by the impact of the air, but

that the object of their seeing was not just the thunder, as indicated in the first half of the verse, but something else, that being the glory of God (for which, see Exod 24:17). For an alternative understanding of ‫וַ יַּ ְרא ָה ָﬠם‬, see above, n. 14. 25 See previous note and above, n. 5. 26 On Philo’s view of revelatory communication at Sinai, see David Winston, “Two Types of Mosaic Prophecy According to Philo,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1988 Seminar Papers (ed. David J. Lull; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 448–52; idem, Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria (The Gustave A. and Mamie W. Efroymson Memorial Lectures, 1984; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985); Maren R. Niehoff, “What is in a Name? Philo’s Mystical Philosophy of Language,” JSQ 2 (1995): 220–52.

256

steven d. fraade the hearing of the mind possessed by God makes the first advance and goes out to meet the spoken words with the keenest rapidity. . . . [46] Then from the midst of the fire that streamed from heaven there sounded forth to their utter amazement a voice, for the flame became articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience, and so clearly and distinctly were the words formed by it that they seemed to see rather than hear them. [47] What I say is vouched for by the law in which it is written, “All the people saw the voice,” a phrase fraught with much meaning, for it is the case that the voice of men is audible, but the voice of God truly visible. Why so? Because whatever God says is not words but deeds, which are judged by the eyes rather than the ears. [48] Admirable too, and worthy of the Godhead, is the saying that the voice proceeded from the fire, for the oracles of God have been refined and assayed as gold is by fire. [49] And it conveys too, symbolically, some such meaning as this: since it is the nature of fire both to give light and to burn, those who resolve to be obedient to the divine utterances will live for ever as in unclouded light with the laws themselves as stars illuminating their souls, while all who are rebellious will continue to be burnt, aye and burnt to ashes, by their inward lusts, which like a flame will ravage the whole life of those in whom they dwell.27

A similar idea, but expressed more briefly, can be found in Philo’s Migration 47–49: [47] For what life is better than a contemplative life, or more appropriate to a rational being? For this reason, whereas the voice of mortal beings is judged by hearing, the sacred oracles intimate that the words of God are seen as light is seen; for we are told that “all the people saw the Voice” (Exod 20:18), not that they heard it; for what was happening was not an impact of air made by the organs of mouth and tongue, but virtue shining with intense brilliance, wholly resembling a fountain of reason, and this is also indicated elsewhere on this wise: “Ye have seen that I have spoken to you out of Heaven” (Exod 20:22), not “ye heard,” for the same cause as before. [48] In one place the writer distinguishes things heard from things seen and hearing from sight, saying, “Ye heard a voice of words and saw no similitude but only a voice” (Deut 4:12), making a very subtle

27 For text and translation (by F. H. Colson), see the LCL 7:20–31. For fire, representing Torah, having the ability both to give light and heat as well as (especially its esoteric teachings) to burn, see Mek. of R. Ishmael Ba odesh 4 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 215; ed. Lauterbach 2:220–21); Mek. of R. Shim{on bar Yo ai Exod 19:8 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 143–44); Sifre Deuteronomy 343 (ed. Finkelstein, 399–400); m. Abot 2:10; t. ag. 2:5 (ed. Lieberman, 381); y. ag. 2:1 (77a) (ed. Sussmann, col. 782); b. ag. 13a-b; Abot R. Nat. 28 (ed. Schechter, 86); as well as discussion in Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 46–49 (with notes). For the “voice” of revelation not diminishing with distance/time, compare Mek. of R. Ishmael Ba odesh 3, 4 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 214, 216; ed. Lauterbach, 2:218, 223).

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distinction, for the voice dividing itself into noun and verb and the parts of speech in general he naturally spoke of as “audible,” for it comes to the test of hearing: but the voice or sound that was not that of verbs and nouns but of God, seen by the eye of the soul, he rightly represents as “visible.” [49] And after first saying “Ye saw no similitude” he adds “but only a Voice,” evidently meaning the reader to supply in thought “which you did see.” This shews that words spoken by God are interpreted by the power of sight residing in the soul, whereas those which are divided up among the various parts of speech appeal to hearing.28

Finally, Philo refers to the tradition of revelation having been seen rather than conventionally heard in Moses 2.213 (LCL 6:554–55), where he speaks of “commands promulgated by God not through His prophet but by a voice which, strange paradox, was visible and aroused the eyes rather than the ears of the bystanders.” If R. Akiba is laconic in his expression of the tradition that the divine voice issued and was perceived at Sinai in visible fiery form, which only secondarily became audible, Philo is, as we have come to expect, oppositely loquacious. They both link this shared understanding of the visual perception of revelation to the words of Exod 20:15 (18), although employing different inter-texts in so doing (Ps 29:7 for R. Akiba; Exod 20:19 [22] and Deut 4:12 for Philo). Whether they simply come to a common understanding of the same verse independently, or whether they draw on a shared tradition of interpretation is impossible to know for certain. However, in the present case, I think that strong credence can be given to the latter assumption of a shared exegetical tradition, even though they are relating to the same scriptural words in different languages (Hebrew for R. Akiba and Greek for Philo). Undoubtedly, the fact that the Septuagint renders ‫ קולות‬for “thunder” with τήν φωνήν, the same Greek word used for the ‫( קול‬blare) of the horn and the ‫( קול‬voice) of God is critical to Philo’s interpretation, as is the use of ‫ קולות‬for thunder to R. Akiba’s interpretation. However, it should be emphasized that R. Akiba’s interpretation in the Mekilta appears as part of an ongoing commentary to the Book of Exodus, to which his is one of several comments to Exod 20:15 (18), whereas Philo’s appears within thematic treatises, within which he cites Exod 20:15 (18) for support of his argument. Of course, that tells us nothing of how each of these interpretations first arose (that is, whether or not from exegetical contemplation of the verse in its scriptural context), but it does tell us 28

For text and translation (by F. H. Colson), see the LCL 4:158–59.

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something about how their respective interpretations are rhetorically presented for their respective audiences’ consumption. Nevertheless, there are several components of Philo’s interpretation that are not expressed in R. Akiba’s interpretation and which are uniquely or at least characteristically Philonic, needing to be understood in terms of Philo’s particular historical/cultural context and ideological/rhetorical program. To begin with, Philo repeatedly stresses that divine speech is unlike human speech, something for which there is rabbinic evidence as well (notwithstanding the dictum attributed to R. Ishmael that, ‫דברה תורה כלשון בני אדם‬, “The Torah speaks in human language”).29 But more broadly, Philo repeatedly emphasizes the superiority of sight over hearing, or at least over normal physical hearing. This emphasis needs to be understood in relation to a broader Platonic deprecation of the physical senses (in comparison to the faculties of the intellect), among which, however, sight is elevated above hearing.30 In this regard, Philo stresses that the divine “voice” at Sinai was miraculous (and paradoxical), unlike any other voice, in that in issuing from fire, it was more of light than of sound, or at least, a unique sort of sound that issued not from the physical processes that normally produce or receive sound, but from a divine effulgence. Thus, to the extent that revelation was heard at Sinai, it was the “hearing of the mind possessed by God,” and not by the physical organ of the 29 For the earliest attestations of this dictum, see Sifre Numbers 112 (ed. Horovitz, 121); Sifra Qedoshim parashah 10:1 (ed. Weiss, 91b); in only the first of which is the saying attributed to R. Ishmael. The saying is much more frequently evidenced in the Babylonian Talmud (32 times) and in the aggadic midrashim (38 times), in only some of which is it attributed to R. Ishmael. For the rabbinic differentiation of divine speech from human, the locus classicus is the interpretation of Ps 62:12 and Jer 23:29 in Sifre Numbers 102 (ed. Horovitz, 100); y. Ned. 3:2 (37d) (ed. Sussmann, col. 1025); b. Sanh. 34a; b. Shabb. 88b. For the most recent discussion, see Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 69–79. 30 See also Philo, Sacrifices 78 (LCL 2:153): “But when, unforeseen and unhoped for, the sudden beam of self-inspired wisdom has shone upon us, when that wisdom has opened the closed eye of the soul and made us spectators rather than hearers of knowledge, and substituted in our minds sight, the swiftest of senses, for the slower sense of hearing, then it is idle any longer to exercise the ear with words.” Similarly, Contempl. Life 10–13 (LCL 9:119): “. . . the most vital of senses, sight. And by this I do not mean the sight of the body but of the soul, the sight which alone gives a knowledge of truth and falsehood” (10). Compare Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 75 (381B) (LCL 5:172–75): “[ The crocodile] is declared to be a living representation of God, since he is the only creature without a tongue; for the Divine Word has no need of a voice, and through noiseless ways advancing, guides by Justice all affairs of moral men” (adapting Euripides, Troades 887–88; cf. Plutarch, Moralia 1007C).

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ear. Similarly, to the extent that the language of revelation is comprehensible to humans, it was not produced in the same way that human speech is normally produced and heard.31 Finally, it should be stressed that Philo uniquely understands Deut 4:12, which is never rabbinically adduced in this connection,32 to denote two types of voices/speech: the human/grammatical, which is (merely) heard, and the divine, which is “seen by the eye of the soul.”33 We shall now consider one final passage from the Mekilta’s commentary on the Book of Exodus’s account of the revelation at Sinai, which will suggest that Philonic and the early rabbinic interpretation share other interpretive moves, notwithstanding their very different historical/ cultural contexts and ideological/rhetorical programs. Coming to Exod 20:19 (22), which was cited by Philo in conjunction with Exod 20:15 (18), the Mek. of R. Ishmael Ba odesh 9, comments: ‫ שכשאחרים‬.‫ הפרש בין שאדם רואה בין שאחרים משיחין לו‬.‫״אתם ראיתם   ״‬ [.‫ רבי נתן אומר‬.‫ אבל כן ]״אתם ראיתם וגו'    ״‬.‫משיחין לו פעמים שליבו חלוק‬ ‫לפי שהוא אומר ״יודוך ייי כל מלכי ארץ כי שמעו‬.‫״אתם ראיתם ״ למה נאמר‬ ‫ לא‬.‫ תלמוד לומר ״אתם ראיתם   ״‬.‫ יכול כשם ששמעו כך ראו‬.‫אמרי פיך    ״‬ 34 .‫ראו אומות העולם‬ “You yourselves have seen [that I spoke to you from the heavens]”: There is a difference between what a person sees and what others tell him. For regarding what others tell him he may have doubts in his mind [concerning its veracity]. Here, however, “You yourselves have seen.” R. Nathan (ca. 200 c.e.) says: “You yourselves have seen”: Why is it said? Since it says, “All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O Lord, for they have heard the words You spoke” (Ps 138:4). One might think that just as they heard, so too they saw. Therefore, Scripture says, “You yourselves have seen”: The nations of the world have not seen.

Compare above, n. 29. The closest is the early medieval Midr. Leqa ov ad loc. (ed. Buber, 14), which connects the verse to the tradition of the divine voice having encircled the Israelite camp at Sinai (see above, n. 20), but without any of the visual associations. Elsewhere, however, the verse is understood to preclude the seeing of God (or his voice), which is how the verse is usually understood: Pesiq. Rab Kah., supplement 7 (ed. Mandelbaum, 471); Tan . Ha azinu 4. Ibn Ezra ad loc. See above, n. 18. 33 This text is important to Daniel Boyarin (Border Lines: The Partition of JudaeoChristianity [ Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004], 114) in arguing for a Jewish “logos theology” that is both “pre- and pararabbinic.” However, Boyarin fails to indicate its comparative and contrastive intersections with early rabbinic midrash. 34 The text as I have presented it follows mainly MS Oxford, according to the data base of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. The text within square brackets is from MS Munich. Its absence from MS Oxford most likely represents a scribal error of homoioteleuton. For critical printed editions, see Horovitz-Rabin, 238; Lauterbach, 275. 31 32

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This interpretation shares with Philo the view that seeing is superior to hearing, although here the comparison is between one’s own seeing and hearing from others. Both Philo and the Mekilta employ Exod 20:19 (22) to valorize Israel’s receiving of God’s revelation at Sinai via sight rather than normal hearing. However, in Philo’s use of the verse to illustrate the superiority of seeing over hearing, it is not clear whether he intends a polemical argument: superiority over whose hearing? He may be saying that Israel’s revelatory knowledge (and attainment of reason and virtue) is superior to that which is not based on visual (mystical?) experience, but merely on oral transmission, e.g., that of the non-Jewish philosophers. If that is his intent, he does not explicitly express it. Alternatively, Philo may simply be making a philosophical argument, buttressed by scriptural citations, that would have resonated well with an educated audience, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. However, by grounding his philosophical argument in Jewish scriptures, Philo may implicitly be claiming a privileged status for those scriptures as the ultimate source of philosophical wisdom. The Mekilta’s interpretive argument is two-fold, with both parts of the argument being grounded in the word ‫“( אתם‬you”), which word is not strictly required by Hebrew syntax, and therefore must bear particular meaning.35 The opening anonymous interpretation stresses the superiority of first-hand seeing (‫ )אתם ראים‬to second-hand hearing (‫אחרים‬ ‫)משיחין‬, since the latter is potentially suspect. The second half of the argument, attributed to R. Natan, has a different emphasis, even though it is based in the same regard for ‫ אתם‬as being non-superfluous: “You yourselves (and no others) have seen. . . .” This becomes manifest through the citation of the intertext from Psalms, which might be understood (were it not for Exod 20:19 [22]) to be an expression of the universal receiving of divine revelation: all of the nations have “heard the words You spoke.”36 Having heard, perhaps they also saw. Our verse comes to assert that whatever the nations have heard, it is nothing compared to what Israel alone has seen. Israel enjoys an exclusive revelatory intimacy

35 Although Exod 20:15 (18) (“All the people saw . . .”) says much the same thing, as midrashically understood, it does not place the same emphasis on “you” in an exclusive sense. 36 Other rabbinic texts stress either that the nations were offered the Torah before it was revealed to Israel, or that they overheard its revelation to Israel, or that the Torah is available to them. See Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 32–49; Marc Hirshman, Torah for the Entire World (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999) (Hebrew).

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with God, based on unmediated seeing that is not shared by the nations, however much they may claim to have heard God’s words. Although, once again, Philo and the Mekilta employ the same scriptural verse to affirm the superiority of seeing over hearing as modes of revelatory reception, and may be responding to the same scriptural barb (“You yourselves have seen [rather than heard] that . . . I spoke with you”), they do so in very different rhetorical manners, suggesting that their exegetical programs thereby reflect their very different historical/ cultural contexts and ideological/rhetorical programs. Neither should the exegetical similarities cause us to lose sight of the rhetorical and structural differences, nor should those differences cause us to lose sight of the exegetical similarities. 3. Revelatory Seeing and the Practice of Rabbinic Midrash Next we shall examine two rabbinic midrashic passages in which the visualization of the revelatory word or revealer plays an important role in authorizing and valorizing specifically rabbinic modes of discourse and interpretation. The first is from Sifre Deuteronomy 313, commenting on Deut 32:10 as it relates to the revelation at Sinai, the following being the second of four sets of interpretations of that verse: ‫ מלמד שהיה הדיבר יוצא מפי הקודש‬.‫)״יסובבנהו ״( ]״יבוננהו ״[ בעשר דברות‬ ‫]ו[היו ישראל מסתכלין בו ויודעין כמה מדרש יש בו וכמה הלכות יש בו‬ 37 .‫וכמה קלין וחמורין יש בו וכמה גזירות שוות יש בו‬ “He cared for (= instructed) him”: With the Decalogue. This teaches that (when each) Divine Word went forth from the mouth of the Holy One, Israel would observe38 it and would know how much midrash could be derived from it,39 how many laws (halakhot) could be derived from it, how many a fortiori arguments could be derived from it, how many arguments by verbal analogy could be derived from it.

37 Sifre Deuteronomy 313 (ed. Finkelstein, 355), corrected according to MS London (MS Vatican not being extant here). For fuller discussion, see Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 60–62; idem, “Rabbinic Polysemy and Pluralism Revisited: Between Praxis and Thematization,” AJSR 31 (2007): 26–28. 38 For the superiority and significance of this reading, ‫מסתכלין בו‬, rather than Finkelstein’s ‫משכילים בו‬, see Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 222–23 n. 187. The expression ‫ מסתכלין בו‬conveys the sense both of “observing” and of “gaining understanding.” 39 Literally, “how much midrash is in it,” and similarly for what follows.

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As elsewhere in tannaitic midrash,40 Deut 32:10 is interpreted to indicate that Israel’s own interpretive engagement with divinely uttered commands originates with Sinaitic revelation itself. The verb ‫ יְבוֹנְ נֵ הוּ‬of the lemma is generally understood by biblical scholars as a polel form of the root ‫בין‬, the only occurrence of this form of the verb in the Hebrew Bible. As such, it is thought to mean here to “bestow (mental) attention on” or to “consider (kindly),” but that understanding is derived largely from the sense of the scriptural context.41 Our commentary similarly construes the word in relation to its scriptural context, that context now being taken to refer to God’s revelation of the Torah to Israel at Sinai, but understanding the verb in terms of its root meaning to split or discern.42 But even so, the verb is read doubly, first as God’s instruction of Israel with the Ten Commandments (with God as the verb’s subject and Israel as its object), and second as Israel’s discerning of the multiple possibilities of interpretation of each commandment (with Israel as the verb’s subject and each divine commandment as its object).43 Thus, already at the very moment of revelation, the Israelites were not simply passive receivers of the divine word, but empowered by God as its active perceivers. Israel’s polymorphic vision at Sinai, according to this formulation, was not so much of God as of his words.44 The

40 Mek. of R. Ishmael Ba odesh 9 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 235; ed. Lauterbach, 2:267), attributed to R. Judah the Patriarch. 41 See S. R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (ICC 5; 3d ed.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1978), 357; BDB, col. 107. 42 In the other three sets of interpretations of this verse different contexts are suggested and, hence, different understandings of the word ‫ יְבוֹנְ נֵ הוּ‬are suggested, including both the sense of instruction and the sense of God’s attending to Israel’s needs. Note that the understanding of ‫ יְבוֹנְ נֵ הוּ‬as “he instructed him” is already found in the Septuagint (ἐπαίδευσεν αὐτὸν), which does not otherwise construe the verse as referring to the revelation at Sinai. The targumim all understand the verb in terms of teaching, using forms of the verbal stem ‫אלף‬. In the present interpretation, the Sifre’s commentary emphasizes the sense of ‫“( בינה‬discernment”), rabbinically understood as the ability to penetrate below the surface meanings of a text and learn its extended meanings. For this understanding, see the commentaries of David Pardo and Zera{ Abraham to the Sifre, as well as Midr. Leqa ob to our verse. 43 Similar elasticity can be seen in the preceding set of interpretations of this verse. There the verse is taken to refer to Abraham, that is, to God’s accompanying of Abraham in his move from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan, even as the word ‫יְבוֹנְ נֵ הוּ‬ is understood to signify Abraham’s having made God known to others as the God of heaven and earth. 44 Compare with y. Pe ah 2:4 (17a); Lev. Rab. 22:1 (ed. Margoliot, 3:496–97; with other parallels listed in notes there), in the name of R. Joshua ben Levi (ca. 235 c.e.): “Even that which an experienced student will someday teach before his teacher was already said to Moses at Sinai.” Our tannaitic text, though earlier, in a sense goes

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emphasis here is on Israel’s visual, possibly even mystical,45 penetration of the interpretive potentiality of each divine utterance to yield (or contain) multiple interpretations by means of a variety of rabbinic hermeneutical rules. Thus, it is asserted that the rabbinic hermeneutical rules themselves were revealed within revelation to the Israelites at Sinai by the power of their visual contemplation of each divine utterance so as to uncover its multiple significations. A similar idea is expressed by the following, later midrash to the decalogue, from the Pesiqta de Rab Kahana,46 but with even more striking visual images: ,‫ א"ר הננא בר פפא נראה להם הקב"ה פנים זעופות‬.‫ד"א ״אנכי י"י אלהיך   ״‬ ‫ כשאדם‬,‫ פנים זועמות למקרא‬.‫ פנים שוחקות‬,‫ פנים מסבירות‬,‫פנים בינוניות‬ ‫ פנים‬.‫ פנים בינונית למשנה‬.‫מלמד את בנו תורה צריך ללמדו באימה‬ ‫ אמ' להם הקב"ה אע"פ שאתם‬.‫ פנים שוחקות לאגדה‬.‫מסבירות לתלמוד‬ .‫ אלא ״אנכי י"י אלהיך    ״‬,‫רואים כל הדמוייות הללו‬ ‫ אלף‬,‫א"ר לוי נראה להם הקב"ה כאיקונין הזו שיש לה פנים מכל מקום‬ ‫ כך הקב"ה כשהיה מדבר כל אחד‬.‫בני אדם מביטין בה והיא מבטת בכולם‬ ,‫״אנכי י"י אלהיכם״ אין כת' כאן‬,‫ואחד מישראל היה אמ' עמי הדבר מדבר‬ .‫אלא ״אנכי י"י אלהיך    ״‬ Another interpretation of “I am the Lord thy God” (Exod 20:2): R. Æanina bar Pappa (ca. 300) said: The Holy One, blessed be He, appeared to [= was seen by] them [ Israel] with a stern face, with an equanimous face, with a friendly face, with joyous face: with a severe face for [the teaching of ]47 Scripture—when a man teaches Torah to his son, he must do so

further: all of Israel already recognized the multiple interpretive potentialities of each divine utterance at Sinai. Similarly, note Sifra Be uqqotay parashah 2:12 (ed. Weiss, 112c): “ ‘On Mt. Sinai through Moses’: This teaches that the Torah was given with its laws (halakhot), and its specifications, and its explications by Moses from (at) Sinai.” Compare as well Song Rab. 1:2 (1:12) (ed. Dunsky, 13), in the name of R. Yo˜anan (ca. 250 c.e.), where an angel reveals to (“tells”) each Israelite at Sinai the multiple contents of each divine utterance/commandment, whereas the other rabbis say that each commandment itself informed the Israelites of its multiple contents, whereupon the Israelite would accept it. 45 Elsewhere the verb ‫ הסתכל‬is used with respect to mystical visions, where it similarly denotes seeing and knowing. See, for example, m. ag. 2:1, where the verb is used in a mystical context, but in juxtaposition with the verb ‫דרש‬. Here the verb is employed as a paraphrase of ‫יְ בוֹנְ נֵ הוּ‬, since the root ‫ בין‬can convey in biblical wisdom literature both the sense of understanding and of perception with the eyes. For the latter, see Prov 7:7; Job 9:11; 23:8. 46 The collection is conventionally and roughly dated to fifth-century Palestine. 47 The sense could be that these are the faces with which God appeared as he revealed each of the following, but the reference to the father teaching his son Torah

264

steven d. fraade in awe; with an equanimous face for [the teaching of ] Mishnah; with a friendly face for [the teaching of ] Talmud; with a joyous face for [the teaching of ] xAggadah. Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: Though you see Me in all these guises, [ I am still One]—“I am the Lord thy God.” R. Levi (ca. 300) said: The Holy One, blessed be He, appeared to them as a statue with faces on every side, so that though a thousand men might be looking at the statue, [it would seem as though] it was looking at them all. So too when the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke, each and every person in Israel would say, “The Divine Word is addressing me.” Note that Scripture does not say, “I am the Lord your (plural) God,” but “I am the Lord thy (singular) God.”48

The combined exegesis of Exod 20:2 in these two comments is that a singular God (despite his many appearances) addressed each and every Israelite singly (despite being assembled en masse). Assuming, as both comments do, that the substance of revelation is speech, the images employed are strikingly visual. In the first interpretation, attributed to R. Æanina bar Pappa, there is a subtle slippage between the faces of God revealed to Israel at Sinai, and the pedagogic countenances of the teacher (first, the father for Torah, and then, presumably, rabbinic teachers for the specifically rabbinic modes of Torah discourse). The idea that God appeared to the Israelites in different human appearances (and costumes), is already expressed in earlier tannaitic midrashic sources.49 However, here the emphasis is on the different facial expressions with which God was revealed to Israel, as if to contradict the biblical statement that only Moses encountered God “face to face.”50 Given the subtle shift from revelation to rabbinic pedagogy, we might say that what the people saw at the moment of revelation (of the decalogue, no less), were the discursive faces of rabbinic instruction (Mishnah, Talmud, and Aggadah). This multiplicity of discursive faces, as seen by Israel at Sinai, is ֶ ‫ ָאנ ִֹכי ה' ֱא‬.51 Another, earlier unified in their single divine locus: ‫ך‬ ָ ‫ֹלהי‬ leads me to think that the reference is to the faces appropriate to teaching, and not just the one-time revelation. However, even if the reference is to the revelation of each of the following types of teaching, my argument would remain unaffected. 48 Translation is adapted from that of William G. Braude and Israel J. Kapstein, Pĕsi ta dĕ-Rab Kahăna: R. Kahana’s Compilation of Discourses for Sabbaths and Festal Days (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1975), 249. 49 See Mek. of R. Ishmael Shirta 4 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 129–30; ed. Lauterbach, 2:30–32); Mek. of R. Shim{on bar Yo ai Exod 15:2 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 80–81). 50 See above, n. 4. Note that the parallel in Pesiq. Rab. 21 (ed. Buber, 100a-102a) attaches these interpretations to both Exod 20:2 and Deut 5:4 (“Face to face the Lord spoke to you,” ‫) ָפּנִ ים ְבּ ָפנִ ים ִדּ ֶבּר יְ הוָ ה ִﬠ ָמּ ֶכם‬. 51 Similarly, elsewhere the ideal of the single sage who masters all forms of rabbinic

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265

midrashic collection makes much the same point, with regard to Moses’s final words, but employing the sense of taste to denote their discursive multiplicity, rather than sight: “The words of Torah are all one, but they comprise Scripture and Mishnah: Midrash, Halakhot, and Aggadot,” ‫דברי תורה כולן אחת ויש בה מקרא ומשנה ומדרש והלכות והגדות‬.”52 Rabbi Levi’s interpretation is even more daring in its implications. Here the “seeing” is directly reciprocal: God appears to (‫ = נראה‬is seen by) the Israelites as an “icon,” ‫( איקונין‬Greek: εἰκών), at whose faces they stare (‫)מביטין‬, as the icon stares (‫ )מבטת‬back at them. I imagine this ‫ איקונין‬to be a statue, rather than a flat image, since it is said to have faces ( ‫ )פנים‬facing in every direction ( ‫)מכל מקום‬, perhaps being a column or an obelisk. How far we have come from Deut 4:12, ‫וּתמוּנָ ה ֵאינְ ֶכם ר ִֹאים‬ ְ (and Philo’s interpretation thereof )! Once again we find the mixing of hearing and seeing modes of perception, for this iconic imagery is by way of explaining how God could speak (‫)מדבר‬ to Israel in such a way that each and every one would experience the ‫דבר‬/‫דיבור‬, divine utterance, speaking directly and individually with him/her (as denoted by the singular pronominal suffix of ‫אלהיך‬, “thy God”). However, from the remaining interpretations of Exod 20:2, it becomes clear that each Israelite, individually seen and addressed by God, understands each divine utterance according to his/her capacity (‫)כח‬, thereby providing scriptural support and a Sinaitic origin not just for the multiplicity of rabbinic forms of discourse, but for the multiple interpretations contained therein.53 These images of a direct and reciprocal visual exchange between God and the Israelites at Sinai (like that of the father teaching his son Torah) lend a feel of both revelatory and pedagogical intimacy to an event that is scripturally portrayed, rather, in terms of fear and trembling and a distancing of the revelatory receivers from the visually veiled source of revelatory utterances.54

discourse is emphasized. See Sifre Deuteronomy 306 (ed. Finkelstein, 339); Abot R. Nat. A 8, A 28, B 18 (ed. Schechter, 35–36, 86, 39). 52 Sifre Deuteronomy 306 (ed. Finkelstein, 339), according to the better reading of MSS London and Oxford, the first printing, and Yal. Shim{oni, as adopted by the Academy of the Hebrew Language data base. 53 See Fraade, “Rabbinic Polysemy and Pluralism Revisited,” 25–26. 54 For the inner-scriptural tension between intimacy and alienation at Sinai, see Nanette Stahl, Law and Liminality in the Bible ( JSOTSup 202; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 51–73 (“Sinai: Law and Landscape”). See also Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments,” 399–422; idem, “ ‘The Kisses of His Mouth’: Intimacy and Intermediacy as Performative Aspects of a Midrash Commentary,” Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (ed. Peter Ochs and Nancy Levene; London: SCM, 2002; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 52–56. For a similar emphasis on the rhetorical significance of rabbinic reworked revelation

266

steven d. fraade 4. Conclusions

In surveying some biblical and post-biblical sources dealing with the uneasy mixture of hearing and seeing at Sinai, we have barely scratched the surface. Even so, it would be difficult to reduce this variety of interpretations to a simple exegetical paradigm or set of paradigms, whether as to substance, form, or meaning. Certainly, most of the interpretations that we have examined are responding, often quite ingeniously, to inner-biblical tensions, even contradictions, whether intertextually across Scripture or intra-textually within single verses. However, to view these interpretations as being solely scripturally motivated or attendant would be to deny them their historical localization. Thus, to take the most obvious set of interpretations that we have compared, Philo and early midrash, both respond to the same scriptural barbs (especially in Exod 20:15 [18] and 20:19 [22]), and both emphasize the visual aspects of the Sinaitic revelation as, what is rabbinically termed ‫מראה דיבור‬, the visual rather than auditory apprehension of divine speech. However, there are also striking differences between them, such as Philo’s repeated deprecating of the sense of hearing, which I have argued must be understood within the broader cultural context of Platonic philosophy. On the rabbinic side, the midrashic emphasis on the divine voice (‫ )קול‬and utterance (‫דבר‬/‫ )דיבור‬assuming physical form or appearance in the eyes of the Israelites at Sinai goes well beyond anything found in pre-rabbinic antecedents. In some such texts what is seen at Sinai are the very faces of rabbinic pedagogical discourse, which might lead us to posit an inner-rabbinic message and motivation of self-authorization. However, such expressions might also be understood in relation to the increasing emphasis on the viewing of icons in contemporary Christian and pagan late-antique societies, and in particular to the experience of intimacy between worshiper and worshiped that these afforded. Likewise, these expressions might be understood in relation to the dramatic increase in synagogue inconography, both scriptural and temple-related, beginning in the mid-third century and accelerating for the next few centuries.55 The limits of space permit me only to raise these considfor inner-rabbinic pedagogical practice, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s contribution to this volume. 55 See my forthcoming article, “The Temple as a Jewish Identity Marker Pre- and Post-70 c.e.: with Particular Attention to the Holy Vessels in Memory and Imagination,”

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267

erations for future exploration. However, to suggest the fruitfulness of this line of inquiry, that is, of relating the rabbinic emphasis on seeing the revelatory divine voice and word to, on the one hand, rabbinic ritualized practice of Torah study, and, on the other, to the historical imaging/imagining of the destroyed temple, I shall conclude with one final midrashic text, from the Sifre’s comment on Deut 32:26, a remarkable text that has not received its own due attention: .‫״ויאמר אליהם שימו לבבכם לכל הדברים ]אשר אנכי מעיד בכם היום[״‬ ‫ וכן הוא אומר ״בן‬.‫צריך אדם שיהו עיניו ולבו ואוזניו מכוונין לדברי תורה‬ ‫אדם שים לבך וראה בעיניך ובאזניך שמע את כל אשר אני מדבר אתך‬ ‫ והרי דברים‬.‫]לכל־חקות בית־ה' ולכל־תורתו[ ושמת לבך למבוא הבית  ״‬ ‫ ומה בית המקדש שנראה בעיני)ה(ם ונמדד ביד צריך אדם‬.‫קל וחומר‬ ‫ דברי תורה שהן כהררין התלויין בסערה‬.‫שיהו עיניו ולבו ואוזניו מכוונין‬ 56 .‫על אחת כמה וכמה‬ “He [ Moses] said to them [ Israel]: Take to heart [ lit.: set your heart toward] all the words [with which I have warned you this day]” (Deut 32:46a): A person needs to direct his eyes and his heart and his ears toward the words of Torah, and so it says, “O mortal, mark well [lit.: set your heart], look with your eyes and listen with your ears to what I tell you [regarding all the laws of the Temple of the Lord and all the instructions concerning it.] Note well [ lit.: set your heart toward ] the entering into the Temple” (Ezek 44:5). We may argue a fortiori: If in the case of the Temple, which could be seen with the eyes and measured with the hand, a person needed to direct his eyes and his heart and his ears [toward it], then how much more should this be with words of Torah, which are like mountains suspended by a hair.

The fragile nature of Torah teaching—written and oral and their interdependence—requires the full sensory attention of its receivers, especially ocular and auditory, no less (in fact, more) than did participation in Temple worship, now lost except to the imagination, whether via textual or figurative visualization. The rabbinic grappling with the balance of sight to sound at Sinai, while profoundly

in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Permutations and Transformations (ed. Lee I. Levine; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). See also Rachel Neis, “Vision and Visuality in Late Antique Rabbinic Culture” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2007); idem, “Embracing Icons: The Face of Jacob on the “Throne of God,” Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture 1 (2007): 36–54. 56 Text is according to Sifre Deuteronomy 335 (ed. Finkelstein, 384–85), according to MS London, according to the data base of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. I have corrected the biblical citation to agree with the Masoretic Text. For fuller treatment of the larger textual unit in the Sifre, see Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 119–20.

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responsive to the conflicting cues of the biblical text, was no less responsive to the need for study of that text to be sensorially stimulating to the eyes and ears and heart in the ritual performance of ‫—תלמוד תורה‬ the dialogical study of written and oral Torah—as an act of communityforming and identity-affirming worship.57

57 This essay benefited from a prior presentation at “The Eleventh International Orion Symposium, Marking the 60th Anniversary of the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls: New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity,” Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, and the Center for the Study of Christianity, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June 19, 2007; from the comments of graduate students in the program in Studies in Hebrew Culture at Tel-Aviv University, June 4, 2008; and from discussions with Hindy Najman, Vered Noam, and Margaret Olin.

THE GIVING OF THE TORAH: TARGUMIC PERSPECTIVES Charles Thomas Robert Hayward University of Durham, England Like other rabbinic writings which expound the biblical information about the place, time, and circumstances of God’s gift of the Torah to Israel, the targumim of the Pentateuch regard Exodus chapters 19 and 24 as one continuous narrative, in such a way that the one chapter can be read in the light of the other.1 No fewer than six targumim are extant for the whole of Exod 19, namely Targum Onqelos (= TO); Pseudo-Jonathan (= PJ); Fragment Targums in the manuscripts Paris 110 (= FTP), Vatican 440 (= FTV), and Cairo Geniza manuscripts (= CG); and Neofiti (= TN) with its marginal and interlinear glosses.2 Exodus 24, however, is represented in its entirety only by TO, PJ, and TN, with FTP preserving targum of verses 10–11, and FTV the single verse 10. These targumim often share with other rabbinic texts common understandings of key words and expressions in the narratives: thus the description of Israel as God’s ‫ סגלה‬in Exod 19:5 evokes from all extant targumim the notion that Israel are ‫חביבין‬, “beloved,” in common with the Mekilta de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 2:48–53 on this verse; and the interpretation of all extant targumim of Exod 24:11 that those who ascended Sinai appeared to eat and drink in God’s presence is shared with Rav’s understanding of this verse preserved in b. Ber. 17a. Indeed, many examples of interpretation shared by the individual targumim 1 This is most evident in the chronological scheme set out in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Exod 19:1, 3, 9, 10–13, 16, continuing into Exod 24:1, 16, with which compare and contrast b. Shab. 86b, 88a; Mek. de R. Ishmael Beshallah 2:1; 3:5ff. 2 Targumim are cited from the following critical editions: (TO) Alexander Sperber, ed., The Bible in Aramaic, vol. 1, The Pentateuch according to Targum Onkelos (Leiden: Brill, 1959); (PJ) Ernest G. Clarke in collaboration with W. E. Aufrecht, J. C. Hurd, and F. Spitzer, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of the Pentateuch: Text and Concordance (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1984); (FTP, FTV) Michael L. Klein, ed., The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch according to their Extant Sources (2 vols.; Rome: Pontifical Institute Press, 1980); (CG) Michael L. Klein, Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch. (2 vols.; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1986); (TN) Alejandro Díez Macho, ed., Ms. Neophyti 1, vol. II Éxodo (Madrid-Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1970). Translations are mine.

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and other rabbinic sources have been noted over the years, and there is no need to rehearse them here.3 By way of contrast, this paper will attempt to discern and comment upon the differing emphases and concerns which a close reading of the individual targumim bring to light. In particular, it will investigate the stances of the several targumim towards the giving of the Torah and three central matters: the place of the Temple and its relationship to Torah; the Synagogue and Beth Ha-Midrash and their relationship to Sinai; and the mystical traditions associated with the theophany at Sinai as suggested by the targumim. Careful analysis of these items may help us to elucidate the varied ways in which the targumists understood the gift of the Torah to Israel, and their conceptions of the meaning of this central biblical event for their hearers and readers. 1. The Giving of the Torah, the Temple, and the Temple Service The Bible itself suggests that Sinai was a sanctuary, at least for the occasion of the giving of the Torah.4 Thus, like Zion in later times, it is a mountain on which the Divine Presence is revealed (Exod 19:2, 11, 18–24; 24:9–18). Consequently, it has set boundaries which, if transgressed, lead to the death of the offender (Exod 19:12–13), and in whose vicinity only those who have sanctified themselves may congregate (Exod 19:10–11). Although the Bible has not yet told of the appointment of sacred ministers, there are nonetheless priests at Sinai (Exod 19:22, 24); an altar is set up (Exod 24:4, 6), ‫ עלת‬and ‫זבחים שלמים‬ are offered (Exod 24:5), and sacrificial blood is dashed upon the altar

3 See, for example, Roger le Déaut, Targum du Pentateuque II Exode et Lévitique (Paris: Cerf, 1979), 152–61, 199–203; Bernard Grossfeld, The Targum Onqelos to Exodus (ArBib 7; Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1988) on chapters 19 and 24; Martin McNamara, Charles T. R. Hayward, and Michael Maher, Targums Neofiti 1 and Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus, (ArBib 2; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 79–83, 103–5; Israel Drazin, Onkelos on the Torah ‫ שמות‬Exodus ( Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2006/5766), 116–24, 158–66. For a detailed study of these chapters, discussing relationships between the targumim and other rabbinic texts, see also Jean Potin, La Fête juive de la Pentecôte, (2 vols.; Paris: Cerf, 1971). In this volume, Diana Lipton places targumic and Talmudic (as well as Christian) interpretations of “God’s back,” from the second Sinai ascent (Exod 33:12–23), in conversation with one another; see “God’s Back! What Did Moses See on Sinai?” 287–311. 4 On this point, made explicit by the Ramban, see further Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary Exodus (Philadelphia/NewYork/Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1991/5751), 105–7.

