(Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism_Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 151) Martha Himmelfarb-Between Temple and Torah_ Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period an(1).pdf

Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism
Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum
Edited by
Peter Schfer (Princeton, NJ)
Annette Y. Reed (Philadelphia, PA)
Seth Schwartz (New York, NY)
Azzan Yadin-Israel (New Brunswick, NJ)
151
Martha Himmelfarb
Between Temple and Torah

Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries
in the Second Temple Period and Beyond
Mohr Siebeck
Martha Himmelfarb, born 1952; 1974 BA in Greek from Barnard College; 1981 PhD in Reli-
gious Thought from the University of Pennsylvania; since 1978 member of the faculty in the
Religion Department at Princeton University; since 2007 William H. Danforth Professor of
Religion.
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ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)
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Table of Contents
Original Publication and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Priests, Temples, and Torah

1. The Temple and the Garden of Eden in Ezekiel,
theBook of the Watchers, and the Wisdom of Ben Sira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2. Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time

of the Maccabean Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3. Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim to Authority

of the Book of Jubilees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4. Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incense: The Law of the Priesthood

in Aramaic Levi and Jubilees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5. Temple and Priests in the Book of the Watchers, the Animal

Apocalypse, and the Apocalypse of Weeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6. Found Written in the Book of Moses: Priests in the Era of Torah . . . . 93
Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls

7. Sexual Relations and Purity in the Temple Scroll and the
Book of Jubilees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8. Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
9. The Purity Laws of 4QD: Exegesis and Sectarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
10. The Polemic against the evul Yom: A Reexamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

VI Table of Contents
Judaism and Hellenism
11. Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
12. Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
13. The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Difference

in Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
14. He Was Renowned to the Ends of the Earth (1Macc 3:9):

Judaism and Hellenism in 1 Maccabees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Heavenly Ascent
15. Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses

and the Hekhalot Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
16. Revelation and Rapture: The Transformation ofthe Visionary

in the Ascent Apocalypses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
17. The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World . . . . . . . . . 295
18. Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem: Rachel Eliors

The Three Temples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
The Pseudepigrapha and Medieval Jewish Literature
19. R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs . . 329
20. Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Index of Ancient Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

Original Publication and Acknowledgments
1.The Temple and the Garden of Eden in Ezekiel, the Book of the Watchers, and
the Wisdom of Ben Sira
Reprinted from Sacred Spaces and Profane Places: Essays in the Geographics of Juda
ism, Christianity, and Islam (ed. Jamie S. Scott and Paul Simpson-Housley; Westport,
Conn: Greenwood, 1991), 6378. Copyright 1991 by Jamie Scott and Paul Simpson-
Housley. Reproduced with permission of ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, Calif.
2.Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of the Mac-
cabean Revolt
Reprinted from JSQ 6 (1999): 124, with permission of Mohr Siebeck.
3.Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim to Authority of the Book
of Jubilees
Reprinted from A Multiform Heritage: Studies in Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor
of Robert A. Kraft (ed. Benjamin G. Wright. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 1930, with
permission of the present publisher, Duke University Press.
4.Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incense: The Law of the Priesthood in Ara
maic Levi and Jubilees
Reprinted from Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (ed.
Raanan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 10322, with permission of Cambridge University Press.
5.Temple and Priests in the Book of the Watchers, the Animal Apocalypse, and
the Apocalypse of Weeks
Reprinted from The Early Enoch Literature (ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and John J. Collins;
Leiden: Brill, 2007), 21935, with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
6.Found Written in the Book of Moses: Priests in the Era of Torah

Reprinted from Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? (ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and
Zeev Weiss, in collaboration with Ruth Clements; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 2341, with per-
mission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
VIII Original Publication and Acknowledgments
7.Sexual Relations and Purity in the Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees
Reprinted from DSD 6 (1999): 1136, with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
8.Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512

Reprinted from DSD 8 (2001): 937, with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
9.The Purity Laws of 4QD: Exegesis and Sectarianism

Reprinted from Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in
Honor of Michael E. Stone (ed. Esther G. Chazon, David Satran, and Ruth A. Clements;
Leiden: Brill, 2004), 15569, with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
10.The Polemic against the evul Yom: A Reexamination

Reprinted from New Perspectives on Old Texts: Proceedings of the Tenth International
Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated
Literature, 911 January, 2005 (ed. Esther G. Chazon and Betsy Halpern-Amaru, in col-
laboration with Ruth A. Clements; STDJ 88; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 199214, with permis-
sion of Koninklijke Brill NV.
11.Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees

Reprinted from Poetics Today 19.1 (1998), Hellenism and Hebraism Reconsidered: The
Poetics of Cultural Influence and Exchange I, ed. David Stern, 1940. Copyright, 1998,
the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University.All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press.
12.Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism

Reprinted from The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (ed.
David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998),
199211, with the permission of the Yale Unversity Press.
13.The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Difference in Antiquity

Reprinted from Ancient Judaism in Its Hellenistic Context (ed. Carol Bakhos; Leiden:
Brill, 2005), 11329, with permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
14.He Was Renowned to the Ends of the Earth (1 Maccabees 3:9): Judaism
and Hellenism in 1 Maccabees
Reprinted from Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext (ed. Anita Norich
and Yaron Z. Eliav; BJS 349; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008), 7797, with
permission of Brown Judaic Studies.
15.Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot
Literature
Reprinted from HUCA 59 (1988): 73100, with permission of the Hebrew Union College
Annual.
Original Publication and Acknowledgments IX
16.Revelation and Rapture: The Transformation of the Visionary in the Ascent

Apocalypses
Reprinted from Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies Since the Uppsala Col
loquium (ed. John J. Collins and James H. Charlesworth; JSPSup 9; Sheffield: Academic
Press, 1991), 7990, by kind permission of Continuum International Publishing Group.
17.The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Reprinted from Death, Ecstasy, and Other Wordly Journeys (ed. John J. Collins and
Michael Fishbane: Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 12137, with
permission of SUNY Press.
18.Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem: Rachel Eliors The Three Temples

Reprinted from Wege mystischer Gotteserfahrung / Mystical Approaches to God. Ju
dentum, Christentum und Islam/Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (ed. Peter Schfer, in
collaboration with Elisabeth Mller-Luckner; Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 65;
Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2006), 1936, with permission of Oldenbourg
Verlag.
19.R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Reprinted from AJSR 9 (1984): 5578, with the permission of Cambridge University
Press.
20.Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature

Reprinted from Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha
(ed. J.C. Reeves; EJL 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 11541, with permission of the
Society of Biblical Literature.
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums
AJSR Association for Jewish Studies Review
AOS American Oriental Series
AOT The Apocryphal Old Testament. Edited by H. F. D. Sparks. Oxford, 1984
APOT The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Edited by
R.H. Charles. 2 vols. Oxford, 1913
BEATAJ Beitrge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentum
BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph.
Stuttgart, 1983
BHT Beitrge zur historischen Theologie
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series
CP Classical Philology
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium. Ed. I. B. Chabot et al.
Paris, 1903
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries
EncJud Encyclopaedia Judaica. 16 vols. Jerusalem, 1972
FJB Frankfurter Judaistische Beitrge
HAR Hebrew Annual Review
HeyJ Heythrop Journal
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs
HSS Harvard Semitic Studies
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
Int Interpretation
JANES Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman
Periods
XII Abbreviations
JSPSup Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha: Supplement Series

JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series
JSQ Jewish Studies Quarterly
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
LJPSTT Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and
the Talmud
NTOA Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus
NTS New Testament Studies
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis
OTL Old Testament Library
OTP Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by J. H. Charlesworth. 2 vols.
New York, 1983
PAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research
PVTG Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti Graece
RB Revue biblique
REJ Revue des tudes juives
RevQ Revue de Qumran
RTL Revue thologique de Louvain
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBLEJL Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and Its Literature
SBLSP Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers
SBLSymS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series
SCS Septuagint and Cognate Studies
SR Studies in Religion
STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah
StPB Studia post-biblica
SVTP Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigraphica
TSAJ Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism / Texte und Studien zum Antiken
Judentum
VT Vetus Testamentum
ZAW Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZPE Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik
ZRGG Zeitschrift fr Religions und Geistesgeschichte
Introduction
This volume contains most of my articles from 1984 through 2011 on topics in
Second Temple Judaism and the development and reception of Second Temple
traditions in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. It does not contain articles I
have written on rabbinic texts or the post-rabbinic Hebrew apocalyptic works
Sefer Zerubbabel and Sefer Eliyyahu. I have also omitted articles relevant to
the volumes subject that no longer add significantly to the content of my books
Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses1 and A Kingdom of
Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism2 as well as articles written for a
more popular audience. Thus I trust that all of the articles here are of continuing
scholarly interest.
The first three sections of the volume treat texts and traditions of the Second
Temple period. The articles in Priests, Temples, and Torah address the themes
of the section title in texts from the Bible to the Mishnah. Purity in the Dead Sea
Scrolls contains articles analyzing the intensification of the biblical purity laws,
particularly the laws for genital discharge, in the major legal documents from
the Scrolls. The articles in Judaism and Hellenism explore the relationship
between these two ancient cultures by examining the ancient and modern histori-
ography of the Maccabean Revolt and the role of the Torah in ancient Jewish ad-
aptations of Greek culture. The last two sections of the volume follow texts and
traditions of the Second Temple period into late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The articles in Heavenly Ascent consider the relationship between the ascent
apocalypses of the Second Temple period and later works involving heavenly
ascent, particularly the hekhalot texts. The final section, The Pseudepigrapha
and Medieval Jewish Literature, contains two investigations of knowledge of
works of the Second Temple period by medieval Jews with consideration of the
channels by which the works might have reached these later readers.
The process of putting this volume together has made me more conscious than
ever of the ways in which the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls during the
last decades of the twentieth century has contributed to and changed our under-
standing of ancient Judaism. With the exception of the pieces on Judaism and
1M. Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1993).

2M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

2 Introduction
Hellenism, all of the articles here reflect the impact of the Scrolls. Several treat
previously unknown texts discovered among the Scrolls, while many of them
are indebted to the new perspectives on long-known works that fragments found
among the Scrolls have provided. The previously unknown texts studied here
include several of the legal texts discussed in the articles in Purity in the Dead
Sea Scrolls: 4QD, the Temple Scroll, and 4QMMT. The long-known works il-
lumined by the new manuscripts that are of most importance for the volume are
Aramaic Levi, Jubilees, and especially the Book of the Watchers. These works
play a central role in Priests, Temples, and Torah, and they make appearances
in other sections of the volume as well.
Of all of these discoveries, it seems to me that the Aramaic fragments of
1Enoch, or more precisely, of four of the five works that make up the Ethiopic
text, have had the most transformative affect on the understanding of ancient
Judaism. The fragments were first published in 1976, when I was in graduate
school.3 But my high estimation of their importance reflects more than the timing
of their publication just as my scholarly interests were being formed. To begin
with, the fragments changed our understanding of the emergence and develop-
ment of apocalyptic literature quite dramatically. The paleographical evidence
of the fragments demonstrated decisively that the biblical Book of Daniel from
the middle of the second century BCE was not, as had previously been thought,
the earliest apocalypse. That honor belongs to the Aramaic original of the Astro
nomical Book (1Enoch 7282), followed by the Book of the Watchers (1Enoch
136), both from the third century.
These new datings changed the way scholars thought about the apocalypses
since Daniel could no longer be understood as the fountainhead of the genre. The
displacement of Daniel is particularly significant because the two early Enochic
works stand at a considerable distance from it in both form and content. Neither
contains the symbolic visions characteristic of Daniel, and neither is primarily
concerned with collective eschatology. In contrast to Daniels visions, which
require an interpreting angel to decode them, the mode of revelation in these
Enochic apocalypses is more direct. The Astronomical Book contains little nar-
rative, but it presents itself as an account of what the angel Uriel showed Enoch.
The central mode of revelation in the Book of the Watchers is the journey, of
which there are two, an ascent to heaven and a journey to the ends of the earth,
with the sights Enoch sees in the course of the journeys. The concentration of the
Astronomical Book on calendar is an indication of the importance of this topic in
Second Temple Judaism, which can be seen also in Jubilees, but calendar is not
a central concern of later apocalypses. The interests of the Book of the Watch
ers the problem of evil, the heavenly temple, personal eschatology, and mythic
3J.T. Milik, with the collaboration of M. Black, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments
of Qumrn Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).

Introduction 3
geography had a greater impact on later apocalypses, including apocalypses

in which collective eschatology plays a central role. Perhaps scholars shouldnt
have needed the new datings to notice the importance of these interests for the
apocalypses, but in practice it was the discovery of the Aramaic Enoch fragments
that placed them on the scholarly agenda.
But the lessons the Book of the Watchers has to teach go well beyond apoca-
lyptic literature. Probably the most important, in my view, is about the relation-
ship between priest and scribe. There can be no doubt of the potential for tension
between these different types of functionaries once a written text detailing the
management of the Jerusalem Temple had received authoritative status, and the
Book of Nehemiah (ch. 13) makes it amply clear that the potential was some-
times realized. But the Book of the Watchers depiction of Enoch as both scribe
and priest points to the ways in which these roles complement rather than oppose
each other. This too is a lesson that we could have learned without the Aramaic
fragments of 1Enoch. After all, the biblical Book of Ezra takes the trouble to
trace the lineage of its hero, the first great scribe of the Second Temple period,
back to Aaron, the founder of the priesthood (Ezra 7:16). Indeed, many of the
scribes known to us by name in the Second Temple period were priests by an-
cestry, while the nature of the codification of priestly law in the Torah suggests
that at least some priests and scribes came to share not only concern for the cult
and questions of purity but also a worldview that valued regularity and precision.
In a happy intersection of scholarly advances, Peter Schfer and his collabo-
rators published their Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur4 only a few years after
the Aramaic fragments brought new attention to the Book of the Watchers. The
publication of the Synopse marked the beginning of a new era in the study of
hekhalot literature and thus of heavenly ascent in ancient Judaism, and it directed
scholarly attention to the ascent in the Book of the Watchers, the first narrative of
ascent in Jewish literature, and to the ascents in other apocalypses. The articles in
Heavenly Ascent are deeply indebted to both publications and to the reinvigo-
rated discussion of the ancient Jewish literature of ascent they made possible.
In contrast to the articles in the other sections, the articles in Judaism and
Hellenism have not benefitted from the availability of new texts or new manu-
script evidence for previously known works. The juxtaposition of Judaism and
Hellenism is itself ancient, going back to one of the works that plays a central
role in these articles, 2Maccabees. In the articles I argue that despite 2Mac-
cabees claim that Judaism and Hellenism are opposing cultures, a close exami-
nation of 2Maccabees itself and of the other great history of the Maccabean
Revolt, the unrelated work known as 1Maccabees, finds Judaism and Hellenism
inextricably intertwined, though the intertwining takes a different and distinctive
4P. Schfer, in collaboration with M. Schlter and H.G. von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-
Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981).

4 Introduction
form in each of the texts. While I hope I have illumined the works I discuss in
new ways, I cannot claim credit for the central insight that ancient Jews suc-
cessfully adapted Hellenism for their own purposes. At least since the middle of
the twentieth century scholars have recognized that there were more options for
Jews of the Hellenistic era than rejecting Greek culture or being overcome by it,
but my understanding is particularly indebted to the work of Elias Bickerman,
the subject of one of the articles here, in my view the greatest twentieth-century
historian of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, despite his lack of formal train-
ing in Jewish history and his limited knowledge of Hebrew.5
The approach of these articles is resolutely old-fashioned, textual and con-
textual. It is an approach that I hope lives up to a memorable formulation of my
teacher Robert A. Kraft: Historians shouldnt shave with Ockhams razor.6
That is, elegant models and simple explanations are deeply appealing and per-
haps in the natural sciences they are to be preferred. But as our own experience
testifies, human affairs are inevitably multifaceted and complicated, causation is
rarely straightforward, and elegant models too often oversimplify and obscure.
Resistance to Ockhams razor in many of the articles published here takes the
form of suspicion of oppositions based on essentialist understandings of the phe-
nomena they study. I have already suggested that the elements of the pairs priest/
scribe and Judaism / Hellenism are not best understood as opposing categories.
The elements of each pair may stand in some tension with each other, but the
relationship is also complementary and certainly complicated. The articles in
Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls express doubts about an opposing pair of
more recent scholarly construction, priestly halakhah and the halakhah of the
sages, that has become the dominant framework for discussion of the legal texts
from the Scrolls and their relation to rabbinic legal texts. Its proponents would
claim that this pair is of a different order from priest / scribe and Judaism / Hel-
lenism since it refers not to ideal types or cultures but to actual legal traditions
that can be identified in specific texts. I certainly agree that contrasting textual
traditions is a legitimate undertaking for a historian, but I question whether these
scholars have not been too quick to group together a quite diverse body of legal
texts as priestly halakhah.
5See A.I. Baumgarten, Elias Bickerman As a Historian of the Jews (TSAJ 131; Tbingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2010), esp. 21115.

6I remember the saying well from my days as Krafts student at the University of Pennsylva-
nia in the mid-1970s. I thank Bob Kraft for confirming my recollection and directing me to his
published discussion of Ockhams razor and its unsuitability for historical work, though without
the formulation cited here (e-mail message, January 10, 2012). See especially his 2006 presi-
dential address to the Society of Biblical Literature, Para-mania: Beside, Before, and Beyond
Biblical Studies, JBL126 (2007): 527, for a section entitled The Seduction of Simplicity:
The Parahistorical Worlds (Or the Problem of Applying Ockhams Razor) (2226). In typical
Kraft style, he apologizes for being unfair to Ockham by oversimplifying his principle (24).
Introduction 5
The articles in this volume are published here almost exactly as they first
appeared. I have introduced some standardization of footnote form and I have
made an effort to cite ancient works consistently. I have also corrected typo-
graphical and other minor errors. I have not added references to scholarship that
appeared after the articles were completed; I have even resisted the temptation
to supply references to work of my own that appeared after the publication of the
article in question. But when one article included here cites another one, I have
added references to the location within this volume. While the overall arrange-
ment of the volume is thematic, within each section of the volume the articles
are arranged in chronological order, from earliest to latest.
Collecting these articles has reminded me of how my thinking has devel-
oped or to put it less gently, how my mind has changed over the years. Some
of these changes will be apparent only when a paricular article is compared to
the discussion in one of my books. Thus, for example, in Levi, Phinehas, and
the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of the Maccabean Revolt, I suggest
an understanding of the critique of priests marriages in the Book of the Watchers
that I believe is an improvement on the one I held in Ascent to Heaven.7 On the
other hand, I think that I offer a better explanation for Jubilees emphasis on the
evils of intermarriage in A Kingdom of Priests than I do in Levi, Phinehas.8
In other cases the volume contains within itself the evidence for changed views.
The most important change is probably one in the understanding of the hekhalot
texts. In Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the
Hekahlot Literature, I contrast the apocalypses narratives of ascent with the
hekhalot texts instructions, which I take as intended for the practice of ascent.9
But in The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World, I have
arrived at the view I now hold, that the ascent material in the hekhalot texts is
intended for reading and recitation rather than for practice, which means it is not
so distant in function from the narratives of the apocalypses.10
I also want to take this opportunity to note one instance in which the publica-
tion of a previously unknown ancient text demonstrated conclusively that I was
wrong. In R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,
I discuss the genealogy and birth of Bilhah according to the midrash Bereshit
Rabbati, compiled by R. Moses the Preacher in Narbonne in the eleventh cen-
tury, and its presumed source, the Greek Testament of Naphtali.11 I interpret
the differences between the two passages as reflecting R. Moses the Preachers
revision of the Testament of Naphtali in keeping with his concerns as a medieval
Jew who read Genesis in the Masoretic Text. In addition, I argued that two other
7Levi,
Phinehas, below, 3137; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 21.
8Levi,Phinehas, below, 3741: Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 7274, 202 n.51.
925782 below.
10295305 below.
1132949 below.
6 Introduction
passages from Bereshit Rabbati were dependent on the Testament of Judah. The
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs as a whole reached the Latin world only in
the thirteenth century, but I suggested that R. Moses knew individual passages
from the Testaments that had been transmitted in Hebrew translation.
R. Moses the Preacher was published in 1984. In 1996 4QTestament of
Naphtali, which consists of three fragments of a genealogy of Bilhah, finally ap-
peared in DJD;12 its existence had first been announced in 1956.13 The fragments
turned out to contain many of the elements in Bereshit Rabbati I had attributed to
revision by R. Moses.14 I believe that my explanation for how the material from
the Testament of Judah reached R. Moses still has a great deal to recommend
it. But the fact that the passage about the birth of Bilhah in Bereshit Rabbati is
closer to the fragmentary 4QNaphtali than to the Greek Testament of Naphtali
suggests that R. Moses somehow had access to the content of an ancient Hebrew
work that was a source of the Greek Testament. The so-called Hebrew Testament
of Naphtali that circulated in the Middle Ages contains what appear to be earlier
forms of the visions in the Greek Testament of Naphtali despite the fact that its
language is clearly medieval. Its existence provides further evidence for the
availability of an ancient Hebrew source of the Greek Testament of Naphtali, or
at least the content of such a source, in the Middle Ages. The Hebrew Testament
of Naphtali does not contain any information about Bilhahs genealogy or birth,
but that does not mean it was absent from the ancient source on which it drew.
It seems, then, that material associated with the Testaments of the Twelve Patri
archs reached R. Moses by more than one route. This conclusion fits well with
the findings of my work on medieval Jewish knowledge of the pseudepigrapha
subsequent to R. Moses the Preacher15 and with Krafts warning about the
unsuitability of Ockhams razor for historical study. Let me add that a student of
antiquity can only be grateful to be proved wrong by a new text.
It is a pleasure to thank the people who made this volume possible. Dr. Hen-
ning Ziebritzki, Editorial Director of Theology and Jewish Studies at Mohr
Siebeck, invited me to publish this collection and offered support throughout the
process of preparing it. I am grateful to him and to my colleague Peter Schfer,
editor of the series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, in which this volume
12For the text, M.E. Stone, 4QTestament of Naphtali, in Qumran Cave 4.XVII: Parabibli
cal Texts, Part 3 (ed. G.J. Brooke et al.; DJD 22; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
13J.T. Milik, Prire de Nabonide et autres rcits dun cycle de Daniel, RB 63 (1956):
407 n.1. In my discussion of the relationship between Bereshit Rabbati and the Testament of
Naphtali, I noted that the publication of the text might have implications for the understanding
of that relationship (R Moses the Preacher, below, 332 n.12).
14See also M.E. Stone, The Genealogy of Bilhah, DSD 3 (1996): 2036.
15See Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature, 35170 below, and M.
Himmelfarb, Midrash Vayissa u, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Non-Canonical

Scriptures (ed. J.R. Davila, R. Bauckham, and A. Panayotov; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
forthcoming), vol. 1.
Introduction 7
appears. I would also like to thank the other editors of the series, Annette Reed,
Seth Schwartz, and Azzan Yadin-Israel, for this opportunity. My daughter, Ruth
Weiss, played an important part in the preparation of the volume. Her knowl-
edge of ancient Judaism, her editorial skill, and her power of organization made
the process far smoother than it would have been without her participation. Dr.
Lance Jenott undertook the final stages of preparation with his customary care
and precision. I am grateful to him for being willing to take time from his own
work to help me. Sorat Tungkasiri, Coordinator of the New Media Center at
Princeton University, oversaw the preparation of electronic files of the articles
and solved many technical problems. I thank my husband, Steven L. Weiss, for
his encouragement in this project, as always. Finally I thank the publishers who
hold the copyrights to these articles for their permission to publish them here.
They are listed together with information about the original publication of each
of the articles.
I would like to dedicate this book to my mother, Judith Himmelfarb, who
truly embodies the quality of esed, loving kindness. It is impossible to express
what I owe her.
Princeton, N.J., June 28, 2012 Martha Himmelfarb

Priests, Temples, and Torah
1. The Temple and the Garden of Eden in Ezekiel,
theBook of the Watchers, and the Wisdom of Ben Sira
Judaism is a religion deeply informed by geography. Its historical imagination

is shaped by the contrast between other lands and the land of Israel; its stories
move back and forth between those poles. I hope that this essay will demon-
strate how fruitful attention to geography can be for another aspect of early
Judaism, the visionary imagination. The visionaries to be considered here make
no distinction between mythic geography and real, but this should not mislead
us into dismissing the places they name as unimportant to their message. There
is no doubt that we miss the full import of their visions unless we study their
geography attentively.
In the concluding vision of his book, the prophet Ezekiel, prophesying in
exile in Babylonia after the destruction of the temple in 586 B.C.E., is taken on
a tour of a future temple in a restored Jerusalem. In one passage he describes a
stream flowing from the temple in terms that recall the Garden of Eden. A similar
transplantation of the garden with its tree of life and its rivers to the vicinity of
the temple appears also in the Book of the Watchers in the late third century and
the Wisdom of Ben Sira in the early second century B.C.E. For the author of the
Book of the Watchers as for Ezekiel, the reemergence of Eden in the temple lies
in the eschatological future, but Ben Sira claims that the presence of Eden in the
temple has already been realized. Here I hope to show some of the implications
of the association of the Garden of Eden with the temple in these three works.
Ezekiels Temple Vision
The Book of Ezekiel concludes with the prophets vision of the restoration of
the temple, the city of Jerusalem, and indeed of the land and people as a whole.1
1The prophets authorship of these chapters is the subject of some dispute. Perhaps the most
detailed study of their composition is H. Gese, Der Verfassungsentwurf des Ezechiel (Kap. 40
48) traditionsgeschichtlich untersucht (BHT 25; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1957). Gese sees a
complex development, with a considerable portion from hands other than the prophets. Moshe
Greenberg, The Design and Themes of Ezekiels Program of Restoration, Int 38 (1984):
181208, is inclined to accept the essential unity of the section and to attribute it to the prophet
himself. Any assessment of authorship is necessarily colored by assumptions about Ezekiels
12 1. The Temple and the Garden of Eden
These chapters (4048) answer the earlier vision of Gods abandonment of the
defiled temple and its subsequent destruction (chs. 811). In the future, Ezekiel
tells his audience, God will return to a new temple, reestablished in the land
to which all the people of Israel have been restored, even the ten tribes of the
northern kingdom lost a century and a half before Ezekiels time.
The vision opens as Ezekiel is taken from Babylonia to a very high moun-
tain in the land of Israel.2 An angelic guide leads the prophet about this city,
which is revealed as the temple compound, measures the dimensions of the
temple that will someday replace the one so recently destroyed, and gives in-
structions for the performance of the cult in the new temple and for the behavior
of the priests who will serve in it (40:344:31). The description of the temple is
followed by the allotment of space to the holy district in Jerusalem (45:19), and
various laws, including a festival calendar and laws governing the conduct of the
prince who is to rule the restored commonwealth (45:1046:24).
Next the angel takes Ezekiel to see the stream that issues from the temple,
bringing wonderful fertility with it as it flows into the Dead Sea (47:112). The
vision concludes with the boundaries of the land, the allotment of portions of
the land to the restored tribes (47:1348:29), and the enumeration of the twelve
gates of the new Jerusalem (48:3035). The portions of the tribes are equal and
symmetrical, as is the structure of Jerusalem. Geographical reality is not allowed
to intrude into the symmetry, nor does historical reality play much of a role: the
land east of the Jordan is eliminated from the Holy Land (47:18).
In the vision the prophet expresses his understanding of the centrality of the
temple and the Holy Land to Gods reconciliation with the people of Israel by
drawing on a variety of earlier traditions.3 The very high mountain of 40:2 on
which Ezekiel sees the restored temple is clearly Mt. Zion, the temple mount.
Ezekiel perceives Mt. Zion as very high, not because of its physical stature, but
because of the mythic qualities it has acquired. Biblical authors did not hesitate
to adapt to Mt. Zion motifs associated with the Canaanite mountain of the gods.
The inviolability of Mt. Zion and the stream rushing from it in so many biblical
texts, for example, have their roots in Canaanite myth.4
The vision of the restored temple also draws on the complex of traditions asso-
ciated with Sinai, the mountain on which the plan of the tabernacle was revealed
to Moses (Exod 25:9). In the course of the vision Ezekiel functions as a second
outlook. See, for instance, the remarks of Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel: A Commentary (trans. C.
Quin; OTL; London: SCM Press, and Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), 54851. In what
follows I am interested primarily in Ezekiels influence on later writers. The author of the Book
of the Watchers and Ben Sira surely took Ezekiel to be the author of all of chs. 4048.
2All translations from the Hebrew Bible are taken from the Revised Standard Version.
3For a full treatment of these traditions, see J.D. Levenson, Theology of the Program of
Restoration of Ezekiel 4048 (HSM 10; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), 553.
4Levenson, Program, 724, and Richard J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and
the Old Testament (HSM 4; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 13160.
1. The Temple and the Garden of Eden 13
Moses, the recipient of a revelation about the laws for the proper functioning of
the new temple and the policy associated with it.5
Finally the prophet calls on traditions about the primal garden of God.6 The
association of Eden with the temple is not original to Ezekiel, but the prophet
develops it in some detail.7
47:7. As I went back I saw upon the bank of the river very many trees on the one side
and on the other. 8. And he [the angelic guide] said to me, This water flows toward the
eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the stagnant waters
of the sea, the water will become fresh. 9. And wherever the river goes every living
creature which swarms will live, and there will be very many fish; so everything will
live where the river goes12. And on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds
of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fall, but they will bear fresh
fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will
be for food and their leaves for healing.
The stream is a prominent feature of the Canaanite mountain of the gods, and it
would be a mistake to try to differentiate too sharply elements of the traditions
of Mt. Zaphon from elements of the traditions of Eden.8 But the details of the
description of Ezekiels stream point to Eden in significant ways.
The Garden of Eden as Genesis describes it contains four rivers and every
tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food (2:9). On either side of the
stream that flows from the temple stand trees of wonderful fruitfulness. Leven-
son suggests that the e rav me od on either bank of the stream in Ezek 47:7
should be translated not as a collective, very many trees, but rather as a singu-
lar, a great tree. In that case the passage alludes to the tree of knowledge and
the tree of life as well as to the fruit trees of the tradition of Genesis 2.9
But the powers of Ezekiels temple stream go beyond the fertility associated
with Eden in Genesis 2. The effect of the waters that flow from the temple is
nothing short of miraculous: they cause the Dead Sea to teem with fish. And the
trees watered by the stream provide not only fruit for food, but even leaves for
healing. Ezekiels eschatological Eden at Zion surpasses the Eden of the past.
And it is the temple that is the source of the wonderful powers of the stream, as
the angel tells the prophet quite clearly (v.12)
While the prophet is clearly alluding to the Garden of Eden in the passage
about the stream, he never refers to it explicitly. But elsewhere in his book
Ezekiel does mention the garden by name, in his lament for the king of Tyre
(28:1118) and his oracle against Pharaoh (31:118). Both passages use the
5Levenson,
Program, 3753.
6Levenson, Program, 2536.
7Levenson, Program, 2728, for a discussion of Psalm 36:810. The J source in the Torah
gives one of the rivers of Eden in Genesis 2 the name of the spring that was the source of Jeru-
salems water supply, Gihon (Levenson, Program, 29).
imagery of Eden to describe the blessed state of these enemies of Israel before
their fall so as to make clear the full magnitude of the fall.
The lament in chapter 28 describes the king of Tyres former glory as a jewel-
bedecked resident of Eden and his expulsion by a cherub who guards the garden
because of his arrogance and sinfulness. The echoes of the story in Genesis 23
are clear; in addition to the story of the fall and expulsion, the details of the
precious stones, although not as ornaments, and of the guardian cherub, appear
also in Genesis 23.
In this passage, too, Ezekiel associates the Garden of Eden with the temple.
The king of Tyres home is identified first as Eden (v.13), then as the mountain
of God (vv.14, 16). The jewels of the king of Tyres dress (v.13) recall the
breast plate of the high priest, as the cherub (vv.14, 16) suggests the cherubim
of the holy of holies. And one of the accusations against the king is that he has
profaned [his] sanctuary (v.18).10
The traditions behind chapter 31s allegory for the doom of Pharaoh and the
land of Egypt show that Ezekiel knew a larger set of traditions about the primal
garden than those preserved in Genesis 23. The traditions about the world-tree
may have come to him from Babylonian sources. The world-tree is a tree of life,
an axis mundi connecting the upper world with the lower.11 Ezekiel describes
Pharaoh as a mighty cedar in Lebanon, a nesting place for birds, a shelter beneath
which animals give birth to their young. With its great beauty and stature, the
tree is the envy of all the trees in the garden of God. But once again pride causes
destruction. The tree pays for its pride in its stature with its destruction at the
hand of foreigners.
Thus the Garden of Eden figures prominently in Ezekiels prophecy. In the
vision of the restored temple motifs drawn from Eden suggest a restoration better
than anything history could possibly offer.12 Their use also sheds light on certain
peculiar aspects of Ezekiels prophecy.
By heredity a priest, Ezekiel is deeply concerned with the details of the cult,
the only prophet to offer a set of laws for the daily operation of the temple. For
some scholars these are interests unbecoming a prophet, and Ezekiel is seen as
untrue to his title.13 But whatever complaints the modern reader may have about
Ezekiel, the power of his imagination can hardly be denied. And this powerful
10C.A. Newsom, A Maker of Metaphors Ezekiels Oracles Against Tyre, Int 38 (1984):
16164. The Hebrew of Ezek 28:18 reads sanctuaries, plural, and the RSV follows the He-
brew. I follow Newsom and other commentators in amending to the singular, following some
of the manuscript and versional evidence (see BHS).
11Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 425.
12Levenson Program, 2133, offers an interesting discussion of suprahistorical implications
of Eden as opposed to Zion.

13See, for instance, P.D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (rev. ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1979), 22834. See also Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 55051, where Ezekiel is rescued from these charges
by the claim that large parts of the vision are not his.
imagination conceives of the temple, the arena of the everyday cult, in mythic
terms. Its cherubim are Gods chariot throne, and its mountain is the cosmic
mountain. In the midst of the dry legal material appears the stream that flows
from the future temple, recreating the fertility and plenty of the primal paradise,
no, surpassing them. The use of traditions about the Garden of Eden in relation to
the restored temple, so surprising at first glance, appears on closer consideration
quite characteristic of Ezekiel.
The Book of the Watchers and the Tour to the Ends of the Earth
The Book of the Watchers, written in Aramaic by a Palestinian Jew in the third
century B.C.E., is one of the earliest apocalypses.14 It has come down to us as
chapters 136 of 1Enoch, a collection of five Enochic apocalypses preserved in
Ethiopic. The Book of the Watchers (chs. 611) tells a more detailed version of
the story of the sons of God and daughters of men alluded to so briefly in Genesis
6:14. According to the Book of the Watchers, the sons of God are angels known
as watchers who abandon their heavenly duties because of lust for the daughters
of men. The encounter between the heavenly beings and the earthly women
creates havoc on earth. The offspring of their union are giants who inflict ter-
rible damage on the earth and its inhabitants; in addition the angels reveal to the
women secrets best kept from humanity, like metalworking, cosmetics, magic,
and astrology. In Genesis the flood follows immediately on the story of the sons
of God and daughters of men, but without any explicit indication of a causal
relationship; here it is represented as the means of cleansing the earth from the
corruption and violence caused, directly and indirectly, by the fallen angels.
Enoch appears in the Bible only in the context of genealogies, most notably
in Gen 5:2124, where the notice of his career breaks the pattern of the notices
for the other antediluvian patriarchs. The others live a certain number of years,
beget their first born, live more years, begetting more sons and daughters, and
then die. At the age of sixty-five, after begetting his firstborn, Methuselah, Enoch
walked with God for three hundred years and begat other sons and daughters.
The concluding notice tells us that unlike his forebears and his descendants,
Enoch did not die. Rather Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God
took him. As with the compressed notice of the interest of the sons of God in
the daughters of men in Genesis 6, this notice about Enoch suggests the existence
of a more extensive body of traditions about the patriarch. Here in the Book of
the Watchers we find the development of such traditions, but a development
undertaken with the biblical text in view.
14For an introduction to the Book of the Watchers, see George W.E. Nickelsburg, Jewish
Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 4855.
Enoch enters the narrative of the Book of the Watchers in his professional
capacity as scribe, when the watchers who remain in heaven send him with
a message of doom to their fallen brethren. Upon hearing this message, the
fallen watchers ask Enoch to draw up a petition on their behalf, asking Gods
forgiveness (chs. 1213). In order to carry out the mission entrusted to him by
the watchers, Enoch ascends to heaven (chs. 1416). There before Gods throne
Enoch presents their petition. Although God emphatically rejects the plea for
mercy and insists that the watchers deserve eternal doom, Enoch himself is
treated with great honor. He is able to pass through terrifying outer courts to
stand before Gods throne as the angels do. When he falls on his face in awe
before the throne, God sends an angel to raise him and speaks to him with his
own mouth (14:24).15
Enochs ascent to heaven, the first in Jewish literature, is deeply indebted to
the chariot vision of Ezekiel 1, where Gods glory descends to earth to encounter
the prophet by the River Chebar in Babylonia. One sign of the debt is the throne
of cherubim with its wheels on which Enoch finds God seated. While in Eze-
kiels vision the wheels and winged creatures of the throne16 serve a function, to
make the throne mobile, that function has been lost in the Book of the Watchers.17
More broadly Enochs ascent to heaven draws on the imagery of the theophany
of Ezekiel 1 to describe Gods heavenly abode.18
The Book of the Watchers interest in a heavenly temple reflects a certain dis-
content with the earthly temple and its personnel. The author uses the story of
the fall of the watchers to criticize the corrupt priests of the Jerusalem temple.
As the angels fail to perform their duties in heaven, these priests fail to fulfill
their responsibilities in the earthly temple, and for some of the same reasons,
like inappropriate marriages.19
The assumption that temples on earth have counterparts in heaven, or to put it
more accurately from an ancient point of view, that temples on earth correspond
15The
translation of the Book of the Watchers used here is that of M.A. Knibb, 1Enoch,
in AOT, 169319.
16The living creatures of the chariot throne in Ezekiels vision are identified as cherubim in
Ezek 10:20. While many modern scholars regard this identification as editorial, the author of
the Book of Watchers would have assumed it.
17In Knibbs translation the throne has no wheels, and there is the sound rather than the sight
of cherubim. But Knibb translates a single Ethiopic manuscript. The Greek is very difficult
here, and the Aramaic is not extant at the crucial point. I follow here the reading of other recent
translations: M. Black in consultation with J.C. VanderKam, The Book of Enoch or 1Enoch: A
New English Translation (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1985), and G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch,
Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee, JBL 100 (1981): 579. For a discus-
sion see Blacks note to 14:18 and J.T. Milik, The Book of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments from
Qumram Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 199200.
18See, for example, Nickelsburg, Enoch, 57682.
19Nickelsburg, Enoch, 58487; D.S. Suter, Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of
Family Purity in 1Enoch 616, HUCA 50 (1979): 11535.

to heavenly archetypes, is widespread in the ancient Near East and appears in a

number of biblical texts.20 But the heavenly archetype can serve either to lend
glory to its earthly counterpart or to make its shortcomings more obvious. In the
eighth century B.C.E., Isaiah of Jerusalem meets God enthroned in the Jerusa-
lem temple (ch. 6); for Isaiah the earthly temple is a worthy dwelling place for
God. The attribution of cosmic qualities to Mt. Zion is part of the same phenom-
enon. But in the period of the Second Temple the earthly temple appears in a
less favorable light. It is at best an inferior version of the First Temple, at worst
a place of corruption whose offerings are unacceptable to God.21 For the author
of the Book of the Watchers as for many of his contemporaries, Gods presence
must be sought in the heavenly temple.
After his ascent to heaven, Enoch undertakes a journey to the ends of the earth
with angels as his guides. This journey concludes the Book of the Watchers, and
it takes up almost half the work. The companionship of the angels reinforces the
point made by the ascent that Enoch is fit company for angels. The tour includes
many wonderful sights, and one major function of the tour, made explicit at the
end, is to assert Gods greatness as creator.
And when I saw, I blessed, and I will always bless the Lord of Glory who has made
great and glorious wonders that he might show the greatness of his work to angels and
to the souls of men, that they might praise his work, and that all his creatures might
see the work of his power and praise the great work of his hands and bless him for
ever. (36:4)
If the Book of the Watchers no longer shares the optimism of the Book of Prov-
erbs and some of the psalms that the wonders of nature loudly proclaim Gods
glory to all mankind, it is not so pessimistic as Job, with its claim that the won-
ders of creation are beyond human understanding. For the Book of the Watchers,
these wonders are accessible to at least one particularly pious human being, and
his concluding praise of God claims that all Gods creatures can see his great
work and draw the appropriate conclusions.22
Like the ascent to heaven, Enochs tour to the ends of the earth is deeply
indebted to Ezekiel. On strictly formal grounds, the best precedent to Enochs
tour is Ezekiels tour of the restored temple and its environs. Not only is this
passage the only full-blown tour in biblical literature; it also includes comments
to Ezekiel from his angelic guide in the form of explanations that begin with
demonstrative pronouns or adjectives. In the Book of the Watchers the spare ex-
planations of Ezekiels tour have developed into dialogue; Enochs questions and
exclamations elicit rather elaborate demonstrative explanations from his guide.
20Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 17780, and M. Himmelfarb, From Prophecy to Apocalypse:
The Book of the Watchers and Tours of Heaven, in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible to the
Middle Ages (ed. A. Green; New York: Crossroad, 1986), 15051.
21For example, 1En. 89:73.
22Himmelfarb, From Prophecy, 15860.
The tour to the ends of the earth was no doubt influenced by other traditions like
the Greek nekyia, but the use of demonstrative explanations indicates that the
primary model in the authors mind was Ezekiel.23
The tour to the ends of the earth is in fact composed of two sources, a rather
short tour (chs. 1719) that was expanded, probably by the author of the Book
of the Watchers in its present form, to create a longer tour including many of the
same sights but also some significant new ones (chs. 2036). Only the last of
the sights in chapters 1719, the abyss that will serve as a prison for the fallen
watchers (18:1219:2), is explicitly related to the story of Enoch and the watch-
ers.24 Many of the sights are described very briefly; they consist of heavenly phe-
nomena like the places of the luminaries and the treasuries of the stars, thunder
and lightning (17:3), or features of earthly geography like the living waters, the
fires of the west that receive the setting sun, a river of fire, and the great rivers
(17:45).25 One further sight should be noted here because of the way it will be
developed in chapters 2036. In the course of his travels Enoch comes to seven
mountains, each made of a different jewel; the middle one is like the throne of
the Lord (18:8).
Enochs itinerary in chapters 2036 begins with the sight most intimately
related to the narrative of the fall of the watchers, the place of their punishment
(ch. 21). It continues with a related sight, the mountain in the west where the
souls of the dead await the last judgment (ch. 22). The fate of human souls is a
natural outgrowth of the concerns of the narrative of the Book of the Watchers.
Next Enoch sees the burning fire in the west (ch. 23) and seven magnificent
mountains, one the throne of God,26 with the tree of life (chs. 2425). The seven
mountains and the mountain throne of God of the second tour are a more elabo-
rate version of the same phenomena in the first tour. The presence of the tree of
life at the mountain throne represents a conflation of Eden and Zion traditions;
the gems of the mountains recall the precious stones of Eden in Genesis 23.27
23M.
Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 4160.
24The dialogue between Enoch and his guide takes place primarily in the second tour; the
only instance of dialogue in the first tour appears in relation to this sight. The presence of the
device there is probably not accidental, but a means of emphasizing the single sight in the tour
that is linked to the narrative of Enoch and the watchers.
25The meaning of the first sight Enoch sees, a place of creatures of flaming fire who can
appear like men (17:1), is far from clear. P. Grelot, in La gographie mythique dHnoch et
ses sources orientales, RB 65 (1958): 38, thinks that these fiery beings may be the cherubim
of the Garden of Eden according to Genesis 23.
26This mountain, which, like the mountain in the first tour (18:8), is first described as like
the throne (24:3), is later identified as the throne (25:3).

27It is not clear whether the gems of chapter 18 are intended to suggest Eden. In one case at
least, an allusion to another set of traditions appears to be intended; the sapphire of the summit
of the middle mountain surely recalls Exod 24:10, where Moses and the elders of Israel see a
sapphire pavement beneath Gods feet and Ezek 1:26, where Gods throne is of sapphire.
In relation to this sight, the angel tells Enoch,

This high mountain which you saw, whose summit is like the throne of the Lord, is the
throne where the Holy and the Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal King, will sit
when he comes down to visit the earth for good. And this beautiful fragrant tree and
no creature of flesh has the authority to touch it until the great judgment when he will
take vengeance on all and will bring everything to a consummation for ever this will
be given to the righteous and humble. From its fruit life will be given to the chosen;
towards the north it will be planted, in a holy place, by the house of the Lord, the
Eternal King.28 (25:35)
In the last days, then, the tree of life will be transplanted to the temple, and the
righteous will eat of its fruit. Like Ezekiel, the author of the Book of the Watchers
transplants Eden to the temple in the eschatological future. In Enochs time,
and presumably the authors as well, the tree of life remains inaccessible, at the
mountain throne of God.
Now Enoch comes to the middle of the earth (26:1), that is, Jerusalem,
which Ezekiel explicitly designates the navel of the earth (38:12). Jerusalem is
described as a blessed land with trees; in it stands a holy mountain with a stream
flowing out of it to the south (26:12). Again our author is indebted to Ezekiel.
Next to the holy mountain lies a cursed valley in which the eschatological judg-
ment will take place (26:327:5). This is Gehinnom, the valley in Jerusalem that
later tradition removes from its earthly location for a long career as a place of
punishment for the wicked.
Now Enoch travels east to a wilderness full of trees and plants, watered by a
gushing stream (ch. 28), with several stops for spice trees. Enoch finds a group of
mountains planted with more spice trees. Beyond these mountains, far towards
the east, Enoch comes to the Garden of Righteousness, full of trees including
the tree of knowledge (ch. 32).29
What is the relationship of the Garden of Righteousness here in the east to the
mountain throne of God and the tree of life in the west? First it should be noted
that although the extant texts of both Greek and Ethiopic contain seven moun-
tains over which Enoch passes to reach the Garden of Righteousness (32:1), the
Aramaic fragment of this passage refers to mountains without specifying their
number. Given the ease with which the mountains that stand before the Garden
of Righteousness could be associated with the seven mountains in the west, it
seems likely that the number seven here is an addition of the Greek translator that
28Italics in Knibbs translation indicate words that do not appear in the original, but are
added to improve the English.