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(Exod 24:6). All these things are clearly represented in the extant targumim and, to the extent that the Bible itself lays down possible lines of communication between the sacred ceremonies accompanying the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the later Temple and its service, the targumim all concur with it. Two targumim, however, seem concerned to strengthen these biblical data with ideas of their own. TO of Exod 19:4 understood the Hebrew text in which God declares to Israel ‫ואבא אתכם אלי‬, “And I have brought you to Myself ” to mean ‫וקריבית יתכון לפולחני‬, “And I have drawn you near to my service”.5 This is an entirely appropriate rendering, for the service in question is almost certainly to be understood as the priestly service which Exod 19:6 goes on to demand, with its injunction that Israel be for God ‫ממלכת כהנים‬. The idea of priestly service is reinforced in TO of Exod 19:22, where the Hebrew refers simply to the priests “who draw near to the Lord,” while TO adds the information that they “draw near to minister to the Lord”. The importance of priests and sacrifice in TO’s account of the giving of the Torah becomes even more apparent in his version of Exodus 24. Thus, in Exod 24:5, Onqelos adopts a well-known interpretation of the “Israelite young men,” whom Moses ordered to offer the sacrifices, as “the firstborn of the Israelites”.6 This interpretation is grounded in Scriptural information provided by Num 3:11–13; 8:14–19, where we learn that the priestly service of the tribe of Levi (see especially Num 8:19) took the place of an original service of the firstborn, who belong to the Lord. The bowls in which the sacrificial blood is collected are called in Hebrew ‫( אגנת‬Exod 24:6), a hapax legomenon in the Pentateuch: TO translated using the word ‫מזרקיא‬, which elsewhere he uses to describe the vessels of the sanctuary (e.g., Exod 27:3; 38:3; Num 4:14). But most striking is TO of Exod 24:8, where, the Hebrew is commonly understood to inform us that Moses took sacrificial blood and sprinkled it upon (‫ )על‬the people. In TO, this becomes: And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it upon the altar to make purgation (‫ )לכפרא‬for the people, and he said: Behold, this is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.

5 Note here the use of the Aramaic stem ‫קרב‬, very frequent in all the targumim of Exodus 19 and 24. The root often expresses the idea of people drawing near, or being brought near, in priestly service to God. TO uses it in Exod 19:12, 13, 15, 22. 6 See also PJ of this verse; m. Zeb. 14:4; b. Zeb. 115b; Mek. de R. Shimon b. Yohai (ed. Epstein and Melamed), 220; Seder Eliyahu Rabba 9:52; and Roger le Déaut, La Nuit Pascale (AnBib 22; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963), 85.

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Onqelos most likely understood the Hebrew preposition ‫ על‬in this verse twice, first as having the force of “on behalf of, for the sake of,”7 and then as meaning “upon.” Thus he explained that the blood had been cast on behalf of the people, and then upon the altar, like all sacrificial blood, to effect purgation for the people, a cleansing by no means out of place given the advent of the Divine Presence. The people, as well as the place, are to be duly cleansed and in a fit state to participate in a momentous, indeed unique, event in the history of the world. This explanation of the targum’s interpretation of Exod 24:8, grounded as it is in the precise elucidation of the Hebrew text, seems preferable to those which suggest that Onqelos altered the Hebrew to counteract Christian claims about the atoning blood of Jesus announced at the Last Supper.8 Onqelos thus introduces into the story of the giving of the Torah a central aspect of the Temple service, the use of sacrificial blood in a rite of purgation. And in a final verse, to which more attention must be given later, TO takes care to point out that the sacrifices at Sinai were accepted: the Hebrew of Exod 24:11 records that nobles of Israel beheld the Almighty, and “ate and drank,” for which TO records that the great ones of Israel “were rejoicing in their sacrifices which were received, as if they were eating and drinking.” PJ also adds mention of the Temple and its service, often with considerable dramatic effect. At Exod 19:4, this targum makes God recall a miracle He performed for Israel: “I brought you to the place of the House of the Sanctuary to offer the Pesa˜ there,”9 as part of a triple

7 This is a common meaning of the preposition: see Francis Brown, Samuel R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1996) and Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 217–18. 8 See, for example, Grossfeld, The Targum Onqelos, 71; Maher, in Targums Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus, 231 citing older scholarship; and Drazin, Onkelos on the Torah, 158, 161, who, however, also lists four other more likely reasons for the change. It is not clear how TO’s interpretation might effectively neutralize Christian assertions. 9 This interpretation, which is unique to PJ (at least in the form which the Targum presents), may be related to the notice in the Hebrew of this verse that God bore Israel on eagles’ wings, since the “wings” of the Divine Presence are associated directly with God’s tabernacle-sanctuary in Ps 61:4. See further Avigdor Shinan, The Aggadah in the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Makor, 1979), 1:247 [in Hebrew]. Mek. de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 2:24, however, displays some similarities with PJ of this verse, including the opinion that God brought Israel to the Temple (though there is no mention of Pesa˜). See now also Beverly Mortensen, The Priesthood in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 1.168.

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interpretation of the Hebrew ‫ ;ואבא אלי‬and at 19:6 the priests of the Hebrew text are further defined as ministering priests. In agreement with TO, the priests named in PJ of Exod 19:22 draw near to minister before the Lord; and at Exod 24:5, where TO is content simply to specify that the firstborn offered the sacrifices, PJ at some length explains why: And he [ Moses] sent the firstborn of the Israelites: for up until that time, the service had been in the hand of the firstborn; for until then the Tent of Meeting had not been made, and until then the priesthood had not been granted to Aaron.10

PJ of Exod 24:6, like TO of that verse, describes as ‫ מזרקיא‬the vessels used for the sacrificial blood, adding at 24:8 the same word;11 and, again in common with TO, this targum insists both that blood was put upon the altar to make purgation for the people (24:8), and that the sacrifices of those who had ascended Sinai were accepted (24:11). None of the other extant targumim displays such an interest in sanctuary and Temple service, even allowing for a stray reference to the priests who stand and minister in TN, FTP, FTV, and CG of Exod 19:22. But while the other targumim are content to retain the biblical material redolent of sanctuary and priestly service, TO and PJ go out of their way to highlight them, and thereby to create a context for the giving of the Torah in which these things are indispensable. In so doing, these targumim agree with an ancient precedent attested already by the LXX translators. The Hebrew of Exod 24:10 reports that those who ascended Sinai “saw the God of Israel, and under his feet there was as it were the work of a pavement of sapphire, and like the heaven itself for clearness.” The Greek translation of this verse is very well known, and runs as follows: And they saw the place where the God of Israel stood; and the things under His feet were like a work of a pavement, and like a form of the firmament of heaven for pureness.

A marginal gloss to TN of this verse is almost identical with PJ’s text. On the significant role of these utensils in PJ’s understanding of the priestly service, see Mortensen, The Priesthood, 1:144–45. PJ alone of the targumim also seems to distinguish between the blood of the whole burnt offerings and the blood of the ‫שלמים‬, “peace offerings”: for the latter at 24:5 PJ uses his usual expression ‫ניכסת קודשין‬, and goes on to note that it was the blood of the ‫ נכסא‬which featured in the purgation rite of 24:8. 10 11

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The differences between the Hebrew and Greek texts of this verse are usually accounted for by noting how Exod 33:20 declares that human beings may not see God’s face and live. The Greek translators, to eliminate a contradiction between two verses of Scripture, are thus believed to have adopted a ploy which preserves the coherence of Scripture and at the same time reduces theological problems arising from any implication that God may have a visible form.12 The various factors which produced the Greek translation do not concern us here, so much as the import of what the translators have actually written. For they have introduced into the verse language normally associated with the Temple; and they do so again, quite strikingly, in their rendering of the following verse (Exod 24:11), where the Hebrew reasserts that Moses and those with him saw God. Here the Greek translators tell us that Moses and the others were seen, or appeared, in the place of God: the Greek words used here, καὶ ὤφθησαν ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τοῦ θεοῦ, unmistakeably recall the words of Exod 23:17; 34:23, that every Israelite male shall be seen or appear (ὀφθήσεται) before the Lord, to which Deut 16:16 adds the words “in the place which the Lord your God shall choose,” that is, the Temple. Readers of LXX of Exod 24:10 might reasonably suppose, therefore, that “the place where the God of Israel stood” was the sanctuary, a supposition reinforced by the Greek version of Psalm 132:7 (LXX 131:7), which exhorts worshippers: “Let us enter into His tabernacles; Let us prostrate ourselves towards the place where His feet stood,” the second part of this verse representing the Hebrew “let us prostrate ourselves to the footstool of His feet.”13 Mention of the

12 See Alain le Boulluec and Pierre Sandevoir, La Bible d’Alexandrie LXX, tome 2: L’Exode (Paris: Cerf, 1989), 246; Alison Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch ( JSS Monograph 15; Manchester: University of Manchester, 1991), 105–6; and John W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Exodus (SCSS 35; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 384–85. 13 Note also Exod 19:9, where God declares to Moses that He will come to His servant “in the thickness of the cloud”: LXX of this verse states that He will come “in a pillar of cloud,” possibly under the influence of Exod 13:21 (so Wevers, Notes, 297) and Exod 13:22; 14:19, 24 (see le Boulluec and Sandevoir, L’Exode, 201). None of these Exodus verses, however, refers to divine speech so central to the account of Mattan Torah which does, however feature strikingly in Ps 99:6–7 where Moses, Aaron and Samuel are said to be among the Lord’s priests who invoke His Name, and to whom God spoke in a pillar of cloud. This information follows immediately the Psalmist’s exhortation to exalt the Lord and prostrate to the footstool of His feet, which the LXX translators rendered as καὶ προσκυνεῖτε τῷ ὑποποδίῳ τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ. Such language is associated in the Bible with the Ark of the covenant, the Cherubim, and the Temple (see, e.g., 1 Chron 28:2), which are in view also at Ps 132:5–7. For a direct link between sanctuary, pillar of cloud, and divine speech we have only to turn to Exod 33:9; the Psalm verses quoted here provided further relevant information, and allowed the LXX translators of Exod

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Lord’s feet, and more particularly LXX’s “the things under His feet,” suggest therefore the Ark of the Covenant and its attendant Cherubim set in the Temple. LXX appears to be aware of this, and we shall have more to say about these things presently.14 We may also briefly note LXX’s concern with the details of sacrifices in the Greek of Exod 24:6 where, as John Wevers has noted, technical terms from the sacrificial laws are introduced.15 We may conclude this section, therefore, by noting that TO and PJ have set the Temple and its service to the fore in their description of events at Sinai, and that their emphasis on these things had ancient precedent. 2. Sinai, Beth Ha-Midrash, and Synagogue Foremost among the targumim which introduce words and phrases associated with Synagogue and Beth Ha-Midrash into their interpretations of Exodus 19 and 24 is the Aramaic translation preserved in the fragment Oxford Bodleian Ms Heb. E 43, folio 61, on Exodus 19. This is explicitly headed ‫לשבועות‬, indicating its selection as Torah reading for that feast in accordance with established synagogue tradition.16 Its translation of Exod 19:3 orders Moses to give instruction “in their synagogues,” the only targum of Exodus 19 to refer directly to the institution. Use of the language of instruction, however, is frequently 24:10–11 to understand the Hebrew as they did. Philo, De Somn. I. 62–63, already perceived a clear affinity between the “place” where God stood according to Exod 24:10, and the “place” which God would choose as His sanctuary. 14 See below, 279–81. On the Ark and Cherubim, and their relationship to the footstool terminology, see most recently John Day, “Whatever Happened to the Ark of the Covenant?” in Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (ed. J. Day; London: T and T Clark, 2005), 263–64 and literature there cited. See also the Vulgate of Isa 6:1, where Isaiah’s vision in the Temple includes not only the Lord’s throne, but also ea quae sub ipso erant, “the things which were beneath it/Him”. 15 See Wevers, Notes, 382–83. On the striking similarity between TO’s and PJ’s “behold, this is the blood of the covenant” and LXX of Exods 24:8, see Wevers, Notes, 383–84. 16 See tos. Meg. 3:5–6, Saul Lieberman, ed., Tosefta Ki-Fshutah Part V, Order Mo{ed (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962/5722), 1170, where, however, Exod 19 is given as the custom of some as opposed to the general tradition of reading Deut 16. b. Meg. 31a explains that, since the custom of observing festivals for two consecutive days arose, both these portions are read. See comments in Lee I. Levene, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 508, and discussion of these lections and the question of the haftarah for the festival in David J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 17–19; Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (trans. D. Louvish; Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004), 154.

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found in CG and elsewhere. Thus Moses went up Sinai “to seek instruction from before the Lord” according to CG, TN, FTP, FTV of Exod 19:3. This is instruction in the Torah, a phrase introduced by CG of that same verse, and by PJ, TN, FTP, and FTV of Exod 19:4. Further references to instruction and to Torah are encountered also at TN of Exod 24:1, 12, and PJ of Exod 24:12, 18. Along with the language of instruction we meet the Aramaic verb ‫( תני‬to repeat, relate, teach), whose importance in the world of Torah learning requires no comment. It is used by PJ, TN, FTP and probably by FTV to translate Hebrew ‫ הגיד‬at Exod 19:3, where Moses is to ‫ תני‬God’s words to Israel.17 PJ, TN, FTP, FTV, and CG of Exod 19:9 again translated Hebrew ‫ הגיד‬with the same word in describing Moses’ reporting Israel’s words to God. At Exod 24:3, where the Hebrew notes that Moses recounted (‫ )ויספר‬God’s words to Israel, TN placed ‫ותני‬. These words and phrases combine to give the impression of Sinai as a school or academy, an impression heightened by mention of the wise men, “the Sages,” whose place is the court, the Beth Ha-Midrash, or the academy. They feature in TN and its marginal gloss, FTP, FTV, and CG of Exod 19:7, and again at TN of Exod 24:1, 9, and TN and PJ of Exod 24:14 representing “the elders” of the Hebrew text. Steven Fraade has recently offered an interpretation of the two Mekhiltas on Exod 19:9 which explains their exegesis as depicting an halakhic debate between Moses and the Almighty, in which Moses emerges victorious, and thereby establishes his credentials as an authoritative and enduring source of revelation and teaching.18 While such a debate cannot be discerned directly in our extant targumim, there is no doubt that the material we have examined in this section sits well with Fraade’s observations; and the explicit interpretation of Exod 19:9 in TN, CG, FTP and FTV to give the sense of a divine promise that Israel “will

17 FTV of Exod 19:3 has the form ‫ ותנני‬with a supralinear ‫ ת‬written above the word. For the technical sense of this verb and its corresponding noun, see Michael L. Chernick, “Tannax,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion (ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and G. Wigoder; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 674. 18 See Steven D. Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric be Disentangled?” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation. Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel ( JSJSupp 83; ed. H. Najman and J. Newman; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 397–422, where he analyses Mek. de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 2 and Mek. de R. Shim{on b. Yohai on Exod 19:9. For a further discussion of revelation through midrashic activity, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s essay on Mekhilta Shirata, “Can the Homilists Cross the Sea Again?” 217–46 in this volume.

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believe in your prophecy for ever, O Moses my servant” offers some indirect confirmation of a key element in his argument.19 From Beth Ha-Midrash we may turn to the Synagogue, since some of the targumim add to the narrative of the giving of the Torah the language of prayer. This is first evident in TN, FTP, FTV and CG of Exod 19:8, according to which Moses related the people’s words “in prayer before the Lord.”20 According to the next verse also (Exod 19:9), FTP, FTV, and CG Moses reported the people’s words “in prayer,” and in TN of Exod 24:1 the divine command to Moses and his companions that they prostrate themselves becomes “and you shall pray.” Closely allied to the language of prayer is the appearance of the verbal stem ‫כון‬ in TN and FTP of Exod 19:2. The tautologous Hebrew of this verse, ‫ויחנו במדבר ויחן שם ישראל‬, becomes in both targumim “and they encamped in the desert and directed themselves there.” The sense intended is that of powerful concentration and purposeful direction in prayer, expressed by the pa{el of ‫ ;כון‬and it is supported by yet another phrase, that Israel were present at Sinai “with a perfect/complete heart” (TN and CG of Exod 19:8) or “with a united heart” (PJ of Exod 19:2).21 Underlying these expressions are thoughts of the undivided loyalty to God and purposeful concentration of the mind in devotion characteristic of the ˜asid as he recites the daily {Amidah (‫ כדי שיכונו לבם‬according to m. Ber. 5:1), and a proper understanding of the words of the Shema{ that one should love the Lord with an undivided heart (Sifre Deut. 32; b. Ber. 61b), and thus take upon oneself the yoke of the kingdom of 19 See Fraade, “Moses,” 405–11 for the issue about Moses as a source of eternal authority, and his remarks on the place of the Sages in the targumim of Exodus 19 in the same essay, 407. Note also that FTP of Exod 19:9 omits the words “Moses, my servant”. 20 B. Barry Levy, Targum Neophyti I: A Textual Study (2 vols.; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), 1.392, suggests that this may result from a targumic attempt to avoid the idea that humans (like Enoch, for example) could approach God, and may therefore indicate targumic reserve about mystical traditions and belief. In view of the evidence collected in section 3, such a view seems unlikely. 21 TN of Exod 19:2 uses the form ‫וכוונו‬, and FTP has ‫וכויכו‬. Targumic use of this verb, and its organic relationship with the note that Israel acted with a whole or united heart at Sinai, is made clear by Mek. of R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 1:108 on Exod 19:2, where the singular form of Hebrew ‫ ויחן‬with Israel as subject, immediately following an occurrence of the plural of the same verb, is taken to indicate the essential unity of the people, ‫השוו כלם לב אחד‬. For the same expression, see Mek. de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 2:85–87 on Exod 19:8, and TN of that verse, ‫בלבא שלמא‬. A very similar interpretation of Exod 19:8 is also attested by LXX, where the Hebrew ‫ יחדיו‬is translated by the rare form ὁμοθυμαδὸν. In LXX Pentateuch this occurs only twice elsewhere (Num 24:24; 27:21), and signifies unity of mind and intention. See further Philo, De Conf. Ling. 58–59 on this verse.

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heaven, a most appropriate sentiment given the divine command of Exod 19:6 that Israel become ‫ממלכת כהנים‬. All the targumim examined in this section are evidently keen to promote the closest links between the narrative of the giving of the Torah on the one hand, and academy, Synagogue, and Beth Ha-Midrash on the other. The account of the giving of Torah legitimates and grants authority to these institutions in the eyes of the targumists and their hearers: these institutions, by targumic exegesis, are manifested as ancient, part of the very stuff of God’s design for His people, alongside the Temple and its service whose presence is implicit in the Hebrew Bible and is accepted as such by all targumim. By way of contrast, TO contains none of the words and phrases associated with Torah instruction and study examined here. This is not to claim that Onqelos was indifferent to such things. Rather, his manner of introducing them into the narratives involves a subtlety and elegance which will, perhaps, become apparent as we proceed. 3. The World Above and Targumim of Mattan Torah The biblical narratives of the giving of the Torah recount how two spheres meet: the earthly realms where human beings dwell are joined for a brief time to the heavenly world, the Almighty Himself making his presence known to His people. The association of these narratives with the first chapter of Ezekiel, which at some point in antiquity was adopted as accompanying haftarah for Exodus 19 when it was read in Synagogue, served to reinforce their association with mystical exegesis in general and the Merkabah in particular.22 Of all the targumim, PJ most clearly represents the mystical aspects implicit in the biblical story.23 Thus the “thick cloud” in which the Lord is revealed (Exod 19:9) becomes in PJ “the thickness of the cloud of Glory,” and the “cloud” of the Hebrew text of Exod 24:15, 16 is further qualified as “the cloud of Glory.” The angelic world is explicitly introduced in the figure of See Halperin, Faces, 17–23; Elior, Three Temples, 164. This targum is well known for its interest in the heavenly world and the mystical traditions: see Avigdor Shinan, The Embroidered Targum: The Aggadah in Targum PseudoJonathan of the Pentateuch ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 120–52 [in Hebrew]; and cf. Mortensen, The Priesthood, 1.363–92. For a related discussion of the connection between Sinai, the heavenly world, and angelic liturgy in a different context, the Qumran community, see Judith Newman, “Priestly Prophets at Qumran: Summoning Sinai Through the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” 29–72 in this volume. 22 23

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Michael, called the sarkhan of wisdom, who according to PJ of Exod 24:1 summoned Moses to Sinai.24 The archangel Gabriel is represented in PJ’s version of Exod 24:10, which alone among the targumim of this chapter includes a detailed account of the Lord’s footstool: And Nadab and Abihu lifted their eyes, and saw the Glory of the God of Israel; and beneath the footstool of His feet which was placed beneath His Throne was as it were a work of sapphire stone, recalling the enslavement with which the Egyptians had enslaved the Israelites with mud and bricks. As the women kneaded the clay with their menfolk, there was there a delicate young woman who was pregnant, and she let the child fall and it was kneaded with the mud. Gabriel descended and made of it a brick and took it up to the heavens of the height (‫)מרומא‬25 and established it as a platform beneath the footstool of the Lord of the Universe. Its splendour was like the work of a precious stone, and like the might of the beauty of the heavens when they are clear.

Mention of the Lord’s footstool calls to mind earlier discussion of imagery drawn from the earthly Temple, imagery now used in PJ of this verse to speak of the Lord’s dwelling on high, whose union with the realms below is effected, in this dramatic aggadah, with reference to the sufferings in Egypt and the redemption from slavery, forever present in the footstool beneath the Lord’s throne. It must be recalled that elsewhere in this targum considerable importance is attached to the fact that the likeness of the Patriarch Jacob, who is Israel, is engraved on the Throne of Glory itself, so that the place of God’s heavenly dwelling has perpetual memorials not only of Jacob-Israel whose likeness is a source of awe and wonder to angels, but also of Israel’s affliction and servitude.26 Not only this: PJ’s description of the footstool and its 24 On this verse, see Shinan, Embroidered Targum, 126, noting that PJ’s tradition here appears unique, and that b. Sanh. 38b reports how Metatron called Moses, on which see further Halperin, Faces, 420–27. For the expression “prince of wisdom,” see 3 Enoch 10:5 and the comments of Philip S. Alexander, “3(Hebrew Apocalypse of ) Enoch,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; ed. J. H. Charlesworth; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983, 1985), 1.243, 264. 25 Gabriel thus ascends to Marom; but there is no hint in the Pentateuchal targumim that Moses did so, even though there are traditions associated with Merkabah mysticism which asserted this on the basis of Ps 68:19. See Halperin, Faces, 303–5. 26 See PJ, TN of Gen. 28:12, and further b. Hull. 91b; Gen. Rab. 68:12; 78:3; 82:2; Numb. Rab. 4:1; Lam. Rab. 2.1,2; PRE 35:3, and discussion in Peter Schäfer, Rivalität zwischen Engeln und Menschen: Untersuchungen zur rabbinischen Engelvorstellung (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975), 204–7; Jarl E. Fossum, The Image of the Invisible God (Göttingen: Vandehoeck and Ruprecht, 1995), 135–91; and Silviu Bunta, “The Likeness of the Image: Adamic Motifs and ‫ צלם‬Anthropology in Rabbinic Traditions about Jacob’s Image Enthroned in Heaven,” JSJ 37 (2006): 55–84.

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association with the clay kneaded by Israel in slavery might further suggest that the Almighty Himself had, in some mysterious manner, suffered affliction along with His people.27 The footstool, no part of the Hebrew text, figures also in TN of Exod 24:10, where it is said that Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy Sages of Israel: saw the Glory of the Shekhinah of the God of Israel; and under the footstool of His feet was as it were a work of brick of sapphire, and like the vision of the heavens when they are clear of clouds.

FTP and FTV of the same verse offer a very similar interpretation. English “footstool” here represents Aramaic ‫( אפיפודין‬PJ, marginal gloss of TN, and most likely FTP which, however, lacks the letter dalet), ‫( איפופדין‬FTV), which in turn represent υποποδιον borrowed from the Greek.28 The footstool serves not only to reinforce association with the Temple, but draws attention also to the seat which must inevitably accompany it: the Throne of Glory. This makes its appearance also in TO of Exod 24:10, and features as a regular object of awe and wonder for the pious visionary, and is celebrated in many texts from Second Temple times and later.29 More controversially, PJ alone of the targumim adds to Exod 19:18 details of what the Bible describes as the Lord’s descent onto Sinai. The Hebrew of the verse begins by declaring that the whole of Sinai was smoke-covered: the Targum goes on to explain that this was so: “because the Lord had bowed down (‫ )ארכין‬the heavens to it, and was revealed upon it in a consuming fire.” This explanation must be 27 See y. Sukkah 4.3; Lev. Rab. 23:8; Song Rab. 4:8.1 and other sources analysed by Michael Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 134–38. 28 The form of the word in TN is ‫אפיפודן‬. See Samuel Krauss, Griechische und Lateinische Lehnwörter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum (2 vols.; Hildesheim: Georg Olms reprint, 1964), 2:39, which notes the appearance of this word in early rabbinic texts like m. Kelim 16:1; 24:7. The same author also discusses its form and use, in his Talmudische Archäologie (2 vols.; Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1910, 1911), 1.62, 385–86. 29 An early description may be found in 1 Enoch 14:18. See Ephraim Isaac, “1 Enoch,” OTP, 1.21, and R. H. Charles, “Book of Enoch,” in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (2 vols.; ed. R. H. Charles; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 1.197, whose translations describe the throne as being like crystal; and George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1. A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36, 81–108 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 257, who prefers “ice” for “crystal,” commenting further on the verse in 264. On the composition of the Throne according to rabbinic texts, see Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 35 n. 21: Halperin, Faces, 80–82, 89, 217–20; and on the tables of the Torah and the Throne, see Philip S. Alexander, The Targum of Canticles (ArBib 17a; London: T and T Clark, 2003), 89.

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understood in the context of rabbinic discussion concerning the precise details of the advent of the Almighty at Sinai, given that PJ’s language here directly recalls the words of Mek. de R. Ishmael: One might suppose that the glory really went down and was spread upon Mount Sinai. Scripture states: “For from heaven I have spoken with you” (Exod 20:19), teaching us that the Holy One, blessed be He, bowed down (‫ )הרכין‬the lower heavens and the upper heavens of heavens upon the top of the mountain, and the Glory descended.30

Thus the divine Presence did not actually “go down” in any obvious and crude manner, a point strongly asserted by R. Jose ben Halafta’s statement a little later in the same section, that neither Moses nor Elijah ascended to heaven, nor did the Glory go down to the earth.31 PJ seemingly assumes that his readers have knowledge not only of this statement, but also of subsequent rabbinic modifications of it,32 to avoid open conflict with Scripture’s unequivocal statement that God did indeed “go down” (Exod 19:20). Thus PJ of Exod 19:17 includes a further well-known tradition, to the effect that Sinai was elevated from the earth, the Lord having uprooted the mountain and lifted it up like

30 Mek. de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 4:46–49 on Exod 19:20; see also b. Sukk. 5a. Note that the language of the Lord’s “bowing down” the heavens is found also in Ps 18:10, and is followed at once by the report that He rode upon a Cherub (Ps 18:11), that celestial creature most intimately associated with the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple, as Ps 99:1 makes plain. PJ’s allusion to the bowed heavens, therefore, may properly be associated with the Temple imagery apparent elsewhere in this Targum’s account of Mattan Torah: see above, n. 13. 31 Mek. de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 4:53–58; b. Sukk. 5a. The Rabbi’s statement is most likely connected with his famous assertion (Gen. Rab. 78:8) that God is not restricted to place, in that the world is not His place (most relevant in the present context), as shown by Wilhelm Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten (2 vols.; Strasbourg, 1884, 1890), 2.185. See further Ephraim. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (2 vols.; trans. I. Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1979), 1.48–50, 2:704. Although the Pentateuchal targumim preserve references in the Hebrew text to Moses’s ascent to Sinai (Exod 19:3, 20; 24:1, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18), they do not introduce notions of a heavenly ascent by Moses, Aaron, and the elders of the sort found in many mystical texts (see, e.g., Halperin, Faces, 35–37, 85–88, and especially 319–22), and they fail to say explicitly that Moses went up to heaven to be given the Torah, which Philip Alexander describes as “the standard Rabbinic view”: see Alexander, Targum, 82, note 42, citing b. Shabb. 89a, Exod. Rab. 28:1and other classical sources. 32 See Urbach, Sages, 1:49, discussing the rabbinic “compromise” whereby it was deemed that the Almighty did descend, but not more than ten handbreadths, and Moses and Elijah did ascend, but not more than ten handbreadths, such that another domain was created for a meeting place. On the relationship between the Throne of Glory and the descent of the Shekhinah at Sinai, see further Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 130–31.

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glass, so that Israel stood beneath it.33 For the duration of the giving of the Torah, therefore, PJ removes Mount Sinai from the confines of this world, the revelation being granted in a sphere which is specially created for the purpose. Other targumim, however, are less reticent in their accounts. TN is particularly keen to proclaim the revelation of the Glory of the Shekina of the Lord at the giving of the Torah, and introduces this expression five times in its version of Exodus 19, and a further five times in expounding Exodus 24. For a detailed study of these verses we may refer to the monumental work of Domingo Muñoz León, making two remarks in passing.34 First, TN’s evident concern to embed the biblical story of the giving of the Torah into the world of academy, Synagogue and school is entirely consonant with the general rabbinic teaching (m. xAbot 3:6) that wherever people “sit and occupy themselves with the Torah,” the Shekhinah is present. Second, by using Glory of the Shekhinah TN contrives to combine the ideas of the otherworldly glory (Exod 19:16, 17) with a term occurring at Exod 24:16 in the form ‫ וישכן‬to introduce Shekhinah, which often suggests God’s immanent presence with those devoted to him, and to make the latter as substantially significant as the former.35 Not unrelated to these matters is the declaration of PJ Exod 19:19 that God spoke to Moses “in a sweet and majestic voice,” a tradition represented also in TN, CG, FTP, and FTP of this verse.36 The special quality of this divine voice may be understood in a number of ways, all of which are suitable for the imparting of heavenly secrets to a human being, such that PJ of Exod 24:18 can declare that Moses was on Sinai “learning the words of the Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, may His Name be praised, for forty days and forty nights.”37 Mek. de R. Ishmael Ba˜odesh 3:123–124; b. Shabb. 88a; Av. Zar. 2b. See Domingo Muñoz León, Gloria de la Shekina en los targumim del Pentateuco (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1977), 86–99. 35 Note TN’s introduction of prayer and concentration discussed above, and in this connection Urbach’s apt comment in Sages, 1:63: “The sources dealing with the orientation of prayer in relation to the Shekhina corroborate that which we find also in other sources, namely that the epithet ‘Shekhina’ expresses the presence and proximity of God.” 36 On the differing readings of the individual targumim, see le Déaut, Targum du Pentateuque, 158–59; McNamara, Hayward and Maher, Targums Neofiti 1, 82, 216. A similar idea may be found in Mek. de R. Ishmael Bahodesh 4:42–44, where R. Akiba explains that God assisted Moses’s voice ‫בנעימה‬, which Lauterbach understood as a “tone” of voice strong enough for Israel to hear the same quality of voice which Moses himself was experiencing. 37 Philo, Quis Heres 17–19, observes that the conversation between God and Moses was prolonged, and consisted of questions and answers, rather in the manner of an 33 34

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Finally, and most intriguingly, TO, PJ, FTP and TN of Exod 24:11 agree that the sacrifices of those who ascended Sinai were accepted, “as if they were eating and drinking.” The targumic phraseology here recalls what is said of angels, who appeared as if they were eating and drinking, at TN and PJ Gen. 18:8; PJ Gen. 19:3; Gen. Rab. 48:11, 14, and suggests that on this unique occasion human beings behaved according to angelic custom; and in the words of Rab (b. Ber. 17a), they are like the righteous in the world to come, where “there is no eating and drinking . . . and the righteous sit and their crowns are on their heads, and they are feasting on the splendour of the Shekhinah, as it is said, And they saw God and ate and drank.”38 All the extant targumim, therefore, in their differing ways acknowledge the events surrounding the giving of the Torah as the revelation of a world normally concealed from human sight. 4. Concluding Observations All the targumim which have survived to our own days date, in their current written forms, from a time after the destruction of the Second Temple, a time when Torah study and prayer have come to be accepted, in the rabbinic world at least, as adequate, or even more than adequate substitutes for the Temple service. Yet ideas rooted in the world of the sanctuary and priesthood, and present in the biblical narratives of Exodus 19 and 24, have not been replaced or modified by the Aramaic versions; and two of them, TO and PJ, have introduced additional material relating to sanctuary and sacrifice not present in the biblical texts. In so doing, they draw on ancient tradition which, in a post-destruction world, can be used tellingly to assert that the Torah, given in the course of a solemn ritual centred on the sanctuary, offers to those who study it now a participation in the fruits of Temple service. academy; and appropriately for our purposes b. Ber. 45a understands Exod 19:19 by analogy with the synagogal reader of Torah and the meturgeman, here representing the Almighty: the voice of the latter is not to be raised above that of the former! For Moses’s period of study on Sinai, see also PRE 46:1. 38 See also Lev. Rab. 20:10, where the vision of God is food and drink. The crowns of the righteous here recall the crowns or diadems which, according to PJ Exod 19:6 kings will “bind” on their heads: for the mystical connotations of this, see Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 65–66, 128–29. On the meal motif in some Merkabah texts, see David J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980), 109, 131.

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The Temple and its service are anything but defunct, but are still vibrant with eternal significance when the circumstances of God’s enduring gift of Torah to Israel are seen in their correct perspective.39 TN, CG, FTP, and FTV are keen to assert that Torah study and prayer are equal to the service of the Temple: when Torah was given, not only was the service of the sanctuary apparent, but the world of academy, schoolhouse, and synagogue was present with it. For these targumim, at Sinai the Sages stood alongside the ministering priests; prayer with purposeful devotion and undivided heart was required; transmission of authoritative teaching was the order of the day. If the Sages were present at Sinai, then their transmitted wisdom may surely be trusted in later times. PJ, too, shares these same concerns. Although lacking the distinctive terminology of the other targumim, TO of Exod 19:7 makes the point that Moses set in order, ‫סדר‬, all God’s words to Israel: this indicates the formal, liturgical and ritual arrangement of the teachings, and features in the interpretations of this same verse given by PJ, TN, FTP, FTV and CG, a very similar notion being also preserved in LXX.40 We have seen how all the targumim in their differing ways attempt to express how, when the Torah was given to Israel, aspects of the world above not normally accessible to human beings were revealed. PJ is pre-eminent in this, in accordance with his keen interest in matters mystical, the angels, and the heavenly realms; but he is also remarkable in the way he places in the heavenly realms a perpetual memorial of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, beneath the Lord’s footstool which is so evocative of His earthly, as well as of His heavenly Temple. The other targumim, like the Bible, do not speak of angels, but bring the divine 39 For the Torah as God’s house, see the illuminating article of Marc Hirshman, “Torah in Rabbinic Thought: The Theology of Learning,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism Volume 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period (ed. S. T. Katz; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 899–924. 40 Instructive here are the comments of Drazin, Onkelos, 116, 117. Where the Hebrew of Exod 19:7 states that Moses set or placed (Hebrew ‫ )וישם‬the Lord’s words before the elders, LXX put καὶ παρέθηκεν, which indicates that he “proposed, explained, communicated” the divine words. The word was also used to describe the setting forth of food at table; and the only other use of this verb in LXX in Exodus, at 21:1 where specific legal rulings are set forth in order, corresponds well with Mek. de R. Ishmael Nezikin 1:8–10 on Exod 21:1, “Scripture says: And these are the ordinances which you shall set before them. Arrange them before them like a prepared table”. See on this le Boulluec and Sandevoir, L’Exode, 214–15. Note also how TN of Exod 24:3 also speaks of ‫ סדרי דינא‬delivered at Sinai, and the same Targum of Exod 24:5 uses the verb ‫ סדר‬of the sacrifices offered on the altar.

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Glory to Israel, whose representatives themselves behave like angels while Torah is being granted.41 The differing emphases of the several targumim stand side by side: the three aspects of their interpretation we have investigated all have their roots in ancient times, and have been developed as time and place dictated, though which times and what places it is now impossible to say. Rather, they all bear witness to the richness of the exegetical material which may be associated with Mattan Torah, and, like plastered cisterns, they seem determined to lose not a drop of the tradition they have received.

Note that all the extant Pentateuchal Targums of Deut 33:2 (TO, PJ, TN, FTP, and FTV) declare that angels were present at the giving of the Torah: see further Schäfer, Rivalität, pp. 43–49; Cécile Dogniez and Marguerite Harl, La Bible d’Alexandrie LXX, tome 5: Le Deuteronome (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 343–45. 41

GOD’S BACK! WHAT DID MOSES SEE ON SINAI?1 Diana Lipton King’s College, London, England What did Moses see on Sinai? What precisely did Moses see when he ascended Mt. Sinai to collect the second set of commandments? The notion that God allowed Moses to glimpse his back, but not to see his face, has taken a vice-like imaginative grip on the recent history of interpretation.2 In this paper, I shall attempt to loosen the vice, suggesting that God showed Moses neither his face nor his back on Mt. Sinai, but offered him a glimpse of the future.3 Reading God’s “back” as an idiomatic reference to the future, reflecting a biblical perception of time now lost to us, sheds new light on traditional Jewish and Christian commentaries on Exod 33:23. It helps explain why commentators more or less ignore God’s back until well into the middle ages. Far from being squeamish about anthropomorphic representations of God, they did not even contemplate a literal reading. It also helps explain thematic preoccupations of these commentaries, such as the relationship between (present) righteousness and (future) reward. As well as illuminating explicit responses to the second Sinai ascent, my reading helps to identify new responses. The story in b. Mena ot 29b of Moses encountering God on Mt. Sinai, sitting and tying crowns to the letters of the Sefer Torah, and Moses’ subsequent visit to Rabbi Aqiba’s Torah academy, is among the best known and 1 I dedicate this paper to my husband of twenty-three years, Peter Lipton ‫ז"ל‬, who died unexpectedly and prematurely on 25th November 2007. Peter regularly told our friends: “Diana thinks the Bible is all about sex.” Sadly (and happily), he will never know that I was finally able to write a paper that is all about death—not even a hint of erotic martyrdom. 2 I have no adequate explanation for the fixation on God’s back, and nor can I tell when it began. It is often difficult to know what commentators have in mind, as with Ibn Ezra, who cites Num 12:8 on God’s likeness, whilst seeming to deny that God can have a form, and Nahmanides, who cites Ps 139:5 without making his own position clear. 3 My initial interest in this subject emerged from an attempt to apply new insights on biblical and ancient Jewish perceptions of time to the Abraham/Sinai dilemma. I explore this topic in a chapter of Longing for Egypt and Other Biblical Tales of the Unexpected (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008).