29J.T. Milik, Hnoch au pays des aromates, RB 65 (1958): 7077, sees this stage of
Enochs journey as reflecting two routes traveled by spice merchants from Palestine, one south
to Arabia, the other north and east, through the Caucasus to India.
then made its way to Ethiopic.30 Indeed a close examination of the eastern and
western sights suggests that the mountain groups have less in common than it
first appears. The mountains in the east are not part of the Garden of Righteous-
ness; Enoch crosses them on the way to the garden, but they are separated from
it by the Erythrean Sea and another sight (32:2).31
Still the presence of the Garden of Righteousness in the east, after the tree of
life and other motifs associated with Eden have appeared in the west, requires
some explanation. Grelot argues that the author of the Book of the Watchers
doubles the Garden of Eden in an attempt to reconcile contradictory biblical
traditions about the location of the garden, the eastern site of Genesis 23, and
the identification of the garden with the holy mountain in Ezekiel 27.32
I am inclined to think that Grelot is right in seeing the influence of Ezekiel
on the association of the mountain throne and the tree of life, although I suspect
that Ezekiel 4048 is a more important influence than Ezekiel 27. We should
not be surprised that the author of the Book of the Watchers has a rather unusual
approach to the Garden of Eden. The Book of the Watchers, after all, tells a story
about how evil came into the world notable for ignoring or, indeed, contradicting
the story Genesis tells about events in the Garden of Eden.
Our author, as we have seen, detaches the tree of life from the garden itself
and associates it with Mt. Zion and the temple. While the trees eschatological
significance is emphasized, its connection to the Garden of Eden is played down.
It is interesting that when our author comes to describe the garden in the east in
terms that cannot help but recall the Garden of Eden of Genesis, he names the
Garden not Eden, but the Garden of Righteousness. And it is a rather diminished
version of Eden. With the tree of life transplanted to the mountain throne of God
and the precious stones relocated to the seven mountains, the great glory of this
garden is the tree of knowledge.
This tree our author describes as the tree of wisdom from which they eat
and know great wisdom (32:3). The reference to those who eat of the tree of
knowledge and attain great wisdom is presumably eschatological, a counterpart
to the eating of the tree of life in chapter 24. Later traditions depict the Garden of
Eden as the place of reward for the righteous after death, much as Gehinnom has
become the place of punishment for the wicked. But if this is the authors view,
he does not make it explicit. Nor does the angelic guide wax enthusiastic about
the qualities of this tree as he did about the qualities of the tree of life. I suspect
30Milik, Hnoch, 74, and Milik, Books of Enoch, 232, for the Aramaic fragment (4QEnel
xxvi, lines 1718).

31Darkness is the reading of the Aramaic for this other sight (4QEnel xxvi, line 21, in Milik,
Books of Enoch, 232). The Aramaic may explain the unintelligible readings of the Greek and
Ethiopic (see Miliks note to line 21, 232).
32Gographie mythique, 4144. Grelot suggests that the author of the Book of the Watch
ers drew on a tradition of exegesis of Genesis 23 that understood God to have removed the
tree of life from the Garden of Eden after the fall.
that this is because the tree of knowledge inevitably and forcefully recalls the
story in which it plays its role in Genesis, the story of the disobedience of Adam
and Eve. To lavish attention on this tree is to remind the reader of that story.
Having mentioned the tree of knowledge, the author can hardly avoid some
acknowledgement of its role in the drama of primal disobedience. When Enoch
exclaims about the beauty of the tree, the angel Raphael says to him, This is
the tree of wisdom, of which your old father and your aged mother, who were
before you, ate, and learnt wisdom; and their eyes were opened, and they knew
that they were naked, and they were driven from the garden (32:6).
Thus Raphael manages to offer a compressed version of the story of Adam
and Eves fall without any mention of their sin. The only indication in Raphaels
account that Adam and Eve did something they shouldnt have done is that they
are driven out of the garden. A reader who did not know the story in Genesis
3 might be puzzled about why learning wisdom and realizing your nakedness
should lead to expulsion from paradise.
Of course it is difficult to imagine a reader of the Book of the Watchers who
did not know that story, and this certainly raises the question of why our author
chose to include the Garden of Eden at all, under any name, in Enochs tour. It
appears to be Ezekiels influence that leads him to depict the mountain throne of
God with motifs drawn from Eden, but the presence of the Garden of Righteous-
ness itself cannot be thus explained.
One way to make sense of the presence of the garden, with the conflicts it
suggests with the narrative of the fallen angels, is to see it as such a fixture of
mythic geography that no author could ignore it. Or perhaps our author chose
to include it so that he could exercise a sort of damage control. By depicting it
as he did, perhaps he felt that he could subtly diminish its importance, making
his readers less likely to sit up from his work and say, Yes, but what about the
fall of Adam and Eve?
From the Garden of Righteousness Enoch continues on to the ends of the
earth, where he sees beasts and birds, perhaps inspired by the proximity of the
garden, and the portals of the heavens (ch. 33). Through these portals he sees
the courses of the stars, described to him by the angel Uriel. To the north, west,
and south, he sees more portals, through each set of which come winds, dew,
and rain (34:136:1), and finally to the east a last set of portals with small portals
above them through which the stars are visible (36:23). The last sights of the
tour, then, point to Gods greatness as creator and are suitable means of eliciting
from Enoch the praise with which the book concludes.
With Ezekiel, the prophet who most influenced him, the author of the Book
of the Watchers condemns the present reality of the temple in the name of the
ideal. Much of the interest in the temple and priests in the Book of the Watch
ers is acted out in the heavenly temple, but the earthly temple is not forgotten.
Despite the difficulties the use of traditions of the Garden of Eden creates for
him, our author follows Ezekiel in drawing on them for a striking image of the
life-giving qualities of the eschatological temple, the transplantation of the tree
of life to its precincts.
Wisdom in the Temple in Ben Sira
An association of the Garden of Eden and the temple, not as eschatological hope
but as present reality, appears in Wisdoms praise of herself in chapter 24 of the
Wisdom of Ben Sira. Ben Sira was an aristocratic wise man and teacher who
wrote his book in Jerusalem about 180 B.C.E. He may have been a younger
contemporary of the author of the Book of the Watchers; in any case he lived not
many decades later.33
Ben Siras book contains a range of different kinds of material, from proverbs
reminiscent of the collection in the biblical Book of Proverbs to Ben Siras own
reflections on the meaning of history, a subject almost completely ignored in
biblical wisdom literature. The work stands in close relationship to the biblical
wisdom tradition, but it is clearly the product of a later time. While Ben Sira is
deeply indebted to the Proverbs, his appreciation of its optimistic attitudes was
anything but unselfconscious, as Mack has recently pointed out.34 The wise men
of Proverbs in the royal courts of Judah before the exile saw the world as perme-
ated by Gods order and expected the wise, who follow Gods ways as revealed
in the world he created, to prosper.
But the view of the order of the universe that came naturally to the authors of
Proverbs could be maintained by Ben Sira only by an act of will. Ben Sira faced
the problem, now centuries old, of the gap between Israels self-understanding
as Gods chosen people and their actual status as a subject people in a great em-
pire. Even the rebuilt temple, as we have seen, was tainted in the eyes of many.
But in the extended meditation on Israels past in his praise of the fathers (chs.
4450), Ben Sira claims that Israels present circumstances represent not a fall
from a more exalted past but the height of glory. Ben Sira treats the temple and
the high priesthood, the central political institutions of the period after the exile,
as a completely adequate replacement for the kingship of the past. In part he does
so by stressing the continuity of the postexilic leadership with the period before
the exile. The two heroes allotted the most space in the praise of the fathers are
Aaron, the founder of the priesthood (45:622), and the recently deceased high
33For an introduction to the Wisdom of Ben Sira, see Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature, 5565.
34B.L.
Mack, Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Siras Hymn in Praise of the Fathers (Chi-
cago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 8487, 15056. Mack argues that the
personification of wisdom in Proverbs 19 can also be viewed as a response to crisis (14250).
My treatment of the praise of the fathers below is much indebted to Mack.
priest, Simon the Righteous (50:121). Ben Sira goes so far as to claim that the
time of Simon was a high point in Israels history.
But, as Mack insists, Ben Siras picture of continuity, stability, and glory in
his own time is best understood as an effort to overcome a far more natural re-
sponse, that his own time is a time of decline. This is why his claim that Eden is
to be found in the temple even as he writes is so striking; after all, Ezekiel and
the author of the Book of the Watchers reserve the appearance of paradise at the
temple for the eschaton.
Ben Sira brings Eden to the temple through the other great religious institution
of his time, the Torah. In chapter 24 Ben Sira identifies Gods wisdom, present
with him at creation, with the Torah God has revealed to Israel. This identifica-
tion is made here for the first time, and it will have a long and significant history.
It is this wisdom that embodies the aspects of Eden to be found in the temple.
The poem in Ben Sira 24 is deeply indebted to the poem in Proverbs 8, Wis-
doms praise of herself. The understanding of wisdom as the order of creation is
dramatized in the earlier poem in Wisdoms claim to have stood by Gods side
as he created the world. But like the early wisdom tradition generally, the poem
is cosmopolitan in its outlook. Wisdom is present at the creation of the entire
world; she is available to all who seek her. There is no suggestion that she is the
specific property of Israel.
Ben Siras Wisdom also claims to have been present as God began the work
of creation: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High / and covered the
earth like mist (24:3).35 This is apparently an allusion to the second creation
story in Genesis: A mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of
the ground (2:6).36 But after her tour of the newly created cosmos, Ben Siras
Wisdom, unlike her predecessor in Proverbs, longs for a permanent home, and
so at Gods direction she takes up residence in the temple at Jerusalem. In the
holy tabernacle I ministered before him, / and so I was established in Zion. In
the beloved city likewise he gave me a resting place, / and in Jerusalem was my
dominion (24:1011).
Now that she is established in the temple, Wisdom describes herself as a tree
or vine:
I grew tall like a cedar in Lebanon,
and like a cypress on the heights on Hermon.
I grew tall like a palm tree in En-gedi,
and like rose plants in Jericho;
Like a beautiful olive tree in the field,
and like a plane tree I grew tall.
35All translations of the Wisdom of Ben Sira are taken from the Revised Standard Version
Apocrypha, where the work is titled, Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach.
36M. Gilbert, Lloge de la Sagesse (Siracide 24), RTL 5 (1974): 34144.
Like cassia and camels thorn I gave forth the aroma of spices,
and like choice myrrh I spread a pleasant odor,
like galbanum, onycha, and stacte,
and like the fragrance of frankincense in the tabernacle.
Like a terebinth I spread out my branches,
and my branches are glorious and graceful.
Like a vine I caused loveliness to bud,
and my blossoms became glorious and abundant fruit. (24:1317)
In the background to the identification of Wisdom / Torah as a tree stands Prov

3:18: She [Wisdom] is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. Ben Sira
has developed this theme in considerable detail. The spice trees so important to
the tour to the ends of the earth appear here in their relationship to the temple
service. Gilbert points out that the place names associated with the trees to which
Wisdom compares herself outline the borders of the Holy Land.37 I would like
to suggest that the trees are also meant to make us think of the Garden of Eden.38
To begin with, Ben Sira has already invoked Genesis 2. In a passage from the
poem that we will consider shortly he compares Wisdom to five rivers, four of
them the rivers of Eden according to Genesis 2. Thus Eden is obviously on his
mind. Further, the cedar of Lebanon (Sir 24:13) is the greatest tree of the garden
according to Ezekiel 31. The image of the terebinth sending forth its branches
(Sir 24:16) also echoes the description of the great cedar of Ezekiel 31. The link
to Ezekiel 31 strengthens the case that Ben Sira intends us to associate Wisdom
as tree with the trees of the Garden of Eden a tree of knowledge whose fruit
is healthful.
Now Ben Sira makes explicit the identification of Wisdom and Torah: All
this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, / the law which Moses
commanded us / as an inheritance for the congregation of Jacob (24:23).39 At
this point the comparison to the rivers begins.
It fills men with wisdom. Like the Pishon,
and like the Tigris at the time of the first fruits.
It makes them full of understanding, like the Euphrates,
and like the Jordan at harvest time.
It makes instruction shine forth like light,
like the Gihon at the time of vintage. (24:2527)
Here the allusion to Eden is clear. Each of the four rivers of Eden according to
Genesis 2 is mentioned, with the addition of the Jordan, the great river of the
land of Israel. Now, since Ben Sira has already fixed wisdom in the temple, his
37Gilbert, Lloge, 332.

38A.
Fournier-Bidoz, Larbre et al demeure: Siracide XXIV 1017, VT 34 (1984): 110,
discusses the biblical background to Ben Siras use of trees in considerable detail. He too sees
the language of this passage as suggesting the tree of life from the Garden of Eden (8).
39For a discussion of the critical problems with this verse, see Gilbert, Lloge, 33638.
comparison of wisdom to the rivers of Eden serves to associate Eden and the
temple. The apparently anomalous mention of the Jordan is quite purposeful in
this reading: it affirms the association of Eden with the temple in Zion, where
the nearest great river is the Jordan.40
Ben Sira goes on to mark out his own relationship to the river of Wisdom.
I went forth like a canal from a river
and like a water channel into a garden.
I said, I will water my orchard
and drench my garden plot;
and lo, my canal became a river,
and my river became a sea.
I will again make instruction shine forth like the dawn,
and I will make it shine afar;
I will again pour out teaching like prophecy,
And leave it to all future generations. (24:3033)
Here Ben Sira makes the striking claim that he and presumably other teachers
as well have inherited the mantle of prophecy. His image of the canal becoming
a river and the river becoming a sea may be intended to recall Ezekiels stream
flowing from the temple to bring fertility to the Dead Sea.41
Ben Sira claims the presence of paradise in the temple so many others viewed
as corrupt by depicting Wisdom as a tree and river of life. Ben Sira parts com-
pany with Ezekiel and the author of the Book of the Watchers, who bring these
aspects of Eden to the temple only in the eschatological future. Of course es-
chatology does not figure prominently in Ben Siras work. In this he stands in
continuity with the earlier wisdom tradition.
But Ben Siras insistence that Eden is to be found in the temple in his own
time is not a sign of genuine contentment with the present. Rather it is an attempt
to ignore the failings of the present, to insist on its essential continuity with the
past. Wisdom, now equated with the Torah, provides him with a vehicle for do-
ing so. Wisdom transcends time, and her presence in the temple allows Eden to
be recreated there even as it turns Ben Sira into a prophet at a time when others
believed prophecy to be a thing of the past.
40Gilbert,
Lloge, 33839.
41Gilbert,
Lloge, 34041, and O. Rickenbacher, Weisheitsperikopen bei Ben Sira
(OBO1; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 16869.
2. Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage
at the Time of the Maccabean Revolt
One of the major problems Ezra and Nehemiah faced according to the biblical
books that bear their names was marriage between Jewishmen and the daughters
of the people of the land. Ezras attempted solution, requiring that the wives and
their children be sent away, appears to have been less than entirely successful
(Ezra 10:44);1 Nehemiah tried again, according to his memoir, with more suc-
cess (Neh 13:2331). While the Torah warns from time to time against marriage
to the people of Canaan and their daughters in particular, its real concern is
idolatry: foreigners bring their gods with them and may seduce their spouses into
joining in their worship.2 For Ezra and Nehemiah, something else is at stake. The
language of the officers who inform Ezra of the marriages between Jewish men
and foreign women is significant: The holy seed has become intermingled with
the peoples of the land (Ezra 9:2).3 This anxiety about preserving the integrity
of the people of Israel and thus their purity is surely a result of the conditions of
the community of the return, where the natural boundaries provided by political
sovereignty are no longer in place.
Priests figure prominently, as heroes and as villains, in the biblical texts con-
cerned with intermarriage. The first hero of the battle against intermarriage or
more precisely, the idolatry that accompanies sexual mingling with gentiles, is
Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, who skewers an Israelite man and a Midianite
woman engaged in sexual relations in the course of the worship of Baal-peor at
Shittim and wins for himself and his descendants a covenant of eternal priest-
hood (Num 25:113). On the other hand, the Book of Ezra devotes several
verses to listing the priests who had married foreign women (Ezra 10:1822),
and Nehemiah particularly emphasizes the pollution incurred by the priests and
Levites through taking foreign wives (Neh 13:2830).
Priests continue to be prominent in several texts from either side of the Mac-
cabean revolt that complain of intermarriage or improper marriages. When
Aramaic Levi and the Book of Jubilees retell the story of the rape of Dinah, Levi
1M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New York and
London: Columbia University Press, 1971), 12125.

2Exod 34:1516 (daughters of the Canaanites only); Deut 7:15 (both sons and daughters).
3All quotations of the Hebrew Bible are taken from the NJPS translation.
28 2. Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage
becomes another Phinehas, and his violence against the Shechemites becomes
the very first instance of priestly zeal in defense of endogamy. But as it exalts
Levi, Aramaic Levi also criticizes priests for undertaking improper marriages,
as do the Book of the Watchers (1Enoch 136) and 4QMMT. As Levi emerges
as a defender of endogamy, Phinehas reputation in this role is fading. While
the Wisdom of Ben Sira and 1Maccabees praise Phinehas zeal, they ignore the
specifics of the situation in which it was displayed. What is important to them is
the covenant it won for him and his descendants.
Here I would like to explore the rise of Levi and decline of Phinehas in the role
of zealous partisan of endogamy and their implications for our understanding of
polemics against improper marriages during the period around the Maccabean
revolt.4 I shall argue that what aroused the ire of the authors of the Book of the
Watchers, Aramaic Levi, and 4QMMT, was not that priests were marrying gen-
tile women, but rather that they were marrying Jewish women forbidden them
according to a rigorist reading of Leviticus 21. While Jubilees does condemn
marriage between Jews and gentiles, this condemnation is not a response to a
widespread social practice, as some scholars have suggested, but rather an aspect
of Jubilees program for making the Jews a kingdom of priests. The failure of
Ben Sira and 1Maccabees to note Phinehas role as scourge of sexual relations
between Jews and gentiles shows that these works did not view such mingling as
an important problem. Nor does 2Maccabees mention intermarriage, although
it is quick to condemn any deviation from piety. Thus, in contrast to the time of
Ezra and Nehemiah, there is no reason to believe that intermarriage was a sig-
nificant issue in Palestine in the period around the Maccabean revolt.
Aramaic Levi
The career of the patriarch Levi did not get off to a very promising start. The
only incident in Genesis in which he plays a leading role is the sack of Shechem
after the rape of his sister Dinah (Genesis 34), and his part in this affair elicits
his fathers immediate disapproval (Gen 34:30) and his deathbed curse (Gen
49:57). But Levi became the ancestor of the priesthood, and the Torah shows
his descendants putting Levis propensity for violence to pious use: not only
does Phinehas perform his act of zeal at Shittim, but the Levites as a group
4The figure of Levi in literature of this period has recently been the subject of a great deal
of interest. See, e.g., R.A. Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from
Aramaic Levi to Testament of Levi (SBLEJL 9; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996); J. Kugel,
Levis Elevation to the Priesthood in Second Temple Writings, HTR 86 (1993): 164; J.C.
VanderKam, Jubilees Exegetical Creation of Levi the Priest, RevQ 17 (1996): 35973; C.
Werman, Levi and Levites in the Second Temple Period, DSD (1997): 21125. On Phinehas
in the Second Temple period, M. Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom
Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 14755.
2. Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage 29
punish Israels worship of the golden calf (Exod 32:2629). As I have already
noted, when Aramaic Levi undertakes to rehabilitate its hero, it is Phinehas who
provides the model.
Aramaic Levis account of the rape of Dinah and the destruction of Shechem
(13) is very poorly preserved, but the points of contact between some recently
published material from Qumran that appears to form part of Levis vision (supp.
2227) and the angelic diatribe against intermarriage that follows the account
of Levis deed in Jubilees (30:523) show that Aramaic Levi shared Jubilees
understanding of the potential marriage of Dinah and Shechem as forbidden
intermarriage.5 The anointing of eternal peace (Ar. Levi 6) that Levi receives
in the vision recalls the covenant of peace (Num 25:12) granted to Phinehas for
his zeal.6
The end of Levis speech at the conclusion of Aramaic Levi (1026) makes it
clear that its author disapproved of the behavior of the priests of his own time,
although unfortunately the passage is so fragmentary that it does not reveal what
the priests were doing wrong. But Isaacs instructions to Levi on the law of
the priesthood earlier in the work (1361) suggest that one object of criticism
was priestly marriage practices. These instructions cover selected aspects of
priestly practice in considerable detail. Usually they supplement the laws of the
Torah, although at some points they contradict them.7 But the only portion of
the instructions with a polemical tone is the very beginning (1317), in which
Isaac urges Levi to avoid harlotry by marrying a suitable wife.8 Despite the
5Verse numbers for Aramaic Levi follow Kugler, Patriarch (6263 for discussion). Kugler
follows the numeration of R.H. Charles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1908), 24556, and labels material found only in
the Qumran fragments supplement. Supp. 2227 come from material Kugler calls 4Q213 2
(Patriarch, 3437). This material has now been published by M.E. Stone and J.C. Greenfield
in Qumran Cave 4: 17, Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 3335, as
4Q213a 34, two fragments; in the editors words, the joinseems convincing (33). For a
table of correspondences between Kuglers labels for the fragments and those of the edition of
Stone and Greenfield, see A. Aschim, review of Kugler, Patriarch, JBL 117 (1998): 355. For
the relationship to Jubilees, Kugler, Patriarch, 3637, 8385.
6Stone and Greenfield also publish a tiny fragment that contains the words eternal priest-
hood, ( 4Q213a 5i; Parabiblical Texts, 3, 35), apparently another allusion to Phine-
has reward (Num 25:13).
7The proper type of wood for sacrifice (2224), the proper measures of wood, salt, fine
flour, oil, wine, and incense (3146), and additional ablutions (1921, 26, 5354) can all be
understood as supplementary. Even in those parts of the instructions that contradict Leviticus,
such as the order in which various acts are performed in the course of the offering (Ar.
Levi 2728, Leviticus 1) the deviations from the practice of Leviticus are not glaring, and it is
possible that they represent a traditional development of those laws. For Kuglers discussion of
the relation of the instructions to the laws of the Torah, Patriarch, 10211.
8Kugler argues that the instructions as a whole are intended as criticism of contemporary
priests, opposing the ideal priest, Levi, to the actual priests of the time (Patriarch, 10810).
He suggests very tentatively that this picture was a Samaritan development, intended to dif-
ferentiate the Samaritan priests from those in Jerusalem (13538). Against the view that the
importance of Levis concern about proper marriage for Dinah, Isaacs charge
to Levi calls upon a different set of considerations:
And now, my son, the true law I will show you, and I will not hide from you any word,
so as to teach you the law of the priesthood. First, keep yourself pure of all fornica-
tion and uncleanness, and of all harlotry. And you, take for yourself a wife from my
family so that you will not defile your seed with harlots. For you are holy seed, and
holy is your seed, like the holy place. For you are a holy priest called for all the seed
of Abraham. (1517)9
According to Isaac, the stakes are higher for Levi than for Dinah or Levis broth-
ers. Isaacs words draw on Lev 21:14, which restricts the high priests choice of
wife: A widow, or a divorced woman, or one who is degraded by harlotry such
he may not marry. Only a virgin of his own kind may he take to wife. Aramaic
Levi clearly understands Levi not only as the first priest, but also as the first high
priest.10 The author of Aramaic Levi assumed that a pious priest would hardly
have needed urging to avoid harlots. Thus the meaning of degraded by harlotry
in Lev 21:14 must be more subtle; the woman must be unsuitable in some less
obvious way. As J. Kampen has pointed out, the term , harlotry, comes to
serve in writings of the Second Temple period as a boundary marker; it refers
not to actual prostitution, but to whatever sexual practices the writer deemed
impermissible, thus setting the writers group apart from other Jews.11 So, for
example, the Damascus Covenant (4.21) condemns either polygamy or divorce
and remarriage marriage to two women while both are alive as .
The term qualifying the virgin wife the high priest is to choose according to
Lev 21:14, , of his own kind, is difficult, but the other uses of the term in
Leviticus 21 (vv.1, 4, 15) suggest a narrow meaning, the family or clan rather
instructions as a whole are intended as a critique of contemporary priests is the absence of a

polemical tone except in relation to marriage.
9All quotations of Aramaic Levi are taken from the translation of Kugler, Patriarch. This
passage appears on 96. The complete instructions are preserved only in Greek in the Mt. Athos
manuscript, but a long portion starting at the beginning is preserved in the Bodleian Geniza
fragment (b 5d 23), as well as in some small Qumran fragments. The fragments according to
Stone and Greenfield, Parabiblical Texts, 3, are 4Q214 12 (=Kugler 4Q213 45), 4Q214a 1
(=Kugler 4Q214 1), and 4Q214b 26 (=Kugler 4Q214 24). Kugler also includes Stone and
Greenfields 4Q214b 7 (=Kugler 4Q214 5), which Stone and Greenfield find impossible to
locate (Parabiblical Texts, 3, 6970).
10See also Kugler, Halakic Interpretive Strategies at Qumran: A Case Study, in Legal
Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization
for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995, Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten (ed. M.
Bernstein, F. Garca Martnez, and J. Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 135.
11Kampen, 4QMMT and New Testament Studies, in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspec
tives on Qumran Law and History (ed. J. Kampen and M.J. Bernstein; SBLSymS 2; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1996), 13538. See also Kampen, The Matthean Divorce Texts Reexamined,
in New Qumran Texts and Studies: Proceedings of the First Meeting of the International Orga
nization for Qumran Studies, Paris 1992 (ed. G.J. Brooke with F. Garca Martnez; STDJ 15;
Leiden: Brill, 1994), 14967, and Kugler, Halakic Interpretive Strategies, 13140.
than the whole people of Israel. Ezekiel, who does not mention a high priest,
insists contrary to Leviticus that all priests must marry virgins or the widows of
priests, but the virgins need not be daughters of priests; they need only be of
the stock ( )of the House of Israel (44:22). Philo (Special Laws 1.110) and
Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 3.277) agree that the high priest may marry only a
woman from a priestly family.12
Isaacs command to Levi to take a wife from my family (( )Ar. Levi
17) is also ambiguous. While Isaacs family includes all Israelites and even some
non-Israelite cousins and offspring, Kugler argues that Aramaic Levi understood
to mean family or clan and intends in this more restricted sense:
Isaac is here speaking as a priest handing on priestly lore to his successor.13
Isaacs emphasis on Levis priestly status as the reason for avoiding improper
marriage (Ar. Levi 17) points in this direction. The remnants of the angels
speech to Levi after the destruction of Shechem leave no doubt that Aramaic
Levi opposes marriage between Jews and gentiles. Yet Isaacs command applies
only to Levi, not to the other sons of Jacob, and it applies to Levi because he is
a priest. Thus Aramaic Levi moves from endogamy as a standard for all Israel in
its account of the aftermath of the rape of Dinah to a more restrictive definition
of appropriate marriage for Levi and his descendants.
4QMMT and the Book of the Watchers
In applying Lev 21:14 to Levi, did Aramaic Levi intend to require all future
priests to marry women from priestly families? According to E. Qimron and
J. Strugnell, 4QMMT condemns intermarriage between priests and Israelites,
and Qimron cites Aramaic Levi as the most striking parallel to the passage in
4QMMT, though he also notes differences.14 The passage in 4QMMT condemns
the harlotry ( )that takes place among the people (B 75, my translation).
It enumerates the biblical prohibitions on the mixing of kinds: the mating of ani-
mals, mixed stuff in clothing, and sowing a field with mixed species.15 It goes on
12The reading of Josephus requires emendation of the text, but the emendation has been
widely accepted. See the note there, Josephus IV: Jewish Antiquities, Books IIV (trans. H.St. J.
Thackeray; LCL; London: William Heinemann and New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1930), 452.
13Kugler, Halakic Interpretive Strategies, 13435, particularly n.15; this represents a
change from his interpretation in Patriarch, 103.

14E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Miqat Ma ae ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994). For the unattributed parts of Miqat Ma ae ha-Torah, I refer to Qimron and Strugnell,
but for part 5, The Halakha, which is signed by Qimron, I refer to Qimron only. The passage
appears on 5457; Qimron discusses Aramaic Levi, which he refers to as Testament of Levi,
on 174. All translations of 4QMMT are taken from Qimron and Strugnell unless otherwise
indicated.
15This is the order in 4QMMT; the order in Lev 19:19 is mating, sowing, clothing.
to call Israel holy, but the sons of Aaron, most holy (( ) B 79).16
Now comes a controversial restoration: But you know that some of the priests
and [the laity mingle with each other].17 [And they] unite with each other and
pollute the [holy] seed [as well as] their own [seed] with women whom they are
forbidden to marry ( ;literally, harlots). Since [the sons of Aaron should]
(B 8082). Here the text breaks off.
The Qimron-Strugnell understanding of the passage as condemning marriage
between priests and Israelites, then, depends on how a lacuna is filled. Thus it
is not surprising that it has not met with universal acceptance. One important
voice of dissent is that of J.M. Baumgarten, who suggested to Qimron and
Strugnell that the passage should be restored as a condemnation of marriage
between Israelites and gentiles.18 L.L. Grabbe has also expressed reservations
about the Qimron-Strugnell position without, however, offering the grounds for
his view.19 Kugler insists that the passage is so uncertain that it is impossible to
decide which type of marriage it condemns; he criticizes as unwarranted defi-
niteness the Qimron-Strugnell understanding of ( B 75), among the
people, as indicating marriages between Jews rather than marriages involving
Jews.20 Most recently C.J. Sharpe has argued that 4QMMT constitutes an ex-
tended polemic against marriage with gentiles; in her view this polemic can be
seen both in the choice of halakhot in section B and in the rhetoric of section C.21
In keeping with her understanding of the purpose of the document as a whole,
she reads the passage in question as a condemnation of marriage between Jews
and gentiles. The harlotry of B 75 can only concern sexual mingling with non-
Jews, although she offers nothing to support this claim beyond a note pointing
to Qimrons own confession of uncertainty about how a law prohibiting priests
from marrying women from non-priestly families would have been derived from
16Only the of the first word is preserved, but this restoration seems secure.
17I correct an apparent mechanical error in Qimron and Strugnell, DJD 10.57, where the
phrase [as well as] at the end of line 80 must have been introduced from the end of line 81,
where it belongs and also appears. I also supply a period, missing in the translation, after each
other.
18Qimron and Strugnell, DJD 10.55 note to line 75, and Qimron, 171 n.178a. Kugler, who
does not offer a judgment about the content of the lacuna or the position of 4QMMT, defends
Baumgartens suggested reconstruction against Qimrons claim that it is too long (Qimron, 171
n.178a; Kugler, Halakic Interpretive Strategies, 136). Kugler also notes Baumgartens view
that Aramaic Levi is advocating not priestly marriage to priestly women, but simply endogamy
(Halakic Interpretive Strategies, 134 n.15). Baumgartens position on both Aramaic Levi and
4QMMT is perhaps influenced by rabbinic law, which permits priests to marry women from
non-priestly families.
19L.L. Grabbe, 4QMMT and Second Temple Jewish Society, in Legal Texts, 103. Grabbe
does criticize Qimrons arguments for his position (103 n.54). On Qimrons arguments, see
the discussion below.
20Kugler, Halakic Interpretive Strategies, 13536.
21C.J. Sharpe, Phinean Zeal and Rhetorical Strategy in 4QMMT, RevQ 18 (1997): 20722.
Lev 21:7 and 14.22 For the holy seed of B 80 she turns to the Book of Ezra,
where the officials complain to Ezra that the people of Israel and the priests and
the Levites (9:1) have taken foreign wives so that the holy seed ( ) has
become intermingled ( )with the peoples of the land (9:2). Here holy
seed clearly refers to the entire people of Israel, and the practice condemned is
clearly marriage between Jews and gentiles.23 The echoes of Ezra 9 in both the
language and intent of B 75f and B 80f are all but unmistakable.24 The problem
with this claim is that the echoes derive in part from Qimron and Strugnell, who
decided to fill the lacuna in B 80 with , the verb that appears also in Ezra
9:2. While a noun from the root appears earlier in 4QMMT meaning sexual
relations ( , B 48), it seems likely that Qimron and Strugnell chose
under the influence of Ezra 9:2. Further, Sharpes claim about echoes is a
little surprising in light of her criticism of Qimron and Strugnells use of the verb
without an object: elsewhere in the Dead Sea Scrolls, she points out, in nine of
twelve instances, the verb takes an object, although none of these uses of
the verb has the same sense as the one in 4QMMT.25 It seems to me that this criti-
cism points not to Sharpes preferred understanding of the passage as restored by
Qimron and Strugnell, but rather to the advisability of considering other possible
restorations. Altogether, the polemic Sharpe finds in 4QMMT is unlikely in the
absence of evidence for the widespread occurrence of marriage between Jews
and gentiles in the mid-second century, a topic to which I shall turn below, and
her reading of specific halakhot as reflecting this concern is often forced.26
While Kugler is certainly correct that the meaning of the passage is far from
clear, it seems to me that the weight of evidence favors the Qimron-Strugnell
interpretation. Still there is no doubt that Qimron has not done a good job of
making the case for the reading he and Strugnell propose.27 The reason that he
has not is that he strains to represent 4QMMTs position as widely held. Thus he
claims, There is evidence that in the Second Temple period priests would marry
only women from priestly families.28 Yet he does not consider the evidence of
Philo and Josephus, two primary sources from the Second Temple period and
the years immediately following that discuss the question.29 As we have seen,
both hold that the high priest may marry only a virgin from a priestly family
22Sharpe, Phinean Zeal, 216, esp. n.10.

23Or
at least those the author of the Book of Ezra viewed as gentiles; see the comments of
Grabbe, 4QMMT, 103 n.54.
24Sharpe, Phinean Zeal, 217.
25Sharpe, Phinean Zeal, 21617, esp. n.12.
26See especially her suggestion that the halakhah for liquid streams has relatively transpar-
ent metaphorical implications for sexual mingling with a Gentile spouse (Sharpe, Phinean
Zeal, 219).
27See the comments of Grabbe, 4QMMT, 103 n.54.
28Qimron, DJD 10.174.
29As Grabbe, 4QMMT, 103 n.54, complains.
(Philo, Special Laws 1.110; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 3.277). But Philo says
explicitly that this rule does not apply to ordinary priests, who may marry any
appropriate Israelite woman (Special Laws 1.111). In the passage in Jewish
Antiquities, Josephus agrees with Philo. He begins by describing the limitations
on women ordinary priests may marry, following Lev 21:7 (Jewish Antiquities
3.276), and he presents the necessity of marrying a woman of priestly descent
as a further restriction on the high priest alone. But in another passage, Against
Apion (1.3035), Josephus implies a somewhat different view about the high
priest, although not about ordinary priests. There Josephus claims that priests
marry only women from families whose unblemished lineage is guaranteed
by genealogical archives and witnesses. Further, these women must be of
the same people as their husbands (Against Apion 1.31).30 The Greek adjec-
tive Josephus uses, , might well be a translation of , but
understood as from his people rather than from his kin or from his tribe.
In Against Apion, then, Josephus appears to apply Lev 21:14 to all priests, but
with an understanding of the crucial term that suggests that even the high priest
may marry an otherwise suitable woman from a non-priestly family. This would
contradict his explicit statement in Jewish Antiquities. But whatever his view
about marriage partners for the high priest, in neither passage does Josephus
require ordinary priests to marry women from priestly families. In fact the only
evidence Qimron offers for the practice of priests marrying women from priestly
families is A. Geigers claim that important priests married only such women,
which Geiger connects to Josephus comments in Against Apion.31 But Geigers
conclusion goes well beyond what Josephus has to say.32
Still, a great deal of evidence for the position on priestly marriage Qimron
and Strugnell discern in 4QMMT is hardly to be expected. On the contrary, one
would expect this position, like the other positions in 4QMMT, to be a minor-
ity opinion, held only by a small group with rigorist ideas about purity. Qimron
suggests that 4QMMTs position relies on an understanding of Lev 21:7 and
14 in which means a woman who is unsuitable because she comes from a
30Thackeray, Josephus I: The Life, Against Apion (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, and London: William Heinemann, 1976 [1926]), translates, of his own race (174).
31Geiger, , in ( ed. S. Poznnski; Warsaw: Tus-
chijah, 1910), 134. Geiger also cites Jewish Antiquities 3.277, which insists on a wife from a
priestly family for the high priest.
32A. Bchler, whom Qimron cites for evidence of unfavorable rabbinic views toward mar-
riages between priests and non-priestly women (DJD 10.174 n.194), points to rabbinic texts
that assume that priestly families were prepared to marry into a certain number of non-priestly
families that were thought to maintain high standards of purity. He believes that this view
reflects the reality of the end of the Second Temple period (Family Purity and Impurity in Je-
rusalem Before the Year 70 C.E., in Studies in Jewish History: The Adolph Bchler Memorial
Volume [ed. I. Brodie and J. Rabbinowitz; Jews College Publications, n.s. 1; London: Oxford
University Press, 1956], 6498).
non-priestly family.33 This is just the sort of exegesis one would expect a rigorist
group to embrace; the prohibition of marriage with actual harlots would hardly
constitute an adequate guarantee of priestly purity. With such an understand-
ing of the term , Sharpes objection that the derivation of the law is unclear
evaporates.
Above I suggested that there is reason to reconsider the content of the lacuna
in B 80. I shall try to restrict my discussion here to elements of 4QMMT that
are actually preserved, at least in part. In my view, the most compelling element
of the extant text for Qimron and Strugnells case is the designation of Israel as
holy and the priests as most holy.34 Other texts found at Qumran show a similar
desire to preserve the boundaries between priests and other Jews. Qimron notes
that 1QS twice designates priests as most holy in contrast to Israel, which is
described as holy or as walking in integrity (8.56, 9.56).35 He might also
have pointed to the Temple Scrolls concern for avoiding the mixing of the sin
and guilt offerings of the people and the priests (35.1015) even as it elaborates
purity laws to make them more relevant to non-priests.
Qimron sees two important similarities between Aramaic Levi and 4QMMT.36
Both texts use the term for marriages they find unacceptable, and both use
the phrase ( Ar. Levi 17) / (). In Qimron and Strugnells recon-
struction, the phrase ()appears twice in 4QMMT (B 7576, B 81), but in
the first instance only is extant; the second instance, where is preserved
in one manuscript and the of in a second manuscript, is more secure.37
While in the Book of Ezra (9:12), as Sharpe points out, holy seed refers to
the people of Israel as a whole, in Aramaic Levi, as we have also seen, the holy
seed is the priestly line. In the first instance of the phrase in 4QMMT, the phrase
refers to Israel: the harlotry takes place among the people despite their being
so[ns] of holy [seed], as is written, Israel is holy (B 7576). The second phrase
is more difficult: [And they] unite with each other and pollute the [holy] seed
[as well as] their own [seed] with women whom they are forbidden to marry
(( )B 8182). It is not clear what their own [seed] is and how it differs
from holy seed. Indeed I wonder if seed is the best way to fill the first lacuna
in B 82. But the holy seed of B 81 must refer to priests, since it is (male) priests
who are forbidden to marry the in Lev 21:7. Here, then, as in the passage
from Ezra, holy seed retains its reference to male biology, although it refers to
priests rather than to all Israel as in Ezra.
33Qimron, DJD 10.17273.

34Strictly speaking, most holy is not extant text; only the first survives.
35Qimron, DJD 10.173.
36Qimron, Miqat Ma ae ha-Torah, 174.
37Qimron and Strugnell reconstruct the second word in the phrase as with a despite
the spelling of the word extant in B 76.

But would 4QMMT have used the term holy seed to refer first to Israel and
then to priests within a single ruling? Further, if both Israel and the priesthood
are holy seed, the prohibition of marriage between them on the basis of the rules
of mixed kinds breaks down. Perhaps the lacuna in B 75 should be filled differ-
ently. My suggestion is [ ] .38 The phrase appears in Deut 7:6;
14:2, 21. There are no instances of in the Bible, and I do not know of
any elsewhere, but to the best of my knowledge there are no instances of
attested either. In my restoration, then, 4QMMT would reserve the phrase
for priests, as Aramaic Levi does.
The last fragment of Aramaic Levi with the speech condemning Levis de-
scendants for their wickedness is, as already noted, so poorly preserved that it is
impossible to specify what that wickedness consisted of. In the corresponding
passage in the Testament of Levi, however, Levi accuses his descendants of a
variety of sins including sexual sins: You willpollute married women, de-
file virgins of Jerusalem, be joined with harlots and adulteresses, take to wives
daughters of the Gentiles, purifying them with an unlawful purification (14:6).39
The juxtaposition of harlots and adulteresses with gentile wives is particularly
interesting. The term harlots ( ) echoes in Ar. Levi 17. If Levis
diatribe at the end of Aramaic Levi also condemned marriage to , by whom
the author of Aramaic Levi intended Jewish women from non-priestly families,
a later reviser might well have understood these unsuitable women as gentiles.
The diatribe against Levis descendants in Aramaic Levi includes an allusion
to an accusation that Enoch made against them. The context is so fragmentary
that it is impossible to say what Enochs accusation was. In the corresponding
speech in the Testament of Levi, Levi claims to have learned of his descendants
future wrongdoing from the writings of Enoch (14:1). The writings of Enoch are
mentioned several times in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs as a source of
knowledge about the future, but the references are usually to the authority of the
Enochic writings more generally rather than to specific passages in Enochic lit-
erature.40 Still, it is significant that the Book of the Watchers uses the story of the
watchers marriages with women as a way of criticizing the marriage practices
of contemporary priests. This criticism has been understood as directed against
marriages between priests and gentile women,41 but the polemics of 4QMMT
38The translation of F. Garca Martnez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran
Texts in English (2nd ed.; Leiden: Brill and Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 78, fills the lacuna
somewhat differently: They are [members of the congregation of perfect] holiness He does
not provide the Hebrew for his suggestion.
39Trans. H.W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A
Commentary (SVTP 8; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 168.

40See Hollander and de Jonge, Testaments, 3940.
41D. Suter, Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1Enoch 616,
HUCA 50 (1979): 11924; G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Rev-
elation in Upper Galilee, JBL 100 (1981): 585. I followed them in Ascent to Heaven in Jewish
and Aramaic Levi make it more likely that it is directed against marriages be-
tween priests and Jewish women from non-priestly families. The advantage of
this understanding is that it does not require us to accept the judgment of its op-
ponents that the priestly establishment was corrupt. The priests condemned by
the Book of the Watchers, Aramaic Levi, and 4QMMT were not violating a clear
command of the Torah; indeed they were not doing anything that they or most
other Jews would have recognized as wrong. The polemics reflect a rigorist inter-
pretation of a commandment of the Torah that most Jews interpreted differently.
Jubilees 30
Aramaic Levi is an account of the career of the founder of the priesthood. For
Jubilees, on the other hand, Levi is only one of many figures of importance, and
he is not the first priest but rather one in a long chain of priests going back to
Adam, the ancestor of all humanity, and including Levis own father Jacob. But
Jubilees treatment of the rape of Dinah and the murder of the Shechemites is
closely related to Aramaic Levis. Either Jubilees here drew directly on Aramaic
Levi or the two works had a common source.42 My own view is that even if the
two works relied on a common source, Aramaic Levi is a better guide to its
content since, as we shall see, Jubilees reworks the source (or Aramaic Levi ) in
keeping with its own concerns.
Like Aramaic Levi, Jubilees views the attack on Shechem as highly praise-
worthy.43 The angelic narrator absolves Levi and his brothers of the accusation of
and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 2122. Both articles
make an important contribution to the understanding of the Book of the Watchers, and my sug-
gestion here is only a small refinement of their arguments.
42See Kugler, Patriarch, 14655, for references to the views of others and discussion. Most
scholars favor a common source. Some understand it as oral, others as written. Kugler himself
argues for a written source. His primary reason for preferring a source, for which there is no
independent evidence, to direct dependence of Jubilees on Aramaic Levi is Levis first visit
to Isaac (Ar. Levi 8, Jub. 31:525). This non-biblical visit is treated in considerable detail by
Jubilees, which reports Isaacs blessings of Levi and Judah, but Aramaic Levi merely notes the
visit and Isaacs blessing of Levi with a single clause each. Thus it seems unlikely that Jubilees
is here dependent on Aramaic Levi; rather, Aramaic Levi appears to be condensing a longer
account (Patriarch, 150). J. Kugel explains the relationship between Aramaic Levi and Jubilees
with a complicated scenario involving two no longer extant Levi works and the use of Jubilees
in the final version of Aramaic Levi (Levis Elevation, 5258); this position is criticized by
Kugler (Patriarch, 15455). In his dicussion of the dating of Aramaic Levi, M.E. Stone as-
sumes direct dependence of Jubilees on Aramaic Levi (Enoch, Aramaic Levi and Sectarian
Origins, JSJ 19 [1988]: 159 n.2). C. Werman has recently argued for direct dependence at
some length; she does not find the visit to Isaac worrisome for her position (Levi and Levites,
21624; on the visit to Isaac, 220).
43For a recent discussion of this chapter, see Werman, Jubilees 30: Building a Paradigm for
the Ban on Intermarriage, HTR 90 (1997): 122.