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most widely discussed of all rabbinic Sinai narratives. I hope to show that it too is a response to Exod 33:12–23, thereby revealing a crucial textual dimension hitherto unrecognised, and, perhaps more importantly, indicating the need for yet another look at Jewish and Christian engagement over the use of Sinai as a focus for issues of succession, intercession, and transmission of authority.4 Back to the Future I see Exod 33:23 as one of a number of biblical texts whose authors located the past in front of them, since they could see it, and the future behind them, since they could not see it. This is less strange than it sounds. Our present-day conception of time is far from straightforward with regard to spatial orientation.5 Sometimes the language we use to describe time indicates that we see the future ahead of us, with ourselves marching bravely—or less timidly—into it, but on other occasions we speak of the future, say new generations, coming up behind.6 In Biblical Hebrew, a strong linguistic case may be made for claiming that the future was physically located behind. Meanings of the root word ‫ קדם‬range from “original” and “early” through “past” and “ancient” to “before” and “in front of,” while meanings of the root ‫ אחר‬include “afterwards” and “end” (as in ‫אחרית הימים‬, “end of days”) alongside “behind” and “back.”7 A recent study by cognitive Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 22–41. For a discussion of these issues in earlier Jewish and Christian exegesis of Moses on Mt. Sinai, see George van Kooten, “Why Did Paul Include an Exegesis of Moses’ Shining Face (Exod 34) in 2 Cor 3?” 149–82 in this volume. 5 See George Lakoff and Michael Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980). 6 This image might emerge from a different concern—the need to look over one’s shoulder at the competition, yet the very fact that we locate our successors or would-be successors over our shoulders is at the least an encouragement to perceive the future there in those particular scenarios. 7 Recent scholarship on biblical and ancient Jewish time has replaced the simple linear conception of time with a more varied and complex picture. Having made the crucial point that the Bible is not monolithic on this matter, Marc Z. Brettler, “Cyclical and Teleological Time in the Hebrew Bible,” in Time and Temporality in the Ancient World (ed. R. M. Rosen; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2004), 111–28, opts for an interplay of teleological and cyclical structures that might best be described as spiral. Meir Bar Ilan, “Time and its Types in Genesis 1,” Mo’ed: Annual for Jewish Studies, 14:2 n.s. (2004, online; [ Heb.]), envisages four different models of time in the Bible: Natural (both linear and cyclical—day follows night); 4

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psychologists of Aymara, an Amerindian language spoken in parts of Bolivia, Peru and Chile, helps to elucidate this little-considered aspect of biblical perspectives on time: “In Aymara, the basic word for FRONT (nayra, ‘eye/front/sight’) is also a basic expression meaning PAST, and the basic word for BACK (qhipa, ‘back/behind’) is a basic expression for FUTURE meaning.”8 A similar perception of time seems to have operated in classical antiquity; the Septuagint’s term for “back” in Exod 33:23 conveys the same spatial and temporal dimensions as the Hebrew—behind and future, respectively. An especially pertinent rabbinic example occurs in b. Hag. 16a, where ‫ לאחור‬and ‫ לפנים‬carry precisely the spatial and temporal significance I propose for the same terminology in Exod 33:23: ‫ בשלמא מה‬.‘‫כל המסתכל בארבעה דברים רתוי לו שלא בא לעולם כו‬ ‫ אלא לפנים מה דהוה הוה‬,‫למעלה מה למטה מה לאחור לחיי‬ WHOSOEVER SPECULATES UPON FOUR THINGS, IT WERE A MERCY IF HE HAD NOT COME INTO THE WORLD etc. Granted as regards what is above, what is beneath, what [will be] after, that is well. But as regards what was before—what happened, happened!9

The juxtaposition of ‫ לאחור‬and ‫ לפנים‬with “what is above” and “what is below” underlines the spatial dimensions of all four terms and the conclusion—“what happened, happened”—makes explicit that the concern in the latter cases at least is temporal.

Numerological (based on seven day units, not natural); Ritual/Quality (good and bad times), and Ritual/non-numerological (astronomical/scientific). Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (trans. D. Louvish; Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004), posits a spatial conception of time in her monograph on the biblical origins of some aspects of Jewish mysticism; I am not sure whether or not she traces this view back to the biblical authors themselves. Nicholas Wyatt, Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Ancient Near East (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), limits conceptual discussion to two footnotes and a brief excursus, in which he mainly cautions against the pagan/cyclical v. Israel/linear dichotomy. Sacha Stern, Time and Process in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003), set out thinking time means calendars and came to believe that ancient Judaism had no sense of time at all, just a sense of process, namely the activities that fill time. 8 Rafael E. Núñez and Eve Sweetser, “With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time,” Cognitive Science 30 (2006): 401–50 (here 402). 9 All translations of talmudic texts are from the Soncino editition of the Babylonian Talmud, ed. Isidore Epstein (London, 1961).

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Despite the fact that the Hebrew is better read as “behind me” (literally, “my behind”) than “my back,” few modern scholars have doubted that God showed Moses his back on Mt. Sinai, and no recent translation offers an alternative.10 Focusing on the final form of Exod 33:12–23, I shall try to undermine this monolithic certainty. What precisely does Moses request when he ascends Sinai the second time, and exactly what does God offer in return? 12 Moses said to the LORD, “See, You say to me, ‘Lead this people forward,’ but You have not made known to me whom You will send with me. Further, You have said, ‘I have singled you out by name, and you have, indeed, gained My favor.’ 13 Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor. Consider, too, that this nation is Your people.” 14 And He said, “I will go in the lead and will lighten your burden.” 15 And he said to Him, “Unless You go in the lead, do not make us leave this place. 16 For how shall it be known that Your people have gained Your favor unless You go with us, so that we may be distinguished, Your people and I, from every people on the face of the earth?” 17 And the LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked; for you have truly gained My favor and I have singled you out by name.” 18 He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!” 19 And He answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name LORD, and I will grant the grace that I will grant and I will show the compassion that I show. 20 But,” He said, “You cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live.” 21 And the LORD said, “See, there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock 22 and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back [lit. my behind, behind me]; but My face must not be seen.”11

10 I do not know of any modern exegete who understands God’s back as I do here. Since the standard views are well known, there is little to be gained by rehearsing them. For commentaries that give a good sense of the range of interpretative options on this matter, see Brevard S. Childs, Exodus: A Commentary (OTL; London: SCM Press, 1974), and Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus ( JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991). 11 Hebrew Bible translations based on Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999).

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Moses makes five more or less explicit requests: 1. (?) You have commissioned me to lead this people, but have not made told me who you will send with me (i.e., tell me who will help me in future) (v. 12). 2. (3) You have said that I have gained your favour, now tell me your ways so that I can continue to gain your favour (v. 13). 3. (1) This nation is your people (i.e., they need sight of you) (v. 13). 4. (2) Go with us so that we can be distinguished among the nations (v. 16). 5. (4) Let me see your presence (v. 18). God makes five distinct statements which—though they appear in a different order and, in one instance, in advance of the demand—may be mapped onto Moses’ five requests: 1. (3) God tells Moses he will go in the lead (to reassure the people?) (v. 14). 2. (4) God promises to do what Moses asked; Moses has gained his favour and he has singled out Moses (v. 17). 3. (2) God declares: “I will show you my goodness, declare my name, and be gracious and compassionate” (v. 19). 4. (5) God refuses to show his face (v. 20). 5. (?) God promises: “Position yourself in a rock-cleft and I will shield you with my hand and then I will show you my back” (vv. 21–23). Whether because of the text’s composite nature, or for literary-aesthetic or theological reasons, the pairing of Moses’ requests and God’s reassuring statements is problematic. As the pericope is traditionally read, one of Moses’ requests goes unanswered, and one of God’s offers appears out of the blue. God does not seem to respond to Moses’ request to discover who will come with him into the land, and Moses does not appear to initiate God’s offer to reveal his back (‫)אחורי‬, other than by asking to see God’s presence. Reading “my back” in the first instance as “behind me” and in the second instance as an idiomatic reference to the future, resolves these problems. All five of Moses’ requests elicit a corresponding response from God; Moses expresses anxiety about the future (32:12), and God agrees to show it to him (32:23). This reading is supported by the fact that the two statements form a textual

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inclusio at the beginning and end of the pericope, and by an interplay throughout the narrative of temporal and spatial notions of what lies ahead (“lead this people forward,” v. 12; “I will go in the lead,” “unless you go in the lead,” v. 14; “pass before you,” v. 19). In so far as this complex text has a plain sense, it is that God agreed on Mt. Sinai to allow Moses a glimpse of future events, motivated by his request to know the identity of his successor. This re-reading raises the theological stakes considerably. As traditionally understood, Moses’ second Sinai encounter climaxes with a vision of God’s back. As I interpret it, it ends with what lies ahead—presumably, Joshua in the first instance. No wonder early commentators seized upon it as a magnet for their own discussions of succession and transmission.12 Translating God’s Back With the exception of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Tg. Ps.-J.), on which more below, the Aramaic translations of Exod 33:23 do not appear to have understood God’s “back” as an anthropomorphic representation. Onqelos is a case in point: And the Lord said to Moses, I will do this matter of which you have spoken, because you have found mercy before Me, and I have ordained you by name. And he said, Show me, I pray, your Glory! And He said, I will make all My Goodness pass before your face, and I will proclaim the Name of the Lord before you, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And He said, You cannot see the Face of My Shekinah; for no man can see Me and survive. And the Lord said, Look, there is a place prepared before Me, and you will stand on the rock, and it will be that when My Glory passes by, I will put you in a cavern of the rock, and My Word will overshadow you until I have passed; and I will take away the word of My Glory, and thou will see that which is after Me, but what is before Me shall not be seen.13

12 Shmuel Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 81, discusses the relationship between R. Judah b. Baba, who ordained students despite a Roman death decree (b. Sanh. 14a), and the transmission of authority from Moses to Joshua. 13 Based on The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch with the Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum from the Chaldee (trans. J. W. Etheridge; London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1862). The texts of the targumim have been taken from the database of Aramaic texts generated by the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL), http://call.cn.huc.edu/, under the direction of Professor Steven Kaufman. See the CAL website for details of each text. Beyond the issues discussed in this paper, the

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Since Onqelos does not employ his usual strategies for dealing with anthropomorphisms, it seems unlikely that he reads ‫ אחורי‬as “my back.” Whereas “my face” (v. 20) becomes for Onqelos “the face of my Shekinah,” and “my hand” (v. 21) becomes “my word,” he renders ‫ את אחורי‬as ‫ית דבתרי‬, “that which is behind me” or “that which is after me”—both straight translations of the Hebrew. His juxtaposition of ‫ דבתרי‬with ‫ קדם‬suggests the spatial reading as the more likely of these two; this root occurs three times in the pericope (vv. 17, 19, 21) before verse 23, and on each of those occasions, it means “in front of.” Alternatively, and perhaps more attractively, he chooses a term that preserves the spatial/temporal ambiguity. God’s Back in Early Christian Commentaries Although Augustine’s reading seems at first conventionally Christological, its temporal emphasis supports my claim that God’s back was not taken literally: And as a matter of fact the words which the LORD later says to Moses . . . are commonly at not without reason understood to prefigure the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the back parts are taken to be his flesh, in which he was born of the virgin and rose again, whether they are called the back parts [ posteriora] because of the posteriority of his mortal nature or because he deigned to take it near the end of the world, that is, at a later period [ posterius].14

Augustine offers two temporal readings for the original term, posteriora, and proceeds to claim that they may be taken as Jesus’ flesh. This implies that he did not see them as God’s flesh. Paterius too sees a temporal connection to Jesus. In this case it is not because God’s “back parts” prefigure Jesus, but rather that they represent the temporal vantage point from which Jesus may be seen—hindsight: The place is the church, the rock is the Lord, Moses is the multitude of the people of Israel who did not believe in the Lord when he preached on the earth. So that multitude stood on the rock and beheld the back

targumim are a rich storehouse of other interpretive traditions about the Sinai revelation; see Robert Hayward, “The Giving of the Torah: Targumic Perspectives,” 269–85 in this volume. 14 The Trinity 2.17.29, cited in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament III (ed. J. T. Lienhard; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 150.

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diana lipton parts of the Lord as he passed by. After the Lord’s passion and ascension they were led into the church and merited to receive faith in Christ. They did not recognize him face to face on earth, but later acknowledged him “from behind.”15

For Gregory of Nazanius, what Moses saw was not Jesus, but “the back parts of God, which he leaves behind him as token of himself, like the shadows and reflections of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes, because he is too strong for our power of perception.”16 It is not clear whether these are after-effects that remain when God has moved to another physical space, or the signs that God leaves behind him when moving into another time. If the latter, an association between God’s “after-parts” and the future is implicit; God has moved into the future, we cannot see him, but we can see the tokens that he leaves as signs of his former presence. Most relevant to our concerns is Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs; he leaves no doubt that he understands the after-parts temporally: Like to these is the saying of God to Moses: “Lo, I have set you in a cleft of the rock, and you shall see my back parts.” That rock which is Christ is therefore not completely closed but has clefts. But the cleft of the rock is he who reveals God to men and makes him known to them; for “noone knows the Father save the Son.” So no-one sees the back parts of God—that is to say, the things that are come to pass in the latter times—unless he be placed in the cleft of the rock, that is to say, when he is taught them by Christ’s own revealing.17

Whether Origen sees the future as the “plain sense” (in so far as he thinks in those terms) meaning of Exod 33:23, or whether for him “back parts” represent future events in the same way that the rock represents Jesus, his conjunction of Jesus and an emphasis on the future is critical.

15 Exposition of the Old and New Testament, Exodus, cited in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament III, 151. 16 From Oration 2.3, cited in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament III, 151–52. 17 From Commentary on the Song of Songs, 3.15, cited in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament III, 152.

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God’s Back in Jewish Commentaries Although, prior to the middle ages, rabbinic commentaries show no sign of taking God’s back literally, they do exhibit a strong temporal interest. Perhaps the most explicitly temporal interpretation comes in the Avot de Rabbi Nathan, where God’s face is interpreted as “this world,” and his back, or what is behind him, as “the world to come.”18 Exodus Rabbah shows no indication that God might have been revealing a body part when he told Moses to look at his back, failing to address the word ‫ אחורי‬at all. This is significant. The preceding midrash analyses ‫פני‬, “my face,” and the midrash in question addresses ‫כף‬, despite the fact that these body parts are mentioned often in the Bible. The fact that Exod 33:23 contains the Bible’s only reference to God’s back, and yet Exodus Rabbah neither cites the word nor comments on it, suggests that the midrashic author read it differently. But how? Several midrashim in Exodus Rabbah on Exod 33:12–23 explore the theme of future reward. Most relevant are 45.5 and 6, which link Moses’ desire to know what was the reward awaiting the righteous and why the wicked prosper to his request to see God’s glory. Although 45.6 cites only the first half of verse 23—“And I will take away my hand”—it interprets on the basis of the uncited second half of the verse: “And I will show you ‫”אחורי‬: God said to him: “I will reveal to you the reward of the righteous which I will bestow upon them at the end of days, ‫[ ”אחרית הימים‬cf. ‫]אחורי‬. R. Assi said, “The prophets beheld the banquet prepared in paradise, but did not behold the reward they would receive, for it says, ‘The eye has not seen, O God, beside you, what he will do for those who wait for him’ (Isa 64:3), and David also said ‘Oh how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored away for those who fear you’ (Ps 31:20).” (Exod. Rabbah 45.6)19

According to this midrash, God interprets eschatologically Moses’ request to see the reward for the righteous, identified by the midrashist with his request to see God’s glory. The additional words, “which I will bestow upon them at the end of days,” reflect God’s offer to show Moses what is behind him, ‫אחורי‬. For the midrashic author, then, what is behind God is what will occur at the end of days, and this is the reward for the righteous. For an English translation see The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (trans. J. Goldin; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955). 19 English translations of Exod. Rabbah based on Midrash Rabbah (3rd edition; trans. S. Lehrman; London: Soncino Press, 1983). 18

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The other important future event linked by midrashim to the second Sinai ascent is the giving of the Oral Torah. Exodus Rabbah categorically denies that the Torah was given at Sinai the first time around: And he [ Moses] began to feel remorse for having broken the tablets, but God reassured him saying: Do not grieve over the first tablets. They contained only the Ten Commandments, but in the two tablets I am about to give you now, there will also be laws, midrash and haggadot. (Exod. Rabbah 46.1)

Midrash Tan uma (Buber), on the other hand, presents a range of opinions, including the assertion in Ki Tissa 17 that the contents of both Written and Oral Torah were given to Moses on his first ascent, but that both were given orally.20 After learning the entire Torah (i.e., both the “written” prior to being written down, and the “oral”), Moses asks God to give it all in writing—he had seen a vision of the future in which the peoples of the world would steal the Torah in order to make Israel like them. Hearing this, God compromised: “Scripture” may be given in writing, but Mishnah and Talmud must remain oral, since it is these that distinguish Israel from the nations. The prooftext given for God’s compromise—namely, Scripture in writing, but Mishnah and Talmud orally—is the term ‫ על פי‬in Exod 34:27, translated idiomatically as “according to,” but read literally in the midrash as “by mouth.” Crucial for our purposes, however, is that Moses’ request for a written text is motivated by a vision of the future, which emerges smoothly from Exod 33:12–23 as I have interpreted it. A Sinai Encounter between Moses and Rabbi Aqiba The preceding analysis of Exod 33:23 and the Jewish and Christian commentaries that address it suggest a radical re-interpretation of what is arguably the Babylonian Talmud’s most evocative and widely discussed Sinai narrative, b. Mena . 29b: ‫ מצאו להקב"ה שיושב‬,‫ בשעה שעלה משה למרום‬:‫אמר רב יהודה אמר רב‬ :‫ מי מעכב על ידך? אמר לו‬,‫ רבש"ע‬:‫ אמר לפניו‬,‫וקושר כתרים לאותיות‬ ‫ שעתיד‬,‫אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו‬ ‫ הראהו‬,‫ רבש"ע‬:‫ אמר לפניו‬.‫לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות‬

20 For an English translation, see Midrash Tanhuma (Buber) (ed. J. T. Townsend; Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1997).

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‫ ולא היה יודע מה‬,‫ הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות‬.‫ חזור לאחורך‬:‫ אמר לו‬,‫לי‬ ‫ מנין‬,‫ רבי‬:‫ אמרו לו תלמידיו‬,‫ תשש כחוֹ כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד‬,‫הן אומרים‬ ,‫ חזר ובא לפני הקב"ה‬.‫ נתיישבה דעתו‬,‫ הלכה למשה מסיני‬:‫לך? אמר להן‬ ‫ יש לך אדם כזה ואתה נותן תורה ע"י? אמר‬,‫ רבונו של עולם‬:‫אמר לפניו‬ ‫ הראיתני‬,‫ רבונו של עולם‬:‫ אמר לפניו‬.‫ כך עלה במחשבה לפני‬,‫ שתוק‬:‫לו‬ ‫ ראה ששוקלין‬,‫ חזר לאחוריו‬.]‫ חזור [לאחורך‬:‫ אמר לו‬,‫ הראני שכרו‬,‫תורתו‬ ‫ כך עלה‬,‫ שתוק‬:‫ זו תורה וזו שכרה? א"ל‬,‫ רבש"ע‬:‫ אמר לפניו‬,‫בשרו במקולין‬ .‫במחשבה לפני‬ Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, At the time [lit. hour] when Moses ascended on high, he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in tying crowns [scribal decorations] to the letters. Said Moses, ‘Lord of the Universe, Who stays Your hand?’ He answered, ‘There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Aqiba ben Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle heaps and heaps of laws’. ‘Lord of the Universe’, said Moses, ‘show him to me’. He replied, ‘Turn backwards’. Moses went and sat down at the end of eight rows [and listened to the legal discourses]. Not being able to follow their arguments, he was ill at ease. But when they came to a particular subject and the disciples said to the master, ‘From what source do you know it?’ and the latter replied, ‘It is a law given to Moses at Sinai’, he was comforted. Thereupon he returned to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said, ‘Lord of the Universe, You have a man like this and You give the Torah through me?’ He replied, ‘Silence! For this is what has come before me in the plan’. Then Moses said, ‘Lord of the Universe, You have shown me his Torah, show me his reward’. ‘Turn backwards’, said He. And Moses turned round and saw them weighing out his [Aqiba’s] flesh at the market-stalls. ‘Lord of the Universe’, cried Moses, ‘such Torah, and such a reward!’ ‘Silence!’ He replied, ‘For this is what has come before me in the plan’.

All modern commentators have recognised that a preoccupation of this narrative is the relationship between Written and Oral Torahs. In an earlier analysis of this text, I highlighted the central role of time in this endeavour, suggesting that b. Mena . 29b converts time into space with the aim of demonstrating that both Oral and Written Torahs were given in one “temporal location.” Our standard answer to a temporal question—When did Moses receive the Law?—is geographic: “On Mount Sinai.”21 J. Rubenstein emphasises the prominence of time with his observations about the unusual collapse of biblical and post-biblical time. While rabbinic texts routinely create “conversations” between Torah scholars

21 See Diana Lipton, Longing for Egypt and Other Biblical Tales of the Unexpected (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008).

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whose lives were separated by hundreds of years, it is extremely rare to find rabbis interacting with biblical figures.22 And whereas most rabbinic texts that blur the boundaries between different generations of scholars make no issue of it—diverse teachings are juxtaposed as if they were formed in light of each other—our text articulates the process by which Moses meets Aqiba. Moses must turn backwards, ‫לאחורך‬, in order to go into the future. It was the semantic and conceptual similarity between this and Exod 33:23, and what that implies for the biblical perception of time, that first interested me in an intertextual reading. What interests me now in addition, but must be pursued elsewhere, is the extent to which this conception of time is also a feature of martyrdom texts. Along with all commentators of whose work I am aware, I had originally assumed that b. Mena . 29b identifies Moses’ visit to Sinai/the Aqiba academy with Exodus 19 (the first ascent, the first tablets), not Exodus 33 (the second set, the second tablets). Although the talmudic narrative gives no explicit justification for this assumption, neither does it offer an obvious reason to think otherwise. In fact, b. Mena . 29b almost certainly relates to Moses’ second ascent, following the Golden Calf and in anticipation of receiving a second set of commandments. It is hardly surprising on reflection that a rabbinic narrative seeking to validate the Oral Torah might appeal to the second set of tablets, as was indeed the case in the Exodus Rabbah and Tan uma midrashim cited above. In what ensues, though, I shall focus initially on specific textual and conceptual, as opposed to basic structural, links between the two texts. As usually interpreted, God’s addition to the Torah of the decorative scribal crowns suggest that he had been hard at work and is just icing the cake when Moses comes across him. Yet the crowns can more plausibly be viewed as a response to the Golden Calf; God expanded the Torah to take account of Israel’s freshly displayed intransigence. On this reading, the additions to the Torah are a permanent memorial to the incompleteness of the first tablets, and indeed to the failure of the first giving, a conception that is more than at home in a narrative that seeks to validate the Oral Torah. Furthermore, while Moses’ first question to God—“Master of the world, ‫מי מעכב על ידיך‬, who will stay your hand?”—is hard to fathom in the context of the first Sinai

22 Jeffrey L. Rubinstein (ed.), Rabbinic Stories (Classics in Western Spirituality; New York: Paulist Press, 2002), 215.

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encounter, it fits perfectly after the Golden Calf. Staying God’s hand is an idiom for deflecting punishment, and Moses now asks God who will perform this role in future on Israel’s behalf. The juxtaposition of “hand” and “back” in Exod 33:23 invites the rabbinic association of the removal of punishment (staying the hand) and the revelation of the future (seeing what lies behind). What has not, to my knowledge, been observed by previous commentators on this text is that what Moses sees God doing on Mt. Sinai alludes directly to the first paragraph of the Shema. Bearing in mind Daniel Boyarin’s important observations about the centrality of the Shema and the assertion of God’s oneness in martyrdom texts,23 its presence here should hardly be surprising, above all in a text about Rabbi Aqiba, but I shall nevertheless spell out the evidence. First, Moses’ sight of God ‫שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות‬, “sitting and tying crowns onto the letters,” recalls the Shema, ‫וקשרתם לאות על ידיך‬, “and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand.” Second, Moses responds to this sight by asking a seemingly unrelated question that is traditionally understood as, “Who will restrain your hand?” Once the allusion to the Shema is recognised, it becomes clear that Moses’ question is not out of the blue as usually supposed, but emerges directly from what he observes on Mt. Sinai. God’s decoration of the ‫אותיות‬, letters, but literally signs, recalls the biblical instruction to “bind the ‫אות‬, sign, upon your hand,” leading Moses to ask ‫מי מעכב על ידיך‬, “who will bind your hand?” This reading explains the role of the traditionally overlooked preposition ‫על‬, upon, in ‫מי מעכב על ידיך‬, “who will bind your hand?” The words ‫על ידיך‬, upon your hand, are a direct quotation from the Shema. In its talmudic context, however, its meaning changes, and it evokes restraint. A midrash from Genesis Rabbah on the creation of the sun and the moon shows how the term can function in both ways. A man intends to take a sea voyage during Sukkot, and asks his brother to pray for him. His brother explains that he is unable to do so, since this would involve putting his brother’s welfare above the needs of the community. At Sukkot, Jews pray for rain, but rain is detrimental during sea voyages, and indeed other forms of travel.24 According to

23 In relation to b. Ber. 61b, Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, 106, writes: “The story about Rabbi Akiva’s death dramatizes the connection between ‘the reading of the Shema [Hear O Israel],’ the declaration of God’s unity and oneness, and Jewish martyrology.” 24 Genesis Rabbah, on Gen 1:14.

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the midrash, the advisability of staying at home during this festival is promoted through the dictum, “When you bind your lulav, bind your feet (restrain yourself ).” Although the meaning of bind changes with the shift in object from lulav to feet, the verb in both instances is ‫קטר‬, precisely equivalent to b. Mena ot’s ‫קושר‬, “tie.” B. Mena . 29b uses two different verbs, the first clearly meaning “tie” and the second evoking restraint, as with the lulav, by the use of a verb, ‫מעכב‬. It is clear, though, why Mena ot, unlike the Genesis Rabbah midrash, uses two different verbs. The second ‫ מעכב‬resonates with Aqiba. Built into Moses’ question is the single acceptable answer. Who else but Rabbi Aqiba (‫ב‬-‫ק‬-‫ )ע‬could stay (‫ב‬-‫כ‬-‫ )ע‬God’s hand?25 B. Mena . 29b gives a short version of the story of Rabbi Aqiba’s death at the hands of Roman torturers. B. Ber. 61b offers a fuller version, culminating with an account of Aqiba’s dying words, the Shema:26 When R. Akiba was taken out for execution, it was the hour for reciting the Shema, and while they combed his flesh with iron combs, he was accepting upon himself the kingship of heaven. His disciples said to him: Our teacher, even to this degree? He said to them: All my days I have been troubled by this verse, ‘with all thy soul’, [which I interpret,] ‘even if he takes your soul’. I said: When shall I have the opportunity of fulfilling this? Now that I have the opportunity shall I not fulfill it? He prolonged the word ‫‘[ אחד‬one’] until he expired while saying it. A bat kol [ heavenly voice] went forth and proclaimed: Happy are you, Aqiba, that your soul has departed with the word ‫ !אחד‬The ministering angels said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Such Torah, and such a reward? [ He should have been] among those that die by your hand, O Lord. He replied to them: Their portion is in life. A bat kol went forth and proclaimed, Happy are you, R. Akiba, that you are destined for the life of the world to come.

The allusion to the Shema in the opening of the story in b. Mena . 29b is thus not incidental, but a crucial component of the unfolding narrative. As well as identifying Rabbi Aqiba, the text predicts his dying words: the final word of the Shema. Indeed, God’s response to Moses’ question identifies Aqiba’s very last word. Asked “Who will stay your 25 Kaf and quf are elsewhere interchangeable, e.g., ‫ ;עכברא עקברא‬see Michael Sokoloff (ed.), Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 26 For readings of the Aqiba martyrdom traditions, see: Michael Fishbane, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994); Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990); and Boyarin, Dying for God, 106.

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hand,” ‫מי מעכב על ידיך‬, God replies ‫אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף‬ ‫כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו‬, “In the future, there will be a certain

[literally one] man, and his name is Aqiba ben Joseph.” Aqiba is from the outset a singular man, with all that entails. We meet him as ‫אדם‬ ‫אחד‬, literally, “one man,” and his last word will be ‫אחד‬, “one.” As usually interpreted, Moses is perturbed by his inability to comprehend the dialogue between Aqiba and his students, but is reassured when he [Aqiba] arrives at “a certain matter,” ‫כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד‬. In the light of the preceding analysis, this may more plausibly be read, “when he came to the word ‘one’.” What reassures Moses is hearing the familiar insistence that the Lord alone is Aqiba’s God, and that Aqiba learned this from the law of Moses on Sinai. As generally read, Moses is reassured by the sound of his own name, but I read it differently. Hearing the incomprehensible scholarly discourse, Moses must have wondered what he and Rabbi Aqiba had in common. Only when he heard the word “one,” linked to his own name and the giving of the law at Sinai, was Moses satisfied that this is not, after all, another religion with two distinct dispensations. This is not just an internal Jewish validation of the Oral Torah, but one that engages with the Christian perception of the New Testament. Further evidence both that the Shema is central to the Moses/Aqiba story and that the validity of the Oral Torah was a concern for its authors emerges from the context in which the story is reported.27 The Mishnah preceding the Moses/Aqiba story in b. Mena . 29b is cited at the end of b. Mena . 28a: Mishnah. Of the seven branches of the candlestick, the [absence of ] one invalidates the others. Of the seven lamps thereof, the [absence of ] one invalidates the others. Of the two portions of scripture in the mezuzah, the [absence of ] one invalidates the other; indeed, even one [imperfect] letter can invalidate the whole. Of the four portions of scripture in the tefillin, the [absence] of one invalidates the others; indeed, even one [imperfect] letter can invalidate the whole. Of the four fringes, [the absence] of one invalidates the others, since the four together form one precept. R. Ishmael says, the four are separate precepts. (m. Mena . 3:7)

I thank Rabbi David Shapero, for pointing out—quite transformatively for me — that the Mishnah was consistent with my analysis of the aggadata. Many thanks also to Gershon Hepner for seeking that advice on my behalf, and for general encouragement on this paper. 27

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Several points of contact leap out from the page to suggest that the Moses/Aqiba story is relating to this Mishnah. First and foremost is the word ‫מעכבין‬. The same term occurs at the beginning of the Moses/ Aqiba story where it means “stay” or “restrain” (Babylonian Aramaic), and here in the Mishnah means “invalidate” (Palestinian Aramaic). This Mishnah is concerned with validation, precisely the concern we attribute to the Moses/Aqiba aggadata. Is a menorah with only six branches valid? No, the absence of one branch renders the remaining six invalid. When it comes to text, even one imperfect letter, let alone the absence of a whole portion, renders the whole invalid. The gemara discusses various aspects of this ruling at some length before focusing on a second point of contact between the Mishnah and the Moses/ Aqiba story: a text (the mezuzah scroll) with two portions in which the absence of one invalidates the other. The repetition of this part of the Mishnah just prior to the telling of the Moses/Aqiba story drives home its extraordinary central point. This is not, as we had thought, simply a narrative that claims validity for the Oral Torah by locating its origin on Mt. Sinai. It is a narrative that asserts that Written and Oral Torah are symbiotic; without the Written Torah, the Oral Torah would be invalid, and without the Oral Torah, the Written Torah would be invalid. That its subject is the Oral and Written Torahs explains, perhaps, why the gemara repeats the only one of the Mishnah’s original examples that has two parts (the two scrolls in the mezuzah as opposed to the four in tefillin); the parallel to the theme of the aggadata is closer. To be sure, it is little short of chutzpah to claim that the Written Torah is effectively invalid without its rabbinic accompaniment. Yet the less dramatic formulation may be the more significant in its context. A criticism of Aqiban halakhah was that it was not derived from biblical interpretation, but rather, like Christian scriptures as the rabbis perceived them, came out of thin air (or meaningless decorations). This aggadata refutes that claim. The Oral Torah does indeed require the Written Torah, though not in the way that the Ishmaelan opponents of Aqiban interpretation envisaged. On the Aqiban model, the two are inextricably bound by their shared revelation. It is simply not necessary to claim, as Aqiba’s opponents did, that halakhah should be grounded letter by letter in the Written Torah. This last point—if correct—indicates that the story works on more than one level, relating both to internal rabbinic themes as well as Christian. I return now to an engagement with Christianity—Aqiba as an alternative to Jesus.

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A Messiah/Martyr Polemic? The passage of Mishnah repeated shortly before the Moses/Aqiba story has two parts, one referring to the loss of one of two portions of text in the mezuzah, and another referring to a second means by which they can become invalid—not by the absence of one portion, but by an incomplete letter. This gives rise to an example of how a letter might be rendered incomplete: ‫ראמי בר תמרי דהוא חמוה דרמי בר דיקולי איפסיקא ליה כרעא דוי"ו‬ ‫ זיל אייתי ינוקא דלא חכים‬:‫ א"ל‬,‫ אתא לקמיה דרבי זירא‬,‫דויהרג בניקבא‬ .‫ אי לא ־ יהרג הוא ופסול‬,‫ אי קרי ליה ויהרג ־ כשר‬,‫ולא טפש‬ It once happened to Rami b. Tamre, also known as Rami b. Dikule, that the leg of the letter vav in the word ‫ויהרג‬, va-yaharog [and he killed] had been severed by a perforation; whereupon he came to R. Zera who said, Go, fetch a child that is neither too clever nor too foolish; if he is able to read the word as ‫ויהרג‬, va-yaharog [and he killed] it is valid; otherwise, the word is ‫יהרג‬, yahareg [he will be killed] and it is invalid.

Daniel Boyarin has identified the earliest rabbinic martyrdom text as the Mekilta on Exod 15:3: R. Akiba says: I shall speak of the prophecies and the praises of Him by whose word the world came into being, before all the nations of the world. For all the nations of the world ask Israel, saying: “What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so adjure us” (Song 5:9), that you are so ready to die for Him, and so ready to let yourselves be killed for Him?—For it is said: ‘Therefore do the maidens love Thee’ (Song 1:3), meaning, they love Thee unto death. And it is also written: ‘Nay but for Thy sake are we killed all the day’ (Ps 44:23).—‘You are handsome, you are mighty, come and intermingle with us.’ But the Israelites say to the nations of the world: ‘Do you know Him? Let us but tell you some of His praise: “My beloved is white and ruddy (Song 5:10).”28

This text links Rabbi Aqiba’s martyrdom to the assertion in Ps 44:23 that “It is for your sake that we are slain all day long, that we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” The occurrence of a passage dealing exclusively with the verb ‫הרג‬, kill, in the gemara immediately preceding b. Mena . 29b’s account of Rabbi Aqiba’s martyrdom enables

28 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (trans. J. Lauterbach; Skokie, IL: Jewish Publication Society, 2005), Tractate Shirata.

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the talmudic redactor to duplicate a key theme of the Mekhilta, and to present a richer and more complex analysis of Jewish martyrdom. The biblical context of the particular instance of ‫ויהרג‬, “and he killed,” under discussion is Exod 13:15.29 This is one of four tefillin texts, and thus an important connection to the Moses/Aqiba story as I have interpreted it. This verse appears in a complex pericope that describes the consecration of the first-born on the one hand, and, on the other, the commandment to observe the rules of Passover, using in both cases the language of the Shema. The first reference to a sign on the hand and a reminder on the forehead follows directly after the command to eat unleavened bread, and seems therefore to apply more generally to the institution of Passover: And this shall serve you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead—in order that the Teaching of the LORD may be in your mouth—that with a mighty hand the LORD freed you from Egypt. You shall keep this institution at its set time from year to year (Exod 13:9–10).

Later in the pericope, the sign on the hand seems to apply specifically to the redemption of the first-born son: When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, the first-born of both man and beast. Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD every first male issue of the womb, but redeem every first-born among my sons. And so it shall be a sign upon your hand and as a symbol on your forehead that with a mighty hand the LORD freed us from Egypt (Exod 13:16).

The point made in BT Men. 29b is that the vav consecutive indicates a change of subject. Pharaoh refused to send us out, and the LORD killed all the first-born in Egypt. Without the vav consecutive, the change of subject is less clear. Far more importantly, the perforation on the leg of the vav renders it as a yod. A double yod in a manuscript was an indication that the verb must be read as a niphal (passive): “And when Pharaoh refused to send us, the LORD will be killed . . .”30 This presents at least two possible causes for rabbinic anxiety. Most obviously, the subject becomes God, and the imperfect niphal suggests that he will at some future time be killed. Slightly less obviously, but far more worryingly, the subject is not straightforwardly God. The talmudic narrative See Rashi’s commentary on the Babylonian Talmud ad loc. I am grateful to Stefan Reif for explaining to me the significance of the double yod in manuscripts. 29 30

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is addressing a possible Christian reading of this verse in which it is taken to predict the killing of Jesus. Given that the pericope in which the verse appears is about the Passover offering, already equated with Jesus in Christian sources, and that the verse continues with the words that every first-born male issue will be sacrificed to the LORD (though first-born sons will be redeemed), the less obvious reading seems, in fact, the more plausible. A final possible reason to see here an allusion to Jesus here is the gemara’s report that the leg of the vav was ‫ניקבא‬, “perforated” or “pierced.” John 19 refers to two typological predictions for the crucifixion. First, the fact that Jesus’ legs are not broken on the cross is linked to the instruction in Exod 12:46 and Num 9:12 that the bones of the Passover sacrifice must not be broken. Neither text specifies that the legs of the sheep cannot be broken, but its legs are mentioned in Exod 12:9, not the usual term ‫רגל‬, but the much less common ‫כרע‬. The word that signifies the leg of the vav in b. Mena . 29b is likewise not ‫רגל‬, but ‫כרע‬. Second, the Roman centurion’s piercing of Jesus’ side is linked to Zech 12:10, which predicts the day when Jerusalem will lament over the “pierced” (slain) as if over a favourite son or a firstborn. The root for “pierced” is ‫דקר‬, not ‫נקב‬, but the many other points of contact suggest that we should not dismiss the possibility that the b. Mena . 29b gemara describes the vav as “pierced” (frequently applied to vessels, but almost never to letters) in order to allude to the account of the crucifixion in John 19. Another key term in the discussion of the perforated letter is ‫איפסיקא‬, severed M. Sokoloff gives as his second definition of ‫פסק‬: “to stop flowing [cf. Ma, ‫ מיא פסיקיא‬stagnant water, Gy 57.1].”31 If the pierced leg of the vav in ‫ויהרג‬, va-yarahog, alludes to Jesus’ unbroken legs and his pierced side in John 19, then the verb ‫ פסק‬may perhaps have been chosen to evoke the blood and water that came out of his side.32 Michael Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It would be tempting to explore, in another context, possible connections to the “pierced Messiah” tradition. See Geza Vermes, “The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research: Seminar on the Rule of the War from Cave 4 (4Q285),” JJS 43 (1992): 85–90. “Isaiah the prophet: [The thickets of the forest] will be cut [down with an axe and Lebanon by a majestic one will f]all. And there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse [ ] the Branch of David and they will enter into judgement with [ ] and the Prince of the Congregation, the Bran[ch of David] will kill him [ by stroke]s and by wounds. And a Priest [of renown (?)] will command [ the s]lai[n] of the Kitti[m].” Possible parallels between the Messiah son of Joseph (b. Sukkah 52a on Zech 12:12) and Aqiba ben Joseph are intriguing, as is the fact that the young child called to read the 31 32

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It is hard to resist speculating on the relationship between b. Mena . 29b and early Christianity. Is it possible that the process of validating the Oral Torah involved not simply locating it at Sinai, as we have seen, but also differentiating it from the New Testament, which claimed its own revelatory status? Reasons for thinking that this could be the case include parallels, presumably for the sake of differentiation, between Rabbi Aqiba and Jesus: a possible allusion to the crown of thorns in the two terms (“crown” and “thorns”) used to describe the Torah’s scribal decorations; Rabbi Aqiba’s eschatological introduction (“a man will come at the end of many generations”); Aqiba’s ability to interpret on the basis of signs and symbols with no inherent meaning; his death at the hands of Roman torturers, and his role as guardian of a second revealed text. More significantly, a brief overview of early Christian commentaries on Deut 6:4 highlights their perspective on God’s oneness: The Father and the Son are one God, not two (Hilary of Poitiers). The Father is God, the Son is God, but there is one God (Gregory of Nyssa). We are called to listen to God. God is immutable and wholly one (Ambrose). The Jews were called to faith in the one God and this faith saved them (Chrysostum). The most blessed Trinity is one God. When the Old Testament speaks of one God, it speaks of the trinity (Augustine). The prayer ‘Hear O Israel’ is addressed to the one God, yet it does not deny the distinction of persons (Fulgentius).33

Rabbi Aqiba’s dying word, ‫אחד‬, “one,” may be read as an assertion of monotheism in the face of Roman polytheism, its explicit narrative context. In the context of the Torah academy, however, it has a more subtle feel—not a protest against paganism, but a strong voice in the theological debate reflected in the patristic commentaries summarised above. Rabbi Aqiba is not Jesus, b. Mena . 29b seems to say, the Oral Law is not the New Testament, and Jews, unlike Christians, are in unbroken continuity with Moses and Sinai. Finally, the spectre of Christianity brings us full circle back to our starting point: what Moses saw behind God, that is, in the future. Not surprisingly, Patristic commentators invoke Jesus here—his reign at the end of days, and his role as guardian of the new covenant. Is it possible that b. Mena . 29b is, at least in part, a response to this Christian tradition? The rightful heir pierced vav is a ‫ינוקא‬, cf. the ‫ ינוק‬who plays over a viper’s hole in Isa 11:8; cf. the allusion in the DSS text above to Isa 11:4. 33 Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament III, 282.