treachery by claiming that the punishment of the Shechemites had been decreed
in heaven (30:46). But for Aramaic Levi, Levis defense of endogamy serves
as a prelude to the defense of a more restrictive set of rules for marriage for
priests. For Jubilees, the value of endogamy is the central lesson of the incident.
The angelic narrator condemns marriage to gentiles in the strongest terms: giv-
ing a daughter in marriage to a gentile is equated with giving a child to Molech
(30:710). This association of intermarriage and idolatrous child sacrifice re-
flects the influence of the Holiness Code, where the prohibition of offering a
child to Molech (Lev 18:21) follows a long list of forbidden sexual relationships.
The context of Lev 18:21 and the problematic language of the prohibition, liter-
ally, You shall not give of your seed to cause to pass to Molech, led Targum
Pseudo-Jonathan and some rabbis to read the verse as a prohibition of sexual
intercourse (give of your seed) with pagan women.44 Jubilees invocation of
Lev 18:21 here suggests knowledge of an early form of such an interpretation.
But while the verse in Leviticus is best suited to condemning the marriage
or sexual relations of a Jewish man and a gentile woman, the angels diatribe
emphasizes the evils of marriage between a Jewish woman and a gentile man
since the potential intermarriage of the incident of concern to Jubilees involves
Dinah and Shechem. In most of the rather few places where the Torah concerns
itself with intermarriage or sexual relations with gentiles, it is primarily with
the dangers posed by foreign women, whose attractions may lead to idolatry,
as in the incident in which Phinehas displayed his zeal. The use of Lev 18:21
in Jubilees comment on the story of the rape of Dinah may be a conscious ef-
fort to claim this verse to oppose Jewish woman / gentile man intermarriage as
well as the reverse.45 The angel goes on to condemn both types of intermarriage
(30:1314) and then to suggest that intermarriage will cause the defilement of the
sanctuary (30:1517). Again we see the influence of the Holiness Code, which
claims that forbidden sexual relations defile the land (Lev 18:2430, 20:2224).
Thus Jubilees insists that ordinary Jews affect the temple through their marriages
and sexual practices.
In Jubilees as in Aramaic Levi, Phinehas zeal at Shittim serves as a model for
the treatment of Levis role at Shechem. As in Aramaic Levi, Levis zeal wins
him the priesthood (Jub. 30:18).46 The angel tells Moses,
44G. Vermes, Leviticus 18:21 in Ancient Jewish Bible Exegesis, in Studies in Aggadah,
Targum and Jewish Liturgy in Memory of Joseph Heinemann (ed. J.J. Petuchowski and E.
Fleisher; Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Hebrew Union College, 1981), 10824.
45Vermes, Leviticus 18:21, 11920.
46VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (CSCO 511, Scriptores Aethiopici 88; Louvain: Peeters,
1989), translates, Levi and his sons will be blessed forever because he was eager to carry out
justice, punishment, and revenge on all who rise against Israel (my italics). The translation
of R.H. Charles (APOT 2) and the revision of his translation by C. Rabin (AOT) use was
zealous and showed zeal respectively. All translations of Jubilees below are taken from
VanderKam. J. Kugel argues that Jubilees offers four different reasons for the choice of Levi
Levis descendants were chosen for the priesthood and as levites to serve before the
Lord as we (do) for all time. Levi and his sons will be blessed forever because he was
eager to carry out justice, punishment, and revenge on all who rise against Israel. So
blessing and justice before the God of all are entered for him as a testimony on the
heavenly tablets. We ourselves remember the justice which the man performed during
his lifetime at all times of the year. As far as 1000 generations will they enter (it). It will
come to him and his family after him. He has been recorded on the heavenly tablets as
a friend and a just man. (30:1820)
This passage echoes the conclusion of Isaacs instructions to Levi in the portion
of Aramaic Levi preserved in Greek in the Mt. Athos manuscript:
You will be more beloved than all your brothers. And blessing will be pronounced
by your seed upon the earth and your seed will be entered in a book of a memorial of
life for all eternity. And your name and the name of your seed will not be blotted out
for eternity. And now, (my) child Levi, your seed will be blessed upon the earth for all
generations of eternity. (5861)
Both passages celebrate the blessing of Levi and his descendants and promise
that Levis name will be inscribed in the heavenly records.47 Aramaic Levi re-
ports that the name of Levis descendants is entered with his, emphasizing their
participation in Levis glory. Jubilees, on the other hand, restricts the entry to
Levis name. But Jubilees does not stop there. Rather, the angel goes on to tell
Moses that if the children of Israel keep the covenant, they will be recorded
as friends (30:21), just as Levi was. For Jubilees, then, the righteousness that
earned Levi the priesthood can be imitated not only by his descendants but by
all Jews. The people of Israel is truly a kingdom of priests.48
The inscription of the names of Levi and his descendants in the book of life in
Aramaic Levi is an appropriate climax to the story of how Levi won the priest-
hood for himself and his descendants. But Jubilees version of the inscription
as priest (Levis Elevation, 57, 4751). Yet as Kugler points out (Patriarch, 16162), the
several passages cohere quite well. Jub. 32:3, where Jacob chooses Levi as priest in the course
of tithing his possessions because Levi occupies the position of tithe of Jacobs sons, counting
up from Benjamin in utero, presumably reflects an earlier tradition, but the author of Jubilees
has successfully integrated it into his larger framework.
47Aramaic Levi refers to a book of a memorial of life, (59),
that owes something to the book of remembrance, , of Mal 3:16. On Levi traditions in
Malachi, Kugler, Patriarch, 1821. Jubilees heavenly tablets elsewhere fulfill a number of
functions, including recording the righteous and the wicked; a little later it warns that those who
transgress will be recorded on the heavenly tablets as enemies. They will be erased from the
book of the living and will be recorded in the book of those who will be destroyed (30:22).
48J.C. Endres, Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees (CBQMS 18; Washington:
Catholic Biblical Association, 1987), also emphasizes the idea of Israel as a kingdom of priests
in his treatment of this passage, which is very valuable, despite problems I raise below (on
Jubilees 30, 12054; on kingdom of priests, 13947). On Israel as a kingdom of priests in
Jubilees, see also M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: The Democratization of the Priest-
hood in the Literature of Second Temple Judaism, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy
6 (1997): 8998.
represents a considerable transformation of Aramaic Levi. By opening the heav-

enly tablets to all the pious, Jubilees diminishes the difference between priests
and other Jews. This move is out of harmony with the exaltation of the hereditary
priesthood, but it reflects characteristic concerns of Jubilees. Similarly, Aramaic
Levis polemic against improper marriages for priests continues the theme of
Levis zealous piety, a piety that should characterize his descendants as well.
Jubilees emphasis on endogamy, while a natural topic in light of the possibility
of intermarriage with the Shechemites, is less closely linked to the exaltation of
Levi. Thus, while comparison of these two passages alone does not allow us to
decide whether Jubilees used Aramaic Levi directly or whether the two works
drew on a common source, it does suggest that if the relationship is by way of a
shared source, Aramaic Levi more closely reflects the source.
E. Schwarz and J. Endres see the lengthy speech condemning intermarriage
in Jubilees 30 as a reaction to marriages between hellenizing Jews and gentiles
in the period leading up to the Maccabean revolt. They view such marriages
as a central concern of Jubilees.49 While they note several passages caution-
ing against marriage with the daughters of Canaan (Jub. 20:4, 22:20, 25:13,
27:10),50 these passages target Canaanite women alone and reflect Jubilees
animus against the Canaanites, who, it claims, will be uprooted from the earth
(Jub. 20:4, 22:20). As the only passage that rejects marriage with gentiles in
general, Jubilees 30 is crucial to Schwarz and Endres claim.
Neither Schwarz nor Endres considers Jubilees relationship to Aramaic Levi,
and many of the Qumran fragments of Aramaic Levi were not available to them.
But we have seen that the condemnation of intermarriage in Jubilees 30 involves
a transformation of Aramaic Levis condemnation of priests failure to marry
women from priestly families in accordance with Jubilees characteristic idea
of Israel as a kingdom of priests. True, such a transformation might have been
inspired by the emergence of intermarriage as a significant issue in the authors
time. But it is also worth noting that Jubilees contains one other long diatribe
about sexual sin that can hardly be read as a response to a problem current in the
authors time, the condemnation, in the wake of Reubens sin with Bilhah, of
sleeping with the fathers wife (Jub. 33:920). At the very end of the speech, the
phrase sexual impurity has replaced the specific act Reuben committed (Jub.
33:20), but the rest of the speech keeps Reubens particular sexual sin clearly in
49Schwarz, Identitt durch Abgrenzung: Abgrenzungsprozesse in Israel im 2. vorchristlichen
Jahrhundert und ihre traditionsgeschichtlichen Voraussetzungen. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Er

forschung des Jubilenbuches (Europische Hochschulschriften 162; Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
1982), das Verbot des Konnubiums einen breiten Raum einnimmt und offenbar eines der
wesentlichen Element im Kampf um die Abgrenzung darstellt (108). Endres, Biblical Inter
pretation: Widespread miscegenation constituted the major problem during his [the author
of Jubilees] era (137). According to Endres, he reached his conclusions independently of
Schwarz (Biblical Interpretation, 1415).
50Schwarz, Identitt, 3235; Endres, Biblical Interpretation, 44, 7377, 13637.
view. It is difficult to imagine that there was ever a time in which sexual rela-
tions between men and their fathers wives constituted a serious social problem;
Jubilees agitation about Reubens sin seems to grow out of the absence of
punishment for it (Jub. 33:1516), despite Lev 20:11, which decrees death for
both son and fathers wife. In other words, the vehemence of Jubilees rhetoric
is not necessarily an indication of the prominence of the practice that elicits it.51
Intermarriage at the Time of the Maccabean Revolt
But it is not only factors internal to Jubilees that point away from viewing in-
termarriage as a significant social reality for the author and his contemporaries.
In fact there is very little evidence for intermarriage in Palestine in the period
leading up to the Maccabean revolt. Scholarly work has focused, reasonably
enough, on the emergence of the prohibition of intermarriage and related ideas,
on which the sources are more forthcoming, rather than on the incidence of the
practice itself.52 In the absence of more thorough studies, I shall restrict myself
to examining the material adduced by Schwarz in his study of Jubilees. Endres
provides no evidence at all to support his assertion that widespread miscege-
nation constituted the major problem at the time Jubilees was written.53 Nor
does Sharpe in the course of her argument that the driving rhetorical purpose
of MMT was to challenge the practice of intermarrying with the Gentiles offer
any evidence for the existence of that practice.54 Schwarz does make an effort
to gather evidence for intermarriage, and this effort is quite telling: there is little
evidence to gather.
Schwarz begins by considering 1Macc 1:15, They joined with the Gen-
tiles, but concedes that it may not refer to intermarriage at all.55 I shall dis-
cuss this passage below. He then points to three other passages, widely separated
in time, in which priests are implicated in marriage to gentiles. In Jewish Antiq
uities 11.30612, Josephus recounts the defection to the Samaritans of Manas-
sah, the brother of the high priest Jaddua, after he is barred from priestly service
in Jerusalem because of his marriage to Nikaso, the daughter of the Samaritan
51Note S.J.D. Cohens comments in his conclusions about the emergence of the matrilineal
principle in rabbinic law: It is easy to believe that the rabbis must have been compelled by
some societal need to institute it [the matrilineal principle]. But there is little evidence to support
this belief. Intermarriage was not a severe problem in rabbinic society (The Origins of the
Matrilineal Principle in Rabbinic Law, AJSR 10 [1985]: 53).
52S.J.D. Cohen has published two important articles relevant to this subject, From the
Bible to the Talmud: The Prohibition of Intermarriage, HAR 7 (1983): 2339; Matrilineal
Principle.
53Endres, Biblical Interpretation, 137.
54Sharpe, Phinean Zeal, 220.
55Schwarz, Identitt, 108. All quotations of 1Maccabees, 2Maccabees, and the Wisdom of
Ben Sira are taken from the RSV translation.

leader Sanballat.56 Josephus adds that many priests and Israelites who were also
married to Samaritan women followed Manassah to Shechem. Josephus places
this incident shortly before Alexanders arrival in Palestine, in the second half
of the fourth century B.C.E. He uses it to explain the building of the Samaritan
temple on Mt. Gerizim; the temple is one of the inducements Sanballat offers
Manassah to abandon Jerusalem. While it now appears that Josephus dating
of the Samaritan temple is roughly accurate, his explanation for its building is
clearly tendentious.57 Even if the report of marriages between leading citizens of
Jerusalem and Samaritan women is true, it is not clear what bearing it has on the
period leading up to the Maccabean revolt a century and a half later. Marriages
between Jews and Samaritans reflect not hellenization but the close ties between
the two groups, as during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah a century earlier.
The next passage Schwarz notes is T. Levi 14:6, in which Levi condemns his
descendants for marrying gentile women.58 In the discussion above, I suggested
that this passage represents a revisers attempt to make sense of Aramaic Levis
condemnation of marriage between priests and Jewish women from non-priestly
families. If so, it does not constitute evidence for priests marrying gentile women
in the revisers own time. Even if the passage is a response to such marriages
rather than an attempt to clarify an obscure passage in Aramaic Levi, the dif-
ficulties in dating the Testament of Levi make its use for the Maccabean period
problematic. Kugler has recently argued for an improved version of the Hasmo-
nean dating that was once dominant.59 But given the complexities of dating, the
Testament of Levi is hardly a firm foundation for reconstructing the situation in
the second century B.C.E.
Finally, Schwarz considers a passage from t. Sukk. 4.28 about a certain Miriam
from the priestly course of Bilgah, who apostasized and married a Greek officer.60
This story is an effort to explicate the obscure comment of m. Sukk. 5.8 about the
course of Bilgah, Their ring [for slaughter] was immovable and their wall-niche
[where priestly vestments were kept] was blocked up.61 According to this pas-
sage, the priests of the course of Bilgah lost their right to officiate in the temple
as a result of the marriage of one of their daughters to a gentile. Following M.
56Schwarz,
Identitt, 1089.
57J.
Purvis, The Samaritans and Judaism, in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters
(ed. R.A. Kraft and G.W.E. Nickelsburg; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 8588.
58Schwarz, Identitt, 109.
59Kugler, Patriarch, 21619. For the earlier view see, e.g., R.H. Charles, Greek Versions,
llvi.
60Schwarz, Identitt, 109. Schwarz cites only the Mishnah (192 n.39), although the story
about Miriam does not appear there, but rather in the Tosefta (and parallels in the Talmudim),
where it is one of the explanations for the Mishnahs saying about the ring of the House of
Bilgah.
61Trans H. Danby, The Mishnah (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 181.
Hengel,62 Schwarz sees this story as an attack on Menelaus, the hellenizing high
priest, who, according to the Old Latin and Armenian of 2Macc 3:4, belonged to
the course of Bilgah. This reading is to be preferred to the Greek, which makes
Menelaus a member of the tribe of Benjamin, an extremely unlikely circum-
stance for the holder of the high priestly office.63
With t. Sukkah in mind, Schwarz returns to the invective of Jubilees 30 and
suggests that its language, which employs the singular in its warnings about de-
filement of the sanctuary, is also directed at Menelaus.64 Schwarz admits that this
suggestion cannot be proved, but I think it is even more problematic than that. It
misses the point of Jubilees 30 altogether. The point of Jubilees is that the temple
can be defiled by lack of purity not only in priests but even in ordinary Jews who,
unlike priests, do not have the physical contact with the sphere of the sacred.
The overall effect of Schwarzs evidence, then, is less than overwhelming. All
of the passages he considers are problematic on grounds of date except the one
from 1Maccabees, which may not be about intermarriage at all. The passage
from Josephus about the Samaritan schism describes an event two centuries
before the Maccabean revolt. The passage from the Tosefta may refer to an
event from around the time of the revolt, but the Tosefta itself was written down
perhaps four centuries later, making its witness less than secure. The date of the
passage from the Testament of Levi is uncertain. Indeed, it is Jubilees that at first
appears to be the strongest piece of evidence. Yet we have seen reason to doubt
that it is a response to the actual practice of intermarriage at all.
1Maccabees
But even more striking than the problematic nature of the evidence for inter-
marriage Schwarz adduces is the silence of sources one might have expected to
protest against such a practice, 1Maccabees and 2Maccabees. As noted above,
one passage sometimes taken to indicate that intermarriage was a problem in the
eyes of the rebels during the Maccabean revolt is 1Macc 1:15, which reports
that the hellenizing Jews joined with ( ) the Gentiles.65 Aquila
and Theodotian use the same Greek verb to translate Num 25:3, Thus Israel at-
tached itself to Baal-peor, and thus some have seen in 1Maccabees an allusion
to the incident.66 The Septuagint, however, translates Num 25:3 quite differently:
62M.
Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (trans. J. Bowden; Philadephia: Fortress, 1974), 1.279.
63J.A.
Goldstein, II Maccabees (AB 41A; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 201 (com-
mentary to 3:4).
64Schwarz, Identitt, 10910.
65This is the reading of MSS A and S; the corrector of S and the Sixtine edition use a differ-
ent verb from the same root, .

66E.g., J.A. Goldstein, I Maccabees (AB 41; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 201
(commentary to 1:15).
Israel became initiates of Baal-peor. The Greek version of 1Maccabees is

a translation of a lost Hebrew original. Even if the allusion to the incident of
Baal-peor was present in the language of the Hebrew of 1Macc 1:15, the rest of
the passage does nothing to capitalize on it. While idolatry and foreign women
are closely linked in the narratives of the Torah and the Deuteronomic history,
foreign women are strikingly absent from the narratives of the Maccabean revolt.
This absence is particularly evident in the treatment of Phinehas, who is an
important figure for 1Maccabees as it attempts to legitimate the Hasmoneans
shaky claim to the high priesthood by suggesting that Mattathias, the founder
of the dynasty, earned the priesthood for his descendants through an act of
zeal. According to 1Maccabees, the Maccabean revolt began when Mattathias
rejected the importunings of the Seleucid officers who asked him, as one of the
leading citizens of Modein, to be the first to offer sacrifice on the pagan altar.
When another Jew agreed to perform the sacrifice, Mattathias took decisive ac-
tion (2:1528).
When Mattathias saw [the man preparing to sacrifice], he burned with zeal and his
heart was stirred. He gave vent to righteous anger; he ran and killed him upon the altar.
At the same time he killed the kings officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and he
tore down the altar. (2:2425)
In case the reader misses the allusion, the comparison is made explicit: Thus
[Mattathias] burned with zeal for the law, as Phinehas did against Zimri the son
of Salu (2:26).
By the end of ch. 2, Mattathias is on his death bed, instructing his sons to
continue along the path he has set for them. Now, my children, show zeal for
the law, he says (2:50), as he invokes the examples of several biblical heroes,
including Phinehas. Phinehas our father, because he was deeply zealous, re-
ceived the covenant of everlasting priesthood (2:54). The message is certainly
clear: Mattathias claims Phinehas as a spiritual ancestor and perhaps a physical
one as well.67 Thus Mattathias sons are also suitable heirs for the office of high
priest, which Phinehas himself was understood to have held as the successor of
Aaron and Eleazar (Judg 20:28; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 5.119). But 1Mac-
cabees understands Phinehas zeal as directed against idolatry, not illicit sexual
relations. First Maccabees might have chosen to depict Mattathias slaying a Jew-
ish man and a gentile woman caught in sinful embrace or to include the sexual
mingling of Jews and gentiles among the evils that befell Jerusalem in the poem
in ch. 1 or Mattathias lament in ch. 2. That it does not suggests that neither it
nor its sources viewed intermarriage as a significant problem.
67On the likelihood that the Hasmoneans saw themselves and were seen by their contem-
poraries as descended from the line of Eleazar and Phinehas, J. Liver, The Sons of Zadok the
Priests in the Dead Sea Sect, RevQ 6 (196769): 2529.
2Maccabees
Second Maccabees is also silent on the subject of intermarriage, which surely

would have caused its author considerable agitation had he known of such
behavior. In its description of the defilement of the temple by the Greeks after
the decree forbidding the practice of Judaism, 2Maccabees complains of illicit
sexual relations in the temple itself, but it is apparently all-gentile sex: For the
temple was filled with debauchery and reveling by the Gentiles, who dallied with
harlots and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts (6:4).
Bickerman understood the Jewish supporters of the gymnasium as proponents
of an ideology of hellenization that attempted to strip Judaism of its supersti-
tious restrictions to bring it into conformity with enlightened Greek ideas.68 (It
is this understanding that underlies Endres assumption that intermarriage must
have been common among the hellenizers.) Bickerman even claimed that the
establishment of the gymnasium in Jerusalem entailed the acceptance of foreign
gods.69 Yet 1Maccabees, 2Maccabees, and the Book of Daniel, all opponents of
the gymnasium, fail to mention such flagrant idolatry, and 2Maccabees reports
an incident that suggests that at least some of the supporters of the Jerusalem
gymnasium went to some lengths to avoid idolatry. Participants in games were
required to make a donation that was used for sacrifices to the god in whose
honor the games were celebrated. Second Maccabees reports on a delegation
from Jerusalem that went to participate in games in Tyre, carrying money for the
required donation. The wicked high priest Jason was content to have the money
used for sacrifices to Hercules, but the members of the delegation were unwilling
to do so and instead used the money to equip triremes for Tyre (2Macc 4:1820).
The hellenizing Jews who made up the delegation could apparently participate
in the games in good conscience; they would surely have pointed out that the
Torah does not forbid such activities. But they knew well that the Torah does
not permit idolatry, and so they took pains to avoid even the pro forma idolatry
of the entrance fee to games.70 In the absence of evidence for the hellenizers
embrace of marriage to foreign women, should we not assume that even support-
ers of the gymnasium would not lightly have ignored the traditional prohibition
of such marriages?
68E.J. Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the
Maccabean Revolt (trans. H.R. Moehring; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 8388.

69Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 41.
70For this view of the behavior of the envoys to the games in Tyre, see, e.g., V. Tcherikover,
Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (New York: Athenaeum, 1974; first ed., 1959), 16667.
Bickerman seems to share this view without noting the problems it poses for his understand-
ing of the religious implications of the gymnasium in Jerusalem: These Antiochenes [the
envoys], after all, remained Jews, even though liberal ones (God of the Maccabees, 41).
Wisdom of Ben Sira
First and Second Maccabees were written after the Maccabean revolt. Ben Sira
wrote shortly before the events leading to the Hellenistic reform and the revolt.
If intermarriage had been a significant reality in the period before the revolt, one
might expect to find some indication of its importance in his work. But while
Ben Sira in his praise of the fathers lauds Phinehas zeal and the covenant es-
tablished with him, his description of the act that earned the covenant is vague:
he was zealous in the fear of the Lord / and stood fast, when the people
turned away, / in the ready goodness of his soul, and made atonement for Israel
(45:23). It is left up to the reader to supply from the biblical account the nature
of Israels sinful behavior and of Phinehas dramatic deed.
For Ben Sira, then, what is important about Phinehas is the covenant he
earned, not the way he earned it. This concern for the priestly covenant shapes
the praise of the fathers as a whole.71 Ben Sira strives to present the situation of
his own day, in which a high priest under the authority of foreign rulers stood in
place of a king, as acceptable, indeed glorious and fitting. Aaron, the first high
priest (45:622), receives more space in the praise of the fathers than Moses
(45:15) or David (47:211), and Ben Sira describes the royal magnificence of
Aarons garments in elaborate detail (45:713). Only the description of Simon
the Righteous, the high priest of Ben Siras youth, as he officiates in the temple,
is longer (51:121), and it forms the climax to the praise of the fathers. The
covenant with Phinehas allows Ben Sira to present rule by the high priest not as
the result of divine punishment for Israels sins, but as a desirable state of affairs.
Still, even if what mattered most to Ben Sira about Phinehas was his covenant,
he might have shown more interest in the deed that won it. That he does not
suggests that the evil at which the deed was directed did not capture his imagi-
nation because it did not seem particularly threatening to him. It is also worth
noting that in all Ben Siras advice about dealings with women, including many
warnings about the problems women cause their fathers and husbands (7:2426,
9:19, 22:35, 25:1326:18, 41:1942:14), he never mentions the dangers of
foreign women. This silence is particularly telling since Ben Sira models his
work to a considerable extent on the Book of Proverbs, in which a metaphorical
foreign woman (( ) 7:5) plays a prominent role as the evil alternative to
Wisdom. Had Ben Sira so desired, this figure might easily have been pressed
into service to denounce real foreign women.
71For a recent discussion of the implications of the priestly covenant in Ben Sira, S.M.
Olyan, Ben Siras Relationship to the Priesthood, HTR 80 (1987): 26186.

Conclusions
Despite the role he assigns his hero in preventing the marriage of Dinah to
Shechem, the problem that troubled the author of Aramaic Levi was not marriage
between Jews and gentiles, but marriage between priests and Jewish women who
did not come from priestly families. Nor is the opinion that priests were required
to marry the daughters of priests the idiosyncratic creation of a single author. The
Book of the Watchers and 4QMMT share the opinion, which is based on or at
least can be justified by exegesis of Lev 21:7. Thus the polemics in these works
are directed not at flagrant violations of the laws of the Torah, but rather at more
lenient and more obvious interpretations of those laws.
Jubilees drew on Aramaic Levi or the same source as Aramaic Levi for its
account of Levis heroism at Shechem. But Jubilees interprets the event quite
differently from Aramaic Levi. For Jubilees, Israel is a kingdom of priests,
and Aramaic Levis insistence that priests may marry only within the family is
therefore most uncongenial.72 The moral Jubilees extracts from the story of the
rape of Dinah and the sack of Shechem is that ordinary Jews take on the respon-
sibilities of priests serving in the temple when they marry. By marrying gentiles,
they defile the temple; by marrying properly, they maintain its sanctity. Thus
Jubilees condemnation of intermarriage does not indicate that it was combating
a widespread practice. The silence of other sources from either side of the revolt
shows that they did not perceive intermarriage as a significant problem. For both
the Wisdom of Ben Sira before the revolt and 1Maccabees afterwards, what is
important about Phinehas is his covenant, not his defense of endogamy. Nor does
2Maccabees have anything to say about a practice it would surely have found
intolerable. The best explanation for the silence of these works is that marriages
between Jews and gentiles were too uncommon to attract their attention.
72Note that Philo views intermarriage between priests and other Jews as a way of sharing
priestly status (Special Laws 1.111).

3. Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets:
The Claim to Authority of the Book of Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees begins with a story of its own revelation that provides an
account of its relationship to the Torah.1 Drawing on Exodus 19 and 24, Jubilees
reports Moses ascent of Mt. Sinai to receive the tablets of the law (1:1). After
receiving the tablets, Moses is summoned into the cloud (1:3) and spends forty
days and nights on the top of the mountain during which the Lord reveals to him
what (had happened) beforehand as well as what was to comethe divisions
of all the times both of the law and of the testimony (1:4)2 and commands
him to write down what he has heard so that in the future when the children of
Israel stray from the covenant, they will come to recognize their wrongdoing
and Gods goodness (1:56). The Torah is apparently identified with the tablets
of the law while Jubilees itself is the transcript of the revelation that took place
during the forty days and nights. While the tablets were written by God himself
(1:1), Jubilees is revealed by God (1:4), but dictated to Moses by the angel of
the presence from the heavenly tablets (1:292:1).3
B.Z. Wacholder has recently offered a striking interpretation of Jubilees
presentation of its relationship to the Torah that grows out of his understanding
of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll as constituting a sectarian Torah.4 The inter-
1Contrary to the views of M. Testuz (Les ides religieuses du Livre des Jubiles [Geneva:
E. Droz and Paris: Minard, 1960], 3942) and G.L. Davenport (The Eschatology of the Book
of Jubilees [StPB 20; Leiden: Brill, 1971], 1017), I treat Jubilees, including chs. 1 and 23, as
a unity. J.C. VanderKam has laid to rest one line of argument for the view that parts of ch. 1
are later additions by showing that apparent differences about who wrote down the work stem
from the Greek translations lack of attention to the hiphil form of several verbs in the Hebrew
original (The Putative Author of the Book of Jubilees, JSS 26 [1981]: 20917). On the other
hand, Testuz and Davenport are responding to some extent to a real difficulty in chs. 1 and 23,
the absence of Jubilees distinctive chronology in the eschatological predictions. I shall discuss
this problem below in more detail; I do not have a solution.
2All quotations from Jubilees are taken from the translation of VanderKam, The Book of
Jubilees (CSCO 511, Scriptores Aethiopici 88; Louvain: Peeters, 1989).

3VanderKam, Putative Author.
4B.Z. Wacholder, Jubilees as the Super Canon: Torah-Admonition versus Torah-Com-
mandment, Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the Interna
tional Oragnization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995, Published in Honor of Joseph M.
Baumgarten (ed. M. Bernstein, F. Garca Martnez, and J. Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill,
1997), 195211. For his most recent views on the relationship between Jubilees and the Temple
50 3. Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets
pretation draws on Wacholders retroversion of ch. 1 into Hebrew on the basis

of the Qumran fragments. The key term for Wacholders reading of Jubilees 1
is , testimony, preserved in the Hebrew of 1:8 (4Q216 ii 5) and (partially)
1:26 (4Q216 iv 4). On the basis of the phrase ( preserved, though
not completely in 1:26 [4Q216 iv 4], and retroverted in the introductory sen-
tence before 1:1, 1:4, 1:29), Wacholder suggests that Jubilees presents itself
as , which he translates Torah-Admonition, while the standard
Torah is , Torah-Commandment ( by retroversion in
the introductory sentence and 1:1; part of in 1:1 is preserved [4Q216 i
6]). According to Wacholder, Jubilees understands itself as super-canonical,
that is, as more authoritative than the Torah, and was so understood, together
with the Temple Scroll, by the Qumran sectarians. In sectarian texts, when not
otherwise specified, the term Torah refers to Jubilees, as well as the traditional
Torah.5 One sign of the superiority of Jubilees is that it cast[s] it[self] as legal
material versus the narrative format of its rival, Genesis-Exodus.6 The Torah-
Commandment, to be taught by Moses to the people of Israel, is only a prepara-
tion for a more mature text to follow; it has a temporary, pedagogical status
in comparison with the eternal position of the Torah-Admonition, which is a
book for the future.7 Behind Jubilees theory of two torahs stands an exegesis of
Deuteronomy 31 in which the law Moses gives to the priests in Deut 31:9 is the
Torah-Commandment, while the book of the law put in the side of the ark as a
witness against the children of Israel ( ;the same root as ( )31:2526) is
the Torah-Admonition.8
Wacholders attention to the significance of the term for Jubilees
self-understanding is an important insight, and I hope to work out some of its
implications in what follows. But Wacholders interpretation of Jubilees 1 ig-
nores much of what Jubilees itself has to say. No reader can help but notice the
way in which Jubilees incorporates laws into the narratives of the patriarchs.9
Thus Wacholders view of Jubilees as law seems reasonable, even obvious. Yet
Jubilees does not claim to be a book of law, but rather an account of past and
future and the divisions of times. The Torah, the public document that Moses is
Scroll, Wacholder, The Relationship Between 11Q Torah (the Temple Scroll) and the Book of
Jubilees: One Single or Two Independent Compositions?, SBLSP 1985, 20516.
5Wacholder, Super Canon, 20211, quotation, 209.
6Wacholder, Super Canon, 203.
9Many scholars have noted the importance for Jubilees purposes of the patriarchs obser-
vance of various laws revealed only later according to the Torah. For a recent discussion, see
VanderKam, The Origins and Purposes of the Book of Jubilees, Studies in the Book of Jubilees
(ed. M. Albani, J. Frey, and A. Lange; TSAJ 65; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1997), 18, 2022.
VanderKam also provides a review of scholarship that demonstrates that this view has long
played an important role in the reading of Jubilees (416).
3. Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets 51
to teach to the children of Israel (1:1), is the repository of Israels law. Jubilees
is testimony, a book for the future from Moses point of view, not because of its
laws, as Wacholder argues, but because of its record of history that will remind
the children of Israel of Gods goodness after they have gone astray.10 Thus the
pair and are not synonymous, but contrasting.
In its opening chapter Jubilees describes itself as containing the divisions of
all the times (1:4, 29). The Hebrew title by which Jubilees was known to the
author of the Damascus Covenant, The Book of the Divisions of Times into
Their Jubilees and Their Weeks (16:34), points to an understanding of divi-
sions of times as the reckoning of history by Jubilees characteristic forty-nine-
year and seven-year units. But this chronology is closely linked in Jubilees to
another aspect of the division of time, the 364-day calendar. This linkage first
emerges in Jubilees account of the career of Enoch, whose writings are also
called testimonies.
[Enoch] was the first to write a testimony. He testified to mankind in the generations of
the earth: The weeks of the jubilees he related, and made known the days of the years;
the months he arranged and related the sabbaths of the years, as we had told him. While
he slept he saw in a vision what has happened and what will occur how things will
happen for mankind during their history until the day of judgment. He saw everything
and understood. He wrote a testimony for himself and placed it upon the earth against
all mankind and for their history. (4:1819)
It is not clear whether Enoch wrote two testimonies, one about calendrical mat-
ters and the counting of years, and another about the course of history, or whether
both kinds of information were contained in a single testimony. The shape of the
Enochic literature known to the author of Jubilees points to the first option, since
the two bodies of knowledge correspond well to the contents of two different
Enochic works, the Astronomical Book (1Enoch 7282) and the Book of Dreams
(1Enoch 8390), but the language of Jubilees refers to a single testimony. Later,
in a retrospective notice about Enoch, Jubilees refers to his post-ascension role
as recorder of the deeds of humanity (4:23) as testimony: Enochs work
was something created as a testimony for the generations of eternity so that he
should report all deeds throughout generation after generation on the day of
judgment (10:17). In any case, what is important for our purposes is not the
number of testimonies but the fact that the account of Enochs career treats the
10J. Kugel has recently pointed out that the verb testify is used in Jubilees much as
is used in biblical Hebrew for the warning that must be given before a crime counts as a crime
(The Jubilees Apocalypse, DSD 1 [1994]: 32831). Kugel notes the occurrence of the verb
in the angels warning about the dire consequences of failure to observe the 364-day calendar
(6:38) and the account of Noahs exhortation to his descendants (7:20). But this understanding
of the implications of the verb testify does not illumine most of the examples of testimony
discussed below.
annual counting of the calendar as part of the larger category of reckoning time
to which the counting of years by weeks and jubilees belongs.
Throughout Jubilees the term testimony is closely linked to calendar and
the course of history.11 The connection to calendar appears in relation both to
aspects of the calendar that clearly follow biblical practice and to those known
only from Jubilees and similar texts. The added day of the Feast of Booths, an
addition noted in Lev 23:36, is entered in the testimony of the festal days
(32:19), apparently on the heavenly tablets (32:18), while the first days of each
quarter of the year, festivals unknown to the Torah, are written down as an
eternal testimony (6:23). In its polemic against those who distort the calendar
by observing the moon, Jubilees actually uses the term day of testimony for
a festival day (6:37).
Another set of uses refers to the recording of history and individual deeds
on the heavenly tablets. The prediction in ch. 23 of a time of sin and troubles
to be followed by days of blessing concludes with an exhortation to Moses to
write down what he has heard because this is how it is written and entered in
the testimony of the heavenly tablets for the history of eternity (23:32). The
other two mentions of the testimony of the heavenly tablets refer to the deeds of
individuals. As a result of Levis pious zeal at Shechem, blessing and justice
before the God of all are entered for him as a testimony on the heavenly tablets
(30:19). The account of Isaacs blessing of Levi and Judah concludes, This is
the way it is ordained regarding the two of them, and it is entered for them as
an eternal testimony on the heavenly tablets just as Isaac blessed them (31:32).
Thus if Jubilees presents itself as testimony, it is claiming to be not a book
of law, but a book about time, the course of history and the deeds of humanity
that make up history as well as the cyclical passage of time, the calendar. This is
11I have tried to include all references to the term testimony in my study although in the
absence of a complete text of the original Hebrew certainty is obviously impossible. I have
checked all of the occurrences of the term testimony in VanderKams quite literal translation
against the Ethiopic. VanderKams testimony consistently reflects the Ethiopic seme .
In addition to the uses discussed below, let me briefly note the remaining instances of the
use of testimony: The term appears twice in relation to laws known from the Torah. Jubilees
concludes its account of the Sabbath laws thus: This law and testimony were given to the
Israelites as an eternal law through their history (2:33). After presenting the laws of Leviticus
12 restricting access to the holy for a woman after childbirth in the course of its account of the
entry into the Garden of Eden of Adam and Eve, Jubilees concludes: These are the law and
testimony that were written for Israel to keep for all times (3:14). The connection of the Sab-
bath laws to calendar is obvious; the laws of a woman after childbirth, while not calendrical,
involve proper marking of time. Perhaps the phrase law and testimony indicates both that
these laws appear in the Torah and that they have to do with the dividing of time. In its account
of the death of Adam, Jubilees explains that he died seventy years short of 1000 years because
1000 years are a single day in the testimony of heaven (4:30). Again, testimony is con-
nected to counting time. The mound of testimony that marks Jacob and Labans oath to each
other (Jub 29:8) is not relevant to our discussion; it simply reflects the Hebrew of the Torah at
this point, ( Gen 31:47).
clearly the point of view of the Damascus Covenant, which provides our earliest
evidence for how Jubilees was read. For the Damascus Covenant, the Torah of
Moses contains commandments, while Jubilees contains the history of Israels
failure to fulfill those commandments.
Therefore a man should take it upon himself to return to the Torah of Moses because all
( )is spelled out in it. And the explanation of the periods of the blindness of Israel
to all these ( ) is spelled out in the Book of the Divisions of Times into Their
Jubilees and Their Weeks. (16:14)12
Jubilees, then, regards itself as a record of the past and a prediction of the future.
It is hard to miss the account of the past, but where is the prediction of the fu-
ture? It is true that Jubilees incorporates into the narrative line it borrowed from
Genesis many instances of sermons from patriarchs or the angel of the presence
warning of Israels future sins, but it contains only two extended passages about
Israels future, the account in ch. 1 and the so-called apocalypse in ch. 23 after
the death of Abraham. In ch. 1 the Lord himself tells Moses how in time to come
the people will fall away and eventually return to him (1:718); the schema
of sin, punishment, and repentance is Deuteronomic, and the language of the
speech draws on Deuteronomy.13 In ch. 23 the angel of the presence offers an
12My translation. The passage is difficult, but the important point here, that the Torah of
Moses contains laws and Jubilees contains history, is clear. See also the translations of G.
Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (4th ed.; London: Penguin, 1995), 106, and F. Garca
Martnez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (2nd ed.; Leiden:
Brill, and Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 39.
Wacholder translates the passage rather differently:
Therefore, a person ought to commit himself to return to the law of Moses, because every-
thing in it is absolutely accurate. It lists the epochs of Israels blindness: (whoever wishes to
escape) from all of these (troubles), behold, it is stated precisely in the book of the Divisions
of the Times (as to the Torah-Admonition) for the jubilees and by their weeks of years
(Super Canon, 206)
I think it is fair to say that this translation is a case of special pleading. The importance of
the words in parentheses that Wacholder has felt it necessary to supply makes it clear that no
translator approaching the text without Wacholders presuppositions would arrive at his trans-
lation. I do not place much weight on the fact that the scribe of the Genizah copy left a space
between the end of the sentence referring to the Torah of Moses and the beginning of the next
sentence that contains the reference to the Hebrew title of Jubilees. One would hardly expect a
medieval scribe to equate Jubilees with the Torah even if that is what the original author had in
mind. Still, since the blank is problematic for Wacholders translation, though not for mine or
for those of Vermes and Garca Martnez, Wacholder should have discussed it. Unfortunately,
only the conclusion of the passage, from the title of Jubilees, is preserved in the Qumran frag-
ments of the Damascus Covenant (4Q270 10 ii 17), so we do not know whether that earlier
scribe left a blank.
13Notice particularly the opening of the speech, I know their defiance and their stubborn-
ness (even) before I bring them into the land which I promised by oath to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob: To your posterity I will give the land which flows with milk and honey. When they
eat and are full, they will turn to foreign gods (1:78), and the language of hiding the face
(1:13).
account of the future falling away and eventual return of the people of Israel to
God. Again the schema is Deuteronomic, but here the language is not. In addi-
tion to the influence of Psalm 90,14 this passage employs Jubilees characteristic
language of reproach: blow upon blow, wound upon wound, distress upon dis-
tress (23:13); compare the angels tirade against intermarriage after Levis
vengeance on the Shechemites: blow upon blow and curse upon curse (30:15).
In light of our discussion of testimony, it is worth noting that the angel claims
that the course of the future he has revealed to Moses is written and entered in
the testimony of the heavenly tablets for the history of eternity (23:32).
A third passage in Jubilees alludes to a revelation of the future course of his-
tory, but does not report any of the content. In a night vision an angel brings
Jacob seven tablets from heaven containing an account of what will happen to
him and his sons throughout all ages (32:2126). This revelation provides
an explanation for Jacobs ability on his death bed to tell his sons what would
befall them at the end of days, ( Gen 49:1). It also underscores the
importance of knowledge of the future by associating Jubilees favorite patriarch
with such knowledge. Despite its efforts to play down the sale of Joseph into
slavery in Egypt (Jub. 39:2), Jubilees account of the eventual reunion of the
family (chs. 4243) does suggest that the knowledge bestowed on Jacob was for
the more distant future since it did not enable him to avoid this family drama.
It is remarkable that none of Jubilees eschatological predictions contains a
timetable based on jubilees or weeks of years, especially since eschatological
timetables measured in these units appear in several other works from roughly
the same time period, the Apocalypse of Weeks (1Enoch 91, 93), the Book of
Daniel, and the fragments of a Moses pseudepigraphon preserved in 4Q390.15
Indeed, none of the passages in Jubilees offers anything resembling a timetable
in any unit of measurement. VanderKam has pointed out that Jubilees makes
only very limited attempts to arrange the biblical data so as to place important
events in significant years; while it shows some preference for the last years of
year-weeks, otherwise it does little to exploit the possibilities of its schema.16
Still, compared to the biblical narrative, which comes equipped with sometimes
recalcitrant dates of its own, the events of the eschaton could be easily shaped
to fit a jubilee pattern.
Despite the absence of any explicit time table in Jubilees, it seems likely that
one is implicit. According to Jubilees the entrance of the people into the land
took place in year 2450 from the creation of the world, after fifty jubilees. The
14For
extensive discussion, Kugel, Jubilees Apocalypse.
15For text, translation, and discussion, D. Dimant, New Light on the Jewish Pseudepig-
rapha 4Q390, The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress
on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid 1821 March, 1991 (ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas
Montaner; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 2.40547.
16VanderKam, Das chronologische Konzept des Jubilenbuches, ZAW 107 (1995): 9697.
concluding chapter of Jubilees speaks of jubilees running their course until Israel
has been purified of all sin (50:5). The Assumption of Moses places the entrance
into the land in year 2500 (1:2) and the eschaton after two hundred and fifty
times (10:12), which apparently means 2500 more years. Jubilees certainly
permits an understanding of 2450 as a midpoint; this would imply a date of 4900,
one hundred jubilees, for the eschaton. It is difficult to know how many years
after the entrance into the land the author of Jubilees understood himself to be
living; knowledge of the chronology of the post-exilic period is notoriously poor
in early Jewish literature. By no conceivable counting, however, could he have
seen his own time as anywhere near the hundredth jubilee. Perhaps he shared
the view of the author of the Apocalypse of Weeks, who understood himself
to be living at the end of the seventh week, just before the beginning of three
eschatological weeks. Such a calculation might allow the author of Jubilees to
view the events of his own day as inaugurating the eschaton. Still, even with
this assumption, the problem of why Jubilees is so reticent about the timetable
remains. Is it because it was so obvious to the author that he felt it needed no
further explication? Or was its omission an attempt to conceal to a certain extent
what should not be made too public?17
I turn now to the heavenly tablets, which have already been mentioned sev-
eral times in the course of the discussion. These tablets play an important role
in Jubilees, and they are important for Jubilees conception of itself and its
understanding of its relationship to the Torah. A number of biblical passages
refer to heavenly records,18 and heavenly books or tablets on which the deeds
of humanity are inscribed play a significant role in the Enochic literature.19 The
idea has deep roots in the ancient near east.20 But Jubilees adds a new element
to the understanding of the heavenly tablets it inherited, the idea of the heavenly
tablets as a source of law. It is impossible to be certain that this idea was the in-
novation of the author of Jubilees, but the idea does not appear in the Epistle of
Enoch, which is roughly contemporary with Jubilees. I hope to show here how
the idea serves Jubilees purposes.
I count twenty-seven passages that refer to the heavenly tablets in Jubilees.21
Three of these passages decree laws found in the Torah; six, laws not found in
17See
the suggestion of E.J. Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1988), 21416.
18E.g., Mal 3:16, Ps 69:29, Ps 139:16. For a more extensive list, S.M. Paul, Heavenly
Tablets and the Book of Life, JANES 5 (1973): 34749.

19See the note to 1Enoch 47:3 in R.H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1912), 9192, for references and discussion.