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to Moses, identified by God on Mt. Sinai, was not Jesus as Christians claimed, but Rabbi Aqiba. It is not Jesus who will be killed by Jews, but Rabbi Aqiba who will be killed by Romans. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan—a Mystery Solved? 34 The assumption underlying this paper is that many early Jewish and Christian commentators are unaware that ‫ אחורי‬might refer literally to God’s back and, on the contrary, are strikingly non-anthropomorphic in their interpretations. A text that fails entirely to fit this pattern is b. Ber. 7a, which posits that when God showed Moses what was behind him, he showed him the knot of his tefillin. This is repeated in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and interpreted by later commentators, including Rashi, as the tefillin knot at the back of God’s head. It is hard to conceive of an image more anthropomorphic than God wearing his tefillin, but I shall try to demonstrate that my proposed reading of b. Mena . 29b provides a non-anthropomorphic explanation for the tefillin tradition in b. Ber. 7a, in that it shows that the two texts, along with the story of Rabbi Aqiba’s martyrdom in b. Ber. 61a, are inextricably linked, and that it emphasises how all these texts address the same themes of reward and punishment. As mentioned above, the one targumic translation that appears at first glance to take God’s back literally is Tg. Ps.-J. ‫ואעבר ית כיתי מלאכיא דקימין ומשמשין קדמי ותחמי ית קטר דבידא‬ ‫דתפילי איקר שכינתי ואפי איקר שכינתי לית אפשר לך למיחמי‬ Although the word order of ‫ דבידא‬and ‫ דתפילי‬is the reverse of what might have been expected (hence the mysterious reference to “handborder” in some English translations), “I will show you the knot of the tefillin of my hand” probably comes close to the author’s intentions. As noted above, however, the strikingly anthropomorphic reference to God’s tefillin is doubly out of place in targum, where hints of divine physicality are usually minimised, not intensified. Can the author of Tg. Ps.-J., admittedly less sensitive than other targumists to the perils of

I am extremely grateful to Raphael Loewe for drawing my attention to the puzzle of God’s tefillin. My attempt to find the answer generated the most creative exegesis I have ever written, all of which I was forced to discard when I discovered that the solution was before my eyes in b. Mena . 29b, the very text I had been working on all along. 34

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anthropomorphism, really have intended to emphasise it in this way? A possible explanation lies in the analysis offered above of b. Mena . 29b. As I have interpreted it, tefillin and the Shema are at the heart of this talmudic narrative. Moses’ sight of God tying crowns onto the letters echoes the Shema, and his question—who will bind onto/ restrain your hand—refers to tefillin. B. Ber. 7a and Tg. Ps.-J. alluded to this text, or a tradition upon which it is based, when they claimed that Moses saw the knot of God’s tefillin when he ascended Sinai for the second time. The image of God binding crowns onto letters is, I think, dictated by the author’s need to articulate several different ideas—the validity of the rabbinic Sefer Torah, precise details of Rabbi Aqiba’s life and death, and the issue of reward and punishment, whether within one individual life, or in relation to Israel’s long-term and even eschatological destiny. This last theme occurs in almost all commentaries on Exod 33:23. It is also the theological context into which is embedded b. Ber. 7a’s claim that God showed Moses the knot of his tefillin. A complex discussion of why bad things happen to good people and the wicked prosper concludes: R. Meir said: only two [requests] were granted to him [Moses], and one was not granted to him. For it is said: And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, although he may not deserve it, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy, although he may not deserve it. And He said, You cannot see My face. A Tanna taught in the name of R. Joshua b. Korhah: The Holy One, blessed be He, spoke thus to Moses: When I wanted, you did not want [to see My face]; now that you want, I do not want.—This is in opposition to [the interpretation of this verse by] R. Samuel b. Nahmani in the name of R. Jonathan. For R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Jonathan: As a reward of three [pious acts] Moses was privileged to obtain three [favours]. In reward of ‘And Moses hid his face’, he obtained the brightness of his face. In reward of ‘For he was afraid’, he was granted the privilege that they were afraid to come near to him. In reward of ‘To look upon God’, he received ‘The likeness of the Lord he does behold’. And ‘I will take away My hand, and you will see My back’. R. Hama b. Bizana said in the name of R. Simon the Pious: This teaches us that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses the knot of the tefillin.

Read in isolation, the reference in this passage and in Tg. Ps.-J. to God’s tefillin seems obscure, irrelevant and fanciful. Read in the context of b. Mena . 29b and b. Ber. 61b, we can see that it answers a crucial theological question. Without Moses’ intercession on Israel’s behalf, what will

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serve in future to “stay God’s hand,” that is to limit the harmful effects of divine anger? The answer is three in one: tefillin, Torah, and acts of martyrdom performed in this instance by Rabbi Aqiba. This interplay between tefillin and Torah is highlighted by an idiosyncrasy of Tg. Ps.-J. on Exod 33:23. Tg. Ps-J. is the only targum to feature the word ‫דבידא‬, “hand.” Targumim other than Onqelos use a term that signifies “word” or “oracle,” as here in Neofiti: ‫ותחמי ית דברא דיקר    ׳ואחמי ית דבורה דאיקר    ״\ואעבר ית כיתי מלאכיה‬ ‫דקיימין ומשמשין קדמיי שכינתי ואפי איקר שכינתי לית איפשר דתחמי   ׳לך‬ ‫למיחמ י    ״׃‬ Neofiti (and other targumim) uses a word in which three of the letters (‫א‬-‫ב‬-‫ )ד‬are the same as those in the equivalent word in Tg. Ps.-J. Tg. PsJ.’s odd letter out is dalet; we find resh in the equivalent place elsewhere. Given the similarity between the letters dalet and resh, the dalet in Tg. Ps.-J. could reflect a scribal error. Alternatively, the similarity could be coincidental; perhaps the author of Tg. Ps.-J. wanted to allude to the tefillin tradition, and was not motivated in his choice by the translations offered by other targumists. I favour a third option: the targumist chose a form of the word “hand” that enabled him to reflect both the tefillin tradition found in b. Ber. 7a, and the “word” or “oracle” tradition of other targumim. As noted above, the word order in Tg. Ps.-J. is surprising; the word for tefillin would usually come before the word for hand. Had Tg. Ps.-J. followed the normal word order, the first person singular possessive ending would be attached to ‫דבידא‬, rather than to ‫דתפילי‬, and this would detract from the “Necker effect” (look once and you see “hand,” look again and you see “word”) he has achieved. But why did the author of Tg. Ps.-J. want to achieve this effect? Why not move unambiguously to “hand”? Perhaps because it reflects concisely and quite brilliantly the very ambiguity of b. Mena . 29b. The Aramaic ‫ דבירא‬refers in some cases to the revealed Torah (especially the Ten Commandments), the text that Moses sees when he ascends Mt. Sinai. Tg. Ps.-J.’s ‫ דבידא‬alludes to the hand that will be stayed, both by the tefillin, and by the Torah itself, as we see in a passage from b. B. Bat. 16a with striking similar themes: Raba said: Job sought to exculpate the whole world. He said: Sovereign of the Universe, you have created the ox with cloven hoofs and you have created the ass with whole hoofs; you have created Paradise and you have created Gehinnom: you have created righteous men and you have created

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diana lipton wicked men, and who can stay your hand? His companions answered him: You banish fear and restrain devotion before God. If God created the evil inclination, He also created the Torah as its antidote.

Setting aside the evil inclination, which has no parallel in b. Mena . 29b, the problem and the solution are more or less identical in these two texts. Job exemplifies the righteous man who was not rewarded, and is therefore like Rabbi Aqiba. The issue is thus God’s punishing hand and how it might be stayed, and the answer is the Torah. By choosing the form of a word that evokes both the punishing hand and the revealed Torah, the author of Tg. Ps.-J. is able to convey to his readers both the problem that vexed the rabbis above all—divine justice—and its solution—the Torah. Conclusions I am painfully conscious of the sense in which this paper is closer to the textual equivalent of a cartoon than a finished work of art; what I have sketched in outline must be filled out in detail elsewhere. My conclusions will not take the form of a summary of the many interpretative claims I have made, but rather some methodological observations. First, it is difficult if not impossible to be a scholar of the Bible and a scholar of the Talmud. Not surprisingly, most work on the Talmud is produced by Talmud specialists, but I hope I have shown here that there are occasions upon which biblical scholars who are not trained in Talmud can contribute to talmudic scholarship. My re-reading of b. Mena . 29b was possible only because I first re-examined the biblical account of what Moses saw on Sinai, using the standard range of skills and techniques available to Bible scholars, but not generally used by Talmud scholars. Related to this point, but distinct from it, is a methodological issue that applies especially to the kind of talmudic material that attracts non-specialists. Many exegetes, including myself, have analysed the Moses/Aqiba aggadata in isolation from its talmudic context. I hope I have shown through my use of the mishnaic discussion of what invalidates a mezuzah that reading in context can be transformative. We cannot understand the precise way in which the Moses/Aqiba aggadata uses Sinai to validate the Oral Torah unless we first take on board the talmudic ruling about what disqualifies a textual unit with two parts. It seems most likely to me that the Moses/Aqiba aggadata was placed here in b. Mena . 29b because of its connection

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with the preceding discussion, and may even have been redacted to highlight the thematic links between the two. Finally, my reading of Jewish and Christian responses to Moses’ second Sinai ascent provides textual support for those who claim that an increasingly nuanced model is required to understand the relationship between emerging Christianity and some (not all) Jewish developments in the same period. What is striking about the analyses offered here is not the differences between Jewish and Christian approaches to what Moses saw on Sinai, but the extent to which some rabbinic texts seem bent on offering Jewish alternatives to what seem to have started life as Christian traditions. Rabbi Aqiba is portrayed as Moses’ successor not just as part of an internal dispute over succession and authority, but to show that Jesus is not Moses’ successor. Jews need not turn to Jesus to stay God’s punishing hand in the absence of Moses; Aqiba performs that function. The Oral Torah is located on Mt. Sinai not only as part of an internal process of validation, but in order to claim that the New Testament—another, very different, “second installment”—was not valid. Jews need not read the New Testament to find out what happens next.

SINAI IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE David Brown University of St. Andrews, Scotland In this essay I want to explore how Sinai has been treated in the visual arts (including architecture) over the centuries by both Judaism and Christianity. Not all is as might be expected from either religion. So it will be important to examine some of the reasons behind changing approaches. Although the parody of Judaism uninterested in art till modern times has long since been discredited (not least under the influence of archaeological discoveries), I begin with Christianity because its history of visual engagement with what happened on Mt. Sinai is more continuous and better known. 1. Christian Developments Here I examine three types of approach: how Moses’ role in mediating law is treated, the influence of the presumed place of revelation, and, finally, Moses as type or pattern and so as anticipatory of Christ. Traditio Legis One may begin with a surprise, and that is the fact that, although the early Latin Church quickly assumed the model of Christ as the new lawgiver, it was not to Moses that artists turned for suitable models or parallels but to the existing culture of the Empire. That may seem all the more puzzling given how deeply that notion of the new law in Christ runs through Roman Catholic moral theology until at least the Second Vatican Council.1 But on the other side must be set the huge

1 One indicator of the difference Vatican II (1962–5) made is the contrast between the earlier and later major works of Bernard Häring (each in three volumes): The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity (7th ed.; trans. Edwin Kaiser; 3 vols; Cork: Mercier Press, 1963–67) and Free and Faithful in Christ: Moral Theology for Clergy and Laity (3 vols; New York: Seabury Press, 1978–81).

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prestige of Roman law both in its original context and in subsequent Christian centuries.2 Although unfortunately heavily restored and so not always entirely clear in its intention, an image from the church of Santa Costanza in Rome from about 350 provides a good example of a pattern that came to be known as the traditio legis or “handing over of the law.”3 In imagery that is almost certainly earlier than the keys tradition, Christ hands over a scroll to Peter in the presence of Paul as witness. While in this case there is no doubt that it is a scroll, in others the appearance is more like a tablet.4 Even so, this would not necessarily point to Sinai, as there was the rival ancient tradition of the Twelve Tables among the Romans themselves.5 In none is the authority of Christ in doubt, but sometimes this is given additional emphasis, as in one instance where Christ stands on a globe.6 That last theme was also derived from imperial art, where the image of the emperor enthroned on the universe symbolised his worldwide sovereignty. Were there any uncertainty about the source, such doubts are quickly put to rest by even more explicit borrowings, not least on sarcophagi where this theme is frequent. So, for example, on the wellknown sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (4th c.), Christ is presented standing on the head of Caelus, the classical personification of the heavens. Equally, there is no shortage of instances where imperial authority is delegated by means of a scroll, including conspicuously in Rome itself on the Arch of Constantine. The delivery of the keys of heaven to St. Peter was eventually to replace such imagery in the middle ages. In the sixteenth century, however, the issue of the relation between old and new covenant came to the fore once more. Whereas medieval Catholicism had been content to see the Christian gospel as essentially a new form of law, among

The greatest flowering of Roman law for the Church occurs between the reigns of Popes Gregory VII (1073–85) and Innocent III (1198–1216). 3 For illustration, André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), no. 101. 4 As on a silver casket from c. 400 now in the Byzantine Museum at Thessalonica; for illustration, Thomas F. Matthews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 80. 5 Probably dating from c. 450 b.c.e., they were published on bronze, ivory or wood (traditions differ). Although the originals had perished by Cicero’s day, as a schoolboy he was still required to learn their contents by heart. 6 As in an image from c. 450 in S. Giovanni in Fonte at Naples; for illustration, Grabar, Christian Iconography, no. 102. 2

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the Reformers Luther in particular was adamant that law and gospel should be held in sharp contrast. The result was the very reverse of the idea behind traditio legis imagery. In its place, especially in Germany, came paintings that underlined the opposition. It is fascinating to observe the resultant changes in the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), as he himself moves from Catholicism to Lutheranism. The effect of the Reformation is by no means confined to new theological understandings such as this. More fundamentally, even the objectives behind his painting changes. Whereas in his Catholic period his primary aim had been to secure the visual engagement of the viewer, now intellectual ideas took precedence. That is to say, instead of encouraging imaginative identification with what is taking place within the canvas, the idea is now to ensure the viewer’s endorsement of its implications for faith or belief. The result is two quite different strategies. In his earlier work, Cranach did not hesitate to alter the details of the crucifixion story, in order to give it more immediate contemporary relevance: for instance, indications of the two thieves having been tortured beforehand was allowed, as this was a normal part of medieval procedure.7 Again, more pertinently here, in an early painting of the delivery of the Ten Commandments which is combined with the incident of the Golden Calf, the idolaters are placed on the same level as Moses on his mountain.8 Such violation of space is presumably intended to encourage a more immediate response on the part of the viewer in confronting the two alternatives of sin or obedience. But Cranach goes even further in actually altering the biblical narrative in order to secure a more ready intelligibility of what the two options are. In place of what would have seemed to most viewers as the rather puzzling worship of a cow, Cranach has substituted a statue of a beautiful young god, perhaps Apollo. Perhaps the most obvious contrast that comes with his conversion to Protestantism is a desire to ensure that any religious painting is seen self-evidently to point beyond itself. In the main in his own case this is achieved largely through a rather obvious use of symbolism. With

7 For a detailed exploration of how Cranach’s pre- and post-Reformation treatments of the crucifixion differed, Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London: Reaktion, 1999), 11–32, 287–95. 8 Original in the Lutherhalle in Wittenberg; for illustration, Régis Debray, The Old Testament: Through 100 Masterpieces of Art (London: Merrell, 2004), 102–3.

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his son, however, that approach is carried one stage further, in a new use of texts even within the paintings themselves.9 The viewer was no longer trusted to get the interpretation correct. The nature of that progression is perhaps best illustrated by comparing a painting by the elder Cranach with one from Hans Holbein the Younger. In Cranach’s Law and Gospel (1529) an all too obvious symbolism is dominant, but textual commentary is reserved for outside and beneath the painting.10 Holbein, however, casts such restraints to the winds in his Allegory of the Old and New Testaments (1535).11 Homo (duly labelled as such) sits under a tree, while his two companions, Isaiah and John the Baptist, point towards the right hand side of the painting and so to what has been done on his behalf in the crucifixion and resurrection (again labelled as justificatio nostra and victor noster). Balancing those two events on the left are Adam and Eve (entitled peccatum) and the brazen serpent (mysterium justificationis). It is, however, what is occurring in the top right and top left that most concerns us here. On the right Christ is on the Mount of Olives praying as an angel presents the cross to him, while on the other side Moses is receiving the Decalogue on Mount Sinai. The elevated position of the latter might be taken to suggest a positive evaluation for Moses’ role. While no doubt true in part, any such notion is massively qualified by the fact that the whole of the left side is in gloom with that side of the tree under which Homo sits stripped of its leaves. At the foot of the tree (again on that side) lies Death (once more labelled in Latin). An interesting challenge to such theology as is presented here by Holbein has come recently from the modern installation artist, Douglas Gordon (b. 1966). In a 2006 retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Art in Edinburgh, Gordon chose to dedicate a room to reflection on the painting’s message.12 A large reproduction reversed the images, while tree stumps and broken mirrors on the floor produced 9 For some examples, Werner Schade, Cranach: A Family of Master Painters (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980), ill. 195, 212, 222, 249. 10 Although woodcuts have also survived, the original is in the Schlossmuseum at Gotha. For illustration and some discussion of Cranach’s intentions, Joseph L. Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reaktion, 2004), esp. 29–33. 11 Now in the National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh. Almost certainly, the more devout Cranach had some influence on Holbein’s version. For illustration and Holbein’s religious views, Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener, Hans Holbein (London: Reaktion, 1997), 112–19. 12 In the exhibition catalogue, allusion is made to both Cranach and Holbein but with only Cranach reversed. There is also some discussion of Gordon’s intentions from

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further deflections of the original. Although Gordon as an atheist saw himself challenging the dogmatism inherent in all religion, the installation could equally be read as primarily questioning the priorities proposed by the original and thus principally its anti-Judaism. Not all Reformation leaders, however, took so negative a view of law. In particular Calvin assigned law a key role in what follows justification, the sanctification of those thus redeemed. Although both Luther and Zwingli had some influence on Thomas Cranmer, it was Calvin who was to be most decisive in shaping thinking in the first few centuries of the history of the Church of England. Whereas Luther had allowed the retention of painting and even sculpture in church, and many German altars had as a result retained their traditional form, in England simple communion tables were everywhere substituted. Also now taking the place of a reredos or any other form of decoration behind the altar, almost invariably, were one or more sets of plain tablets, instructing the people in the Ten Commandments, in the Apostles’ Creed, and in the Lord’s Prayer.13 Of these the Decalogue was unusually placed centrally, with its moral emphasis seen as supported on one side by faith (the Apostles’ Creed) and on the other by prayer. Although occasionally appearing prior to the Reformation, such prominence for the Law was made mandatory in the Orders of 1561 and the Advertisement of 1566, and finally enshrined in the canons of 1604.14 Once to be found in almost every English church, most such tablets were to disappear in the Catholic reforms of the nineteenth century.15 The Place and its Influence While various alternative sites have been canvassed for the actual place of revelation, here I shall ignore other options, not least because my focus will be on the impact of the particular site chosen on ways of

Keith Hartley: Ian Rankin et al., Douglas Gordon Superhumanatural (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2006). 13 Where exceptions occurred as in the three pictures by Hogarth purchased for St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol in 1755 for the same position, another prominent place had to be found. 14 Canon 82 ordered them to be “set up on the east end of every church and chapel where the people may best see and read the same.” 15 For some illustrations, George William O. Addleshaw and Frederick Etchells, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (London: Faber and Faber, 1948), Pl. I and VI; for commentary, 158–61.

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presenting the significance of Moses.16 New Testament scholars are of course very familiar with the importance of the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered there in 1888, but no less significant is the way in which the ancient monastery on the site helped shape the later iconographic tradition. Legend had it that St. Catherine of Alexandria (to whom the monastery is dedicated) was buried by angels on the neighbouring mount. The saint’s great reputation for learning gave an impetus to the monks to ensure that the place became one of the major centres of Byzantine learning and iconography.17 Of the two paintings by El Greco celebrating the place, the one from 1568 simply records the significance of the two mounts, whereas the later one (from 1572) attempts to reflect that learning, as pilgrims from both east and west are shown arriving at the monastery.18 The extent to which both are works of the imagination is indicated not only in the fact that El Greco had never been there but also in the way in which the style of presentation anticipates his more famous view of Toledo a generation later. Nonetheless, what El Greco’s choice of subject does underline is the historical reality of the extent of Sinai’s influence on the iconographical tradition of Eastern Christendom and to some extent on Western approaches as well, for, while El Greco moved westwards from his home in Crete, others travelled in the opposite direction.19 One such was the thirteenth century painter, Stephanos the Venetian, who in his matching icons of Moses and Elijah produced one of history’s most memorable images of Moses.20 Commissioned either for the monastery itself or for chapels on the holy mount, the two paintings nicely illustrate the sort of

16 Depending on whether a northerly, central or southern route is chosen for the wanderings of the Israelites, at least a dozen sites have been identified as possibilities for Mount Sinai or Horeb (its most frequent alternative name). The present location assumes a southerly route. 17 Part of her legend speaks of Catherine defeating in debate fifty pagan, male philosophers. Her reputation for learning is reflected in the founding of colleges in her name at both Cambridge and Oxford. 18 For illustration and commentary on the earlier Modena polyptych, see David Davies, John H. Elliot, et al., El Greco (London: National Gallery, 2003), 45–47; for the 1572 version with Mount Sinai on its own, 100–1. In the former Sinai is used as a type of Christ’s ascension; in the latter while the easterners arrive by camel, the westerners do so on foot (from the left) and in very obviously western clothing. 19 El Greco eventually reached Spain via Venice. 20 Illustrated in Yuri Piatnitsky, Marlia Mango and Robin Cormack, Sinai, Byzantium, Russia: Orthodox Art from the Sixth to the Twentieth Century (ed. O. Badderley, E. Brunner and Y. Piatnitsky; London: The St. Catherine Foundation in association with the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 2000), 242–44.

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dilemmas an artist can have in portraying specific biblical figures and the events with which they were associated. Given the setting at Sinai or Horeb, the reference in the Elijah icon must be to 1 Kings 19 and the presence of God in “the still small voice.” But how was Stephanos to indicate this? The artist draws on an unrelated incident, and a raven carrying a Eucharistic wafer is used to identify Elijah (cf. 1 Kgs 17:6). In Moses’ case, rectangular tablets are being received from heavenly hands. However, whereas the portrait of Elijah is of a body held still in a firm and somewhat stubborn resolution that is reinforced by the set of his eyes, with Moses the folds of his garments are suggestive of movement and dynamism and offer a powerful contrast, not least in his beautifully calm, serene and youthful face.21 While the western tradition was eventually to represent Moses as old as Elijah at the time of receiving the Decalogue, here Stephanos follows an artistic tradition that is at least as old as the sixth century church of St. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna that assumes Moses to be still relatively young. It is a pattern that was to become the norm in eastern representations of the Transfiguration.22 Both icons carry inscriptions in both Greek and Arabic. Even at this late date, there is some hesitancy about the legitimacy of such images. Under Moses we read: “Stephan who has depicted your sacred image begs you who have seen the Lord to forgive his errors.” More controversially, under Elijah there is the plea: “Forgive Stephan who has depicted you, the divine, and remit his sins.” Another (anonymous) icon from the same century may be used to illustrate how complex iconographical schemes could become.23 Once again, Moses is portrayed as a handsome young man, but this time with the Virgin Mary in the middle and him on one side with John the Baptist on the other.24 Although such images were often entitled “Icons of the burning bush,” there is nothing to conjure up that incident

The literary tradition is as complex as the artistic, with the rabbinic tradition also exploring a very wide range of possibilities for Moses’ age at the time. 22 For an illustration of the apse of St Apollinare, see Giuseppe Bovini, Ravenna: Art and History (Ravenna: Longo, 1991), 97; for an example from the fourteenth century Theophanes the Greek, though this time bearded, Konrad Onasch, Russian Icons (trans. I. Grafe; Oxford: Phaidon, 1977), 28; for one from Armenia (c. 1450), Mahmoud Zibawi, Eastern Christian Worlds (ed. N. McDarby; trans. M. Beaumont; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), Pl. 34. Contrast Raphael’s famous depiction of the same event, James H. Beck, Raphael (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977), 174–75. 23 Illustrated in Kurt Weitzmann, The Icon (London: Studio Editions, 1982), 228. For a slightly older Moses from the same century, 217. 24 Images of John may have influenced how Elijah was portrayed. 21

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before the untrained eye. The clue lies in Mary holding the adult Christ in her arms in front of her womb. The allusion is to the way in which, just as the bush before Moses of Exodus 3 was not destroyed by God’s presence within it, so neither was Mary despite the fact that she bore God in her womb. Even to this day monks point to the bush at the foot of the mountain just outside the east end of the church where they allege the incident happened, while John is there to remind us of how he leapt with joy in his mother’s womb at this first encounter with Christ in Mary’s womb.25 Mary’s unique status is underlined by the fact that she alone stands on a cushion, thus elevating her above the earth. Sometimes such icons become even more complex. For instance, in one seventeenth century Russian icon, an eight-pointed star of glory is used to frame Virgin and Child with the outer concave quadrangle red to represent the flames of fire and the inner figure green to hint at the burning bush that was not consumed.26 Yet there are so many additional allusions that the viewer might easily be overwhelmed by the detail. However, it was not only through the burning bush that patristic exegesis was accustomed to connect Mary and Moses. Just as Mosaic legislation decreed that the Ark of the Covenant should be used to represent God’s special place in the Temple, so Mary was often compared to the Temple in virtue of the fact that she also held God within her. As the Ark of the Covenant contained the tablets of the law, that of course provided a further link with Sinai. Nowhere in eastern Christendom is the connection celebrated with more fervour than in Ethiopia. This stems back to the intimate linking of the two themes at the country’s mother church, the Cathedral of St. Mary at Aksum.27 Since at least the sixteenth century and probably much earlier, a small building nearby has been taken to mark the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. The great Ethiopian epic Kebra Nagast (“Glory of the Kings”) tells how it was first brought there by Menelek, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.28

25 Strictly speaking, the original site is now part of a side chapel. It is only the bush’s successor that grows outside; for illustration, Orianna Baddeley and Earleen Brunner, The Monastery of Saint Catherine (London: Saint Catherine Foundation, 1996), 56. 26 Illustrated in Piatnitsky, Mango, and Cormack, Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, 198. 27 Although much altered, the cathedral was probably first erected in the fourth century. For illustration, Marilyn Heldman, African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia (ed. R. Grierson; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 70. 28 A masterpiece of Gexez literature and dating from the early fourteenth century, it identifies Aksum as the new Jerusalem and the Ethiopians as the new chosen people of God.

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The result has been Moses held in special honour within the Ethiopian tradition, although this has not prevented some oddities from emerging along the way. Among them might be included how his presence at the Transfiguration is treated. In one twentieth century instance the three disciples are standing on the viewers’ left while on the right, in contrast to Elijah who sits enthroned on a cloud, Moses alone is cast to the ground.29 An explanatory inscription records, “Moses said, I prefer my grave.” Deriving ultimately from Jewish legend, the notion is found enshrined in the Ethiopian set of liturgical readings known as the Synaxarion. Apparently, the thought was that since Elijah was already in heaven, that must be the place to which he returned after the incident, whereas Moses could only have come from his grave, to which he must therefore return.30 If that is taken to suggest a church incapable of stepping beyond tradition, the icon as a whole can quickly dispel any such illusions. Surrounding panels mix allusions to the past with a very contemporary appearance to the tormentors of Christ.31 From Type to Character What I have discussed thus far well illustrates the degree to which the life of Moses, and his encounter on Sinai in particular, was drawn upon to provide “types” or patterns that are treated as merely anticipatory of what are seen as more significant disclosures in the new covenant. Those types were, however, eventually to yield to a new interest in character, and it is that new interest that I would like to explore here. The earlier typological approach is seen to particularly good effect on the north portal of Chartres, dating from c. 1205. Here Melchizedek, Abraham and Moses are all deployed as types for Christ’s future role.32 Although Moses has his tablets, what clearly interests the sculptor more is the snake set up on a pillar (Num 21:4–9) and so the possibility of an allusion to John 3:14.33 In a similar way at the Renaissance it was 29 For illustration and commentary, Stanislaw Chojnacki, Ethiopian Icons: Catalogue of the Collection of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University (Milan: Skira, 2000), 260, 471–72. 30 Contrast 2 Kings 2:11 and Deuteronomy 34:5. 31 While Christ could be an Ethiopian, the two soldiers who torment him are very obviously modern Europeans or Americans. 32 Illustrated in Paul Williamson, Gothic Sculpture 1140–1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 41. For a better view of the expressivity in Moses’ face, Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz and Peter Kurmann, Chartres: La cathédrale (Paris: Éditions Zodiaque, 2004), 405. 33 The pillar is placed above the hand that holds the tablets.

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common to have cycles on the left side of a chapel as the Hebrew anticipation of the more perfect Gospel revelation on the right. Examples include the Arena Chapel in Padua, the Sistine Chapel in Rome and the School of San Rocco in Venice. Sometimes, however, it is simply a matter of contrast or opposition, as in a joint painting by Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo in the Sistine Chapel, in which the Hebrews’ disobedience is set against Christ’s obedience in the Wilderness. Not that it is entirely a matter of two opposed worlds. Joshua is dressed as Moses’ assistant but in the garb of a Christian deacon. Such placing of the new within the old is even more striking in a quite brilliant painting by Tintoretto at San Rocco from 1576.34 In theory, Tintoretto’s theme is Moses striking the rock (Exod 17:6). But in order to conjure in the Christian viewer thoughts of Christ as the source of living water (in baptism), Tintoretto merges the individual bodies in the crowd into a single whole, with them all stretching out earnestly in longing towards the central supernatural source, in the water outpoured. Equally, although in theory there is to be found in the background the next episode that immediately follows, of conflict between Joshua and Amalek (v. Exod 17:8ff.), inevitably this is interpreted in the light of foreground events and so speaks to the Christian viewer of the victory that comes through baptism. So it would be quite wrong to think of typology being applied by artists in a rather wooden or mechanistic way. Certainly, the almost invariant assumption is of the inferiority of the Old Testament dispensation. Even so, the events surrounding Sinai are allowed creatively to enhance understanding of the New. Accordingly, although initially it might sound plausible to associate the new stress on Moses’ character with the individualism of the Renaissance, what in fact one finds is interest in that aspect being developed very much earlier. So, for instance, in a late tenth century ivory carving from Trier an anonymous artist chooses to contrast the hesitant faith of Doubting Thomas with how Moses’ responds at Sinai.35 As with the wounds in Christ’s side, the tablets offer an encounter with the divine, but Moses is portrayed reaching out with a confidence denied to St. Thomas. The apostle struggles to reach Christ’s side, with one foot raised from the ground and his head bent right back in his desperate attempt For illustration, Tom Nichols, Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity (London: Reaktion, 1999), 187; also in Debray, The Old Testament, 100–1. 35 Now in Berlin. For illustration, Hanns Swarzenski, Monuments of Romanesque Art (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), Pl. 21. 34

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to see the exalted Christ. Again, in a twelfth century bronze sculpture from Lorraine, Moses sits with the tablets on his lap in a pose of pensive but assured meditation, accentuated by the stroking of his beard.36 However, if such a focus did not originate in the Renaissance, the approach does reach its culmination at this point in the work of Michelangelo, in his famous statue of Moses now in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.37 It had been intended as part of a much more elaborate complex that would have included a Virgin and Child in the middle, with Paul and Moses as supporting figures.38 That commission for the tomb of Pope Julius II in 1505 was only brought to partial realisation forty years later, in a much reduced design agreed by the Pope’s family.39 Rachel and Leah are placed on either side of Moses who now sits in the centre, the inclusion of the two subordinate figures being interpreted by some as the artist’s move away from an original Neo-Platonic vision to a more Counter-Reformation focus.40 Double life-size, the statue was originally intended to be viewed from a distance below, where the sense of impending action on Moses part would have made a much greater impact on the viewer than it does today. However, even if it now takes longer to detect the retracted left foot and so Moses’ readiness to leap up, the widened eyes and the intensity of his gaze leave us in no doubt about the depth of character implied. Michelangelo’s aim was to produce terribilità, a sense of the divine power imparted to the human agent. So, although Moses holds two rectangular tablets, more important are the symbolic horns which the artist retains despite his awareness of the inadequacy of Jerome’s over-literal translation.41 Moses’ face shines as a result of his contact with divinity on Sinai. Vasari’s comment is relevant here: 36 The sculpture is now in the Ashmolean in Oxford. For illustration, Swarzenski, Monuments of Romanesque Art, Pl. 227. 37 For illustrations, Gabriele Bartz & Eberhard König, Michelangelo (Cologne: Ko˝nemann, 1998), 58–61. 38 For some drawings, Howard Hibbard, Michelangelo (London: Lane, 1975), 52, 99. 39 The della Rovere family. 40 Like the sisters Mary and Martha, Rachel and Leah were taken to represent the contemplative and active life. Gone were the more inclusive references to paganism that had characterised earlier versions. For such an argument carried to extremes, see Erwin Panofksy, “The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo,” in his Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of Renaissance (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 171–230, esp. 187–99. 41 Exod 34:29: ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua ex consortio sermonis Domini. Although the verb is connected with the Hebrew noun for horn (qeren), the meaning is more about the skin being transformed into emitting a glorious ray of light:

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While Vasari may have intended to mock a Jewish naivety that borders on idolatry, it would be a mistake to assume similar prejudice on the part of Michelangelo himself. In general, his attitudes were sympathetic. Indeed, when visiting Venice, he liked to stay in the Jewish ghetto there. Another key example of such a focus on character comes from Rembrandt in the following century, in the painting commonly known as “The Breaking of the Tablets” (1659).43 In considering how interest in Moses’ personality changes the nature of the presentation, it is fascinating to compare Rembrandt’s work here with treatment of the same incident on a twelfth century capital at Vézelay.44 In that latter case, as Moses breaks the tablets over the Golden Calf, a devil emerges from the calf. By re-writing Scripture, the unknown artist has thus given the incident the maximum possible dramatic power. Yet Moses’ face is peripheral to the composition. By contrast, although Rembrandt’s Moses has the tablets raised ready to break them, it is the expression on his face that most intrigues us. Admittedly, some have questioned whether the right moment has been correctly identified or not. The raised tuft of hair and the light on his face could possibly suggest Exod 34, this time interpreted more naturalistically than was the case with Michelangelo.45 One of his friends was Menasseh ben Israel, and so Rembrandt may well have seen the customary raising of the scrolls during the synagogue service. If so, the theme would be

cf. Hab. 3:4; Perhaps Michelangelo thought the horns could still have a use in symbolising that light. 42 Quoted in Hibbard, Michelangelo, 101. 43 Illustrated in Christopher Leslie Brown, Jan Kelch and Pieter van Thiel, Rembrandt: The Master and his Workshop (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 272–74. 44 Véronique Rouchon-Mouilleron, Vézelay (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 140–41. 45 Rembrandt’s customary care with Jewish issues is well indicated by his careful transcription of the Hebrew. He records on the tablets the second half of the decalogue. Although the tenth is abbreviated, all else is correct apart from one missing letter from the third word in the ninth commandment.

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their re-presentation to the people. But, on other side must be set the profound sadness in Moses’ face, and the rocks at the bottom right of the painting which could so easily be used to break the tablets. One difference from Michelangelo’s Moses is that the tablets are not rectangular but rounded. In itself this simply reflects their appearance in the Calvinist Churches that Rembrandt attended. In considering why this pattern eventually became dominant a number of competing explanation have been canvassed. In my view it probably merely represents the final triumph of a more appealing aesthetic form. Rounded stele are to be found intermittently from ancient Egypt onwards, while their double form reflects long-standing Christian teaching that the first half of the Decalogue consists of duties to God, the second half duties to our fellow human beings.46 2. Jewish Developments Here I want to explore matters under two headings, first images in painting, then the use of the symbolism of Sinai in synagogue architecture. Moses in Jewish Painting Generalisations about religion are always dangerous, and in the case of religion and art there is no exception. As with Islam, it is still quite commonly asserted that Judaism was entirely non-iconic until modern times. But just as evidence from Persia in particular confutes the claim about Islam, so in respect of Judaism the re-discovery of Dura Europos (in 1932) and other ancient synagogues within Israel itself such as Beth Alpha can now be used to tell a quite different tale. Indeed, it has become legitimate to speak of “Ancient Jewish Art.”47 Nor was

Gad Sarfatti in his essay “The Tablets as Symbols of Judaism,” in B-Z Segal ed., The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (Magnes Press, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1990), 383–418, esp. 397–402 suggests an origin in the wax writing diptych tablets of the middle ages. While possible, the division into two was already guaranteed on other grounds, while inspiration for their rounded character could just as easily have come from some local church or cemetery. 47 As in the title of Gabrielle Sed-Rajna’s book Ancient Jewish Art: East and West (Paris: Flammarion, 1975). Among the paintings at Dura Europos is one of someone reading the law. Sed-Rajna suggests Moses as a possibility (cf. 70), but Elijah is more likely as the reader is holding a scroll. At Beth Alpha as at Hammath Tiberias the floor mosaic blends characteristically Jewish elements (e.g. Temple implements and the sacrifice of 46

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medieval Europe much different. Passover Haggadot were often replete with imagery. In Britain, perhaps the best known is the fourteenth century Rylands Haggadah, a Sephardic masterpiece.48 However, precisely because the main focus is on the celebration of Passover, the illustrations only go so far as escape from Egypt, and thus miss our topic here. Nonetheless, they are worth mentioning because they can be used to illustrate the high quality attained in Jewish art long before the major developments of the nineteenth century and beyond. Understatement is used to remarkable effect, for example, in the Golden Haggadah which comes from the same century and was produced in Catalonia around 1330. Particularly impressive is the depiction of one incident in which an apparently innocent scene of workers making bricks for a tower only slowly resolves itself before our eyes into its full horror: a woman waits with her child for him to be bricked up in that self-same tower.49 Even so, it is really only by turning to Christian representations of Jews that we can find allusions to Sinai as such, and in particular to the rather unfortunate contrast drawn in medieval Christian art between Ecclesia and Synagoga. Typical is a work from the anonymous fifteenth century painter known as the Master of the Ursula Legend. Handsome and beautifully dressed, Ecclesia holds her head upright as she proudly carries chalice and host, while the unfortunate Synagoga, beneath a foreigner’s turban, is blindfolded with head bent down, as the tablets of the law seem ready to fall from her grasp.50 That type of contrast seems first to have occurred in manuscript illustrations and ivories during Carolingian times and to have migrated from there onto medieval sculptural portals, as at Strasbourg and Trier, and then into paintings.51 A broken sceptre or spear alternates with broken tablets,

Isaac), with more pagan or astrological elements such as signs of the zodiac and the sun god Helios (105, 111). 48 For a facsimile edition, Raphael Loewe ed., The Rylands Haggadah: An Illuminated Passover Compendium from Mid-14th-century Catalonia in the Collections of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, with a Commentary and a Cycle of Poems (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988). 49 For some illustrations, including this one, Ingo F. Walther and Norbert Wolf, Masterpieces of Illumination: The World’s Most Famous Manuscripts 400 to 1600 (Cologne: Taschen, 2005), 204–6, esp. 205 top right. 50 Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History (London: SCM, 1996), colour Pl. 4. 51 In numerous other churches of course as well, but Strasbourg and Trier are especially interesting here as in both cases Synagoga holds the law: Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, 47, 50.

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while the presence of a fallen crown alludes to verses from Lamentations: “The crown has fallen from our head . . . our eyes have grown dim” (5:16–17). An early manuscript example that is particularly intriguing (because ambiguous or ambivalent) is how the theme is treated in the work known as the Hortus Deliciarum of 1185 by Herrad of Landsberg. Two allusions seem to pull in quite different directions.52 One has the blindfolded Synagoga sitting on an ass, with eyes firmly averted from Christ on the cross. This is in marked contrast to Ecclesia who holds out a chalice to catch the blood that flows from his side. Presumably to emphasise her Jewishness, Synagoga holds a circumcising knife and kid as symbols of her cult, but, whereas Ecclesia’s standard flies aloft, Synagoga’s banner trails hopelessly on the ground. Throughout word and image are used to reinforce each other’s message. Yet it is all rather overdone. To give but one example, a written expression of ignorance is included (te ego nesciebam) but this would have seemed quite superfluous to most medieval viewers. That is because the meaning would in any case have been obvious from the way in which the ass bends its head. Following a tradition long associated with Nativity paintings, ox and ass were contrasted as Gentile and Jew, and so the ignorance of the Jew was already indicated by Ecclesia’s and Synagoga’s mounts and their contrasting attitudes.53 If all this might be taken to suggest a work shot through with antiSemitism, the other image from the same work tells a quite different tale. Moses is actually made to sit alongside Christ with a sprinkling stick, as he holds the usual chalice.54 In the accompanying text a number of parallels are drawn between their two roles, among them the following: “Moses sprinkles the people with the blood and ashes of the red cow for purification; Christ sanctifies believers through his blood and the ashes of his body.” As if to underline their shared role at the bottom we read: “The sevenfold Spirit illuminated the prophets, apostles and evangelists and through them he created both testaments.” So it would be wrong to speak of the Christian artistic tradition as wholly negative

52 Black and white reproductions of the two images are available in Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art, 43, 69. 53 Based on Isaiah 1:3, the ass came to be assimilated to the Jew of the second half of the verse. 54 Cf. Numbers 19:1–22. More accurately, they form a single two-headed body, but one suspects that this is artistic economy rather than deliberate intention.

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in its attitude towards Judaism. Indeed, sometimes a legend that had its origins in Judaism comes to be incorporated into the Christian tradition, as in a ninth century illuminated Bible from the Monastery of St. Paul in Rome.55 Within a page that also includes Moses preaching and him being warned that he will not enter the Holy Land, his subsequent death is also depicted. But, rather than following the biblical account of his end in a grave, Jewish folklore is utilised to conclude with him being carried by an angel to heaven. It is only really in the twentieth century that we begin to find interesting representations of Sinai from artists who are themselves Jews, Marc Chagall being most prominent among them. During the 1950s he settled in the small town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence near Nice, and it was for its Chapelle du Calvaire that he originally created a series of works that included several on Sinai.56 The initial reception of the tablets, the worship of the Golden Calf, the breaking of the tablets and their second gift all find mention, but almost always qualified in two important ways: first, as events that are profoundly mysterious and awe-inspiring, and secondly as marked by continuing relevance to the present day.57 Thus, in evoking the former, sometimes golden rays emanating from Moses’ head are used; intriguingly, once with the tablets made themselves gold and Moses given a green face that animates all present.58 In suggesting contemporary relevance, the most complex in the series perhaps provides the best example.59 Moses is a dark and solemn figure who is placed centre-stage, with the tablets lying broken at his feet. Yet on the right, even as the people stand round the golden calf, already above Moses is receiving a new set, while on the left a marriage is being celebrated in the presence of a rabbi who is holding scrolls of the law.60 That is only one way among many used to hint at the event’s essentially timeless relevance. In another painting, even as

For illustration and commentary, Walther and Wolf, Masterpieces of Illumination, 102–3. 56 Most are now in a specially built museum in Nice, the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall. 57 For that element of mystery achieved in two quite different ways, Raymond Cogniat, Chagall (Naefels, Switzerland: Bonfini, 1978), 84–85. 58 For the latter, Werner Haftmann, Chagall (New York: Harry H. Abrams, 1998), 140–1. 59 For illustration, 20th Century Art: Museum Ludwig Cologne (ed. M. Scheps and I. Bruckgraber; Cologne: Taschen, 1996), 135. 60 Likely also to be an allusion to the biblical image of God married to his people, as well perhaps as to Lekhah dodi, the synagogue hymn of Israel wed to the Sabbath. 55

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Moses receives the law, in the distance an angel can be seen flying down to another group, carrying what looks like synagogue scrolls.61 With rare exceptions Chagall’s oeuvre was always fundamentally optimistic. For a more sombre approach one might take the work of the Polish artist Jonasz Stern, in particular his “Tablet” from 1981.62 At the beginning of the Second World War he had fled from Krakow to Lodz. There he was put before a firing squad but amid the hundreds shot down his accidental survival went unnoticed. Unsurprisingly, thereafter his paintings (often in mixed media) focused on the Holocaust. For example, one uses a prayer shawl floating over the city of Kalusz, to allude to the destruction of this once Jewish town. In the case of the “Tablet” at one level it can be read as simply a tombstone on which some bones have been used to spell out in Hebrew an appropriate inscription. But its double curved shape is conventionally that reserved for tablets of law. So the viewer is left pondering on the loss not only of human beings but of an entire culture and religion. Jewish Architecture I have already had occasion to mention a number of mutual borrowings between Judaism and Christianity. It was a process that accelerated, so far as Judaism is concerned, in the period of assimilation that first brought release from the ghettoes. In a way that would now seem quite impossible, synagogue architecture aped Christian, to such a degree that the casual visitor might easily have been deceived into mistaking such synagogues for Christian churches. So, for instance, the internal front elevation of the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London resembles nothing so much as a baroque high altar.63 Again, no sooner did the modern version of Romanesque known as Rundbogenstil became fashionable in German lands for the building of churches, than synagogues followed suit.64 For illustration, Gill Polonsky, Chagall (London: Phaidon, 1998), 114–15. Avram Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in 20th Century Art (London: Lund Humphries, 1990), 99–101, esp. 101. 63 For an illustration of this work (dating from 1701), Harold A. Meek, The Synagogue (London: Phaidon, 1995), 143. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem has a similar example (originally from Venice), 135. 64 As in the Glockengasse Synagogue, Cologne (1861), Spanelska Synagoga, Prague (1868) and, rather late, in the Tempelgasse Synagogue, Vienna (1922); for illustrations, Dominique Jarrassé, Synagogues: Architecture and Jewish Identity (Paris: Vilo International, 2001), 81, 171, 181. 61 62

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Not surprisingly, the many shocks of the twentieth century produced a reaction in a re-assertion of difference. This is reflected not least in changing patterns of architecture. Jewish immigration into the United States, combined with growing prosperity within that community, meant that over two hundred and fifty new synagogues were built in the United States between 1945 and 1955. Over fifty were built by Percival Goodman, among them Shaarey Zedek in Southfields, Michigan which is characteristic of the move of Jews outwards into the suburbs. Built in 1962, it was the seventh synagogue building of this community since 1864.65 As in many other such synagogues, symbolism drawn from Sinai has moved from largely liturgical and other internal uses to a very public declaration of identity.66 The synagogue’s external architecture has been made deliberately suggestive of a mountain, such that it could not possibly by mistaken for a Christian church. This is noticeable even where the architect was not himself Jewish, as with Frank Lloyd Wright’s design in 1954 for the Beth Shalom synagogue at Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.67 Even interior designs also acquired more distinctiveness. Ben Shahn’s innovative work at Beth Zion in New York, for example, is in marked contrast to a 1924 window in the Isaiah Temple in Chicago where Moses receiving the law is virtually indistinguishable from how he might have appeared in any Christian church of the time.68 Although Shahn came from an Orthodox Jewish home, he rebelled early and it is only really in his post-war painting that he once more attempts to interact with his Jewish inheritance. For some (perhaps even Shahn himself ) it was a purely secular recovery of an inherent value in Jewish symbolism, while others (both Jews and Christians) have detected a renewed religious dimension. This window would be one example, his painting The Third Allegory (which also has the Decalogue as its theme) another.69

The first had been in downtown Detroit. For illustration, Jarrassé, Synagogues, 234. For another striking example at El Paso in Texas, 247. 67 For Wright’s 1954 design, Jarrassé, Synagogues, 239. 68 For Beth Zion and Isaiah Temple, Jarrassé, Synagogues, 205, 245. Shahn’s work dates from 1967, only two years before his death. 69 For discussion, see Frances K. Pohl, “Allegories in the work of Ben Shahn,” in Susan Chevlowe, Common Man: Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1998), 111–41, esp. 128–38. 65 66

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3. Concluding Remarks To varying degrees, Judaism and Christianity have become used to presenting themselves as essentially religions of the book: as verbal and oral in inspiration rather than visual. Even in respect of scripture, however, this is somewhat misleading, since, while descriptions and their associated metaphors sometimes function purely mentally, more commonly their impact is visual.70 It is often forgotten how often in the past even Protestant Bibles were illustrated. Likewise, in later history it would be a mistake to suppose that all art ever has done is to copy or represent what is endorsed through other means. Calvin himself did not give the same weight to obedience to law that was later to be found in English churches. Yet that very weight helped to ensure the Liberal and Catholic rebellion that was to occur in later centuries. Had obedience to law been given the joyful character it has in Chagall’s paintings, a quite different result might have ensued. Nor was that an impossibility, as Turner’s marvellously positive evocation of Sinai in an early nineteenth century watercolour demonstrates.71 Again, although much art reinforced anti-Semitism, it is important to concede that not all did. Indeed, sometimes it pulled in quite the opposite direction. The new interest in Moses’ character helped. So too did the earlier identification of Mary’s role with key moments in the life of Moses. Our religious beliefs are a reflection of the totality of our experience and not just of one aspect of it, and it is important that the role of artistic representation in all of this should be recognised.

70 But not always successfully so. Visually, the Book of Revelation is somewhat comic in its effect. In chapters 1–2 Christ holds in his mouth a sword 2–3 feet long, while in chs. 21–2 the heavenly Jerusalem has buildings 1,500 miles high but a surrounding wall of only 400 feet. Such lack of attention to the visual in scripture is, however, fortunately rare. 71 Now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

SINAI SINCE SPINOZA: REFLECTIONS ON REVELATION IN MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT Paul Franks University of Toronto, Canada Spinoza (1632–1677 CE) was the first to understand that modern philosophy, with its new conception of nature, issued an enormous challenge to Judaism as it had been interpreted in the Jewish philosophical tradition, with which he was intimately familiar. Here I will bring this challenge into focus by thematizing the role of Sinai in some strands of Jewish philosophy. Some brief remarks on the linkage between Sinai and nature in the Maimonidean tradition well-known to Spinoza will enable me to characterize the challenge of modernity and to show both that Mendelssohn’s pioneering response was problematic, and that it contained the seeds of two contrasting approaches developed by twentieth century Jewish thinkers. 1. Before Spinoza The history of Jewish philosophy is intertwined with the history of translations of the Hebrew Bible and, if one wants to locate the origin of Jewish philosophy, one could do no better than to name the translation of the Septuagint in Hellenistic Egypt. This much-storied event gave rise to the earliest known Jewish philosophical conversation: a discussion, preserved by Eusebius, about anthropomorphic characterizations of God, between the Hellenistic king Ptolemy and a Jewish philosopher named Aristobulus.1 More pertinent to my topic here, however, is the Septuagint’s fateful translation of “Torah” as “nomos.” As has been noted before, “didache” was an available alternative, yet “nomos” was used 196 times out of 220.2 Whatever the motivation for this choice, the result

1 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 8.10.1–5, translated by A. Y. Collins in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; 2 vols; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 2.837–838. 2 See T. Muraoka, “A Japanese studying an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible at Göttingen.” Online: http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/de/netzwerk/ veranstalt/hoersaal/doc/muraoka.pdf.

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was to present Torah primarily as the legally compulsory norm of a Jewish polity—a move that would have rich and long-lasting implications for Jewish philosophy and for Judaism.3 It was of crucial importance that this nomos, unlike any other, was given by the creator of nature. But the connection could be made in several, significantly distinct ways. For Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BCE–50 CE), who drew on Stoicism among other resources, Torah was nomos physeos.4 For Maimonides (1138–1204 CE), however, it was crucial that, while nature was divinely established in its regularity, creation did not of itself give rise to any rule—or, at least, to any sufficient rule—of human life. Human beings were unique in being composed both of matter and of a form—the intellect—that could in principle become separate from matter, and this gave rise to a problem of individual and collective governance that was essentially not natural but rather political.5 It was a problem best addressed by a law whose origin was divine. This was in part because such a law, while not natural, could imitate the divine governance of nature. If, for Maimonides, Torah was not natural law, then it was nevertheless quasi-natural: a sort of second nature stemming from the creator of first nature. 3 See James Kugel, “Some Unanticipated Consequences,” in this volume, 1: “Rabbinic Judaism, it almost goes without saying, is a religion of laws . . . How did all this come about?” On nomos, see Kugel, 7. In his broad-ranging and fascinating discussion of the development of the idea of a covenant and of the prescriptive character of practices and figures, however, Kugel does not address the question of how this prescriptive character came to be conceptualized as specifically that of law. 4 See Hindy Najman, “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law, ” SPhilo 11 (1999): 55–73; “A Written Copy of the Law of Nature: An Unthinkable Paradox?” SPhilo 15 (2003): 51–6. On Torah as law and its connection to nature in Josephus, see Zuleika Rodgers, “Josephus’ ‘Theokratia,’ ” in this volume, 129–47. 5 Thus Adam and Eve misunderstand the serpent’s promise because of the ambiguity of the Hebrew word “elohim.” Whereas they thought that, if they ate the forbidden fruit, they would become “as gods,” they would in fact become “as judges.” See Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (2 vols; trans. Shlomo Pines; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), I, ch. 2, 25. In general, Maimonides follows the Aristotelian view that moral and political judgments are conventional. He uses no term signifying natural law. However, as Kraemer has pointed out, it is possible to see natural law as implicit in Maimonides’ thinking in two ways: he never excludes the possibility that some details of conventional law may be rationally required for any well-ordered society; and he asserts that there is an inborn disposition to do what is right, independently of prophetic instruction. See Joel L. Kraemer, “Naturalism and Universalism in Maimonides’ Thought,” in Meah Shearim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky (ed. E. Fleischer et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 57, 59. Nevertheless, it remains the case that, for Maimonides, whatever norms of human life result from creation do not suffice to solve the problems of human life, which require a law that is not natural, but political and indeed revealed.

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Thus the education that Moses needed and requested in order to govern a people who could return to idolatry so quickly after the wonders of Sinai, was an education in physics. When Moses asked to be shown God’s ways, (Exodus 33:13) his point was that he had to contend with “a people for the government of which I need to perform actions that I must seek to make similar to Thy actions in governing them.”6 And when God responded by causing “all My goodness” to pass before Moses (Exodus 33:19), what Moses came to understand were the divine actions—that is, the nature that God had created and continued to govern, which God had found to be “very good.”7 (Genesis 1:31) Thus, Maimonides emphasized the extent to which Mosaic governance imitated the divine governance of nature: If you consider the divine actions—I mean to say the natural actions—the deity’s wily graciousness and wisdom, as shown in the creation of living beings, in the gradation of the motions of the limbs, and in the proximity of some of the latter to others, will through them become clear to you. Similarly His wisdom and wily graciousness, as shown in the gradual succession of the various states of the whole individual, will become clear to you . . . Many things in our Law are due to something similar to this very governance on the part of Him who governs, may He be glorified and exalted. For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. And therefore God sent Moses our Master to make out of us a kingdom of priests and a holy nation . . .8

In general, although the Torah was not, for Maimonides, the law of nature, nevertheless, “the Law always tends to assimilate itself to nature, perfecting the natural matters in a certain respect.”9 What was the role of Sinai within this conception of Judaism? It was the event that manifested the identity of (1) the creator of nature, (2) the giver of natural or quasi-natural law, and (3) the covenantal partner who intervenes in history to bring Israel out of Egyptian servitude. On the one hand, the tie between revelation and creation was essential, for the revealed law had to be either natural or quasi-natural, and such a law could only originate with the creator. On the other hand, the tie between revelation and covenantal history was no less important, for although

6 7 8 9

Maimonides, Guide, I, ch. 54, 125. Maimonides, Guide, I, ch. 54, 124. Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 32, 25–6. Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 43, 571.

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the law was of significance for all human beings, it was nevertheless the law of Israel in particular. This duality was reflected in the content of the Decalogue: the first two commandments were concerned with God’s existence and oneness, which were knowable through a speculation on nature that was universally accessible; the remainder “belong to the class of generally accepted opinions and those adopted in virtue of tradition, not to the class of intellecta,” and were directly communicated to Moses the prophet alone, who communicated them in turn to Israel.10 Since the Torah was the uniquely quasi-natural law, it was important to emphasize that Sinai was a unique event: “nothing like it happened before and will not happen after.”11 2. Spinoza and the Advent of Modernity Spinoza understood with great clarity the importance of the reconception of nature articulated in the project of modern physics, and he followed what he took to be the radical implications of this reconception with unparalleled consistency and forthrightness. Among these implications were consequences for Judaism, and in particular for Judaism as interpreted by Maimonides, consequences from which Spinoza did not shy away. As Spinoza emphasized, the new physics was supposed to employ mathematics in order to grasp necessary truths about extended things, giving rise to exceptionless generalizations. Although some modern philosophers spoke of these truths as laws of nature, Spinoza saw that this locution was problematic and potentially confusing: The word “law,” taken in its absolute sense, means that according to which each individual thing—either all in general or those of the same kind—act in one and the same fixed and determinate manner, this manner depending either on Nature’s necessity or on human will. A law which depends on Nature’s necessity [e.g., that all bodies colliding with smaller bodies lose as much of their own motion as they impart to other bodies] is one which necessarily follows from the very nature of the thing, that is, its definition; a law which depends on human will, and which could more properly be termed a statute [ius], is one which men ordain for themselves

10 11

Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 33, 364. Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 33, 366.

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and for others with a view to making life more secure and more convenient, or for other reasons.12

In other words, it was essential that laws of nature be exceptionless, or else they would not be laws of nature in the modern sense; but it was equally essential that laws depending on human will should admit exceptions, otherwise they would not be laws in the relevant sense of regulating human life. To avoid confusion, Spinoza suggested that we should be clear about which sense of the term “law” is primary: Still, it seems to be by analogy that the word “law” is applied to natural phenomena, and ordinarily “law” is used to mean simply a command which men can either obey or disobey, inasmuch as it restricts the total range of human power within set limits and demands nothing that is beyond the capacity of that power. So it seems more fitting that law should be defined in its narrower sense, that is, as a rule of life which man prescribes for himself or for others for some purpose.13

Note that laws in the strict sense concern rules that have purposes. In contrast, as Spinoza insisted, following Descartes, the modern conception of nature excluded the notion of purpose from physics altogether.14 It follows, as Spinoza noted, that nature as reconceived by modern philosophy could offer no ethical or political guidance whatsoever for human life: “Whatever an individual thing does by the laws of its own nature, it does with sovereign right, inasmuch as it acts as determined by Nature, and can do no other.”15 Since the laws of a thing’s nature were exceptionless, nothing could count as transgressing those laws. Consequently, the laws of human nature called for no particular actions or arrangements rather than any other. It is important to note that this potential for confusion existed because of the advent of the modern reconception of nature. Aristotelian physics, for example, articulated a conception of nature that fits more neatly with the idea of law. According to Aristotle, physics did not deal with what is always and by necessity, but with what is for the most part. “Mathematical accuracy is not to be demanded in everything, but only in things which do not contain matter. Hence this method is not that of natural science, because presumably all nature is concerned with 12 See chapter 4 in Theological-Political Treatise in Benedictus de Spinoza, Complete Works: Spinoza (ed. M. Morgan; trans. S. Shirley; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), 426. 13 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 4 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 427. 14 Spinoza’s Ethics I, Appendix in Complete Works, 238–43. 15 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 16 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 527.

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matter.” Since physics dealt with matter, it was not concerned with exceptionless truths. Rather, it was concerned, for example, with the truth that honey-water is usually beneficial in the case of fever; there were numerous exceptions, but stating these was not the task of science.16 Similarly, ethics and political science dealt with what is for the most part.17 Moreover, physics—like ethics and political science—was concerned with purposes. In general, Aristotelian physics gave rise to generalizations that were valid for the most part and involved reference to purposes. Nature was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) because it served these purposes. Because ethics and political science also dealt with generalizations that were valid for the most part and involved reference to purposes, it was eminently plausible, either that nature could give ethical and political guidance to human life, or that nature could provide a model for a law that could give such guidance. In contrast, modern physics gave rise to generalizations that were exceptionless and involved no reference to purpose. Consequently, nature could no longer provide guidance, either directly or indirectly, to human life. Now, since—according to Spinoza—God was the ground of the rationality and intelligibility of all that existed, and since what existed was rational and intelligible to the extent that it operated according to exceptionless generalizations, it followed that such generalizations—eternal truths—were the sole expressions of God. If God had been understood instead as giving rise to laws in the strict—ethical or political—sense, then this could only have been a result of ignorance: God’s affirmations and negations always involve eternal necessity or truth. So, if for example, God said to Adam that he willed that Adam should not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it would have been a contradiction in terms for Adam to be able to eat of the tree. And so it would have been impossible for Adam to eat of it, because that divine decree must have involved eternal necessity and truth. However, since Scripture tells us that God did so command Adam, and that Adam did nevertheless eat of the tree, it must be accepted that God revealed to Adam only the punishment he must incur if he should eat of that tree; the necessary entailment of that punishment was not revealed. Consequently, Adam perceived this revelation not as an eternal and necessary truth but as a law, that is to say, an enactment from which good or ill consequence would ensue not from the intrinsic nature of deed performed but only from the 16 17

Metaphysics, Book VI, 1027a20. Nicomachean Ethics, 1094.

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will and absolute power of some ruler. Therefore that revelation, solely in relation to Adam and solely because of the limitations of his knowledge, was a law, and God was a kind of lawgiver or ruler. For this same reason, namely, their lack of knowledge, in relation to the Hebrews alone the Decalogue was a law; for not knowing God’s existence as an eternal truth, it was inevitable that they should have perceived as a law what was revealed to them in the Decalogue, namely, that God existed, and that God alone must be worshipped. But if God had spoken to them directly, employing no physical means, they would have perceived this not as a law, but as an eternal truth.18

Here, in a striking break with the Maimonidean tradition, Spinoza argued in effect that it was impossible for God to be both the origin of nature and the origin of law. What, then, could Torah be? After all, it purported to be the law that originates with God. Spinoza concluded that it could only be a law based on ignorance. However, such a law was necessary, since ignorance was to be expected among the majority of human beings, and since obedience could not be grounded solely on the knowledge that only a few could be expected to attain. This gave rise to a division of labour between faith and reason, theology and philosophy: According to our fundamental principle, faith must be defined as the holding of certain beliefs about God such that, without these beliefs, there cannot be obedience to God, and if this obedience is posited, these beliefs are necessarily posited . . . between faith and theology on the one side and philosophy on the other there is no relation and affinity . . . The aim of philosophy is, quite simply, truth, while the aim of faith . . . is nothing other than obedience and piety. Again, philosophy rests on the basis of universally valid axioms, and must be constructed by studying Nature alone, whereas faith is based on history and language, and must be derived only from S cripture a nd r evelation . . .19

The happy implication of this division of labour was that faith and reason, theology and philosophy, need not and indeed could not conflict, since they were concerned with entirely different domains. Of course, Spinoza’s radical rethinking of Scripture in accordance with the modern reconception of nature could hardly leave the Sinai event untouched. He regarded the very idea of a revelatory event as an inappropriate anthropomorphization of God, and he was scornful

18 19

Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 4 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 430. Theological Political Treatise, chapter 14 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 516–19.

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of Maimonides’ attempt to avoid the problem by portraying divine speech as issuing from a “created voice”:20 It seems quite alien to reason to assert that a created thing, dependent on God in the same way as other created things, should be able to express or display, factually or verbally, through its own individuality, God’s essence or existence, declaring in the first person, “I am the Lord your God, etc.” . . . Now in the case of people who previously knew nothing of God but his name, and desired to speak with him so as to be assured of his existence, I fail to see how their need was met through a created thing (which is no more related to God than are other created things, and does not pertain to God’s nature) which declared, “I am the Lord.” What if God had manipulated the lips of Moses—but why Moses? the lips of some beast—so as to pronounce the words, “I am the Lord”? Would the people thereby have understood God’s existence?21

But there was no problem here, since—as we have seen—a true revelation would have to be of eternal truths. What happened on Sinai was not an act of revelation, but rather an act of law-giving, and it was in this light that the pyrotechnics of the event should be understood: Although the voice which the Israelites heard could not have given those men a philosophical or mathematical certainty of God’s existence, it sufficed to strike them with awe of God as they had previously known him, and to induce them to obedience, this being the purpose of that manifestation. For God was not seeking to teach the Israelites the absolute attributes of his essence (he revealed none of these things at the time), but to break down their obstinacy and bring them to obedience. Therefore he assailed them, not with arguments, but with the blare of trumpets, with thunder and with lightnings (see Exodus ch. 20 v. 20).22

In short, Moses was a master of statecraft, and he understood well that the establishment of a new polity called for, not an impressive feat of argumentation, but rather an impressive public drama. There was much, Spinoza thought, to learn from the statecraft of Moses. Indeed, the original idea of Moses’ theocratic constitution—the idea of universal equality before God—was an excellent one: Since the Hebrews did not transfer their right to any other man, but, as in a democracy, they all surrendered their right on equal terms, crying with one voice, “Whatever God shall speak, we shall do” (no one being named

20 21 22

Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 33, 365. Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 1 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 397. Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 14 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 519.

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as mediator), it follows that this covenant left them all completely equal, and they all had an equal right to consult God, to receive and interpret his laws; in short, they all shared equally in the government of the state.23

However, the seeds of the destruction of the Mosaic constitution were also planted at Sinai, when the people withdrew after hearing the first two commandments: But on this first appearance before God they were so terrified and so thunderstruck at hearing God speak that they thought that their last hour had come . . . they . . . abrogated the first covenant, making an absolute transfer to Moses of their right to consult God and to interpret his decrees.24

Thus true theocracy became debased theocracy, which eventually became monarchy: It had first been intended to entrust the entire ministry of religion to the firstborn, not to the Levites; but when all except the Levites had worshipped the calf, the firstborn were rejected as defiled and the Levites were chosen in their place. The more I consider the change, the more I am forced to exclaim in the words of Tacitus, “At that time, God’s concern was not for their security, but for vengeance.” I cannot sufficiently marvel that such was the wrath of heaven that God framed their very laws, whose sole end should always be the honour, welfare and security of the people, with the intention of avenging himself and punishing the people, with the result that their laws appeared to them to be not so much laws—that is, the safeguard of the people—as penalties and punishments.25

Here we must recall that, by divine reward and punishment, Spinoza understood nothing other than temporal success and failure, insofar as these lay beyond the limits of human endeavour. It was in this way that he explained the election of Israel: All worthy objects of desire can be classified under one of these three general headings: 1) To know things through their primary causes. 2) To subjugate the passions; i.e., to acquire the habit of virtue. 3) To live in security and good health. The means that directly serve for the attainment of the first and second objectives lie within the bounds of human nature itself, so that their acquisition must depend on human power alone; i.e., solely on the laws of human nature. For this reason it is obvious that these gifts are not peculiar to any nation but have always been common to all

Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 17 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 540. Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 17 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 540. 25 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 17 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 549. The Tacitus quotation is from Histories, I, 31. 23 24

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paul franks mankind . . . But the means that serve for the attainment of security and physical well-being lie principally in external circumstances, and are called the gifts of fortune because they mainly depend on the operation of external causes of which we are in ignorance. So in this matter the fool and the wise man have about an equal chance of happiness or unhappiness. Nevertheless, much can be effected by human contrivance and vigilance to achieve security and to avoid injuries from other men and from beasts. To this end, reason and experience have taught us no surer means than to organize a society under fixed laws, to occupy a fixed territory and to concentrate the strength of all its members into one body, as it were, a social body . . . If [such a society] . . . endures for some considerable time, this is to be attributed to some other guidance, not its own. Indeed, if it overcomes great perils and enjoys prosperity, it cannot fail to marvel at and worship God’s guidance (that is to say, insofar as God acts through hidden external causes, and not through the nature and mind of man); for what it has experienced is far beyond its expectation and belief, and can truly be regarded even as a miracle . . . Thus the Hebrew nation was chosen by God before all others, not by reason of its understanding nor of its spiritual qualities, but by reason of its social organization and the good fortune whereby it achieved supremacy and retained it for so many years.26

If the original idea of a constitution based on universal equality before God was the source of Israel’s endurance and the sign of Israel’s election, then the debasement of that idea, which eventually led to the destruction of the state, must have been a sign of Israel’s rejection. Both were present at Sinai. This division between the original Mosaic idea and its debasement also generated a distinction between the eternally valid core of the Mosaic polity—a politics based on universal equality and an ethics of neighbourly love—and those aspects that were limited to ancient Israel. Even if some particular aspects of Mosaic law contributed to the endurance of Israel, it followed only that these were worthy of close study, not that they were in any way binding upon contemporary descendants of the Israelites: The Divine Law, which makes men truly blessed and teaches the true life, is of universal application to all men . . . Now ceremonial observances— those, at least, that are laid down in the Old Testament—were instituted for the Hebrews alone, and were so adapted to the nature of their government that they could not be practised by the individual but involved the community as a whole. So it is evident that they do not pertain to

26

Tractatus, chapter 3 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 417–18.

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the Divine Law, and therefore do not contribute to blessedness and virtue. They have regard only to the election of the Hebrews, that is (as we demonstrated in chapter 3) to their temporal and material prosperity and peaceful government, and therefore could have been of practical value only while their state existed . . . That the Hebrews are not bound to practise their ceremonial rites since the destruction of their state is clear from Jeremiah, who, when he saw and proclaimed the imminent ruin of the city, said that God delights only in those who know and understand that he exercises loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth, and so thereafter only those who know these things are to be deemed worthy of praise (see chapter 9 v. 23).27

Thus Spinoza issued a challenge, not only to Jewish philosophy, but to Judaism itself: according to the philosophical tradition, the validity of the Torah as law of Israel depended on its direct or indirect linkage to nature; but nature could no longer be understood as a source or model of law; so it followed that the law of Israel was no more and no less sanctioned by nature than any other law, and that the destruction of the Jewish state should have resulted in the end of Judaism. 3. Responses: From Mendelssohn to Breuer, Buber and Rosenzweig Mendelssohn (1729–1786 CE) was perhaps the first Jewish philosopher to respond seriously to Spinoza’s challenge. However, even as he resisted Spinoza’s conclusions, he adopted some central features of Spinoza’s views about Judaism, no doubt because he too saw the enormous significance of modern philosophy’s reconception of nature. In particular, Mendelssohn adopted, from Spinoza’s revision of the Maimonidean tradition, the idea that the Torah revealed on Sinai was essentially nomos, a purely political law: Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation another. The voice which let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim, “I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according to their deeds.” This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism; and the universal religion of mankind, without which men are neither virtuous nor capable of felicity, was not to be revealed there. In reality, it could not have been revealed there, for who was to be convinced of these

27

Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 5 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 435–37.

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paul franks eternal doctrines of salvation by the voice of thunder and the sound of trumpets? . . . A historical truth, on which this people’s legislation was to be founded, as well as laws, was to be revealed here—commandments and ordinances, not eternal religious truths.28

Mendelssohn rejected Maimonides’ view that the first two commandments were speculative in content. Rather, they were expressions of God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. Indeed, it would have been odd if God had revealed speculative truths at Sinai, for such truths were to be known through observation of nature and through rational reflection, not through pyrotechnics, however divine. The Torah revealed on Sinai was a political law for a people covenanted to God. It was not, strictly speaking, a religion. For religion consisted in eternal truths conducive to human felicity, and was consequently universally accessible through reason, not directed to a particular people through revelation. Consequently, just as Spinoza had argued that religion and philosophy could not conflict since they were concerned with different domains, so Mendelssohn argued in effect that there could be no tension between “the religion of mankind” and Judaism, which was therefore more compatible with the Enlightenment than Christianity, which did indeed purport to be a religion. This was not to say, however, that Judaism lacked all connection to eternal truths. Here Mendelssohn parted company from Spinoza: “All [ Mosaic] laws refer to, or are based upon, eternal truths of reason, or remind us of them, and rouse us to ponder them.”29 Indeed, the mission of Judaism was to preserve “pure concepts of religion, far removed from all idolatry.”30 It was to do by embodying and symbolizing ideas, not in images, which could all too easily give rise to idolatry, but rather in patterns of living, to be passed down through the generations by largely unwritten example.31 Mendelssohn also disagreed sharply with Spinoza’s conclusion that Judaism should have ended with the destruction of the Temple: I cannot see how those born into the House of Jacob can in any conscientious manner disencumber themselves of the law. We are permitted to reflect on the law, to inquire into its spirit, and, here and there, where the

28 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or On Religious Power and Judaism (ed. A. Altmann; trans. A. Arkush; Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1983), 97–8. 29 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 99. 30 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 118. 31 See Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 102–20 for his account of the need for the oral law.

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lawgiver gave no reason, to surmise a reason which, perhaps, depended upon time, place, and circumstances, and which, perhaps, may be liable to change in accordance with time, place and circumstances—if it pleases the Supreme Lawgiver to make known to us His will on this matter, to make it known in as clear a voice, in as public a manner, and as far beyond all doubt and ambiguity as He did when He gave us the law itself. As long as this has not happened, as long as we can point to no such authentic exemption from the law, no sophistry of ours can free us from the strict obedience we owe to the law; and reverence for God draws a line between speculation and practice which no conscientious man may cross.32

In other words, although the Torah was intended as a political constitution, it originated in an event that was not only political but also revelatory, and only another revelatory event could abrogate it. However, Mendelssohn’s defence of Judaism was problematic. First, Mendelssohn himself had argued in an earlier section of Jerusalem that any exercise of legally coercive power in the domain of religion, rather than in the domain of the state, was incompatible with natural right: “Religious society lays no claim to the right of coercion, and cannot obtain it by any possible contract.”33 This did not make his views contradictory, since he regarded the theocracy established at Sinai to be a direct effect of revelation, not of a contract. But he offered no account of what it meant to regard Sinai as revelatory and he did nothing to counter Spinoza’s objections to traditional conceptions of revelation as inappropriately anthropomorphic. Consequently, it was hard to see why the demise of the Mosaic state should be lamented rather than celebrated, and it was hard to see what force Mendelssohn’s defence of post-destruction Judaism could have. Salomon Maimon (1753–1800 CE), a younger contemporary of Mendelssohn’s and a crucial figure in the development of post-Kantian Jewish philosophy, drew the conclusion that Mendelssohn wished above all to avoid: So far as I am concerned, I am led to assent entirely to Mendelssohn’s reasoning by my own reflections on the fundamental laws of the religion of my fathers. The fundamental laws of the Jewish religion are at the same time the fundamental laws of the Jewish state. They must therefore be obeyed by all who acknowledge themselves to be members of this state, and who wish to enjoy the rights granted to them under condition of their obedience. But, on the other hand, any man who separates himself from 32 33

Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 233. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 45.