20Paul, Heavenly Tablets, 34546, 35253 (an appendix by W.W. Hallo).
21For a useful listing of the passages, see Garca Martnez, The Heavenly Tablets in the
Book of Jubilees, Studies in the Book of Jubilees, 24360. Garca Martnez counts only twenty-
five passages. All contain the phrase, heavenly tablets, with two exceptions: Jub. 32:2122,
an angel coming down from heaven with seven tablets (v.21), and Jub. 3:31, commanded
the Torah; and seven, laws related to calendar, of which most do not conflict with
the Torah. The remaining passages note the recording of the deeds of humanity
and the inscription of the course of history on the tablets.22 Thus law is clearly a
central aspect of the contents of the heavenly tablets. F. Garca Martnez suggests
that the heavenly tablets serve Jubilees as the equivalent of the oral law in rab-
binic Judaism, a hermeneutical recourse which permits the presentation of the
correct interpretation of the Law, adapting it to the changing situations of life.23
It seems to me that Garca Martnez is only partially correct. It is true that the
existence of the heavenly tablets allows Jubilees to supply laws unfortunately
missing from the Torah. But I am not sure that Garca Martnezs explanation
does justice to the peculiarities of the contents of the heavenly tablets. Garca
Martnezs theory would lead us to expect that most of the references to calendri-
cal matters on the heavenly tablets involve subjects on which Jubilees differed
from other opinions. It is true that the angel of the presence asserts that the heav-
enly tablets dictate the observance of the first day of each quarter of the year as a
festival (6:2829) and vouch for the correctness of the 364-day year (6:3035),
both subjects on which Jubilees practice was hardly unanimous. On the other
hand, four of the five remaining references to calendrical matters on the heavenly
tablets serve to explain the patriarchs observance of festivals before the revela-
tion of the Torah (6:17, 16:2829, 18:19, 32:2729); the timing and content
of the festivals is not controversial. The remaining instance treats a matter on
which Jubilees is in no way unusual, the ongoing observance of the passover
by the people of Israel after the exodus (49:8). Further, we must remember that
Jubilees treats calendar as an aspect of the divisions of time rather than law.
From Jubilees point of view, rules about calendar should probably be grouped
with the notations of the course of history and the register of human deeds that
are the central concern of the Book of the Divisions of Times.
Why, then, does Jubilees add law to the traditional contents of the heavenly
tablets when it is the traditional contents that are most appropriate for its un-
derstanding of its role? Part of the answer has to do with Jubilees conception
of the history of humanity. Jubilees shows the patriarchs observing the laws of
the Torah in the era before the Torah. The existence of a heavenly prototype of
the Torah underscores its divine origins and makes its authority independent of
in the tablets. I reach the number twenty-seven by adding Jub. 36:10, He will not be entered
in the book of life but in the one that will be destroyed, and Jub. 39:6, The sin will be entered
regarding him in the eternal books forever before the Lord. Both passages surely refer to the
heavenly tablets despite the absence of the phrase.
22Garca Martnez, Heavenly Tablets, divides the passages into five categories, Tablets
of the Law (material found in the Torah, four passages, of which one is not legal), Heavenly
Register of Good and Evil (two passages, to which I would add the two additional passages
indicated in the previous note), Book of Destiny (past and future; six passages), Calendar
and Feasts (seven passages), and New Halakot (laws unknown in the Torah; six passages).
23Garca Martnez, Heavenly Tablets, 258.
the particular moment in history when it was revealed. From this point of view,
the heavenly tablets function much the way the rabbis claim that the Torah was
created before the world does.24 But the presence of laws on the heavenly tablets,
including laws that do not appear in the Torah, serves another purpose for Jubi
lees. The heavenly tablets serve as a source of divine authority that trumps the
authority of the Torah. Thus they put Jubilees and the Torah on a similar footing.
Both are subordinate to the heavenly archive that apparently contains everything
that appears in either of them and more as well. From this angle of vision, then,
the existence of a heavenly prototype of the Torah serves not to strengthen the
authority of the Torah but to relativize it.
It is in this light that I believe we should read Jubilees reports of books writ-
ten by patriarchs before the giving of the Torah. As we have seen, Enoch wrote
testimonies about the calendar and human history (4:1819). Noah is also repre-
sented as an author.25 One of his books is a record of the division of the earth by
lot among his sons (8:11); another is a book of remedies revealed to him when
his descendants are beset by evil spirits (10:13). Neither of these books is cited
by any later patriarchs, but Abraham refers to another work connected to Noah
and Enoch. As he nears death, Abraham exhorts Isaac to piety and instructs him
in the laws of sacrifice and other aspects of priestly practice (ch. 21). In the
middle of this speech, Abraham refers to his source: This is the way I found
(it) written in the book of my ancestors, in the words of Enoch and the words
of Noah (21:10).26 Presumably this book was among the Hebrew books of
unspecified content Abraham had earlier received from his father. At Gods com-
mand, the angelic narrator of Jubilees makes Abraham understand Hebrew, and
Abraham copies the books and studies them with angelic guidance (12:2527).
Abraham, too, was the author of a book according to Jubilees. Joseph wards
off the advances of Potiphars wife because he remembered the Lord and what
his father Jacob would read to him from the words of Abraham that no one is to
commit adultery with a woman who has a husband; that there is a death penalty
which has been ordained for him in heaven before the most high Lord (39:6).
Finally, we have already noted that Jacob writes down the contents of the seven
heavenly tablets the angel shows him (32:2126). After Jacobs death, all his
books and the books of his fathers pass to Levi (45:16).
Jubilees understands the heavenly tablets as an archive of divine knowledge.
The Torah and Jubilees even in combination constitute only a limited publication
24Gen.
Rab. 1.1 and 1.4 and parallels.
25Garca
Martnez, Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran
(STDJ 9; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 2444, argues that the subjects of the various writings of Noah
mentioned in Jubilees all formed part of an Aramaic book of Noah.
26Isaacs instructions to Levi on the law of the priesthood in Aramaic Levi refer to a book
of Noah about the blood (Ar. Levi 57); the passage is preserved only in Greek in the additions
to the Testament of Levi in the Mt. Athos manuscript.
of its contents. Thus one might have expected Jubilees to represent the books of
the patriarchs as similar, if even more limited, publications. Yet only in the case
of Jacobs recreation of the contents of the seven tablets shown to him does Ju
bilees make such a relationship explicit. Although the subject matter of Enochs
testimonies, calendar and the future, is central to Jubilees view of the heavenly
tablets, the tablets are not mentioned in Jubilees account of Enochs career. The
future was revealed to Enoch in a vision he had while asleep (4:19), and while
it is not entirely clear, it appears that Jubilees imagines that the calendrical rev-
elation was made during Enochs time with the angels (4:21). Perhaps Jubilees
neglects to attribute these revelations to the heavenly tablets because its account
of Enoch draws on established traditions. A considerable portion of the sacri-
ficial instructions Abraham attributes to the words of Enoch and Noah and the
prohibition of adultery that Joseph remembers from the words of Abraham are
also found in the Torah.27 Since the Torah is not yet in existence, any knowledge
of the contents of the Torah is presumably derived from the heavenly tablets,
although Jubilees fails to make this connection. Perhaps Jubilees considered
links between these pre-Torah revelations and the heavenly tablets so obvious
as to require no comment.
I hope it is clear by now that Wacholders claim that Jubilees represents itself
as super-canonical is not accurate. Rather, Jubilees envisions a distribution of
labor between itself and the Torah: the Torah is a book of law, while Jubilees
reveals information of the first importance that is not to be found in the Torah,
the divisions of times. To strengthen its own claim, Jubilees suggests that even
as a book of law the Torah has limitations. Not only had other books already
revealed some of its contents (the same is true for Jubilees itself), but there are
laws engraved on the heavenly tablets that are not to be found in the Torah.
Thus Jubilees demotes the Torah by undermining its claims to uniqueness and
completeness, claiming for itself a separate but equal sphere.
How could Jubilees have hoped to get away with it? When Jubilees was writ-
ten in the second century BCE, there was not yet a fixed form of the biblical
text, the final contours of the canon had not yet been delineated, and perhaps
most important, the very notion of a canon, a body of literature with exclusive
claims to authority, had not yet emerged. The study of the biblical manuscripts
among the Dead Sea Scrolls has brought these points home forcefully.28 To be
27Although no book is involved, one should also note Noahs exhortation to his descendants
to observe laws first commanded by Enoch and passed on from father to son (7:3839). These
laws include the commandment to cover ones nakedness (7:20), which Jubilees has earlier re-
ferred to the heavenly tablets (3:31), as well as a number of commandments that echo the Torah
more or less directly: honoring father and mother (7:20), loving one another (7:20), avoiding the
shedding and consuming of blood (7:2833), observing the laws of ( 537).
28For a helpful recent discussion of the state of the question, see E. Ulrich, Pluriformity in
the Biblical Text, Text Groups, and Questions of Canon, Madrid Qumran Congress 1.2341.
For a more extensive discussion of the question of canon, see Ulrich, The Canonical Process,
sure, there can be no doubt that the Torah had achieved authoritative status by
the second century BCE. But the authority was clearly of a somewhat different
kind from the authority it would later enjoy in rabbinic Judaism. Furthermore,
unlike the Temple Scroll or any other text I know that implicitly challenges the
authority of the Torah, Jubilees offered an account of its relationship to the Torah
that provides a place for both works. Jubilees claim to authority alongside the
Torah was clearly quite persuasive to some readers. Not long after Jubilees was
written, the Damascus Covenant cited it as an authoritative work. The fourteen
manuscripts of Jubilees found at Qumran suggest that the community there
shared the opinion of the Damascus Covenant. The only works better attested
at Qumran are Psalms (thirty manuscripts), Deuteronomy (twenty-five manu-
scripts), Isaiah (nineteen manuscripts), and Genesis and Exodus (fifteen manu-
scripts each).29 Indeed, it should be remembered that the full text of Jubilees has
come down to us only because at a time when the (Christian) canon was already
in place, Ethiopian Christians embraced Jubilees along with the Torah. From one
point of view, the stakes were not as high for them as for ancient Jews since the
Torah was not as central to their Bible. But from another angle, the existence of
a canon makes the peaceful coexistence of Jubilees and the Torah more difficult
to maintain. I find it satisfying to think that Jubilees careful working out of its
relationship to the Torah contributed to its survival.
Textual Criticism, and Latter Stages in the Composition of the Bible, Sha arei Talmon:
Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (ed.
M. Fishbane and E. Tov, with the assistance of W.W. Fields; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1992), 91.
29For discussion of the implications of the manuscript evidence, VanderKam, The Jubilees
Fragments from Qumran Cave 4, Madrid Qumran Congress 2.648.

4. Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incense:
The Law of the Priesthood in Aramaic Levi and Jubilees
It is difficult to overstate the centrality of the temple for Judaism in the Second
Temple period. Yet, as far back as the Book of the Watchers in the third century
B.C.E., many Jews were deeply critical of the priestly establishment that ran
the temple. Some critics, including the community at Qumran, came to view the
temple as defiled and were unwilling to participate in its cult. Even as they criti-
cized the current state of affairs, however, they nonetheless continued to hold
fast to the ideal of the temple. One type of response to the distressing reality of
the present appears in texts such as the Temple Scroll and 4QMMT, which offer
detailed legal prescriptions for the proper governance of the temple and its cult.
Another type of response is attention to the heavenly temple on which biblical
tradition understands the Jerusalem temple to be modeled. Thus, for example,
the Book of the Watchers describes Enochs ascent to heaven as if he were enter-
ing a temple and treats the angels he encounters as priests, while the Songs of the
Sabbath Sacrifice describes the liturgy of the heavenly temple.
This paper begins on earth, with the law of the priesthood (13) in Aramaic
Levi (1361).1 Here Levi, the ancestor of all priests, receives instruction from
his grandfather Isaac on a range of topics concerning proper cultic procedure.
These rules have sometimes been understood as an example of the kind of criti-
cism of the Jerusalem temple through the legal prescription I have already noted.
But, after a thorough examination of these rules in comparison to the laws of
the Torah and other texts concerned with the temple cult, I argue that this is not
the case. Aramaic Levi may have offered implicit criticism of the Jerusalem
temple through a description of the heavenly temple, although unfortunately the
content of Levis vision of heaven is lost (supp. 21). In the law of the priesthood,
however, the only area in which Aramaic Levi is critical of the priestly establish-
ment is its marriage practices. In other areas, I suggest, the law of the priesthood
supplements the laws of the Torah to provide priests with the information neces-
sary for them to do their jobs.
1For text and translation of this work, preserved in Aramaic manuscripts from Qumran and
the Cairo Genizah and in a Greek manuscript from Mt. Athos, I use R.A. Kugler, From Patri
arch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic Levi to Testament of Levi (SBLEJL
9; Atlanta, 1996).
62 4. Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incens
From Aramaic Levi, I turn to the Book of Jubilees and its adaptation of the law
of the priesthood (Jubilees 21). One notable feature of Jubilees is its emphasis
on aroma in sacrifice. According to other sources of this period, aroma is the
essence of the cult in the heavenly temple. If the biblical tradition understands
the earthly temple as modeled on the heavenly, it is a scholarly commonplace,
of course, that the biblical tradition has it backwards. For scholars, depictions
of the heavenly temple inevitably reflect the realities of the earthly temple. But
this view of the matter does not do justice to the significance of the heavenly
temple in the imagination of ancient Jews. Here, I argue that Jubilees concern
for aroma in the earthly cult is an instance in which descriptions of the heavenly
temple have influenced prescriptions for the earthly temple.
The Law of the Priesthood
Because Levi lived before the revelation at Sinai, it is clear that he could not
learn to be a priest by consulting the Torah. Thus, Aramaic Levi has Isaac teach
him about a variety of subjects of importance to a priest: proper marriage part-
ners (1618); washing before and during sacrifice (1921, 26, 5355); the types
of wood to be used for sacrifice (2224); the order of sprinkling blood and lay-
ing the parts of the sacrificial animal on the altar and the requirement to salt the
parts (2529); the sacrifice of flour, oil, wine, and incense that accompanies the
animal sacrifice (30); the amount of wood necessary for different types of offer-
ings (3136); the weights of the salt, fine flour, oil, and frankincense that accom-
pany different kinds of offerings (3746); the relationships among the different
weights (4647); keeping the priests garments free of blood (53); and covering
and avoiding the consumption of blood of animals slaughtered for food (56).2
Yet even if Levi had had the Torah in front of him, much of how a priest fulfills
his duties would have been left to his imagination, for, despite the profusion of
detail it offers, the priestly source of the Torah is certainly not a handbook for
priests. Anyone attempting to perform a sacrifice on the basis of the laws in
Leviticus and Numbers alone would be left wondering how to proceed at many
points. There are so many questions P neglects to answer. How, for example, is
the slaughter of sacrificial animals to be carried out? What sort of wood is to be
used on the altar? How much salt is required for salting the sacrifices? Surely, P
did not intend to leave decisions about the many points of procedure it neglects
2The
last part of the instructions, 5160, repeats and summarizes some of the material that
comes before it. This has led some scholars to suggest that this portion is not original to the
text. See Kugler, From Patriarch, 108, for references. Jubilees version of the instructions
includes keeping the garments free of blood and covering blood (21:17), subjects that Aramaic
Levi treats only in this concluding portion (53, 56). Thus, if the conclusion of the instructions
is a later addition to Aramaic Levi, it had already been added by the time Jubilees was written.
4. Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incens 63
to clarify to the individual priest it would be too dangerous, as the story of

Nadav and Avihus ritual innovation and its fatal consequences (Lev 10:13)
demonstrates. Clearly, P presupposes a more elaborate and detailed body of tra-
dition to be taught to young priests as they came of age to officiate in the temple.
The body of priestly tradition that was not committed to writing is, of course,
lost to us, and it would be naive to read Isaacs instructions as a straightforward
report of what a priestly father was expected to pass on to his son. It is clear
that by the later Second Temple period the Jerusalem temple involved a physi-
cal plant, a bureaucracy, and a workload far beyond what Ps picture of Aaron
and his sons officiating in the wilderness tabernacle prepares us for. The Letter
of Aristeas, probably from sometime in the second century B.C.E., describes
priests functioning on an assembly line that would make an efficiency expert
proud (9295). The Temple Scroll, which probably also dates to the second cen-
tury B.C.E., mandates a temple with many architectural elements and equipment
unknown from the Bible (cols. 3045). More than a century after the temples
destruction, the Mishnah recalls an even more elaborate temple complex and
provides information about how its bureaucracy was organized.3 Although none
of these texts can be taken as a simple representation of reality, they point to a
far busier and more bureaucratic institution than P envisions.
Even if the temple in pre-Maccabean times was a simpler operation than is re-
flected in these somewhat later sources, the lone priest sacrificing apart from an
institutional setting is a requirement of the pseudepigraphic setting of Aramaic
Levi, not a reflection of contemporary reality. Indeed, it may well be that by the
time Aramaic Levi was written, which I take to be some time in the late third or
early second century B.C.E.,4 the indoctrination of young priests was no longer a
task for fathers and grandfathers but had become institutionalized. Still, it seems
to me that Isaacs instructions to Levi contain precisely the sort of information
a young priest would need to know before undertaking service in the temple.
Robert A. Kugler has recently argued that Aramaic Levi is intended as a cri-
tique of the Jerusalem priesthood, offering the figure of Levi as a model of a pure
and pious priest in contrast to the priestly establishment.5 Kugler sees the differ-
ences between Isaacs instructions and the commands of the Torah as Aramaic
Levis criticism of the practice of the priestly establishment. Yet the only place in
Isaacs speech where there is any hint of polemic is in his advice about marriage:
Take for yourself a wife from my family so that you will not defile your seed
with harlots (17). We know from other sources of the Second Temple period
that marriage between priests and women from nonpriestly families was not
uncommon. Isaacs position, that priests must marry only women from priestly
families, appears also in the Book of the Watchers and 4QMMT, both texts criti-
3M.
Tamid and m. Middot are particularly relevant.
4M.E.
Stone, Enoch, Aramaic Levi and Sectarian Origins, JSJ 19 (1988): 15960 n.2.
5Kugler, From Patriarch, 10811.
cal of the priestly establishment.6 The Book of the Watchers condemnation of

the watchers marriages to human women, in my view, reflects criticism not of
priests marriages to foreign women marriages that would have been widely
viewed as unacceptable but rather of priests marriages to Jewish women from
nonpriestly families. 4QMMTs condemnation of the harlotry taking place
among the people that it compares to a violation of the laws of mixed kinds also
seems to reflect the position found in Aramaic Levi. On the question of marriage,
then, Aramaic Levi rejects the dominant priestly practice in favor of a rigorist
position shared by other antiestablishment works.
If Kuglers view of the instructions as critique is correct, however, it is re-
markable how well the intent of the passage has been concealed on every topic
except marriage. I now propose to look at the rest of the instructions contained
in Aramaic Levis law of the priesthood and their relationship to the laws of the
Torah. On some subjects, Isaacs directions complement the Torahs relatively
terse instructions; there is no question of contradiction or critique. On other
points, Isaacs directions stand in a certain tension with the Torah, but nowhere,
I hope to show, do they straightforwardly contradict the Torah.
Washing
Isaacs instructions about washing are one example of the way Aramaic Levi
supplements the laws of the Torah. Isaac echoes the command of Exod 30:1921
that priests wash before entering the sanctuary and before approaching the altar
(19, 21), but adds a command to wash after donning the priestly garments (20)
and after sprinkling the sacrificial blood on the side of the altar (26). Aramaic
Levi also demonstrates a concern absent in P for washing up at the end of the
process of sacrifice. In his concluding remarks, Isaac tells Levi to wash his
hands and feet from all the flesh (presumably of the sacrifice) on leaving the
sanctuary and to be sure that there is no blood on him (5355). These ablutions
reflect a greater anxiety about sacrificial blood than the priestly document of the
Torah shows, but going beyond the demands of the Torah in washing appears to
have been standard operating procedure in the Second Temple period in many
areas of life. Indeed, a wide range of sources from Philo to the Dead Sea Scrolls
demonstrates that washing had become a popular pious practice.7 It would not be
surprising if ablutions beyond those required by the Torah were standard priestly
practice in the Second Temple.
6See M. Himmelfarb, Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of the
Maccabean Revolt, JSQ 6 (1999): 124 (in this volume, 2747).

7For a recent discussion, see E. Regev, Pure Individualism: The Idea of Non-Priestly Purity
in Ancient Judaism, JSJ 31 (2000): 176202. I think Regevs term for this purity is confusing,
and I do not accept many aspects of his argument.
Blood on Garments
Sacrifice must have been an extremely messy ritual. Although P does not ap-
pear to be worried about blood on priests garments, the Mishnah contains some
indications that it expected priests to change their garments frequently. A list of
temple officials includes a certain Phinehas who was in charge of the garments
(m. eqal. 5:1); he had a chamber designated for his use (m. Mid. 1:4). We also
learn that there were niches in which priests kept their garments when not par-
ticipating in the service (m. Tamid 5:3). But in the fictive world of Aramaic Levi,
there is no room for temple personnel whose task it is to keep the officiating
priests in fresh garments. Thus, the best thing a priest can do is to take care not
to get blood all over himself in the first place, and so Isaac urges Levi to avoid
blood stains on his garment (53) and on himself (5455).
Wood for the Altar
The Torah decrees arranging wood on the altar (Lev 1:7), but it is silent on the
kind of the wood to be used and its qualities. Isaacs instructions (2325) rem-
edy that lack with a list of twelve trees suitable for use in the sacrifice because
of their pleasant aroma. Isaac also cautions that the wood must be inspected
for worms (22). As we shall see, a list of trees similar but not identical to that
in Aramaic Levi appears also in Jubilees (21:12); the differences could reflect
the vicissitudes of translation and transmission or changes in priestly practice
over time. The passage in Jubilees places particular emphasis on the aroma of
the trees. The passages in rabbinic literature that discuss the subject show some
overlap with these lists, although they are much shorter; this is not surprising in
texts written centuries after the temple had ceased to function.8
Order of Sacrifice
One set of rules in Aramaic Levi that might be read as contradicting the laws of
the Torah is Isaacs instructions to Levi about the order of the sacrifice (2527).9
Leviticus first commands the priests to dash the blood on the sides of the altar
(1:5) and then to stoke the fire10 and lay wood on the altar (1:7). According to
Isaac, Levi is to dash blood on the altar as the fire begins to burn the wood he
8For references to these texts and to secondary literature, see Kugler, From Patriarch, 104
n.152.
9Kugler, From Patriarch, 105, sees considerable differences between the laws of the
Torah and Isaacs instructions on the order of sacrifice.

10J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York, 1991), 157.
has laid there (25). From a practical point of view, there is much to recommend
the order of Aramaic Levi, in which the wood was already laid on the altar and
the fire burning adequately before the priest sprinkled the blood and arranged
the parts of the animal on the altar. Although Aramaic Levi is explicit about the
timing of these acts in relation to each other, however, the Torah does not call
for a particular order. It is possible that the order in which the commands appear
is intended to be the order in which they are performed, but this is by no means
evident.11 So it is certainly not necessary to read Isaacs instructions as intended
to contradict the order of the Torah. Indeed, the more practical order of Aramaic
Levi might well reflect actual temple practice.
Isaac goes on to decree the order for laying the parts of the offering on the
altar:
Let the head be offered up first, and cover it with fat, but do not let be seen upon it the
blood of the slaughtered bull. After it its neck, and after its neck its forequarters, and
after its forequarters the breast with the base of the rib, and after this the haunches with
the spine of the loins, and after the haunches the hindquarters washed with the inner
parts. (2728)
Isaacs words designate the victim, a bull, but do not make explicit the type of
sacrifice. The content of the instructions suggests that it is the olah, the burnt of-
fering. This is the first sacrifice to be discussed in the laws of Leviticus; it comes
in three forms, from the herd (Lev 1:39), from the flock (Lev 1:103), and
birds (Lev 1:1417). For both cattle (herd) and sheep or goats (flock), Leviticus
decrees cutting the sacrificial animal into sections (Lev 1:6, 12). As for cattle,
the type of victim in the instructions in Aramaic Levi, Leviticus decrees the fol-
lowing arrangement:
Aarons sons, the priests, shall lay out the sections, the head and the suet,12 on the wood
that is on the fire upon the altar. Its entrails and legs shall be washed with water, and
the priest shall turn the whole into smoke on the altar as a burnt offering. (Lev 1:89)13
Aramaic Levi offers more detail than Leviticus about the parts of the sacrificial
animal. Leviticus refers to the sections, but Aramaic Levi lists the remaining
pieces of the bull, leaving nothing to chance.
When we turn to the order of laying out the parts of the sacrifice, we see once
again that Leviticus offers an order only by implication, but Aramaic Levi makes
one quite explicit. One piece of evidence against viewing the laws of Leviticus as
dictating order when order is not explicit is the requirement that all sacrifices be
salted. Not until it has commanded the salting of meal offerings does Leviticus
11Thus, Kugler is overstating the case when he writes, Lev 1:5 requires sprinkling of blood
before laying the fire in v.7 (From Patriarch, 105).

12I adjust the translation of NJPS, with the head and the suet, to make it more literal. The
Hebrew is a list: the sections, the head, and the suet. RSV translates in the same spirit I do.
13All translations of biblical texts come from NJPS unless otherwise indicated.
add, With all your offerings you must offer salt (Lev 2:13). Thus, salting turns
out to apply to the burnt offerings of Leviticus 1, but there is no retrospective
indication of when in the process of sacrifice the salting is to take place. Aramaic
Levi does not command salting at a particular moment, but it does refer to the
pieces of the sacrifice to be placed on the altar as salted (26); an explicit com-
mand to salt the pieces comes only at the end of the list of parts of the sacrificial
animal to be arranged on the altar: And all of them salted with salt as is fitting
for them, as much as they require (29). Is this an echo of Leviticus delayed
command? The absence of language about order in Leviticus again means that it
is possible that Aramaic Levis order represents actual priestly practice.
It is worth noting that m. Tamid also indicates the order in which the parts of
the daily burnt offering, the tamid, were to be offered. This order differs con-
siderably from that implied by Leviticus and stated by Aramaic Levi, although
all three texts begin with the head. Like Aramaic Levi, the Mishnah provides
a more detailed accounting of the parts of the sacrificial animal than Leviticus,
but in keeping with its picture of the temple as the bustling stage for highly
complicated rituals requiring the carefully synchronized services of an elaborate
priestly bureaucracy, it depicts a whole corps of priests participating in the of-
fering of the tamid (m. Tamid 4:3, 7:3).
The Minah Accompanying Animal Sacrifices
To accompany the animal sacrifice he describes, Isaac decrees that Levi offer
the fine flour14 mixed with oil, and after everything pour wine and burn over
them frankincense (30).15 Until the mention of frankincense, Isaacs directions
echo the Torahs rules for the meal offering, the minah, that is to accompany
certain animal sacrifices (Numbers 15).16 The priestly source requires frank-
incense as part of an uncooked minah that stands by itself (Lev 2:1, 15), al-
though not as part of a cooked minah (Lev 2:4, 5, 7).17 But it does not mention
frankincense when it describes the minah that accompanies animal sacrifices
(Num 15:311). Does the omission in Numbers suggest that the priestly writ-
14Kugler,
From Patriarch, translates fine meal; I prefer flour to be consistent with my
previous translations. The term nyp is not the usual Aramaic equivalent for the biblical solet,
fine flour, but it appears (in slightly different form) also in the phrase swlt nyp in the passage
from the Genesis Apocryphon (10:16), as will be discussed (M. Morgenstern, E. Qimron, and
D. Sivan, The Hitherto Unpublished Columns of the Genesis Apocryphon, Abr-Nahrain 33
[1995]: 3054; for discussion of this term, 35).
15Kugler translates lbnh (30) as incense, but he translates libantos (45) and libanos (46)
as frankincense. It seems to me that lbnh should also be translated as frankincense.