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paul franks this state, who desires to be considered no longer a member of it, and to renounce all his rights as such, whether he enters another state or betakes himself to solitude, is also in his conscience no longer bound to obey those laws . . . As far as is known, Mendelssohn lived in accordance with the laws of his religion. Presumably, therefore, he always regarded himself as still a member of the theocratic state of his fathers, and consequently acted up to duty in this respect. But any man who abandons this state is acting just as little in violation of his duty.34

Exercising the option that he thought Mendelssohn had shown him to be available, Maimon left not only the observance of Judaism but also the Jewish community. Since his attempt to convert to Christianity without compromising his philosophy was rebuffed,35 and since there was no secular state of which he could become a citizen, he betook himself to solitude. Maimon’s attitude to Mendelssohn was widely shared among Jewish philosophers: they revered Mendelssohn as a pioneer and as a personality, but they regarded his response to the challenge of modernity raised by Spinoza as a failure. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn’s work contained the seeds of at least two later responses that did not break with Judaism, as Maimon had done. On the one hand, one could continue to maintain, with Spinoza and Mendelssohn, that Judaism was fundamentally not religion but law. Then, however, one would have to explain why theocratic nomos was a good thing, and why its validity had outlasted the existence of a Jewish state. On the other hand, one could break with the entire tradition, originating in the Septuagint, of regarding Torah as nomos. But then one would have to explain what role, if any, there could be within Judaism for obligations. The first option was developed by Isaac Breuer (1883–1946 CE), the leading intellectual figure of independent German Orthodoxy.36 After 34 Solomon Maimon, Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography (trans. J. Clark Murray; Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 229–30. 35 Maimon, An Autobiography, 253–57. 36 Breuer was the grandson of Samson Raphael Hirsch, who founded independent Orthodoxy, and he was the son of Joseph Breuer, Hirsch’s son-in-law and successor. Unlike communal Orthodoxy, independent Orthodoxy insisted on rigorous separation (Austritt) from all institutions involving non-Orthodox movements, including traditional Jewish communal institutions, and on the intrinsic value of both Torah and the surrounding, general culture. See Mordechai Breuer, Modernity within Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Alan Mittleman, Between Kant and Kabbalah (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990); and Matthias Morgenstern, From Frankfurt to Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Breuer played a leading role in the founding of Agudath Israel—the primary non-Zionist, Orthodox political movement—and later of Poalei Agudath Israel, but

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developing a general account of law within a Neo-Kantian philosophical framework, Breuer argued that the Torah was obligatory for Jews in exactly the way that law was obligatory for citizens of a state: Law is simply obligatory ruling. It is in the concept-characteristic of obligation pure and simple that the complete abstraction from the individual lies . . . The Jewish law is no different. According to the collective will of the Jewish nation which was given expression at Mount Sinai, the sole and exclusive constitutional organ of the legislature is God . . . The individual Jew is subject to the law by reason of his membership of the Jewish nation. The condition and basis of his obedience lies not in his personal conviction of the excellence of the law, indeed not even his conviction of its divine origin. The law imposes absolute obligation . . . whoever has never seen the king of Prussia and, therefore, succumbs to the fixed idea that such a person does not exist at all—then, should he disobey the constitutional will of the monarch, he will very soon and in a most unpleasant manner receive sufficient conviction, indeed not of his theoretically confirmed existence but of his practically extremely effective manifestation of power.37

Such a view necessitated an emphasis on Sinai as the location of the event whereby the polity was established. Employing Neo-Kantian terms, Breuer regarded the Sinai revelation as the factum at the basis of Judaism, without which it simply could not be understood, just as every science has a factum at its basis:38 The teaching of Judaism was demonstrated on Sinai with perfect lucidity before the eyes of the entire nation. The conviction, which the Sinaitic community brought to the teaching was not merely subjective, won from them in their deepest sensitivity; it was rather the direct self-assurance which was based on their own perception. The Sinaitic community actually experienced the doctrine of Judaism at Mount Sinai. For them the teaching of Judaism thus became a fact of experience.39

So far, Breuer sounded as though he was merely articulating in NeoKantian terms the idea—developed by Spinoza and Mendelssohn—that the Torah was a non-natural nomos. But he departed significantly from

his combination of uncompromising Orthodoxy with Neo-Kantianism and socialism remained largely his own view rather than the ideology of the movement. 37 From Breuer’s Teaching, Law and Nation (1910) found in Isaac Breuer, Concepts of Judaism (trans. and ed. J. Levinger; Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), 41. 38 On the notion of a factum in post-Kantian philosophy, see Paul Franks, “Serpentine Naturalism and Protean Nihilism: Transcendental Philosophy in Anthropological NeoKantianism, German Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism,” in Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (ed. B. Leiter and M. Rosen; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 39 Teaching, Law and Nation, in Breuer, Concepts of Judaism, 43.

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his predecessors in his argument—which draws on the Bible commentary of his illustrious grandfather, Hirsch—that Sinai established as king, neither God nor Moses, but rather the Torah itself : “Moses commanded us a teaching; it is to be the inheritance of Jacob’s congregation; for this reason it became king in Yeshurun” (Deut 33:4–5, following Hirsch’s translation). . . . Moses commanded a teaching to us who were collected at Mount Sinai. He has permitted us direct insight into the truth of this teaching by making it our experience. Therefore he could command us to accept this as a teaching. But this doctrine is not to disappear with us. The teaching is to become an inheritance for all the future members of Jacob’s congregation. The revelation was to remain effective for all time and not just for the contemporary generation. This was the reason why the teaching should become king in Yeshurun, why it had to be clothed in the power of the law and secure for itself purity and a future through the commanding authority of the law.40

Here lay the key both to Judaism’s continued legitimacy and to the need for separatism. Sovereignty was vested, not in institutions such as the monarchy or the Temple, but rather in the Torah as Israel’s constitution. Consequently, Jewish communities that treated the Torah as their constitution retained the right to exercise legally coercive power, while Jewish communities that ceased to treat the Torah as their constitution lost their legitimacy entirely. It was therefore of crucial importance to maintain the Jewish polity by preserving or, if necessary, re-establishing “Torah-true” communities, to which Jewish individuals would continue to be bound, not by subjective consent, but in virtue of what happened at Sinai. The continued legitimacy of Judaism after the destruction of the Jewish state was not the only problem with Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem that Breuer could claim to address. He also argued that the Jewish polity founded at Sinai was a good thing from the standpoint of reason. For Breuer, Kant’s approach to ethics and law was the culmination of natural right, since it thematized the necessary conditions for the exercise of practical reason and could therefore claim universal validity. However, Breuer affirmed the charge—originally made by Maimon but more famously repeated by Hegel—that Kantian ethics and natural right were merely formal and empty of content. Kant had succeeded in formulating the structure of practical rationality, but he had failed to provide substance for the structure. Indeed, he could not help but 40

Teaching, Law and Nation, in Breuer, Concepts of Judaism, 44–5.

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fail, since human reason alone could not solve the problem. Only revelation could: “From freedom—to law: [Kant] could not tread this path of Judaism, since he had not stood before Mount Sinai. So he had to be content with filling up the gap, where the law should have been, with the idea of the law.”41 Only the Torah, as non-natural and revealed nomos, could succeed where Kant—and, indeed, human reason unguided by revelation—had to fail. A very different view was developed by Martin Buber (1878–1965 CE), who rejected the identification of Torah with nomos, and emphasized instead that Torah was teaching. It was as if he was returning to the Septuagint and re-translating “Torah” as “didache.” In a famous letter, Rosenzweig (1886–1929 CE) gave Buber full credit for this move, and for an open-mindedness towards Jewish tradition that had transformed German liberal Judaism, which had once recognized as Jewish teaching only what it could also find in Kant: We accept as teaching what enters us from out of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries in its apparent and, above all, in its real contradictions. We do not know in advance, what is and is not Jewish teaching; when someone tries to tell us, we turn away in disbelief and anger . . . Earlier centuries had already reduced the teachings to a genteel poverty, to a few fundamental concepts; it remained for the nineteenth to pursue this as a consistent method, with the utmost seriousness. You have liberated the teaching from this circumscribed sphere and, in so doing, removed us from the imminent danger of making our spiritual Judaism depend on whether or not it was possible for us to be followers of Kant.42

However, Rosenzweig complained that Buber had excluded the legal aspects of Judaism altogether. Indeed, Buber saw revelation as an immediate I-thou encounter that could only be betrayed if it was expressed in legal terms: I do not believe that revelation is ever a formulation of law. It is only through man in his self-contradiction that revelation becomes legislation. This is the fact of man. I cannot admit the law transformed by man into the realm of my will, if I am to hold myself ready as well for the unmediated word of God directed to a specific hour of life.43

The New Kuzari (1934), in Breuer, Concepts of Judaism, 277. “The Builders” (1923) in Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning (trans. and ed. N. Glatzer; New York: Schocken, 1965), 77. 43 Martin Buber, letter to Rosenzweig, June 24, 1924, found in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 111. 41 42

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Surely it was possible instead to adopt towards Jewish law exactly the same open-mindedness of attitude that Buber had urged towards Jewish teaching: And so it is all the more curious that after liberating us and pointing the way to a new teaching, your answer to the other side of the question, the question concerning the Law: “What are we to do?”—that your answer should leave this Law in the shackles put upon it—as well as upon the teachings—by the nineteenth century. For is it really Jewish law with which you try to come to terms? . . . Is the Law you speak of not rather the Law of the Western Orthodoxy of the past century?44

Indeed, Rosenzweig suggested that Buber’s narrow-mindedness consisted in rejecting the legal aspects of Judaism as if they could only be interpreted as Mendelssohn and Breuer had interpreted them—namely, as obligations stemming from the nomos of a Jewish polity established at Sinai. Just as problematic as an over-emphasis on Judaism as legal system was an accompanying over-emphasis on Sinai itself: Just as the formulas into which the liberalism of the reformers wanted to crowd the Jewish spirit can be traced back to a long line of antecedents, so too can one trace back the reasons that S. R. Hirsch gave to his YisroelMensch45 for keeping the Law. But no one before Hirsch and his followers ever seriously attempted to construct Jewish life on the narrow base of these reasons. For did any Jew prior to this really think—without having the question put to him—that he was keeping the Law, and the Law him, only because God imposed it upon Israel at Sinai? Actually faced by the question, he might have thought of such an answer; and the philosophers to whom the question has been put because they were supposedly “professional” thinkers, have always been fond of giving this very reply.46

Here Rosenzweig explicitly connected both Kantian Jewish Liberalism and Hirsch’s independent Orthodoxy—implicitly, also Breuer’s ongoing development of his grandfather’s approach—to the sense in the nineteenth century that Judaism was compromised by modernity, in the face of whose challenge it had no choice but to transform itself into something narrower than traditional Jewish life. Moreover, Rosenzweig saw clearly that this unfortunate development had begun with Men-

“The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 77. Hirsch’s educational ideal was the person who was well-rounded both as a Jew (“Yisroel”) and as a human being (“Mensch”). 46 “The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 78. 44 45

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delssohn, and that, if Buber was its leading Liberal exponent, Breuer was its leading Orthodox representative: From Mendelssohn on, our entire people has subjected itself to the torture of this embarrassing questioning; the Jewishness of every individual has squirmed on the needle point of a “why.” Certainly, it was high time for an architect to come and convert this foundation into a wall behind which the people, pressed with questions, could seek shelter. But for those living without questions, this reason for keeping the Law was only one among others and probably not the most cogent. No doubt the Torah, both written and oral, was given to Moses on Sinai, but was it not created before the creation of the world? Written against a background of shining fire in letters of somber flame? . . . And can we really fancy that Israel kept this Law, this Torah, only because of the one “fact which excluded the possibility of delusions,” that the six hundred thousand heard the voice of God on Sinai? This “fact” certainly does play a part, but no greater part than all we have mentioned before, and all that our ancestors perceived in every “today” of the Torah: that the souls of all generations to come stood on Sinai along with those six hundred thousand and heard what they heard. For a Jewish consciousness that does not question and is not questioned, all this is as important as the “fact,” and that “fact” no whit more important than those other considerations.47

Before Mendelssohn, Sinai was indisputably an important factor within Jewish thinking about the demands of the Torah and their basis. But it was only one factor among many others, articulated within a web of midrashic and kabbalistic traditions to be found both in the books of scholars and in the liturgy familiar to the masses. In the effort to respond to the challenge arising from the modern severance of law from nature, too much had been given up. German Jews had been forced into a choice between revelatory teaching with no ritual or legal expression, and revelatory law with the heavy-handedness of the state. There was, Rosenzweig insisted, an alternative to the forced choice between narrow Liberalism and narrow Orthodoxy. The Torah’s demands upon action could be conceptualized in a way that was actually more consonant with traditional Jewish life, if not with Jewish philosophy—as mitzvah rather than as nomos: Whatever can and must be done is not yet deed, whatever can and must be commanded is not yet commandment. Law [Gesetz] must again become commandment [Gebot ], which seeks to be transformed into deed at the

47

“The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 78–79.

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paul franks very moment it is heard. It must regain that today-ness [Heutigkeit] in which all great Jewish periods have sensed the guarantee for its eternity.48

In other words, each Jew had to face the spiritual challenge of coming to understand what seemed to be an impersonal law as a personal commandment addressed directly to him or her by God. By invoking the demand that every day be seen as “today”49—as the present moment of revelation—Rosenzweig effected, not the replacement of Sinai with the plains of Moab, but rather the situation of Sinai within a broader tradition originating with Deuteronomy.50 For, if Sinai was more than a merely political event that had occurred in ancient history, this was because of the Deuteronomic repetition of Sinai, and because of the accompanying call to make revelation ever-present by repeating Sinai again and again. As Rosenzweig acknowledged, he learned the distinction between law and commandment from the controversial Christian theologian, Christoph Schrempf.51 But he could perhaps have found an intimation in Section I of Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem: The state gives orders and coerces, religion teaches and persuades. The state prescribes laws [Gesetze], religion commandments [Gebote] . . . In one word: civil society, viewed as a moral person, can have the right of coercion, and, in fact, has actually obtained this right through the social contract. Religious society lays no claim to the right of coercion, and cannot obtain it by any possible contract.52

As was discussed above, it was hard to reconcile Mendelssohn’s rejection of religious coercion in Section I with his presentation of Judaism as a revealed nomos in Section II. Why should some parts of this law have remained obligatory once the state was destroyed? Mendelssohn could have distinguished between those parts of the law directly associated with statehood and those whose significance did not depend on legal coercion. The latter—called commandments in the above passage— would have retained their obligatory status when the state ceased to “The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 85. See Deut. 26:16 and Rashi’s commentary ad loc.: “Every day [the commandments] should be new in your eyes, as if you were commanded concerning them that very day.” 50 See Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism ( JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003). 51 See Franz Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings (trans. and ed. P. Franks and M. Morgan; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 71. 52 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 45. 48 49

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exist, because their authority rested, not on the coercive power of the state, but on the authority of the commander. But Mendelssohn did not in fact develop this distinction. It was left to Rosenzweig and, after him, to Levinas (1906–1995), to work out an ethics and a politics based on the command of the other. In one respect at least, however, Rosenzweig’s view was similar to Breuer’s. For him too, natural religion was not the doctrinal core of Judaism; instead, Judaism was the overcoming of natural religion. Without revelation, nature alone could give rise only to paganism.53 This was one of the fruits of Spinoza’s dissociation of Torah and Sinai from the ideas of natural and quasi-natural law. However, this did not mean that the revelation at Sinai became, for Breuer and Rosenzweig, dissociated from creation. On the contrary, only the creator of nature could overcome natural religion. In Rosenzweig’s words: “The word of God is Revelation only because at the same time it is the word of Creation.”54 4. Conclusion Spinoza thematized the conception of nature articulated in modern physics and metaphysics, and the disjunction between nature so conceived and law. Thus he undermined the connection drawn hitherto within Jewish philosophy between Torah and nature. Sinai became the site, not of a manifestation of God’s power over nature and human society, but rather of a solely political event whereby was established the polity for which the Torah was the nomos. This led Spinoza to conclude that, since the Jewish polity no longer existed, its nomos was no longer obligatory, and there was no good reason for Jews to maintain Judaism. While generally regarded as unsuccessful, Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem contained the seeds of two responses to the challenge of modernity raised by Spinoza. The first response affirmed Spinoza’s thesis that the Torah was political and not natural, but sought to show that in some sense the obligations of Judaism persisted after the destruction of the Jewish state—either because a second, equal revelation would be

53 See Rosenzweig’s treatment of paganism in The Star of Redemption (trans. B. Galli; Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). 54 Rosenzweig, Star, 121.

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required to undo the revelation at Sinai, or because the Jewish polity could survive without a state. The second response rejected Spinoza’s thesis and, indeed, questioned the exclusive identification—traceable back to the Septuagint—of Torah as nomos. But it did not restore the pre-modern link between Torah and nature. Instead, it insisted that the Torah was in part teaching (didache), and that the obligations of Judaism were best understood, not as laws, but rather as commandments, addressed by a personal God to a singular individual or to a singular people. While the first line of thought made Sinai more central to Judaism than ever, the second sought to undo what it regarded as an undue emphasis on Sinai that misunderstood Sinai’s importance. Following the Deuteronomic tradition, this second response took Sinai’s importance to consist, not in its uniqueness, but rather in its repeatability.55

55 I have of course dealt here with only one strand of modern Jewish philosophy. For another perspective on the relationship between Torah, Sinai and nature, see David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS Abegg, M. G. 29 n. 1, 75, 75 n. 9, 120 n. 10 Addleshaw, G. W. O. 317 n. 15 Albani, M. 42 n. 31 Alexander, P. S. 30 n. 4, 32 n. 8, 36, 36 n. 17, 38, 39 n. 23, 60 n. 74, 64 n. 82, 88 n. 67, 119 n. 9, 140 n. 42, 142 n. 51, 183 n. 1, 185 n. 2, 187 n. 8, 192 n. 28, 196 n. 43, 199 n. 53, 279 n. 24, 280 n. 29, 281 n. 31 Alexander, T. D. 15 n. 4 Allegro, J. M. 113 n. 58 Allison, D. 64, 64 n. 81 Altmann, A. 197 n. 47, 344 n. 28 Andersen, F. I. 195 n. 41, 197 nn. 44–46 Anderson, G. 197 n. 47 Arkush, A. 344 n. 28 Arnold, R. C. D. 39, 39 n. 24, 61 n. 76, 86 n. 59 Attridge, H. A. 113 n. 58 Aufrecht, W. E. 269 n. 2 Avalos, H. 167 n. 16 Avishur, Y. 16 n. 6 Azar 230 n. 55 Bacher, W. 281 n. 31 Badderley, O. 318 n. 20, 320 n. 25 Baillet, M. 76, 76 n. 18, 101 n. 27 Bal, M. 223 n. 30 Barc, B. 197 n. 47 Barclay, J. M. G. 131, 131 nn. 5, 8, 132, 132 nn. 11–12, 133, 133 n. 14, 134 n. 16, 135 n. 19, 136 n. 26, 137, 137 nn. 31–32, 138 nn. 35–36, 139, 140, 140 n. 41 Bar Ilan, M. 288 n. 7 Barthélemy, D. 86 n. 56 Barton, J. 79 n. 26, 92 n. 5 Bartz, G. 323 n. 37 Basser, H. 229 n. 52, 241 n. 88 Bätschmann, O. 316 n. 11 Baumgarten, J. M. 38 n. 21, 83 n. 45, 85 n. 52, 100 n. 23 Beaumont, M. 319 n. 22 Beck, J. H. 319 n. 22 Begg, C. T. 131 n. 6, 135 n. 20 Begrich, J. 66 n. 86 Ben Hayyim, Z. 225 n. 36, 229 n. 53

Ben Zvi, E. 97 n. 17 Berger, P. 118 n. 5 Bergren, T. A. 185 n. 2 Berlin, A. 32 n. 8, 86 n. 60 Bernstein, M. J. 76 n. 16, 82 n. 41, 92 nn. 4–5, 113 n. 58 Berthelot, K. 167 n. 16 Betz, H. D. 178 n. 30 Bieler, L. 164, 164 n. 10 Bietenhard, H. 253 n. 20 Bilde, P. 137 n. 28, 138 n. 33, 139 nn. 37–39 Black, M. 104 n. 36 Bland, K. P. 250 n. 10 Blau, J. 16 n. 6 Blenkinsopp, J. 138 nn. 33, 37, 139 nn. 38–39 Bloom, H. 141 n. 44 Boccaccini, G. 185 n. 2, 207 n. 11 Bogaert, P. 209 n. 15, 214 nn. 22–23 Bokser, B. 245 n. 102 Borgen, P. 142 n. 51, 144 nn. 62, 65 Bousset, W. 193 n. 33 Bovini, G. 319 n. 21 Bowley, J. E. 80 n. 33, 100 n. 24 Bowman, A. K. 95 n. 10, 208 n. 13 Boyarin, D. 208 n. 14, 223 n. 29, 236 n. 72, 244 n. 96, 259 n. 33, 288 n. 4, 299 n. 23, 300 n. 26 Boyle, A. J. 130 n. 3 Brady, M. 76 n. 16, 82 n. 41 Braude, W. G. 264 n. 48 Brekelmans, C. 15 n. 1 Brenton, L. C. L. 160 Brettler, M. Z. x, 15–27, 16 n. 11, 19 n. 21, 24 n. 35, 79 n. 26, 204 n. 5, 253 n. 18, 288 n. 7 Breuer, I. 346–349, 346 n. 36, 347 nn. 37, 39, 348 n. 40, 349 n. 41 Breuer, M. 346 n. 36 Brooke, G. J. ix–xiv, xi, 27 n. 43, 31 nn. 6, 8, 36, 36 n. 16, 50 n. 50, 64, 64 n. 83, 67 n. 86, 73–89, 75 n. 10, 80 n. 32, 85 n. 55, 91, 92 n. 5, 93 n. 7, 100 n. 24, 117, 121 n. 13, 122 n. 20, 123, 123 nn. 24–25, 124 nn. 27–28, 30–31, 125 nn. 32, 34, 127 n. 38, 164 n. 11, 167 n. 16, 201 Broshi, M. 76 n. 15, 81 n. 38

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Brower, K. E. 124 n. 27 Brown, D. xiii, 313–31 Brown, C. L. 324 n. 43 Bruckgraber, I. 328 n. 59 Brunner, E. 318 n. 20, 320 n. 25 Buber, M. 349–351, 349 n. 43 Budick, S. 217 n. 2 Bultmann, C. 79 n. 26 Bunta, S. N. 180 n. 34, 185 n. 3, 279 n. 26 Burkert, W. 178 n. 30 Burnyeat, M. F. 153 n. 5 Buss, M. J. 8 n. 17 Calderhead, C. 91 n. 2 Callaway, M. 236 n. 73 Cancik, H. 36 n. 17, 197 n. 47 Caquot, A. 31 n. 8, 81 n. 35 Carasik, M. 252 n. 18 Carr, D. M. 95 n. 10 Carras, G. P. 136 n. 26 Carson, D. A. 140 n. 42 Cassuto, U. 219 n. 9, 251 n. 14 Cazelles, H. 81 n. 36 Charles, R. H. 202 nn. 1–2, 280 n. 29 Charlesworth, J. H. 83 n. 45, 91 n. 1, 92 n. 4, 183 n. 1, 186 n. 3, 192 n. 30, 193 n. 33, 279 n. 24, 333 n. 1 Chazon, E. G. 30 n. 4, 37 n. 19, 92 n. 4 Chevlowe, S. 330 n. 69 Chernick, M. L. 276 n. 17 Childs, B. S. 16 nn. 7, 10, 106 n. 42, 219 n. 10, 226 n. 41, 233 n. 62, 290 n. 10 Chojnacki, S. 321 n. 29 Christensen, D. L. 18 n. 18 Chyutin, M. 104 n. 34 Clarke, E. G. 269 n. 2 Clements, R. A. 37 n. 19, 56 n. 67, 77 n. 21 Cogniat, R. 328 n. 57 Cohen, S. J. D. 139 n. 37 Collins, A. Y. 178 n. 30, 333 n. 1 Collins, J. J. 56 n. 67, 92 n. 4, 185 n. 3 Cook, E. M. 120 n. 10 Cooper, A. 103 n. 33, 106 n. 42 Cormack, R. 318 n. 20, 320 n. 26 Coulot, C. 100 n. 23 Cross, F. M. 2 n. 5, 219 n. 9, 220 n. 11, 239 n. 83 Crowley, J. E. 125 n. 32 Culley, R. C. 16 n. 11

Danby, H. 191 n. 24 Daube, D. 138 n. 37 Davies, D. 318 n. 18 Davies, E. F. 97 n. 17 Davies, P. R. 77 n. 20 Davies, W. D. 207 n. 10 Davila, J. R. 38 nn. 20, 22, 40 nn. 25–26, 42 n. 31, 43 n. 36, 49 n. 47, 53 n. 58, 60 n. 74, 65 n. 85, 82 n. 39, 199 n. 54 Day, J. 275 n. 14 Debray, R. 315 n. 8, 322 n. 34 De Conick, A. 199 n. 54 Dedering, S. 201 n. 1, 214 n. 23 Delcor, M. 104 n. 36 Demsky, A. 95 n. 10 Denis, A.-M. 186 n. 5 Desrousseaux, L. 100 n. 23 DeVries, S. J. 93 n. 7 Dexinger, F. 81 n. 35 Díez Macho, A. 269 n. 2 Dimant, D. 31–32 n. 8, 51 n. 52, 73 n. 3, 86, 86 nn. 60–61, 92 n. 4 Dogniez, C. 285 n. 41 Doidge, B. xiv Dominik, W. J. 130 n. 3 Dozeman, T. B. 16 n. 10 Drazin, I. 270 n. 3, 272 n. 8, 284 n. 40 Driver, S. R. 262 n. 41 Dunn, J. D. G. 149 n. 2 Du Toit, D. S. 174 n. 24 Edmondson, J. 130 n. 3 Ego, B. 31 n. 8 Eichler, B. 220 n. 12 Elias, L. 217 n. 1, 222 n. 22, 228 n. 48, 236 n. 71 Elior, R. 30 n. 4, 33 n. 9, 104 nn. 34–35, 275 n. 16, 278 n. 22, 289 n. 7 Elliot, J. H. 318 n. 18 Epstein, J. N. 224 n. 33, 239 n. 83 Eshel, E. 12 n. 28 Eshel, H. 78 n. 22 Etchells, F. 317 n. 15 Evans, C. A. 35 n. 13, 61 n. 75, 92 n. 4, 100 n. 23, 193 n. 33 Falk, D. K. 33 n. 11, 36 n. 16, 41 n. 30, 50 n. 49, 77 n. 19, 80 n. 31, 122 n. 21, 123 nn. 22, 26 Feldman, L. H. 131, 131 n. 6, 132 n. 9, 134 nn. 16, 18, 135, 135 nn. 21–23, 136, 136 nn. 25, 27, 138

index of modern authors n. 33, 139 nn. 37–38, 145 nn. 66, 68, 146 nn. 69–70, 147 Finkelstein, L. 207 n. 10, 217 n. 1, 224 n. 33, 241 n. 87 Fishbane, M. 17 n. 12, 25, 25 n. 37, 95 n. 10, 97 n. 17, 114 n. 60, 280 n. 27, 300 n. 26 Fitzgerald, J. T. 173 n. 20 Fitzmyer, J. A. 86 n. 56 Fleischer, E. 34 n. 13, 334 n. 5 Flescher, P. 226 n. 39 Fletcher-Louis, C. H. T. 34 n. 12, 82, 82 n. 39, 83, 86, 86 n. 64, 100 n. 24, 191 n. 22, 192 n. 30, 193 n. 33 Flint, P. W. 44 n. 37, 54 n. 60, 70 n. 94, 74 n. 3, 80 n. 33, 82 n. 39, 93 n. 6, 100 n. 24, 103 n. 33, 104 n. 36, 105 nn. 39–40, 106 n. 42, 113 n. 58, 185 n. 2 Floyd, M. H. 97 n. 17, 123 n. 25 Flusser, D. 34 n. 13, 234 n. 65, 245 n. 104 Fonrobert, C. E. 223 n. 30 Fossum, J. 193 nn. 33–34, 194 n. 37, 197 n. 47, 279 n. 26 Fox, M. V. 15 n. 4 Fraade, S. D. xiii, 24 n. 35, 43 n. 34, 56 n. 66, 57, 57 n. 68, 64 n. 82, 68, 68 nn. 89–90, 69 n. 91, 77 n. 21, 83 n. 44, 84 n. 48, 85 n. 54, 163 n. 9, 218 n. 3, 219 n. 8, 245 n. 103, 247–68, 247 n. 1, 253 n. 20, 256 n. 27, 260 n. 36, 261 nn. 37–38, 265 nn. 53–54, 266 n. 55, 267 n. 56, 276 n. 18, 277 n. 19 Franks, P. xiii, 118 n. 6, 133 n. 13, 333–54, 347 n. 38, 352 n. 51 Freedman, D. N. 219 n. 9, 220 n. 11, 239 n. 83 Frennesson, B. 86, 86 nn. 62–63 Frey, J. 42 n. 31 Friedman, R. E. 103 n. 33 Fuhs, H. F. 20 n. 27 Gager, J. G. 153 n. 6 Galli, B. 353 n. 53 García Martínez, F. 36 n. 16, 42 n. 31, 66 n. 86, 67, 101 n. 25, 111 n. 53 Gaster, M. 185 n. 3 Gelder, G. J. H. 214 n. 23 Geller, S. A. 252 n. 18 Georgi, D. 151 n. 4, 154, 154 n. 7, 164, 164 n. 10, 166 n. 13, 174, 174 nn. 21–22, 175, 175 nn. 26–27, 176, 177, 177 n. 28

357

Ginsberg, H. L. 18 nn. 14, 16 Glickman, J. 117 n. 1 Goff, M. 55 nn. 63–64, 56, 56 n. 67 Goldin, J. 217 n. 1, 220 n. 12, 222 n. 21, 223 n. 28, 224 n. 33, 225 nn. 35–36, 38, 226, 226 n. 40, 229 n. 53, 231 n. 58, 233 nn. 61–62, 237 n. 74, 238 n. 79, 295 n. 18 Goodman, M. D. 95 n. 10, 208 n. 13 Goranson, S. 123 n. 23 Goshen-Gottstein, M. H. 104 n. 36 Grabar, A. 314 nn. 3, 6 Grafe, I. 319 n. 22 Gray, R. 139 nn. 37–39 Green, A. 57 n. 68 Greenberg, M. 15, 16, 16 n. 5 Grenz, J. 117 n. 2 Griener, P. 316 n. 11 Gropp, D. M. 76 n. 16, 82 n. 41 Grossfeld, B. 270 n. 3, 272 n. 8 Gruenwald, I. 30 n. 4, 185 n. 3, 280 n. 29, 281 n. 32, 283 n. 38 Gunkel, H. 8 n. 17 Gutman, Y. 185 n. 3, 187 n. 8 Haak, R. D. 123 n. 25 Haftmann, W. 328 n. 58 Halperin, D. 62 n. 78, 199 n. 54, 275 n. 16, 278 n. 22, 279 nn. 24–25, 280 n. 29, 281 n. 31, 283 n. 38 Halpern, B. 2 n. 5 Hammer, R. 217 n. 1, 223 n. 23, 241 n. 88 Hanson, P. D. 54 n. 61, 207 n. 10 Häring, B. 313 n. 1 Harl, M. 285 n. 41 Harnisch, W. 211 n. 19, 214 n. 21 Harrington, D. J. 45 n. 41, 48 n. 46, 56 n. 65 Harris, J. 91 Hartley, K. 317 n. 12 Hartman, G. H. 217 n. 2 Hasan-Rokem, G. 242 n. 91 Hata, G. 139 n. 38 Hauptman, J. 244 n. 100 Hayward, C. T. R. xiii, 63 n. 79, 109 n. 48, 219 n. 8, 269–85, 270 n. 3, 282 n. 36, 293 n. 13 Heckel, T. K. 178 n. 30 Heinemann, I. 231 n. 57 Heldman, M. 320 n. 27 Hempel, C. 97 n. 16, 185 n. 2, 203 n. 4 Hengel, M. 50 n. 48

358

index of modern authors

Henshke, D. 245 n. 102 Henten, J. W. van 83 n. 42 Henze, M. xii, 85 n. 53, 112 n. 56, 122 n. 20, 127 n. 37, 138 n. 34, 185 n. 2, 201–15, 203 n. 4 Hepner, G. 301 n. 27 Hibbard, H. 323 n. 38, 324 n. 42 Hilhorst, A. 92 n. 4 Himmelfarb, M. 111 n. 53 Hirschman, M. 218 n. 7, 229 n. 53, 260 n. 36, 284 n. 39 Holladay, C. R. 185 n. 3, 186 n. 5, 187 nn. 7–8, 188 n. 11, 189 n. 14, 190 n. 19 Horst, P. W. van der 185 n. 3, 187 n. 8, 191 n. 22, 193, 193 nn. 31–32, 195 n. 38 Hurd, J. C. 269 n. 2 Hurtado, L. 185 n. 3 Isaac, E.

280 n. 29

Jackson, B. S. 122 n. 19 Jackson, D. 91, 91 n. 2 Jacobson, H. 185 n. 3, 186 nn. 5–6, 188 n. 11, 190, 190 nn. 17–18, 19, 198 n. 50 Jaffee, M. S. 68 n. 88 Jansen, L. 165 n. 12 Japhet, S. 93 n. 7, 101 n. 28 Jarrassé, D. 329 n. 64, 330 nn. 66–68 Jedan, C. 165 n. 12 Jenks, A. W. 18 n. 15 Johnson, A. 124 n. 27 Johnson, M. 288 n. 5 Kadushin, M. 220 n. 14, 237 n. 75 Kahana, M. I. 217 n. 1, 218 n. 6, 220 n. 14, 222 n. 22, 224, 224 nn. 32–33, 230 n. 55, 235 n. 70, 238 n. 80, 239 n. 84 Kampf, A. 329 n. 62 Kapstein, I. J. 264 n. 48 Kasher, M. 220 n. 12, 223 n. 28 Katz, S. T. 284 n. 39 Kaufman, S. 292 n. 13 Kelch, J. 324 n. 43 Kiley, M. 78 n. 23 Kim, T. H. 185 n. 2 Kister, M. 37 n. 19 Klatt, W. 8 n. 17 Klawans, J. 126 n. 36 Klein, M. L. 269 n. 2 Klijn, A. F. J. 214 n. 23

Knibb, M. A. 73 n. 2, 187 n. 10, 189 n. 13, 191 n. 26, 193 n. 33, 196 n. 42 Knoppers, G. 115 n. 62 Kobelski, P. J. 86 n. 57 Koerner, J. L. 316 n. 10 König, E. 323 n. 37 Konradt, M. 203 n. 3 Kooten, G. van xii, xiv, 132 n. 10, 146 n. 70, 149–81, 153 nn. 5–6, 165 n. 12, 178 n. 30, 198 n. 50, 288 n. 4 Kraemer, J. L. 334 n. 5 Kraft, R. A. 92 n. 5, 108 n. 46, 112 n. 56, 206 n. 8 Krauss, S. 237 n. 75, 280 n. 28 Kugel, J. x, 1–13, 5 nn. 6–8, 7 nn. 12–13, 8 nn. 18–19, 9 nn. 20–22, 10 n. 24, 22 n. 32, 23 n. 34, 29 n. 2, 32 n. 8, 52 n. 52, 91, 96 n. 13, 97 nn. 15, 17, 98 n. 19, 103 n. 33, 105 n. 41, 217, 217 n. 2, 232 n. 60, 237 n. 76, 334 n. 3 Kugler, R. A. 112 n. 57 Kuhn, P. 218 n. 4 Kuiper, K. 186 n. 3 Kurmann, P. 321 n. 32 Kurmann-Schwarz, B. 321 n. 32 Kvanvig, H. S. 74 n. 4 Laato, A. 207 n. 9 Labahn, M. 165 n. 12 Lacoste, N. xiv Lafargue, M. 192 n. 30 Lakoff, G. 288 n. 5 Lanfranchi, P. 186 n. 3 Lange, A. 31 n. 8, 42 n. 31 Lauterbach, J. Z. 217 n. 1, 282 n. 36, 303 n. 28 Leaney, A. R. C. 121 n. 14 Le Boulluec, A. 274 nn. 12–13, 284 n. 40 Le Déaut, R. 270 n. 3, 271 n. 6, 282 n. 36 Leemhuis, F. 214 n. 23 Légasse, S. 81 n. 35 Lehrman, S. 295 n. 19 Lehtipuu, O. 165 n. 12 Leiman, S. Z. 139 nn. 38, 40 Leiter, B. 347 n. 38 Lemaire, A. 64 n. 83, 105 n. 38 Lembi, G. 145 n. 68 Levene, L. I. 275 n. 16 Levene, N. 265 n. 54 Levenson, J. D. 2 nn. 4–5, 54 n. 61 Levine, E. 225 n. 36, 229 n. 53

index of modern authors Levine, L. I. 267 n. 55 Levinger, J. 347 n. 37 Levinson, B. M. 11 n. 27, 17 n. 12, 19 n. 23, 53 n. 59 Levison, J. R. 134 n. 16, 139 n. 37 Levy, B. B. 277 n. 20 Lewis, G. S. 199 n. 54 Licht, J. 16, 16 n. 6 Lichtenberger, H. 36 n. 17, 197 n. 47, 214 n. 23 Lieberman, S. 218 n. 5, 240 n. 85, 275 n. 16 Lienhard, J. T. 293 n. 14 Lieu, J. M. 97 n. 16, 203 n. 4 Lipton, D. xiii, 204 n. 5, 270 n. 3, 287–311, 287 n. 3, 297 n. 21 Loewe, R. 307 n. 34, 326 n. 48 Lohfink, N. 15 n. 1 Luckmann, T. 118 n. 5 Lull, D. J. 136 n. 26, 255 n. 26 Mack, B. 140 n. 44, 142 n. 51 Maher, M. 194 n. 37, 270 n. 3, 272 n. 8, 282 n. 36 Maier, J. 50 n. 49, 120 n. 11 Maimon, S. 346 nn. 34–35 Malamed, E. Z. 224 n. 33 Mandel, P. 98 n. 19, 242 n. 89 Mango, M. 318 n. 20, 320 n. 26 Markschies, C. 178 n. 30 Martens, J. W. 142 n. 53, 143 nn. 55–56 Martin, R. P. 154, 154 n. 7 Mason, S. 130 nn. 3–4, 131, 131 nn. 5, 7, 132 n. 9, 134 nn. 15, 17, 135 n. 20, 137 nn. 28–29, 139 nn. 37–38, 40, 145 n. 68, 177 n. 29 Matthews, T. F. 314 n. 4 McBride, S. 54 n. 61 McCann, J. C. 54 n. 60 McCarter, P. K. 2 n. 5 McDarby, N. 319 n. 22 McDonald, L. M. 92 n. 5, 139 n. 38 McKenzie, S. L. 204 n. 5 McNamara, M. 270 n. 3, 282 n. 36 Meek, H. A. 329 n. 63 Meeks, W. A. 164, 164 n. 10, 174 n. 23, 175 n. 25, 186 n. 3, 187, 187 nn. 7–8, 190, 191, 191 n. 22, 192 n. 29 Mendelssohn, M. 343–48, 344 nn. 28–31, 345 nn. 32–33, 352–53, 352 n. 52 Merback, M. B. 315 n. 7

359

Metso, S. 61 n. 76, 68 n. 88, 70 n. 93, 119 n. 9, 121, 121 nn. 16–18 Mettinger, T. N. D. 24 n. 36 Miller, J. H. 62 n. 77 Miller, P. D. 18 n. 18, 54 nn. 60–61, 106 n. 42 Mirsky, A. 226 n. 39 Mishor, M. 230 n. 55, 237 n. 77 Mittleman, A. 346 n. 36 Morgan, M. 337 n. 12, 352 n. 51 Morgenstern, M. 346 n. 36 Mortensen, B. 272 n. 9, 273 n. 11, 278 n. 23 Mroczek, E. xi, xiv, 84 n. 48, 91–115, 118 n. 5, 141 n. 46, 145 n. 67, 203 n. 4 Muddiman, J. 79 n. 26 Mulder, M. J. 95 n. 10, 145 n. 68 Muñoz León, D. 282, 282 n. 34 Muraoka, T. 333 n. 2 Murphy, F. J. 205 n. 7 Murphy-O’Connor, J. 77 n. 20, 119 n. 9 Mutius, H. G. von 183 n. 1 Naeh, S. 222 n. 22 Najman, H. ix–xiv, 26 n. 40, 33 n. 9, 42 n. 32, 73 n. 1, 74 n. 5, 80 nn. 27–28, 83 n. 44, 84 n. 49, 88 n. 67, 91, 92 n. 4, 93 n. 5, 94 n. 8, 97 n. 17, 108 n. 46, 109 nn. 47, 49, 117, 140 n. 43, 141, 141 nn. 45–48, 142, 142 nn. 49–53, 143, 143 nn. 54–58, 144 nn. 60–65, 147, 147 n. 72, 201, 245 n. 103, 247 n. 1, 268 n. 57, 276 n. 18, 334 n. 4, 352 n. 50 Neis, R. 267 n. 55 Nelson, R. D. 20 n. 24 Nelson, W. D. 254 n. 22 Neusner, J. 174 n. 23, 186 n. 3, 217 n. 1, 226 n. 44 Newman, C. C. 63 n. 79, 199 n. 54 Newman, J. H. xi, 29–72, 33 n. 9, 35 n. 13, 83 n. 44, 93 n. 7, 97 n. 17, 121 n. 13, 126 n. 35, 225 n. 37, 240 n. 85, 245 n. 103, 247 n. 1, 276 n. 18, 278 n. 23 Newsom, C. A. 29, 29 n. 3, 30, 34, 34 n. 13, 35, 35 nn. 14–15, 38, 38 n. 20, 40 nn. 27–28, 41 n. 30, 42 n. 31, 44 n. 38, 46 nn. 42–43, 47 n. 45, 49 n. 47, 51 n. 51, 52 n. 55, 53, 53 n. 56, 59 n. 72, 64 n. 80, 76 n. 15, 81, 81 n. 38, 86 n. 58, 125 n. 35

360

index of modern authors

Niccacci, A. 230 n. 56 Nichols, T. 322 n. 34 Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 92 n. 5, 112 n. 54, 203 n. 3, 204 n. 6, 249 n. 7, 280 n. 29 Niehoff, M. R. 255 n. 26 Nitzan, B. 44 n. 37, 114 n. 59 Noam, V. 268 n. 57 Noth, M. 80 n. 29 Novak, D. 354 n. 55 Núñez, R. E. 289 n. 8 Ochs, P. 265 n. 54 O’Connor, M. 272 n. 7 Oegema, G. S. 214 n. 23 Olin, M. 268 n. 57 Olyan, S. M. 16 n. 11 Onasch, K. 319 n. 22 Orlov, A. xii, 112 n. 56, 143 n. 57, 164, 180 n. 34, 181 n. 35, 183–99, 185 n. 2, 186 n. 3, 187 n. 8, 192 n. 27, 193 n. 33, 197 n. 47, 203 n. 4 Panofsky, E. 323 n. 40 Parente, F. 139 n. 37 Parry, D. 112 n. 57 Patte, D. 237 n. 76 Peres, I. 180 n. 33 Piatnitsky, Y. 318 n. 20, 320 n. 26 Pietersma, A. 106 n. 42 Pilch, J. J. 167 n. 16 Pilhofer, P. 31 n. 8 Pines, S. 334 n. 5 Ploeg, J. van der 86 n. 56 Pohl, F. K. 330 n. 69 Poirier, J. C. 81 n. 37 Polonsky, G. 329 n. 61 Polzin, R. 18 n. 18 Poorthuis, M. 77 n. 20, 78 n. 22 Popović, M. 36, 36 n. 17, 167 n. 15 Porter, S. E. 100 n. 23 Potin, J. 270 n. 3 Pouilly, J. 119 n. 9 Price, J. J. 145 n. 68 Propp, W. H. C. 15 n. 4, 19 n. 20, 219 n. 9, 220 n. 12, 221 n. 16, 223 nn. 25, 28, 225 nn. 35, 37, 226 n. 41, 230 n. 56, 235 n. 67 Puech, É. 83 n. 43, 92 n. 4 Qimron, E. 100 n. 22 Quispel, G. 197 n. 47 Rabenau, K. von 8 n. 17 Rad, G. von 26, 26 n. 41

Rajak, T. 135 n. 19, 137 n. 28 Rankin, I. 317 n. 12 Reed, A. Y. 207 n. 11, 208 n. 12 Reif, S. 304 n. 30 Richter, S. L. 11 n. 26 Richter, W. 52 n. 54 Rives, J. 130 n. 3 Robertson, R. G. 186 n. 3, 187 n. 8, 190 nn. 18–19, 198 n. 49 Roddy, N. 207 n. 9 Rodgers, Z. 94 n. 8, 112 n. 57, 129–48, 129 n. 2, 185 n. 2, 203 n. 4, 334 n. 4 Römer, T. 26 n. 42, 80 n. 32, 123 n. 24 Rosen, M. 347 n. 38 Rosen, R. M. 288 n. 7 Rosen-Zvi, I. xii, 58 n. 69, 217–45, 222 n. 22, 229 n. 53, 266 n. n. 54, 276 n. 18 Rosenzweig, F. 349–53, 349 nn. 42–43, 350 nn. 44, 46, 351 n. 47, 352 nn. 48, 51, 353 nn. 53–54 Rouchon-Mouilleron, V. 324 n. 44 Rubinstein, J. L. 298 n. 22 Ruffato, K. 186 n. 3, 187 n. 8, 189 n. 15 Runia, D. T. 174 n. 23 Russell, D. S. 94 n. 8 Ruzer, S. 234 n. 65 Safrai, C. 77 n. 20, 78 n. 22 Safrai, S. 217 n. 1, 237 n. 75, 244 n. 99 Safrai, Z. 244 n. 99 Saldarini, A. 95 n. 10 Salvesen, A. 274 n. 12 Sanders, E. P. 203 n. 3 Sanders, J. A. 54 n. 60, 92 nn. 4–5, 103 n. 33, 104, 104 nn. 35–36, 105 n. 37, 139 n. 38 Sandevoir, P. 274 nn. 12–13, 284 n. 40 Sänger, D. 203 n. 3 Sarfatti, G. B. 230 n. 55, 325 n. 46 Sarna, N. 248 n. 5, 270 n. 4, 290 n. 10 Savran, G. W. 9 n. 23 Sayler, G. B. 204 n. 6 Schade, W. 316 n. 9 Schäfer, P. 36 n. 17, 183 n. 1, 197 n. 47, 218 n. 4, 240 n. 85, 279 n. 26, 285 n. 41 Schams, C. 94 n. 9, 95 n. 10, 96 n. 12, 107 n. 45 Schearing, L. S. 204 n. 5 Scheps, M. 328 n. 59

index of modern authors Schiffman, L. H. 30 n. 3, 76 n. 14, 77 n. 20, 78 nn. 23–24, 80 n. 31, 109, 109 n. 47, 111 n. 53, 113 n. 58 Schlüter, M. 183 n. 1 Schmidt, F. 125 nn. 32, 35 Schneemelcher, W. 212 n. 20 Schnelle 158 n. 8 Schniedewind, W. 2 n. 5 Scholem, G. 191 n. 23, 218 n. 5 Schreckenberg, H. 326 nn. 50–51, 327 n. 52 Schremer, A. 235 n. 66 Schuller, E. M. 36 n. 16 Schwartz, B. 15, 15 n. 4 Schwartz, D. R. 83 n. 45, 138 n. 33, 139 n. 37 Schwartz, S. 208 n. 14 Schwemer, A. M. 50 nn. 48–49 Scott, J. M. 78 n. 24 Sed-Rajna, G. 325 n. 47 Seelig, G. 158 n. 8 Seely, D. 36 n. 16, 59, 59 nn. 70–71 Segal, A. 197 n. 47 Segal, B. Z. 325 n. 46 Segal, M. 76 n. 14, 113 n. 58 Segal, M. H. 95 n. 11 Shapero, D. 301 n. 27 Sharvit, S. 230 n. 55 Shemesh, A. 77 n. 21, 244 n. 98 Shepkaru, S. 292 n. 12 Sherwood-Smith, M. 149 n. 1 Shinan, A. 272 n. 9, 278 n. 23, 279 n. 24 Shirley, S. 337 n. 12 Sievers, J. 139 n. 37, 145 n. 68 Skehan, P. W. 104 n. 36 Smalley, W. A. 104 n. 36 Snell, B. 186 n. 5 Sokoloff, M. 300 n. 25, 305 n. 31 Sommer, B. D. 15 n. 2, 16 n. 8, 19 n. 22, 21 n. 30 Sperber, A. 269 n. 2 Spilsbury, P. 131 n. 6, 135 n. 20 Spitzer, F. 269 n. 2 Sprinkle, J. M. 122 n. 19 Stager, L. 5 n. 8 Stahl, N. 265 n. 54 Starobinski-Safran, E. 186 n. 3, 188 n. 11 Sterling, G. 56 n. 67 Stern, D. 96 n. 13, 242 nn. 90–91, 243 nn. 92–93 Stern, M. 150 n. 3 Stern, S. 289 n. 7 Stone, M. E. 74 n. 7, 92 nn. 4–5, 185 n. 2, 197 n. 47, 210 n. 17, 211 n. 18

361

Strecker, G. 158 n. 8, 212 n. 20 Strugnell, J. 56 n. 65, 91 n. 3, 100 n. 22 Stuckenbruck, L. T. ix–xiv, 91, 117, 201 Swartz, M. D. 33 n. 9, 226 n. 39 Swarzenski, H. 322 n. 35, 323 n. 36 Sweetser, E. 289 n. 8 Sysling, H. 145 n. 68 Tabori, J. 245 n. 102 Tal, A. 252 n. 16 Talmon, S. 104 n. 36 Tardieu, M. 81 n. 35 Teugels, L. M. 62 n. 78 Thiel, P. van 324 n. 43 Thompson, T. L. 77 n. 20 Tiede, D. L. 174 n. 22 Tigay, J. 220 n. 12, 248 n. 4 Tigchelaar, E. J. C. 76 n. 13, 92 n. 4, 101 n. 25 Toeg, A. 21 n. 28, 26 n. 38 Toorn, K. van der 95 n. 10 Tov, E. 74 n. 3, 75 n. 9, 76 n. 14, 95 n. 10, 111 n. 53, 113 n. 58, 114 n. 60 Townsend, J. T. 296 n. 20 Tromp, J. 197 n. 47 Tsevat, M. 2 Tso, M. xi, 31 n. 7, 73 n. 1, 117–27, 204 n. 5 Ulrich, E. 70 n. 94, 105 n. 38, 112 n. 57, 113 n. 58, 114 n. 60 Urbach, E. E. 7 n. 15, 229 n. 53, 240 n. 85, 281 nn. 31–32 VanderKam, J. C. 40 n. 25, 44 n. 37, 61 n. 75, 62 n. 77, 74 n. 3, 76 nn. 14, 16, 77 n. 20, 80 n. 31, 82 nn. 39, 41, 85 n. 53, 88 n. 68, 92 n. 5, 110 n. 50, 111 n. 53, 112 n. 56, 113 n. 58, 122 n. 20, 185 n. 2, 188 n. 10, 193 n. 33, 194, 194 n. 35, 249 n. 7 Van Der Water, R. 186 n. 3 Van Seters, J. 16 n. 9 Vermes, G. 81 nn. 34, 36, 84 n. 46, 87 n. 65, 305 n. 32 Vermeylen, J. 100 n. 23 Vervenne, M. 62 n. 78 Vielhauer, P. 212 n. 20 Vogel, M. 180 n. 33 Vogt, E. 186 n. 3 Wacholder, B. Z. 103 n. 33, 106 n. 42 Walther, I. F. 326 n. 49, 328 n. 55

362

index of modern authors

Waltke, B. K. 272 n. 7 Watts, J. W. 110 n. 51, 111 n. 52 Weinfeld, M. 11 n. 27, 13 n. 30, 19 n. 22, 21 n. 29, 26 n. 39, 59, 59 nn. 70–71, 248 n. 5, 253 n. 18 Weise, M. 41 n. 30 Weitzmann, K. 319 n. 23 Welch, A. C. 18 n. 14 Werblowsky, R. J. Z. 276 n. 17 Werman, C. 56, 56 n. 67 Wevers, J. W. 274 nn. 12–13, 275 n. 15 Whealey, A. 177 n. 29 White Crawford, S. 92 n. 3, 113 n. 58, 114 n. 60 Whitmarsh, T. 166 n. 14, 179, 179 n. 31 Wiencke, M. 186 n. 3 Wigoder, G. 276 n. 17 Williamson, H. G. M. 140 n. 42 Williamson, P. 321 n. 32 Wilson, G. 54 n. 60, 104 n. 36 Winston, D. 255 n. 26

Winter, B. W. 154, 154 n. 7, 174, 174 n. 22, 177, 179 n. 32 Wintermute, O. S. 74 n. 6, 91 n. 1, 110 n. 50 Wise, M. O. 120 n. 10 Wolf, N. 326 n. 49, 328 n. 55 Wolfson, E. 33 n. 9, 48 n. 46, 69 n. 92, 244 n. 96, 248 n. 4 Woolf, G. 95 n. 10 Wright, B. G. 97 n. 16, 98 n. 18, 108 n. 46 Wyatt, N. 289 n. 7 Wyrick, J. 102 n. 32, 106 n. 43, 107 n. 44 Xeravits, G.

64 n. 83

Yadin, A. 21 n. 31, 258 n. 29 Yerushalmi, Y. H. 229 n. 52 Yuval, I. J. 238 n. 82 Zibawi, M. 319 n. 22 Zimmermann, J. 82 n. 40, 83

SUBJECT INDEX Adam 9, 184, 338–39 -ic lore 197, 197 n. 47 Christ 178–81 Eve 316, 334 n. 5 glory 179–81 Moses 180, 180 n. 34 angels 12–13, 29–72, 82, 85–88, 98–99, 100 n. 24, 149, 181, 184, 191 n. 26, 194 n. 37, 195–99, 239–40, 279, 283–85, 300, 318 art 316, 328–29 communion with 86, 88 interpreters 98–99, 189–92, 189 n. 15, 191 n. 25 Metatron 183–99, 279 n. 24 priests 29–72, 32 n. 8, 38 n. 20, 40 n. 25, 42 n. 32, 85–87 Qumran 29–72, 32 n. 8, 40 n. 25, 42 n. 33, 45 n. 39, 51 n. 52, 85–87, 101, 125 n. 35 Sinai 263 n. 44, 278–79, 278 n. 23, 283–85, 285 n. 41, 316 stars 195–199 apocalyptic 33–34, 35 n. 13, 50 n. 49, 192 n. 29, 204, 207–10, 214–15 apologetic texts 129, 132–34, 137, 147, 174–76, 181, 250 n. 10 Aristobulus 153, 333 art and architecture 313–31 authoritative works 66 n. 86, 68, 71–72, 113 n. 58, 117–18, 123, 139, 141, 207, 276, 284 authority 6 n. 10, 31 n. 5, 39, 42–43, 42 n. 32, 71–72, 84, 110–111, 133, 138 n. 34, 139, 141–147, 142 n. 51, 170–171, 184, 195, 207–08, 223 n. 30, 277 n. 19, 278, 288, 292 n. 12, 311, 314, 353 Baruch 112 n. 56, 201–15 beit ha-midrash 270, 275–78 chosenness 45–46, 102, 209, 341–43 Christ See Jesus community Baruchian 210–213 Corinth 150–51, 156–58, 167–68, 172, 175, 180

esoteric lore 192 n. 29 interpretative 141, 143, 143 n. 58, 147 Jewish 346 Josephus 138 and n. 33–34, 172 Jubilees 31 n. 5 Qumran 30–31, 30 n. 4, 31 n. 5, n. 7, n. 8, 33 n. 9, 35 n. 13, 36 n. 17, 36–37, 40, 41 n. 30, 43 n. 34, 43–44, 44 n. 37, 52 n. 53, 67 n. 86, 84 n. 48, 85 n. 53, n. 54, 86 n. 61, 88 n. 67, 114 n. 59, 117 n. 3, 123 n. 23, 124 n. 30, 125 n. 32, n. 35, 180, 201 n. 5 constitution 7 n. 16, 119, 129–34, 130 n. 3, 132 n. 12, 133 n. 13, 137, 137 n. 29, 137 n. 32, 140, 144–48, 170, 176, 340–42, 347–48 covenant 20, 25, 26 n. 38, 37 n. 18, 41 n. 30, 44, 119 n. 8, 121, 125–26, 334–35 Davidic 2–3 renewed 61–63, 70, 84, 88 n. 68, 89, 121–22, 157–61, 169, 306, 314, 321 Sinai 2–3, 5–6, 26, 30, 74, 76, 84 n. 48, 85, 118, 121, 249 darkness 15, 19, 51 n. 52, 52 n. 54, 206, 213 David 2–4, 91–115, 220 angel-like 100 n. 24 covenant 2–3 ethical model 93–94, 100–113 psalmist 93, 106–109 scribe 94, 100–114 Dead Sea Scrolls 29–127, 164, 179–180 see also Qumran Decalogue 3–6, 15–18, 18 n. 17, 21–25, 114 n. 59, 133, 146, 252 n. 18, 253, 261, 263–264, 276, 296, 309, 315–17, 319, 324 n. 45, 325, 330, 336, 339 Deuteronomy 3, 8, 11, 12, 15–27, 53 n. 59, 79 as ethical discourse 120–22 as re-written Law 15–27, 83–84, 88, 124–25, 141–42, 252 n. 18, 253 n. 18, 352, 354

364

subject index

dream visions 164, 187–90, 187 n. 10, 194 n. 37, 195, 198 election see chosenness Elijah 3, 30, 63, 64, 72, 81, 281, 281 n. 32, 318–19, 321, 325 n. 47 Enoch 74, 112 n. 54 and n. 56, 143 n. 57, 180, 180 n. 34, 181, 183–99 mediator 98–100, 107, 109, 113, 115, 143 n. 57, 184 Metatron 183, 192–93, 196, 199 prophecy 184, 186–91, 191 n. 25, 195 scribe 98–100, 107, 109, 109 n. 48, 113, 115 eschatology 29 n. 2, 35 n. 13, 40 n. 25, 48, 52 n. 54, 58, 64, 81, 89, 95, 118, 125–27, 179, 187 n. 10, 201–215, 234, 237, 295, 306, 308 esoteric traditions 35, 45, 47–49, 54–55, 69, 71, 185, 190–92, 192 n. 29, 211 ethics 8, 31, 31 n. 7, 41 n. 30, 43, 48, 93, 94, 100–102, 112, 117–27, 337, 338, 342, 348, 353 Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian 183–199 exegesis 33 n. 9, 77, 80 n. 31, 122, 138 n. 34, 140, 144 n. 61, 149–81, 212, 218, 229 n. 53, 241, 251–53, 257, 261, 264, 266, 276, 278, 285, 290–92, 307 n. 34, 310, 320 Exodus 4, 10, 15–26, 30, 40, 62–63, 76, 81, 121–22, 125, 218–26, 244, 252 n. 18, 257, 259, 269, 271, 274 n. 13, 275, 277 n. 19, 278, 282–84, 298, 320, 335, 340 Ezekiel 3, 11, 30, 34, 38, 50 n. 49, 62–63, 72, 218, 278 fire 11, 15–27, 63, 199 n. 52, 252 n. 18, 255–56, 258, 320 glory 149–181 divine 12, 30–31, 44, 46, 50–52, 55, 57, 62–69, 76, 85–87, 89, 100, 149, 179–181, 188–89, 193–95, 198, 223, 226, 248–49, 254–55, 279, 281–85, 292, 295 of Moses 159–63, 167–71, 175–77, 180–81 of Adam 179–181 God 1–17, 18–26, 32 n. 8, 41–44, 44–45 n. 39 and 41, 46, 47, 47 n. 44 and 45, 48, 50–55, 57, 59, 60, 63,

64, 67, 69, 70–72, 74, 76–83, 85–87, 89, 91, 96, 99–102, 106, 109, 110, 115, 115 n. 62, 118–20, 123, 124, 125 n. 35, 126, 132–34, 137, 140, 143, 144 n. 66, 145, 146, 149–152, 160, 162–65, 167–70, 176, 179, 184, 188, 192–93, 193 n. 34, 199 n. 54, 202–6, 209, 211, 219–20, 220 n. 14, 221, 221 n. 17 and n. 18, 217–243, 247–68, 269, 271–84, 287–311, 319, 320, 324, 325, 328 n. 60, 333, 334 n. 6, 335, 336, 338–45, 347, 348, 350–54 abstract 9–13 body 9, 36, 57, 59, 248 n. 4, 255, 287–93, 295, 307 incorporeal 24–25, 248 king/ruler 137, 137 n. 32, 140, 193, 338–45, 348 lawgiver 1–4, 7, 41, 110, 132, 134, 140, 143, 144, 176, 262, 338–45, 350 visible 9–10, 24–45, 162, 162 n. 9, 248–268, 273–74, 283 Gospel 177, 314–15, 322 Heaven 9, 11–13, 18–19, 32 n. 8, 33 n. 9, 70–71, 82, 86, 144, 179, 181, 186, 188, 189 n. 13, 190–91, 192 n. 29, 194 n. 37, 195 n. 38, n. 41, 196–97, 252, 262 n. 43, 273, 278–81, 300, 314, 321, 328, 341 Horeb 6, 17–18, 23–27, 53, 63–65, 73, 76, 80, 85, 124, 318 n. 16, 319 identity 29, 40 n. 25, 81–88, 93–97, 100–107, 114–15, 118, 122–27, 171, 174–79, 194–95, 198, 209, 268, 292, 330, 335 interpretation see also exegesis biblical 1–127 Deuteronomic 3, 53–54, 76, 84, 203–6, 209–10, 252 n. 18, 352, 354 Christian 149–54, 163, 167–8, 175–6, 180, 266, 272, 287–88, 293–94, 296, 301–2, 305–7, 311, 313–17, 322, 325–6 Hellenistic Jewish 4, 7, 73, 80 n. 30, 112 n. 57, 129–48, 149–81, 153, 160, 162, 164, 168–78, 183–99, 241 n. 88, 244 n. 97, 250–61, 252–55, 257, 262 n. 42, 265–56, 277 n. 21, 284, 289, 333, 334, 346, 349, 354

subject index inner-biblical 15–27, 266 polemical 34 n. 13, 77, 155, 167, 185, 234, 260 pre-rabbinic 1–13, 210 rabbinic 18, 26, 62 n. 78, 68, 73, 162 n. 9, 192, 196, 207–8, 210, 217–245, 247–268, 287–88, 295–99, 302–4, 308, 311, 319 n. 21 targumic 269–85, 292–93, 307, 309 Isaiah 3, 30, 34, 38, 41, 44, 49, 50 n. 49, 59, 67, 72, 120 n. 11, 218, 221 n. 18, 275 n. 14, 35 n. 32, 316 Jerusalem Qumran 29, 32 n. 8, 37–38, 44–45, 63, 67 vs. Sinai 73–89, 112 Zion 73–89 Jesus/Christ 150, 154, 156, 157, 161, 167, 167 n. 16, 173, 175–78, 176–80, 272, 293, 293–94, 302, 305–7, 311, 313–14, 316, 318 n. 18, 320–23, 327, 331 n. 70 Josephus 4, 7, 129–49, 164–72, 174–78, 252–53, 255 kavod 188–89, 194 n. 36, n. 37, 195, 198 knowledge 35, 42–62, 66 n. 86, 67–72, 74, 87, 96–98, 135–37, 140, 154, 169, 177–78, 189–92, 202, 211, 237 n. 76, 240, 260, 281, 299, 338–39, 349 law see also Torah 1–13, 17–27, 117–48, 201–15, 333–54 2 Corinthians 148–81 Christianity 149–81, 313, 315, 317 divine 4, 11, 58, 102, 110, 146 Mosaic 4, 54, 62, 81, 83–84, 84 n. 48, 93, 102, 112, 113 n. 57, 129, 133, 140–44, 146–49, 151, 157–59, 165, 185, 204, 206, 210, 301, 320, 334 n. 4, 342, 344 natural/of nature 132, 133 n. 13, 142 n. 53, 143, 143 n. 55, 144, 146, 334–39, 343–44, 351, 353–54 revealed 74, 111, 144, 335, 351 sanctification 81, 201–15 after Sinai 333–54 written 142, 157, 158 n. 8 letter and spirit 155–58 liturgy 29–72, 93, 101–7, 111–13, 219 n. 9, 240 n. 85, 278 n. 23, 351

365

Maimonides 250, 334–36, 340, 344 Mary 319–20, 323 n. 40, 331 mediatory figures 5, 20, 30, 31 n. 5, 42 n. 33, 65, 80–84, 92–94, 115, 132, 146, 149, 183–85, 191 n. 25, 340–41 Metatron 183, 192, 193, 196, 199, 279 n. 24 midrash 18, 217–45, 247, 250, 253 Mosaic discourse 17, 26–27, 73 n. 1, 80, 92–94, 130–148 Moses 18, 20–26, 30, 31 n. 5, 41, 42–43 n. 33, 53, 56, 61–64, 66, 72, 73–115, 121, 123–24, 129–99, 203, 205, 207, 211, 213, 239, 241, 248–49, 254 n. 21, 262–65, 271, 273–77, 279–84, 287–311, 313, 315–16, 318–25, 327–31, 335–51 angel 81–83, 83 n. 43, 100 n. 24, 181 appearance 149–81, 198–99 art 313–25, 27–331 Christ 175–81, 313–25, 331 divine 82–83, 100 n. 24, 174–75 Enoch, Enochic traditions 109, 180–1, 183–99 example 91–105, 109–115, 144, 172, 203–11, 213 founder 93 n. 7, 94 n. 8, 141, 143 n. 54 legislator 3, 4, 18–26, 30–31, 41, 53, 91–115, 123–24, 128–32, 151, 164–68, 335–56, 340–41 pagan literature 149–81 polemics 143 n. 57, 149, 154, 163, 166–69, 171, 174, 176, 180, 180 n. 34, 183–99 prophet 23, 26, 31, 31 n. 5, 72, 81, 100 n. 21, 114–115, 121, 123, 129, 138, 142–47, 183–84, 248, 248 n. 4, 336 Qumran 31 n. 5, 73–89, 91–105, 109–115, 121, 123 scribe 91–105, 109–115 vs. Rabbi Akiba 287, 296–11 mysticism 30–34, 39, 63 n. 79, 183–99, 240 n. 85, 255 n. 26, 260, 263, 263 n. 45, 270, 277 n. 20, 278–84, 289–90 n. 7 nomos

7, 333–34, 343, 346–54

oneiromancy see also dream visions 187–88

366

subject index

Paul 149–181, 314, 323, 328 Philo of Alexandria 4, 7, 73, 80, 136, 142–44, 146, 149–81, 244 n. 97, 250–61, 265–56, 334 physics 335–38, 353 polemics 25, 77, 149, 154–55, 163, 166–69, 174, 176, 180, 185, 190, 198, 234, 235 n. 66, 242 n. 91, 260, 303–7 politics 7 n. 16, 30, 118, 124, 126, 127, 129–48, 151, 184, 192 n. 29, 234, 235, 237 n. 76, 243 n. 95, 334, 334 n. 5, 337, 338, 342, 343–46, 352, 353 prayer 1, 12, 33 n. 9, 40, 43 n. 34, 69, 76, 85, 93, 96, 100–1, 107–8, 113, 144, 147, 201–2, 220 n. 14, 277, 282 n. 35, 283–84, 306, 317, 329 priesthood, priests 10–12, 73 n. 2, 74–76, 78, 83, 84, 85 n. 54, 88, 112 n. 57, 125, 136–40, 145–48, 152, 175, 184, 270–75, 297, 284, 305 n. 32 angelic 29–72, 85–87, 86 n. 61, 270–75 community 86, 89, 125–26, 147 service 49, 60, 67, 72, 85–87, 270–75, 278, 283–84 succession 113 n. 57, 145 Priestly text 15 n. 4, 16, 252 n. 18 prophecy 3, 4, 30, 31 n. 5, 32, 40, 50, 52 n. 54, 58, 59, 62–65, 72, 81, 97 n. 17, 99, 100 n. 21, 102, 102 n. 30, 104, 106–7, 122–3, 129, 138–46, 168, 173, 188, 202, 205, 214, 218, 221 n. 18, 233 n. 62, 248, 248 n. 4, 250, 250 n. 8, 277 pseudepigraphy 92 n. 4, 94 n. 8, 109, 112 n. 56, 185, 194, 203 n. 4, 204, 208 Qumran see also Dead Sea Scrolls 29–127, 136 n. 25, 167 n. 16, 180 angels 29–72, 32 n. 8, 40 n. 25, 42 n. 33, 45 n. 39, 51 n. 52, 85–87, 101, 125 n. 35 body 35–37, 57–59 Deuteronomy 73–89 ethics 117–27 identity formation 88, 17–27 initiation 61, 84–87, 119, 121–22, 189 Jerusalem 29, 32 n. 8, 37–38, 44–45, 63, 67

liturgy 29–72 Moses 31 n. 5, 73–89, 91–105, 109–115, 121, 123 priesthood 29–72, 76–77, 84–88 purity 60 n. 74, 63, 69, 125–26 scriptural traditions 30–31, 34, 49, 53, 68, 70–71, 75–76, 91–115, 117–18, 120, 141 Shavuot 30, 37 n. 18, 60–62, 84–88 songs 8, 29–72, 86, 103–8, 114 n. 59 Rabbi Akiba 223–24, 242–43 n. 91, 244 n. 98, 251–58, 282 n. 36, 287, 296–311 rabbinic Judaism 1–13, 26, 62 n. 78, 68, 72–73, 207–10 Reformation 314–17, 323 revelation 1–354 creation 143, 335, 338–39, 353–54 law 1–13, 15–27, 217–45, 269–85, 340 narrative 15–27 ongoing 62, 68, 71–72, 84, 88 Sinai 1–13, 15–27, 29–72, 160, 184, 217–45, 317–21 Shekhina 217–45, 282 auditory 24–25, 42, 183, 247–68 visual 24–25, 42, 257, 247–68 exclusive 117–127 universal 76, 129–48 reward 55, 205–6, 209, 287, 295–97, 300, 307–10, 341 re-written scripture 91–115, 140–44, 147, 227, 324 ritual 29–72, 125, 151–52, 244–45, 267–68, 283–84, 289 n. 7, 351 sacrifice 3, 10–11, 77, 101 n. 26, 151–52, 244 n. 98, 271–75, 283, 284 n. 40, 304–5, 325 n. 47 scribes, scribalism 42, 42 n. 32, 92–115, 183 n. 1, 201, 211, 214, 297–98, 306, 337 scripture 8, 43 n. 34, 46, 53, 62, 64, 94, 113, 119, 134, 136, 138–40, 151, 211, 236, 238, 243, 253–54, 260, 265–66, 274, 281, 296, 302, 324, 331, 338–39 sectarianism 29–78, 80, 88, 117–27, 207, 209–10 Septuagint 135–6, 139 n. 39, 145, 153, 333, 346, 349, 354 Shekhina 218, 228 n. 48, 280, 281 n. 32, 282–83

subject index Sinai 1–354 ascent and decent 164–65, 170, 176, 188–89, 296–98, 311 covenant 2–3, 5–6, 26, 74, 76, 85, 118, 121–22, 218, 249, 340–41, 344 dream-vision 187–88 lawgiving 1–27, 117–48, 333–354 Qumran literature 29–127 relativization of 15–27, 79–84, 94, 121 n. 15 sacred place 74, 79 sacrificial service 270–75, 283–85 school/academy 207, 275–78, 282–84 scriptorium 112, 115 synagogue 270, 275–78 throne of glory 184, 186, 193 n. 34, 194 n. 37, 199 n. 52, 279–81 unique 336, 354 wilderness tradition 40, 52 n. 54, 63, 76–79, 84 Zion/Jerusalem 73–89 sophistry 149, 154–81, 345 Spinoza 333–54 spirit 29–72, 96, 103, 155–69, 177, 198, 327, 344, 350 spiritual transformation 165, 179–80 synagogue 207, 239, 242, 266, 270, 275–78, 282, 284, 325–30 targum 109, 136, 193 n. 34, 269–85, 292, 307–310 Teacher of Righteousness 81, 84, 115, 119, 123 temple 10–13, 24, 29, 31–32 n. 8, 38, 45–49, 50 n. 48, 52 n. 53, 60–63, 66–67, 71–72, 74, 77–79, 89, 101–3, 105–7, 125, 147, 201–6, 212, 223, 267, 270–75, 278–280, 283–84, 320, 330, 344, 348 theocracy 129, 137, 147, 341, 345 theophany 63–64, 66, 219, 247, 250, 270 throne of glory 184–86, 193 n. 34, 194 n. 37, 199 n. 52, 279–80, 281 n. 32

367

Torah see also law 7, 16, 26, 27, 31 n. 5, 42 n. 31, 43 n. 34, 53, 53 n. 57 and n. 59, 54 n. 61 and n. 62, 56, 61, 62, 71, 72, 81, 93, 102, 109, 113, 115, 120–3, 126–7, 132 n. 9, 133 n. 13, 134, 138, 138 n. 34, 141, 144–6, 149–50, 155, 157, 183–5, 188, 201–15, 217–45, 247, 249, 256 n. 27, 258, 260 n. 36, 262, 263–68, 269–85, 287, 296–302, 306, 308–11, 333–36, 339, 343–54 abrogation of 341–45 constitution 7 n. 16, 129–48, 170, 176, 340–42, 333–54 eschatology 201–15 eternal truth 333–54 giving of 16, 21, 26–7, 62 n. 78, 63 n. 79, 78, 84, 85, 88, 116–27, 149–50, 152, 155, 165, 210, 247, 269–85, 296, 301 hidden and revealed 122–23, 189 mitzvah 351 natural law 132 n. 9, 133 n. 13, 146, 333–54 (see also natural law) observance as sacrificial service 270–75 oral 72, 268, 296–302, 306, 310–11 prophecy 99, 202 righteousness 201–45 sectarian identity 31 n. 8, 41 n. 30, 43 n. 34, 117–27 study 43 n. 34, 68, 217–45, 267 teaching 53–55, 72, 99, 132, 141, 263–67, 269–85, 333–54 universality 129, 140–46, 229 n. 53, 260, 336, 340–44, 348 transmission of tradition 42–44, 54, 77, 91–115, 129–148, 183, 260, 284, 288, 292 typology 321–322 wilderness 4, 29–30, 40, 52 n. 54, 53, 63–64, 76–79, 84, 88, 102, 123–25, 125 n. 32, n. 35, 150, 184, 228 n. 48 Zion 6, 31, 50, 65 n. 84, 72–78, 89, 201, 206, 212, 270

INDEX OF PRIMARY TEXTS Mesopotamian Texts Laws of Eshnunna Laws of Hammurabi

4, 6 n. 11 4, 6 n. 11

Laws of Lipit-Ishtar Laws of Ur-Namma

4 4

Jewish Texts 1. Hebrew Bible Genesis 1–3 1 1:14 1:31 17:1 17:6 19:3 24:40 28:12 32:31 37

55 51 299 335, 338 119 n. 8 231 n. 58 283 52 n. 54 194 n. 37, 279 n. 26 248 164

Exodus 3:1–4:7 3 3:2–6 3:2 3:6 3:7 3:9 3:11–4:17 3:12 3:15 5:21 7:1 12:1 12:9 12:46 12:51 13:9–10 13:15 13:16 13:17–19:25 13:21 13:22 14:10 14:14

249 n. 6 19, 23, 320 249 n. 6 23 249 249 n. 6 249 n. 6 249 n. 6 52 n. 54 52 n. 54 251 n. 14 81–82 101 n. 26 305 305 124 304 304 304 224 274 n. 13 274 n. 13 220 n. 14 220

14:19 14:24 15 15:1 15:2 15:3 15:4–5 15:6 15:9–10 15:11 15:12 15:13–17 15:13 15:14–16 15:17–18 15:18 15:19 15:20–21 16:7–10 16:18 17:6 17:8 18:13–27 19–24 19–20 19 19:1 19:2 19:3 19:4 19:5–6 19:5

40, 274 n. 13 274 n. 13 218 219, 220 222, 226, 231, 254 n. 23 225 n. 36, 228, 229 n. 53, 235, 303 220 229 n. 53 220 221 229 n. 53 230 n. 54 223 220 31 n. 8 219, 220, 225 n. 36 219 n. 10 220 n. 12 31 234 322 322 124 218 16, 218 18 n. 17, 24, 269, 275, 275 n. 16, 278, 282–83, 298 269 n. 1 270, 277, 277 n. 21 88 n. 68, 269 n. 1, 275–76, 276 n. 17, 281 n. 31 247 n. 2, 271, 276 2 6 n. 10, 251 n. 13, 269

index of primary texts 19:6 19:7 19:8 19:8 (LXX) 19:9

19:9a 19:10–13 19:10–11 19:11 19:12–13 19:12 19:13 19:15 19:16–17 19:16 19:17 19:18–24 19:18 19:19 19:19b 19:20 19:22 19:24 20 20:1 20:2 20:15

20:17 20:18 20:19 20:20 20:21 20:22 21–23

10, 88 n. 68, 125, 271, 273, 278, 283 n. 38 276, 284, 284 n. 40 88 n. 68, 256 n. 27, 277, 277 n. 21 277 n. 21 19, 269 n. 1, 276, 276 n. 18, 277, 277 n. 19, 278 20 269 n. 1 270 24, 248, 270 270 271 n. 5 271 n. 5 88 n. 68, 271 n. 5 124 20, 64, 269 n. 1, 282 281 270 18, 19, 20, 280 64 n. 82, 251 n. 13, 274, 282, 283 n. 37 21 281, 281 n. 30, 281 n. 31 270–71, 271 n. 5, 273 270 16, 18 n. 17, 22, 81 20, 22 263–65, 264 n. 50 250, 251 n. 14, 252–55, 254 nn. 22, 24, 257, 259, 260 n. 35, 266 251 n. 14 10, 21, 24, 256 18, 20, 252, 257, 259–60, 266, 281 21, 163 n. 9, 340 19 18, 256 16

21:1 (LXX) 21:12–36 22:16–17 23:17 23:20–23 23:20–21 24

24:1 24:3 24:4 24:5 24:6 24:6 (LXX) 24:8 24:8 (LXX) 24:9–18 24:9–11 24:9–11 (LXX) 24:9 24:10–11 24:10–11 (LXX) 24:10 24:10 (LXX) 24:11 24:12 24:13 24:14 24:15 24:16–17 24:16 24:17 24:18 25–40 27:3 30:30–32 30:35 32:1 32:8 32:12 32:16 32:34 32:26 32:46a

369 284 n. 40 122 n. 19 122 n. 19 274 40 40 n. 26 18, 18 n. 17, 218 n. 6, 269, 271, 275, 282–83 269 n. 1, 276, 277, 279, 281 n. 31 276, 284 n. 40 74, 270 270–71, 273, 273 n. 11, 284 n. 40 270–71, 273 275 271–73, 273 n. 11 275 n. 15 270 250 250 n. 10 276, 281 n. 31 269 274–75 n. 13 24, 273, 275 n. 13, 279–80 274 24, 269, 272–74, 283 276, 281 n. 31 281 n. 31 276 278, 281 n. 31 31, 63 269 n. 1, 278, 282 248 n. 5, 249, 255 n. 24 276, 281 n. 31, 282 63 271 101 63 249 249 291 41 40 267 267

370 33 33:2 33:9 33:10 33:11 33:12–23

index of primary texts

34:6–7 34:23 34:27 34:29–35 (LXX) 34:29 34:33 34:34–35 34:34 34:35 38:3 40:34–35

298 40 274 n. 13 249 248 270 n. 3, 288, 290, 295–96 291–92 248, 291, 335 291–92 291 291, 293 63 248, 250 n. 9, 291 291–93, 335 9, 248, 254 n. 21, 274, 291, 293 291 293 xiii, 249, 287–311 149–81, 198, 199 n. 51, 324 248 274 296 160, 175 323 n. 41 160 160 160 160 271 63

Leviticus 26:9 26:11

242 242

Numbers 1:1 3:11–13 4:14 6:24–26 8:14–19 8:19 9:12 12:6–8 12:8 15 16 19:1–22 21:4–9 21:18 24:24 (LXX) 27:21 (LXX)

76 271 271 70 271 271 305 248 n. 4 254, 287 n. 2 239 168 327 n. 54 321 109 n. 48 277 n. 21 277 n. 21

33:12 33:13 33:14 33:16 33:17 33:18–22 33:18 33:19 33:20 33:21–23 33:21 33:23 34

Deuteronomy 1:16–18 4 4:12 4:15–19 4:15 4:19–20 4:20 4:24 4:29 4:36 4:46 5:1–6:3 5 5:1 5:2 5:4–5 5:4 5:5 5:20–24 5:21–23 5:22–23 (Eng.) 5:22 5:23 5:24 (Eng.) 5:24b 5:25–26 5:27 5:28–29 5:28 (Eng.) 5:29 5:31 6:1–3 6:4 6:5 7:9–10 8:6 9:3 9:8 10:12 11 11:22 12–26 12:5 12:11 12:14 12:15

124 16, 20 n. 25, 24, 252 n. 18 11, 248, 252 n. 18, 256–57, 259, 265 248, 252 n. 18 11 12 n. 29 12 20 n. 26 120 11, 252 n. 18 27 n. 43 16 15–17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 252 n. 18 24 21, 76 19 18, 19, 24, 248 n. 4, 264 n. 50 19, 20, 22, 248 n. 4 252 n. 18 22 24 18, 19, 23, 23 n. 33, 24 23 23 25 24 20, 23 81 23 21 23 21 306 88 25 119 n. 8 20 n. 26 25 11, 119 n. 8 11 n. 27 119 n. 8 79 3, 79 11, 79 79 11

index of primary texts 12:18 12:21 12:26 13:5 14 14:23 14:25 16 16:2 16:3 16:6 16:7 16:11 16:15 16:16 17:8 17:10 18 18:14–22 18:15 18:16 18:18–19 19:9 19:16–21 22:218–29 26:2 26:16 26:17 27–29 28:9 28:69 29:18–20 29:18 29:19–20 30:1–10 30:16 30:19 30:20 31 31:9 31:11 31:12 32 32:8 32:9 32:10 32:11 32:48–52 33:1 33:2 33:21 34:4

79119 n. 8 79 79 12 11 n. 27 11, 79 n. 25 79 n. 25 11 n. 27, 275 n. 16 11, 79 n. 25 19 n. 23 79 n. 25 79 n. 25 11, 79 n. 25 79 n. 25 79 n. 25, 274 79 n. 25 79 n. 25 23 23 64 23 81 119 n. 8 122 n. 19 122 n. 19 79 n. 25 352 n. 49 119 n. 8 121 119 n. 8 26 121 121 n. 15 121 n. 15 204 n. 5 119 n. 8 119 n. 8 12 23 53 79 n. 25 23 226 n. 44, 241 12 n. 29 12 261–62 247 n. 2 203 100 n. 21 6 n. 9, 247 n. 2, 253 n. 20, 285 n. 41 109 102

34:5 34:6 34:10–12 34:10

371 321 102 114 102, 220 n. 11, 248 n. 4

Joshua 1 1:8

53 53

Judges 5:4–5 5:20

6 n. 9 220 n. 11

1 Samuel 17:45 18:6–7

238 n. 78 220

2 Samuel 7:10–13 7:12–16 7:16 22:15 24:17

31 n. 8 2 n. 5 2 236 101 n. 26

1 Kings 5:12 17:6 18:30 19 19:12 22:19

96, 107 319 3 319 63, 64, 64 n. 80 250 n. 8

2 Kings 2:11 6:16–17 12:2 14:1–4 15:1–4

321 239 2 n. 3 2 n. 3 2 n. 3

Isaiah 1:3 6 6:1–5 6:1 (Vg) 6:3 6:8 11:4 11:8 12:2 13:1 15:1 49:2 49:3

327 n. 53 38, 49, 50 n. 49 250 n. 8 275 n. 14 34, 49, 50, 50 n. 49, 52 n. 53 52 n. 54 306 n. 32 306 n. 32 225 n. 37 65 n. 84 65 n. 84 59 59

372

index of primary texts

54:11–12 59:17 59:19 59:20 59:21 60:2 63:7–64:12 63:9 66:1

45, 67 236 44 44 44 44 40 40, 40 n. 26 66

Jeremiah 1:7 16:14 17:21–22 23:29

52 233 7 n. 12 258 n. 29

Ezekiel 1 1:1 1:24 1:25 1:26–28 1:26 1:28 2:3 3 3:12–13 3:12 5:5 10:5 10:20 37:26–28 38:12 40–48 44:5 46:1–10

278 250 n. 8 64 n. 80 64 250 n. 8 11 12 52 n. 54 50 n. 49 50, 64 n. 80 34 74 64 n. 80 250 n. 8 63 74 38, 38 n. 20 267 66

Hosea 4:1–3

3, 4

Amos 9:1

250 n. 8

Micah 7:15

233, 234 n. 63

Nahum 1:1

65 n. 84

Habakkuk 2:17 3:3 3:4 3:9 3:11

77 6 n. 9 324 n. 41 236 236

Zechariah 5:1–4 9:1 12:1 12:10 12:12

4 65 n. 84 65 n. 84 305 305 n. 32

Malachi 1:1 2:7 3:16 3:23–24

65 n. 84 32 n. 8 55 64 n. 83

Psalms 1 1:1–2 8:5–6 15:2 17:15 18:10 18:11 20:8 24:7 24:9 29:7 31:20 35:2 35:3 37 37:30–31 44:23 45:4 51 51:21 61:4 62:12 68:8–9 68:19 78:4 78:32 84:12 91:4 99:1 99:6–7 101:16 105:2 105:5 106 106:7 106:22 118:14 119 119:92 127

53 54 46 119 n. 8 250 n. 8 281 n. 30 281 n. 30 238 n. 78 66 66 251, 253, 255, 257 295 236 236 54 n. 62 53 n. 57 303 236 41 65 272 n. 9 258 n. 29 6 n. 9 279 n. 25 47 47 119 n. 8 236 281 n. 30 274 n. 13 119 n. 8 47 47 221 n. 17 47 47 225 n. 37 105 n. 40 242 105 n. 40

index of primary texts

373

131:7 (LXX) 132:5–7 132:7 138:4 139:5 139:14

274 274 n. 13 274 259 287 n. 2 233

Daniel 8 9:11

190 12

Job 9:11 23:8 38:7 38:7 (LXX)

Ezra 7:6 7:10

4 4

263 n. 45 263 n. 45 51 n. 52 52 n. 52

Nehemiah 9:13 10:29 10:31

18, 19 3 7 n. 12

Proverbs 7:7

263 n. 45

Song of Songs 1:3 5:9 5:10

303 303 303

Qohelet 12:9–12 12:12

1 Chronicles 21:17 22:8 22:14 28:2 28:11–19 28:19 29:11

101 n. 26 102 n. 30 101 66, 274 n. 13 102 106 225 n. 37

96–97 99

Lamentations 3:21 5:16–17

242 327

2 Chronicles 8:14 14:10 15:12 18:18 25:15 35:4

100 n. 21 238 n. 78 120 250 n. 8 52 n. 54 106

2. Apocrypha Baruch

112 n. 56

Ben Sira 24:33 39 39:1–8

95 99, 107 107 95–96

45:2–5 45:2 45:17 47 47:8–10 47:9–10

102 n. 31 100, 100 n. 24 77 102 n. 29 107 101

3. Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Zephaniah 9:4–5 2 Baruch 17:4 31–34 31:3 32 32:1 32:9 34:1

100 n. 24 112 n. 56, 127 n. 37, 201–15 205 209 n. 16, 212 210 212 212 213 212

38:2 41:3 41:4 44–47 44:2–3 46:1–3 46:4 48:22–24 48:47 51:3 51:7–8 51:11

202 209 209 209 n. 16, 212 212 213 213 202 206 205 205 203

374

index of primary texts

54:14 59:2 59:7 59:11 67:6 76:2 76:3–4 77 77:2 77:3 77:12–14 77:15–16 77:15 78–87 85:1–5 85:2 85:3

206 206 211 211 205 213 203 209 n. 16, 213 210 213 213 213 214 201 201 205 210

3 Baruch

112 n. 56

4 Baruch

112 n. 56

1 Enoch

76 n. 17, 112 n. 56 189, 191 n. 25, 197 98 n. 19 112 n. 54 98 n. 19 187 n. 10 188 280 n. 29 98 n. 19, 112 n. 54 189 n. 12 189 n. 13 189 n. 13 189 n. 13 74 n. 8 195 n. 39 204 191 191 193 n. 34 193 n. 34 193–94 198 n. 48 187 n. 10 189 n. 16 188 187 n. 10 196 249 n. 7 189 n. 16

1–36 12:3–4 12:4 13:3–7 13:7–9a 14 14:18 15:1 17–18 18:6–8 24:3 25:3 26:1 33:2–4 37–71 59–60 60:11 62:5 69:29 71 71:11 83 83:6–7 85–90 85 86 89:30 90:41–42

92:1

98 n. 19, 112 n. 54

2 Enoch 1:6–7 4:1–10 7 7:3 22 22.8 22.10 22.11 30.10–11 33.5 33.8 37 37.2 40:2–4 47.2 48.6–7

112 189 196 197 197 196 181 181 181 181 181 181 199 181 195 181 181

3 Enoch 10:5

183 191 n. n. 24 191 n. 199 199 n. 195 n.

11:3 15 15:1 46:1–2 Exagoge of Ezekiel 67–90 68–69 82 85 4 Ezra 9:30 14:27–28 14:28 14:37–44 14:46–47 Jubilees

1:1 1:2–6 1:5–7

n. 56 n. 16

n. 51 n. 41

21, 279 21 52 40

143 n. 58, 185–99 186 164 187 n. 9, 189 n. 16 190–91 210 210 210 211 23 n. 34, 31 n. 5, 73, 76 n. 17, 80 n. 27, 80 n. 31, 91 n. 3, 95, 97, 108 n. 46, 113, 136 n. 25, 142 62, 109 74 110

index of primary texts 1:26–2:1 1:27–28 1:29 2:2 2:3 2:29–30 4:17–19 4:19 4:26 5:13 6:15–21 6:17 8:19 12:27 15:1 15:21 16:13 19:13 24:33 32:1 32:26

110 74, 89 74 51 n. 52 51 n. 52 7 n. 12 98 187 74 42 n. 31 62 84 74 98 62 85 n. 51 85 n. 51 74 42 n. 31 42 n. 31 99

375

45:15 45:16 50:6–13

91, 114 99 7 n. 12

Ladder of Jacob

194 n. 37

L.A.B. 12:1

136 198

Odes of Solomon

112 n. 56

Orphica 26–41

192 n. 30

Prayer of Joseph

194, 194 n. 37

Psalms of Solomon

112 n. 56

Testament of Levi 4:3 18:3–4

77 77

4. Qumran Texts CD II, 5 II, 14–16 III, 12–IV, 4 III, 12–16 III, 20 IV, 8 V, 5–6 V, 5 V, 12 V, 18–19 VII, 18 VIII, 14 X, 6 XII, 23–XIII, 2 XIII, 2 XIII, 6–8 XIV, 6–8 XV, 2 XV, 9 XV, 12 XV, 15–17 XV, 19 XVI, 1–2 XVI, 2 XVI, 5 XIX, 4 XX, 17

44 n. 37 119 31 n. 8 83 180 88 101 n. 25 100 n. 23 80 n. 30 83 84 n. 47 80 n. 30 45 125 n. 32 56 43 n. 35 56 31 n. 5 31 n. 5, 80 n. 30 31 n. 5, 81 36 n. 16 81 81 81 80 n. 30, 81 45 44 n. 37

1QpHab VII, 11 VIII, 1 IX, 4 XII, 4–5 XII, 7 1QS I–IV I–II I, 1–3 I, 1b–7a I, 3 I, 7b–9a I, 8 I, 16–II, 18 I, 21 II, 1–4 II, 1b–18 II, 12b–18 II, 12b–14 III, 13–15 III, 26 IV IV, 6 IV, 23 V, 6 V, 7–10 V, 8–9

123 n. 23 123 n. 23 77 123 n. 23 77 119 n. 9, 122 n. 20 121 41 n. 30 44 119–20 80 n. 30 120 124 n. 30 121 70 70 121 121 121 n. 15 43 45 67 45 180 67 83 62

376

index of primary texts

V, 8 VI, 6–8 VI, 6 VI, 7–8 VIII–IX VIII, 1–19 VIII, 4b–13 VIII, 5–6 VIII, 11 VIII, 15 VIII, 22 IX, 12–XI, 22 IX, 18–19 X, 6 X, 8 X, 11 X, 20

31 n. 5, 80 n. 30 43 n. 34 84 n. 47 68 44 n. 37 57 45 68 67 31 n. 5, 80 n. 30 31 n. 5, 80 n. 30 41 n. 30 43 41 41 41 44 n. 37

1QSa I, 6–7 I, 25–27 I, 29–II, 1 II, 3–9

56 84 n. 48 125 nn. 32, 34 36 n. 16

1QSb IV, 24–26

40 n. 25, 87

1QM I, 3 II, 1–4 III, 14 IV, 1–5 V, 1–2 VII, 4–5 VII, 4 X, 6 XII, 12–15 XIV, 8b–18 XIV, 14

78 124 n. 30 124 n. 30 125 n. 32 124 n. 30 36 n. 16 78 80 n. 30 78, 87 47 n. 44 47 n. 44

1QHa I, 12–13 IV, 12 IV, 15 VI, 24 IX, 8–17 IX, 22 IX, 27–30 X, 9 XI, 21–23 XIV, 6 XVI, 16 XVI, 35–36 XIX

40 n. 80 n. 180 44 n. 52 n. 52 n. 69 44 n. 70 44 n. 69 71 46

25 30 37 53 53 37 37

1Q14 8–10 1Q22 1Q22 1 I, 4 1Q29 1Q29 1, 1–2 2Q21 2Q25 1, 3 3Q6 1, 2 4Q127 4Q158 4Q159 5, 6 4Q162 II, 7 4Q162 II, 10 4Q164 4Q164 1, 3–5 4Q169 3–4 I, 10–11 4Q171 1–2 II, 14 4Q171 1–2 II, 22 4Q174 1–2 I, 11 4Q174 1–2 II, 2 4Q174 1–2 III, 6–7 4Q175 4Q177 10–11, 5 4Q179 4Q180 5–6, 4 4Q186 4Q186 1 II, 6 4Q186 2 I, 6 4Q203 1–4 II, 14–15 4Q216 V, 6 4Q225 4Q226 4Q227 4Q249 verso 1 4Q256 4Q258 4Q258 1 I, 4 4Q258 2 II, 6–7 4Q259 4Q260 4, 10 4Q266 2 II, 5 4Q266 3 III, 19 4Q266 8 I, 7–9 4Q266 11 4Q266 11, 17–18 4Q266 11, 17 4Q269 1, 2 4Q270 7 I, 2 4Q270 7 II, 11–12 4Q275 4Q284 3, 4 4Q286 2, 1 4Q299 71, 1

123 n. 23 76 n. 13, 80 n. 31 76 80 n. 31 67 80 n. 31 80 n. 30 29 n. 1 80 n. 31 81 n. 35 84 n. 47 77 77 45 67 77 123 n. 23 123 n. 23 84 n. 47 123 n. 23 31 n. 8 81 84 n. 47 88 77 36 n. 16 60 n. 74 60 n. 74 98 n. 19 43 n. 33 80 n. 31 80 n. 31 80 n. 31 80 n. 30 121 121 67 67 121 44 n. 37 44, 44 n. 37 84 n. 47 36 n. 16 37 n. 18 84 n. 50 85 44 n. 37 37 n. 18 84 n. 50 85 n. 53 41 n. 29 65 n. 85 44 n. 37

index of primary texts 4Q320 4 III, 1–5 4Q321 2 II, 4–5 4Q334 4Q364 4Q364 14, 4 4Q365 4Q365 26a–b, 4 4Q366 4Q368 4Q374 2 I, 7 4Q374 2 II, 6 4Q375 4Q376 4Q376 1 II, 1–2 4Q377 4Q377 4Q377 4Q382 4Q394 4Q398 4Q398 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q400 4Q401 4Q401 4Q401 4Q402 4Q402 4Q403 4Q403 4Q403 4Q403

2 II, 4–12 2 II, 6 104, 7 8, III 14 II, 1–2 14 II, 1 1 I, 4 1 I, 5 1 I, 8 1 I, 15–16 1 I, 15 1 I, 17 1 I, 19 2, 4 2, 6–7 2, 7 14 I, 6 14 II, 6–8 16, 2 1, 5 9, 3 1 I, 19 1 I, 30–31 1 I, 31–40 1 I, 35–42

4Q403 1 I, 35 4Q403 1 I, 36 4Q403 4Q403 4Q403 4Q403 4Q403

1 1 1 1 1

I, 41–II, 1–16 I, 41 II, 10 II, 26–27 II, 27

85 n. 53 85 n. 53 29 n. 1 76 n. 14 31 n. 5 76 n. 14, 80 n. 31, 91 n. 3 76 76 n. 14, 91 n. 3 80 n. 31 76 81–82, 164 80 n. 31, 91 n. 3 80 n. 31, 91 n. 3 67 80 n. 31, 83 n. 43 82 76 31 n. 5 36 n. 16 101 n. 25 100 n. 22 40, 43 n. 33 40, 60 n. 73 43 n. 33 43 40, 42 44, 58 43 n. 33 32 n. 8 46 34 n. 11 32 n. 8 47 64 n. 80 44 64 n. 80 47 n. 44 50 49 49 n. 47, 50–51 58–59 52 n. 55, 57, 66 49 65 63 48–49 47

4Q404 4Q404 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q405 4Q408 4Q417 4Q417 4Q417 4Q418

3–5 6, 3 3 II, 9 4–6 4–5 6, 1–8 13, 3 14–15 I, 5 18 18, 3 18, 5 19, 4 19, 7 20 II–22, 11 20 II–22, 6–7 20 II–22, 7 20 II–22, 8 20 II–22, 12 20 II–22, 13 23 I, 1 23 I, 5 23 I, 11 23 II, 10b–13 23 II, 10 23 II, 12 1 I, 6 1 I, 13–18 1 I, 17

4Q418 42–45 I 4Q418 43, 4 4Q433 4Q433a 4Q434–439 4Q436 I, 1–II, 4 4Q436 I, 7–8 4Q448 4Q504 4Q504 1–2 II, 7–11 4Q504 3 II, 13 4Q504 4, 8 4Q504 8, 4–7 4Q509 97 4Q509 98 I, 7–8 4Q511 35, 3 4Q511 35, 4 4Q511 63–64 II, 2b–3 4Q512 4–6, 6 4Q512 70–71 4Q513 4Q513

377 49 n. 47 50 47 n. 44 50–51 49 n. 47 49 n. 47 47 n. 44 59 64 64 n. 80 64 n. 80 63 64 63 64 63 64 64 64 65 n. 85 65 n. 85 66 71 63 67 80 n. 31 56 55 55 29 n. 1, 52 n. 54 55 56 29 n. 1 29 n. 1 36 58 58 29 n. 1 77 n. 19 101 n. 27 76, 85 31 n. 5 180 67 67 67 40 n. 25 42 43 n. 36 44 n. 37 31 n. 5 13, 2 43 n. 36

378 4Q521 4Q522 2 II 4Q524 4Q525 4Q534 4Q547 9, 4 4Q558 4Q561 11Q5 11Q5 XXII, 1–15 11Q5 XXVI, 12 11Q5 XXVII 2–11 11Q10 XXX, 5 11Q13 II, 10

index of primary texts 36 n. 16 101 n. 28 80 n. 31 36 n. 16 36 n. 16 76 81 36 n. 16 93 n. 6, 105, 113 78, 87 51 n. 52 103–104, 107 n. 45 52 n. 52 29 n. 1

11Q17 VIII, 5b–6 11Q17 X, 6 11Q17 X, 7 11Q18 11Q19

11Q19 11Q19 11Q19 11Q19 11Q19 11Q20 11Q21

XIV, 7–8 XV, 3 XLV, 7–12 XLV, 12–14 XLV, 4–5

65 65 n. 85 66 78 78, 78 n. 24, 79, 80 n. 27, 80 n. 31, 88, 91 n. 3, 111 n. 53, 113, 142 39–40 40, 46 84 n. 48 36 n. 16 125 n. 32 80 n. 31 80 n. 31

5. Philo Abr. 5 16 276

143 143 143

Cher. 27–29

144 n. 61

Conf. 58–59

277 n. 21

Contempl. 85

244 n. 97

Decal. 1 32–49

143 n. 54 255

Det. 68

143

Her. 17–19

282 n. 37

Migr. 34–35 47–49 48

144 n. 61 256–57 252 n. 18

Mos. 1.1–2 1.148

153 143 n. 54

1.162 1.188 2.2–3 2.4 2.12 2.14 2.26–27 2.31–40 2.47–48 2.48 2.69–70 2.69 2.70 2.213

143 n. 54 144 n. 65 143 n. 54 143 164 143 n. 56 144 n. 63 144 143 143 164–65 165–66, 176 166 257

Opif. 1.1–2 3 89–128

132 n. 9 143 143 n. 56

Prob. 6.2

143

Sacr. 78 131

258 n. 30 143

Spec. 2.129 3.1–6 3.6

143 144 n. 61 143 n. 59

index of primary texts

379

6. Josephus Against Apion 1.29–30 1.29 1.30 1.31–36 1.36 1.37–41 1.41 1.42 1.47–57 1.54 1.279 2.145–286 2.157–63 2.160 2.164–286 2.165 2.184–88 2.184 2.185 2.190–98 2.193–94 2.193 2.239–41 2.255 2.257 2.281 2.291 2.293 2.295 2.284 Jewish Antiquities 1–10 1.1–26 1.3–4 1.5 1.9–11 1.10–13 1.11–12 1.11 1.15 1.17 1.18–24 1.19 1.21 1.22 1.24 1.29

129, 131, 134 138 138 138 138 138 138 138–39 134 138 135 n. 22, 136–38, 139 n. 39 175, 178 133 132 n. 10 132–33 133 n. 13 137 137 133 137 132 147 147 132 n. 12 133 n. 13 133 n. 13 133 n. 13 134 133 n. 13 133 n. 13 132 136 n. 24 131 7 n. 16 7 n. 16, 131, 135 145 136, 139 n. 39 133 135 132, 132 n. 12, 145 134, 138 132 146 146 132 n. 12 146 135

2.216 2.268 2.377 3–4 3 3.74 3.75 3.76 3.78 3.83 3.84 3.86–88 3.87 3.90 3.93 3.100 3.107 3.179–80 3.180–87 3.180 3.188 3.192 3.202–203 3.212 3.213 3.222 3.223 3.317 3.318 4.14–15 4.14 4.158 4.197 4.223–34 4.303 4.304 4.307 4.320 4.327–31 4.328 6.33 6.36 6.39 6.60–61 6.89 6.262–68 10.218 11–20 12.20

145, 145 n. 66 168 146 n. 71 132, 134, 134 n. 16 129 168 133, 146 n. 71 170 146 n. 71 170 133 146 133, 146 n. 71 133 133, 146 n. 71, 147 146–47 146 n. 71 178 146 174–75 137, 145, 145 n. 66 145, 145 n. 66 147 146 n. 71, 170 134 170, 176 7 n. 16 170 170 168–69 170 168 146 137 146 n. 71 137–38 146 n. 71 146 n. 71 170 170, 172 137 n. 30 137 137 n. 30 137 n. 30 137 n. 30 137 n. 30 134–35 136 n. 24 135

380 12.39 12.48 12.49 12.108 13.300–301 14–17 14.41–42 18.63–64 18.63 19.222–23 20.224–36 20.229 20.251

index of primary texts 135 135 135, 135 n. 22 135 137 n. 30 136 n. 24 137 n. 30 177 178 137 n. 30 138 131 131

20.261 20.264

131, 138 135, 135 n. 264

Jewish War 1.3 1.18 2.145 3.352 5.212–14

138, 139 n. 39 138, 139 n. 39 80 n. 30 138, 139 n. 39 146

The Life 1–6

131 138, 139 n. 39

7. Rabbinic Writings: Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmudim Mishnah m. ’Abot 1:1 2:10 3:2 3:6

72, 207 256 n. 27 217 217

m. Rosh HaShanah 1:6

232 n. 59

m. Sanhedrin 7:6

223 n. 24

m. Shabbat 6:1 6:2

223 n. 23 223 n. 23

m. Tamid 7:4

232 n. 59

m. Zevahim 14:4

271 n. 6

m. Berakot 1–5 5:1 9:4

1 n. 2 277 232 n. 59

m. Eduyyot 2:10

232 n. 59

m. Eruvin 9:3

232 n. 59

m. Hagigah 2:1

191, 263 n. 45

m. Kelim 16:1 24:7

280 n. 28 280 n. 28

m. Makkot 3:16

7 n. 14

b. Avodah Zarah 2b

m. Menahot 3:7

301

b. Baba Batra 14b–15a

m. Mo‘ed Qatan 3:9

232 n. 59

m. Pesahim 10 10:1 10:4 10:6

244 244 n. 102 245 n. 102 244 nn. 98–99

Tosefta t. Hagigah 1:10 2:5

234 n. 63 256 n. 27

t. Megillah 3:5–6

275 n. 16

Talmudim 282 n. 33

16a

106 n. 43, 109 n. 48 309

b. Berakoth 7a 45a 58a 61a 61b

307–309 283 n. 37 225 n. 37 307 277, 299–300, 308

index of primary texts b. Hagigah 13a–b 16a

256 n. 27 289

b. Hullin 91b b. Megillah 31a b. Menahot 29a 29b

88b 89a

269 n. 1, 282 n. 33 258 n. 29 281 n. 31

279 n. 26

b. Sukkah 5a

281 nn. 30–31

239 n. 83, 275 n. 16

b. Yevamot 49b

248

b. Zevahim 115b

271 n. 6

y. Hagigah 2:1

256 n. 27

y. Nedarim 3:2

258 n. 29

y. Pe’ah 2:4

262 n. 44

y. Sukkah 4:3

280 n. 27

301 287, 296–301, 303–307, 307 n. 34, 308–310

b. Rosh HaShanah 11b

244 n. 98

b. Sanhedrin 14a 34a 38b

292 n. 12 258 n. 29 279 n. 24

b. Shabbat 86b

269 n. 1

88a

381

8. Rabbinic Writings: Targumim Cairo Geniza Manuscripts Exod 19:3 Exod 19:7 Exod 19:8 Exod 19:9 Exod 19:19 Exod 19:22

276 276 277 276, 277 282 273

Fragment Targums Paris 110 Exod 19:2 Exod 19:3 Exod 19:4 Exod 19:7 Exod 19:8 Exod 19:9 Exod 19:19 Exod 19:22 Exod 24:10 Exod 24:11 Deut 33:2

277 276 276 276, 277 277 276, 277 n. 19 282 273 280 283 285 n. 41

Vatican 440 Exod 19:3 Exod 19:4

276, 276 n. 17 276

Exod 19:6 Exod 19:8 Exod 19:9 Exod 19:19 Exod 19:22 Exod 24:10 Deut 33:2

276 277 276, 277 282 273 280 285 n. 41

Targum Neofiti Gen 18:8 Gen 28:12 Exod 15:3 Exod 19 Exod 19:2 Exod 19:3 Exod 19:4 Exod 19:7 Exod 19:8 Exod 19:9 Exod 19:16 Exod 19:17 Exod 19:19 Exod 19:22 Exod 24 Exod 24:1

283 279 n. 26 225 n. 36 282 277, 277 n. 21 276 276 276 277, 277 n. 21 276 282 282 282 273 282 276, 277

382 Exod 24:3 Exod 24:5

index of primary texts

Exod 24:9 Exod 24:10 Exod 24:11 Exod 24:12 Exod 24:14 Exod 24:16 Exod 33:23 Num 21:18 Deut 33:2

276, 284 n. 40 273 n. 10, 284 n. 40 276 280, 280 n. 28 283 276 276 282 309 109 n. 48 285 n. 41

Targum Onqelos Exod 19:4 Exod 19:7 Exod 19:12 Exod 19:13 Exod 19:15 Exod 19:22 Exod 24:5 Exod 24:6 Exod 24:8 Exod 24:10 Exod 24:11 Exod 33:20 Exod 33:21 Exod 33:23 Deut 33:2 Deut 33:21

271 284 271 n. 5 271 n. 5 271 n. 5 271, 271 n. 5 271 271 271–72 280 272, 283 293 293 292 285 n. 41 109 n. 48

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Gen 18:18 Gen 19:3 Gen 28:12 Exod 19:1 Exod 19:2 Exod 19:3 Exod 19:4 Exod 19:6 Exod 19:9 Exod 19:10–13 Exod 19:16 Exod 19:17 Exod 19:18 Exod 19:19 Exod 19:22 Exod 24:1 Exod 24:5 Exod 24:6 Exod 24:8 Exod 24:10 Exod 24:11 Exod 24:12 Exod 24:14 Exod 24:15 Exod 24:16 Exod 24:18 Exod 33:23 Deut 33:2

283 283 194 n. 37, 279 n. 26 269 n. 1 277 269 n. 1 272, 276 273, 283 n. 38 276, 278 269 n. 1 269 n. 1 281 280 282 273 269 n. 1, 279 273, 273 n. 11 273 273, 273 n. 11 279, 280 273, 283 276 276 278 269 n. 1, 278 276, 282 307–309 285 n. 41

9. Other Rabbinic Works Avot of Rabbi Nathan 28 A8 A 28 A 66 B 18 B 30

295 256 265 265 223 265 223

Exodus Rabbah 28:1 45:5 45:6 46:1

281 n. 31 295, 295 n. 19 295 296

Genesis Rabbah 68:12 78:3 78:8 82:2

279 279 281 279

Lamentations Rabbati 3.21

241–42

n. n. n. n. n. n.

n. n. n. n.

27 51 51 24 51 24

26 26 31 26

Leviticus Rabbah 1:14 2010 22:1 23:8

248 283 262 280

Mekilta de R. Ishmael

303–304

Bahodesh 1, 108 2 2, 24 2, 85 3–4 3, 4 3, 123 4, 42 4, 46 4, 53 9 212 215

277 21 276 n. 18 272 n. 9 276 n. 21 218 n. 8 256 n. 27 282 n. 33 282 n. 36 281 n. 30 281 n. 31 259, 262 n. 40 218, 219 n. 8 256 n. 27

n. n. n. n.

4 38 44 27

index of primary texts 218 223 224 235

219 219 219 251

Beshallah 2:1 3:5

269 n. 1 269 n. 1

Nezikin 1, 8–10

284 n. 40

Pischa 14 Shirata 1 4 6–7 7 8 12 20 23 24 25 27 28 29 30–31 31 33–34 39 42 59–60 60 62 66

80

n. n. n. n.

8 8 8 12

228 n. 48, 244 n. 98 220 n. 12, 232 n. 59 264 n. 49 234 n. 63 220–21 226 227 n. 46, 232 n. 59, 237 n. 77 232 n. 59 226, 227 n. 47 218, 226, 227, 231, 232 n. 59, 240 222 228 n. 48 227 n. 46, 228, 240 n. 86 227 n. 45, 231, 232 n. 60, 244 n. 101 235–36 232 n. 59 228 nn. 50–51, 229 n. 53 228 n. 51, 229 n. 53 233 n. 62 238 n. 82 221, 221 n. 17, 238 n. 81 226 n. 44 230 n. 55, 232 nn. 59–60, 233, 234 n. 63 225 n. 36

Vayehi 3 16 211–12 Mekilta of R. Shim‘on Exod 15:2

383 220 n. 14 234 n. 63 239

Exod 24:5

254 n. 23, 264 n. 49 247 n. 2 256 n. 27 276 n. 18 254, 254 n. 22 271 n. 6

Midrash Leqah Tov Deut 4:12 Deut 32:10

259 n. 32 262 n. 42

Midrash Samuel 9:4

251 n. 12

Midrash Tanhuma 17

296

Midrash Tanna’im Deut 32:11 Deut 33:2

247 n. 2 247 n. 2

Numbers Rabbah 4:1

279 n. 26

Pesiqta Rabbati 21

264 n. 50

Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 7 12.25

263–64 259 n. 32 162 n. 9

Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer 35 41 46

279 n. 26 251 n. 12 283 n. 37

Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 9:52

271 n. 6

Seder Olam Rabbah 5

239 n. 83

Sifra 2:12 10:1

263 n. 44 258 n. 29

Exod Exod Exod Exod

19:4 19:8 19;9 20:15

384 Sifre Numbers 43 102

index of primary texts

112

226 n. 220 n. n. 29 248 n. n. 21 258 n.

Sifre Deuteronomy 32 36 306 313 314 315 333

277 223 n. 23 265 nn. 51–52 261, 261 n. 37 247 n. 2 232 n. 59 232 n. 59

103

44 13, 258 4, 254 29

335 343

267, 267 n. 56 247 n. 2, 253 n. 20, 256 n. 27

Sifre Zutta 84

191 n. 21

Song of Songs Rabbah 1:2 4:8

263 n. 44 280 n. 27

Tanh. Ha’azinu 4

259 n. 32

Yalqut

254 n. 21

Christian Texts 1. New Testament John 3:14 19

321 305

Acts 13:15

62 n. 78

Romans 2:29 7:6

157 157

1 Corinthians 1:25 1:26 1:27 2:3 2:4 4:10 10:1–4 10:5–6 11:7 13:12 14:16 14:23 15:44–49 15:45 15:47–49 15:49

167 169 167 173 170 167 150 150 179 248 n. 4 151–52 151–52 166 158 180 179

2 Corinthians 2–3 2:6

169 169

2:16 2:17 3–4 3 3:1–6 3:1–3 3:1 3:2–3 3:2 3:3b 3:3c 3:4–6 3:5–6 3:6 3:7–11 3:7 3:12–18 3:13 3:14–15 3:15 3:16 3:18–4:4 3:18 4:2 4:4 4:6a 4:8–10 4:16

169 154–55, 174 n. 22, 179 180–81 149–81 158 155–57 155–57 158 156–57 156 156–57 157–58 169 157–58 159–61 159, 162 161–64 162, 176 176 171 162, 180 179 162, 165, 179–80 155 177, 179–80 177 173 163, 165, 173, 179–80, 180 n. 33

index of primary texts 4:17 5:1–10 5:16 10–13 10:10 11:4–6 11:6b 11:22 11:30 12:5 12:9–10

180 180 n. 33 177 150 166–67, 173 177 178 167 173 173 173

385

Galatians 1:10 3:17 3:19 4:9

170 149 149 162

1 Thessalonians 1:9

162

Revelation 4:2–11 4:11

52 n. 53 52 n. 53

2. Patristic Writers Augustine Trinity 2.17.29

293, 293 n. 14

Dio Chrysostom Discourses 76.1–4 76.3

158 n. 8 158 n. 8

Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica 8.10.1–5 13.12.1–2

333 153

Gregory Nazianus Oration 2.3

294, 294 n. 16

Origen Comm. on Song of Songs 3.15

294, 294 n. 17

Paterius Comm. on Exodus Exod 33:23

293–94, 294 n. 15

Greek and Latin Texts Alexander Polyhistor

187

Aristobulus Frag. 3 Aristophanes Plutus 1003

153

Celsus Apud Origen Contra Celsum I.16

153

172

Cicero Laws Republic

134 n. 15 134 n. 15

Dio Orations 12.5 12.13 12.15

173 173 173

Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca Historica 1.94.1–2

151–52

Aristotle apud Diogenes Laertius Vitae philosopharum 5.18 156 Metaphysics VI, 1027

338, 338 n. 16

Nicomachean Ethics 1094

338, 338 n. 17

386

index of primary texts

Epictetus Dissertationes 2.3

156

Euripides Troades 887–88

258 n. 30

Hecataeus of Abdera apud Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca Historica 40.3.3–6

151

2.572 2.585 521 554 570 590 616

172 172 174 174 174 174 174

Plato Protagoras 313d–e

154–55

Republic 589a

178

Juvenal Saturae 14.100–104

152

Libanius Declamations 31.35

Plutarch De tuenda sanitate praecepta 131A 173

158 n. 8

Lucretius On the Death of Peregrinus 13

Isis and Osiris 75

258 n. 30

178

Moralia 1007C

258 n. 30

Numenius Frag. 8.13

153, 153 n. 5

Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 1.483 1.486 1.525

Strabo Geography 16.2.36–37

152

172 171 171–72

Tacitus Historiae 1.31 5.4.1

341 n. 25 152