16Kugler, From Patriarch, 106, does not note this possible contradiction.
17Milgrom, Leviticus, 1989, explains the difference as a concession to the poor who could
not afford frankincense.

ers deemed the meat that formed the main part of the sacrifices described there
adequate for providing the sweet smell, whereas the purely vegetal offering of
Leviticus 2 required spice for achieving the requisite aroma? Or does the rule
in Numbers assume the frankincense Leviticus has set out and thus feel no need
to mention it?
For P, smell serves to play down the anthropomorphic understanding of God
implicit in offering sacrifices: God does not eat or even taste the sacrifices, but
partakes of the sacrifice only by means of an aspect of the sacrifice that is almost
without physical reality. The recurrent references in Numbers 15 (vv.7, 10, 14)
to the reia-nioa (pleasing odor) of the sacrifices could provide support for
the view that the minah accompanying animal sacrifices should include frank-
incense despite the silence of Numbers 15.
Aramaic Levi appears to offer a harmonizing reading of the Torah that brings
Numbers 15 in line with Leviticus 2. But it is possible that adding frankincense
to the minah that accompanies the animal sacrifices was actually the practice,
both before the codification of the Torah and after. Menahem Haran suggests
that the use of the verb qr in the hif il for offering sacrifices, which he calls
especially characteristic of P, as well as the term reia-nioa itself, points to
the possibility that priests added spices to animal and bird sacrifices despite the
absence of a command to do so in the Torah.18
It is, of course, impossible to be certain that Aramaic Levi reflects temple
practice on this point because we do not know what temple practice was. There
is no indication in Isaacs rhetoric, however, that Aramaic Levi understands the
practice it decrees as controversial. Furthermore, the practice is reflected in other
texts of the Second Temple period. The Temple Scroll does not make any men-
tion of such a practice,19 but at this point, it may simply be following its biblical
model. Jubilees offers several examples of such a practice, which I shall discuss
in some detail. Here let me note that, according to the Genesis Apocryphon,
which, unlike Jubilees, gives no indication of sectarian provenance, the minah
that accompanies the sacrifice Noah offers on emerging from the ark includes
frankincense (10:16).20
18M. Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977;
repr., Winona Lake, Ind., 1985), 2301.

19It is difficult to be certain because there are significant lacunae in the relevant passages in
the Temple Scroll (cols. 1314). Still, reconstruction of the text according to the Torah seems
adequate.
20For the text, Morgenstern, Qimron, and Sivan, Genesis Apocryphon, 44. It appears that
the offering is explicitly designated mn , although the reading is not certain.

Weights and Measures
A considerable portion of Isaacs speech concerns the amounts of wood, salt,

fine flour, oil, wine, and frankincense to accompany different sacrificial animals
(3246). After the middle of the first verse, the passage is preserved only in
Greek and thus the units of measure are in Greek. The measures of wood are
given by weight in talents and minas (3236). The measures of frankincense are
also given by weight, but in a smaller unit, the sheqel (4546). The unit in which
the measures of salt, flour, oil, and wine are given is the saton, Greek for Hebrew
se ah, a measure of volume that appears once in the Torah, although not in the
priestly document, and several times elsewhere in the Bible (3744).21
The Torah is just as silent about the proper amount of wood to lay upon the
altar as it is about the types of wood suitable for use, and it does not provide
measures for salt or frankincense. Thus, no direct comparison of Aramaic Levi
to the Torah on these points is possible. According to Isaacs instructions, larger
animals require larger amounts of wood, salt, and frankincense. A correlation
between the amount of the auxiliary materials and the size of the animal being
sacrificed is also evident in the Torahs instructions for the minah that ac-
companies animal sacrifices (Num 15:311). It seems unlikely that a decision
about the proper amount of wood, salt, and frankincense for various sacrifices
was left to the judgment of individual priests, and, as far as I can see, there is
no reason why Isaacs instructions in Aramaic Levi could not reflect standard
temple practice.
The Torah does provide measures for the fine flour and oil to be used in the
minah and the wine for the libation that accompany animal sacrifices. In Num-
bers 15, the measure used for oil and wine is the hin, a measure of volume for
liquids. For the fine flour, the amount is given in tenths, although the Masoretic
Text does not specify a unit of measure. But the instructions for the minah
(Num 28:5) in the opening passage in the list of festival offerings in Numbers
2829 make it clear that it is the ephah, a measure of volume for solids, as the
Septuagint indicates at Num 15:4.22 The measures for the meal offering and
libation to accompany animal sacrifice according to the Torah (Numbers 15)
are as follows:
21Gen
18:6; 1Sam 25:18; 1Kgs 18:32; 2Kgs 7:1, 16, 18.
22The
book of Ezekiel orders different amounts in its sacrificial instructions: an ephah of
flour and a hin of oil as accompaniments to animal sacrifices for Passover and Sukkot (45:23
25; cf. 46:11, in which the same measures are given for the princes offering of bulls and rams,
but in which there are no fixed amounts for his offering of sheep). For the daily offering, it
decrees a sixth of an ephah of flour and a third of a hin of oil (46:1314). As far as I can tell,
these proportions have no influence on Aramaic Levi.
Sacrificial Animal Fine Flour Oil Wine

Sheep (vv.45) 1 10 [ephah] (v.4) 1 4 hin (v.4) 1 4 hin (v.5)
Ram (v.6) 2 10 [ephah] (v.6) 1 3 hin (v.6) 1 3 hin (v.7)
From the herd (vv.89) 3 10 [ephah] (v.9) 1 2 hin (v.9) 1 2 hin (v.10)
Aramaic Levi offers a somewhat different list of animals to be accompanied by a

minah, but it is not difficult to see the correspondence between the categories in
Aramaic Levi and those in the Torah. Both texts distinguish three size groupings,
although Aramaic Levi lists the animals in descending order of size, in contrast
to the Torah, which lists them in ascending order. Here in chart form are the
measures from Aramaic Levi:
Sacrificial Animal Fine Flour Oil Wine Frankincense
Large bull, second 1 saton (41) saton (43)
1 4 =oil (44) 6 sheqels (45)
bull, heifer (41)
Ram, he-goat (42) 2 portions of a 1 6 saton (44) =oil (44) 3 sheqels [1 2 of
saton (42) 6sheqels] (45)
Lamb, goat kid (42) 1 3 saton (42) 1 8 saton (44) =oil (44) 2 sheqels [1 3 of
6sheqels] (45)
The amount of fine flour for midsize animals, two portions of a saton, is mean-
ingless. The text is preserved in a single manuscript, so there is no other reading
to turn to; however, on the basis of its position in the list and the relations among
other measures, I would guess that the correct measure is 1 2 saton.
The most striking difference between the measures in Aramaic Levi and the
Torah is that Aramaic Levi replaces the ephah and the hin with a single unit of
measure, the saton, which it uses for both solids and liquids. As I already noted,
the se ah, the Hebrew translated by saton, appears several times in the Bible,
although not in P. The relationship between the saton and the ephah is crucial
for determining whether Aramaic Levi intends to expand on the rules of the
Torah or to correct them. The Septuagint is not very helpful on this question. It
usually translates se ah with the generic metron, which it sometimes uses for
ephah as well.23
At the conclusion of the passage of instructions about measures, Aramaic Levi
offers several equivalences for the measures it uses, among them, a third
of a saton is a third of an ephah (46). If, in fact, it wishes to claim that the
ephah and the saton are equivalent, Aramaic Levi differs from the Torah quite
significantly. Its measures of fine flour would be about three times as large as
those of Numbers. Yet, if its measures represented a purposeful rejection of the
Torahs directions, one would expect some hint of this in its rhetoric. There is
none. Furthermore, the text of Aramaic Levi raises questions. If the saton and the
ephah are equivalent, why not say so directly? Why equate one-third of a saton
23Deut 25:14; Ezek 45:10, 11, 13; 46:14; Zech 5:610.

with one-third of an ephah? A text that originally read, A saton is one-third of

an ephah, would provide an equivalence that brings Aramaic Levi and the To-
rah quite close, and it is not hard to imagine a scribal error that could introduce
the extra one-third into such a text. Furthermore, scholars have sometimes
suggested identifying the se ah with the shalish, or third of Isa 40:12, which
they take to be a third of an ephah.24 Isaacs instructions to Levi perhaps provide
further evidence for this identification.
On the assumption that Aramaic Levi understands a saton as one-third of an
ephah, a comparison of the amounts of fine flour in Aramaic Levi and the Torah
look like this:
Sacrificial Animal Size Torah (Numbers 15) Aramaic Levi Fine Flour in
Fine Flour in ephah ephah Measure
Measure (saton = 1 3ephah)
Small 1 10 (0.1) 1 9 (0.11)
Medium 2 10 (0.2) 1 6 (0.167)
Large 3 10 (0.3) 1 3 (0.33)
If my suggestion for correcting the text of Aramaic Levi is accepted, the amounts
it proposes are quite close to those of the Torah, especially for large and small
animals.
Like the Torah, Aramaic Levi calls for equal amounts of oil and wine; indeed,
it does not bother to provide measurements for the wine, but simply indicates
that the wine should be equal to the oil. As we have seen, the Torah, unlike
Aramaic Levi, uses different measures for its solid ingredient, fine flour, and its
liquids, oil and wine. But if an ephah was roughly equivalent to 22 liters and a
hin to 3.6 liters,25 we can see that the ratios of fine flour to liquid in the Torah
and Aramaic Levi are fairly similar:
Animal Size Torah (Numbers 15) Aramaic Levi
Flour/Liquid Flour/Liquid
Large 3.67 : 1 4:1
Mid-size 3.67 : 1 3:1
Small 2.44 : 1 2.67 : 1
Again, the similarity points toward understanding Aramaic Levis measures not
as an effort to correct the Torah, but rather as a different way of expressing the
same measures. I have no explanation for why Aramaic Levi translates the mea-
surements of the Torah into different terms. Further, I recognize that my effort
to reduce disagreement on measures between Aramaic Levi and Numbers 15 is
quite speculative. Still, although I would not want to place too much emphasis on
the emendation I suggest, I do want to remind the reader that Aramaic Levi is at-
24O.R.
Sellers, Weights and Measures, IDB (1962): 4.83435.
25Baruch Levine, Numbers 120 (AB 4A; New York, 1993), 391.
tested at this point in only a single manuscript and that scholars have sometimes
suggested on other grounds that a se ah is one-third of an ephah. But I believe
that the most important piece of evidence for Aramaic Levis basic agreement
with the Torah is the absence of any indication that it understands its instructions
as in conflict with anyone elses position.
The Law of the Priesthood and Sectarianism
It seems to me that this point holds true for the Aramaic Levis law of the priest-
hood as a whole. There are hints elsewhere in Aramaic Levi of at least one
position that will come to be sectarian: adherence to a solar calendar (6365).26
Further, the protosectarian author of Jubilees and the sectarian author of the
Damascus Document valued Aramaic Levi enough to use it, and it was preserved
in several copies at Qumran. Despite these sectarian associations, however, as I
have already argued at perhaps tedious length, there is no reason to understand
Aramaic Levis rules for priests as sectarian. It is true that certainty on this point
is beyond our grasp, not only because of the fragmentary state of Aramaic Levi,
but also because we are so ill informed about temple practice that it is impos-
sible to say whether Aramaic Levis law of the priesthood deviates from it. And
it is, of course, possible for a position to become sectarian, as adherence to the
solar calendar did. Still, although it is not impossible that the practices Isaac
passes on to Levi were later viewed as sectarian, as far as I can see there is no
evidence from the later Second Temple period to suggest this. At the very least,
the rhetoric of the law of the priesthood suggests that the author of Aramaic Levi
did not understand the instructions as opposing the practices of others, with the
significant exception of his prohibition of certain kinds of marriages.
Jubilees Adaptation of the Law of the Priesthood
One central concern of the Book of Jubilees is to demonstrate that many of the
laws of the Torah were in practice before the giving of the Torah. Thus it de-
scribes the establishment of various festivals and sacrifices in the period of the
patriarchs. Festivals and sacrifices require priests, and for Jubilees, Adam, the
first man, was also the first priest (3:27). Priesthood then passes to Enoch, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, before Levis ordination (32:3).
26Kugler, From Patriarch, 116; J. Greenfield and M.E. Stone, Some Remarks on the
Aramaic Testament of Levi from the Geniza, RB 86 (1979): 22425; Stone, Enoch, Aramaic
Levi, 15960 n.2, 16870.
Jubilees places its adaptation of Aramaic Levis law of the priesthood in Abra-
hams mouth as part of his exhortation to Isaac before his death (Jubilees 21).27
It is noteworthy that Jubilees makes Abraham the authority for priestly behavior,
as in Jubilees account he stands at the beginning of the hereditary priestly line
that leads to Levi. For Jubilees what is significant about Levi is not that he is the
founder of the priesthood, which he is not, but rather that he is the first priest to
hold the office of priest in a generation in which there are other possible claim-
ants.28 Aramaic Levi, of course, glorifies Levi as the founder of the priestly line,
yet even there Isaacs role as Levis instructor implies that Levi is by no means
the first priest for it requires that Isaac himself be a priest. This strongly suggests
that in the background of Aramaic Levis exaltation of Levi stood a view of the
history of the priesthood not unlike Jubilees.
Both the opening of Abrahams speech (Jub. 21:25) and the conclusion (Jub.
21:2125) preach righteousness of a kind relevant to those descendants of Abra-
ham in future generations who will not serve as priests. It is the instructions for
sacrifice in the central portion of the speech (Jub. 21:717) that draw on Aramaic
Levis law of the priesthood. The speech has been composed quite carefully.
Rules involving blood, the cultic substance par excellence, in contexts relevant
to nonpriests (Jub. 21:6, 1820) serve as transitions between the exhortations
to righteousness at the beginning and the end of the speech and the cultic mate-
rial in the middle. It is worth noting that the prohibition on eating blood (Jub.
21:6, 18) echoes a similar prohibition at the end of the law of the priesthood in
Aramaic Levi (56).
All the topics of the section of Abrahams speech concerned with the cult
appear in Aramaic Levi: procedure for sacrifice (Jub. 21:711, parallel to Ar.
Levi 2730), wood for the offering (Jub. 21:1215, parallel to Ar. Levi 2225),
and washing and avoidance of blood on ones garments (Jub. 21:1617, parallel
to Ar. Levi 1921, 26, 5354). Jubilees version of the instructions is smoother
than Aramaic Levis, and it has eliminated the somewhat confusing repetition at
the end of Aramaic Levis instructions. Jubilees also stays closer to the text of
the Torah than does Aramaic Levi. For example, unlike Aramaic Levi, Jubilees
specifies the type of sacrifice with which its instructions are concerned, the peace
27I
understand Jubilees as drawing on and reworking Aramaic Levi. See my comment in
n.2. For a more extended discussion, see C. Werman, Levi and Levites in the Second Temple
Period, DSD 4 (1997): 2201; the law of the priesthood figures prominently in Wermans
discussion, but she considers other points as well. Stone also argues for direct dependence of
Jubilees on Aramaic Levi (Enoch, Aramaic Levi, 15960 n.2; 170). See Kugler, From Patri
arch, 1467, for a brief discussion of the views of scholars who argue against direct dependence
in favor of a common source, and 14755 for a defense of this position based on the relationship
of Jub. 30:132:9 to Aramaic Levi.
28In my view, Jubilees plays down Levis role as priest (M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of
Priests: The Democratization of the Priesthood in the Literature of Second Temple Judaism,
Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 [1997]: 912).
offering (Leviticus 3; 7), and it uses language that recalls the Torahs description
of this sacrifice (Lev 3:11): the food of the offering to the Lord (Jub. 21:9).29
Frankincense and the Minah
The Torah distinguishes two kinds of peace offerings, one of thanksgiving, the
other votive or freewill, with somewhat different rules for each (Lev 7:1118).
The passage in question describes the minah of the thanksgiving peace offering,
four different varieties of cakes or wafers, in some detail, but it does not specify
the nature of the minah to accompany the votive and freewill peace offerings.
It also provides different limits for the time during which the sacrificial meat
may be consumed: the day of the sacrifice only for the thanksgiving offering,
that day and the next day for the votive and freewill offerings (Lev 7:1517).
The peace offering Jubilees has in mind must be the votive or freewill version
because Abraham tells Isaac that it can be eaten until the third day (Jub. 21:10).
This identification explains the minah that Jubilees requires: fine flour mixed
with oil (21:7). This is the minah that accompanies animal sacrifices according
to Numbers 15, which does not specify that the sacrifices in question include
peace offerings, but does identify them as votive or freewill offerings.
Abrahams speech places great emphasis on aroma, including the aroma of
the wood to be used on the altar (Jub. 21:1314), a characteristic Aramaic Levi
mentions but does not emphasize (23). Yet, in keeping with the Torah, Abraham
does not mention frankincense as part of the minah to accompany the votive
peace offering:
If you slaughter a victim for a peace offering that is acceptable, slaughter it and pour
their blood onto the altar. All the fat of the sacrifice you will offer on the altar with the
finest flour; and the offering kneaded with oil, with its libation you will offer it all
together on the altar as a sacrifice. [It is] an aroma that is pleasing before the Lord. As
you place the fat of the peace offering on the fire which is on the altar, so also remove
the fatAll of this you will offer as a pleasant fragrance which is acceptable before
the Lord, with its sacrifice and its libation as a pleasant fragrance the food of the of-
fering to the Lord. (Jub. 21:79)
Despite the absence of frankincense in the minah in Abrahams instructions to

Isaac, frankincense forms part of all but one of the sacrifices Jubilees details.30
29All translations of Jubilees are taken from J.C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (CSCO
511; Louvain, 1989). See also his note to Jub. 21:9.

30The sacrifice in which frankincense is missing is Jubilees version of the covenant between
the pieces (Genesis 15; Jub. 14:120). Jubilees transforms the covenant ceremony of passing
between the severed pieces of the animals, which it must have found exceedingly strange, into
a sacrifice, even adding a minah and a libation of wine (Jub. 14:9), but it does not mention
frankincense.
Noah adds frankincense to the sacrifices he offers on emerging from the ark (Jub.
6:3), as in the Genesis Apocryphon, and in celebration of the new wine (Jub.
7:45). In the first sacrifice, Noah puts frankincense not on the minah but on ev-
erything; in the second, the frankincense seems to be almost a separate sacrifice:
Then [Noah] took a bull, a ram, a sheep, goats, salt, a turtledove, and a dove and offered
(them as) a burnt offering on the altar. He poured on them an offering mixed with oil,
sprinkled wine, and put frankincense on everything. He sent up a pleasant fragrance
that was pleasing before the Lord. (Jub. 6:3)
[Noah] offered all their meat on the altar. On it he placed their entire sacrifice mixed
with oil. Afterwards he sprinkled wine in the fire that had been on the altar beforehand.
He put frankincense on the altar and offered a pleasant fragrance that was pleasing
before the Lord his God. (Jub. 7:45)
Abraham adds frankincense to his sacrifice for the feast of the first fruits of the
wheat harvest. As in Noahs sacrifice on emerging from the ark, the frankincense
is added to the sacrifice as a whole, not to the minah in particular.
[Abraham] offered as a new sacrifice on the altar the first fruits of the food for the
Lord a bull, a ram and a sheep; (he offered them) on the altar as a sacrifice to the Lord
together with their (cereal) offerings and their libations. He offered everything on the
altar with frankincense. (Jub. 15:2)
Jacob adds frankincense to the sacrifices he offers for the feast of booths. In this
sacrifice, the existence of the minah is questionable, and as in Noahs sacrifice
on the festival of new wine, the incense appears to be a separate sacrifice:
On the fifteenth of this month [Jacob] brought to the altar 14 young bulls from the
cattle, 28 rams, 49 sheep, 7 kids, and 21 goats as a burnt offering on the altar and as
a pleasing offering for a pleasant aroma before God. This was his gift because of the
vow which he had made that he would give a tithe along with their sacrifices and their
libations. When the fire had consumed it, he would burn frankincense31 on the fire
above it; and as a peace offering two young bulls, four rams, four sheep, four he-goats,
two year-old sheep, and two goats. (Jub. 32:46)
The Incense Offering
To make sense of the status of frankincense in the descriptions of sacrifices just

quoted, it is helpful to consider Jubilees interest in the incense offering. The To-
rah decrees that Aaron was to offer qeoret sammim (aromatic incense) twice
daily, morning and evening, on a special altar for the purpose (Exod 30:78).
Jubilees clearly views this twice-daily ritual as of great importance. It claims
31VanderKam, Jubilees: incense. The Ethiopic word here is sehna, the same word Vander
Kam translates as frankincense in the passages just discussed. I would like to thank Annette
Reed for checking the Ethiopic of these passages for me.
that morning incense was the first sacrifice ever offered by Adam as he left the
Garden of Eden (3:27).32 The evening incense offering, according to Jubilees,
goes back to Enoch (4:25). Not only does Jubilees note the establishment of the
incense offerings, but it also mentions Abrahams incense offerings during his
observance of the feast of booths (16:24).33
Jubilees further stresses the importance of incense in its Sabbath laws at the
end of the book:
For great is the honor which the Lord has given Israel to eat, drink, and be filled on this
festal day; and to rest on it from any work that belongs to the work of mankind except
to burn incense and to bring before the Lord offerings and sacrifices for the days and
the Sabbaths. (Jub. 50:10)
It is striking that burning incense is not simply included in the larger category of
sacrifice, but rather is treated as a category in its own right. Indeed, it receives
special emphasis as the first category of activity that must be specially authorized
for the Sabbath. It is also worth noting that Gods commands about Sabbath ob-
servance at the conclusion of creation are said to rise as a fine fragrance which
is acceptable in his presence for all times (2:22).
We have seen that the Torah does not mention frankincense as part of the
minah accompanying animal sacrifices. But we have also seen some evidence
to suggest that priests in the temple did add frankincense to the minah. The
rather loose relationship between the minah and frankincense in Jubilees
descriptions of sacrifice appears to reflect both the practice of adding frankin-
cense to the minah attached to the animal sacrifice under the influence of the
freestanding minah and Jubilees taste for incense offerings, so that the frank-
incense is sometimes described as if it were a separate offering.
Incense and the Heavenly Temple
Why are the incense offering and the aroma of sacrifices so important to Jubi
lees? Perhaps it is because aroma plays so prominent a role in descriptions of
the liturgy of the heavenly temple from the centuries around the turn of the era.
The heavenly cult presents certain obvious difficulties. Even for people who
saw sacrifice as an essential mode of connection between God and humanity, it
32It reports the four components of Adams incense as frankincense, galbanum, stacte,
and aromatic spices. This list presumably echoes the Torahs list of spices for incense, stacte,
onycha, galbanum, and frankincense (Exod 30:34); the difference may well be the result of the
vicissitudes of translation.
33The seven fragrant substances: frankincense, galbanum, stacte, nard, myrrh, aromatic
spices, and costum, include the four Adam offered; perhaps the theory is that more is better.
Jubilees description of the spices as beaten, equally mixed, pure (Jub. 16:24) appears to echo
Exodus, expertly blended, refined, pure, sacred (Exod 30:35).
must have been hard to imagine the blood and fat of animals on a heavenly altar.
Although a few texts refer explicitly to sacrifice in heaven, I do not know of any
that mentions animals, blood, or fat. The least problematic aspect of sacrifice
from this point of view, the most ethereal and suitable to heaven, was its aroma,
the pleasing smell to which the priestly source of the Torah refers so often. For
the same reason, the offering of incense seems more appropriate to heaven than
does animal sacrifice. Thus, the opening of the last of the Songs of the Sabbath
Sacrifice mentions the sacrifices of the holy ones, the odor of their offer-
ings, and the odor of their drink offerings (11QShirShabb 87, lines 23). In
the Book of Revelation, at the opening of the seventh seal, an angel offers up
incense together with the prayers of the saints (Rev 8:34). The Testament of
Levi imagines angels in the sixth heaven offering a pleasant odor, a reasonable
and bloodless offering (T. Levi 3:6).34
Jubilees never mentions a heavenly temple explicitly, but its claim that the
Sabbath (2:18) and the Feast of Weeks (6:18) are celebrated in heaven may imply
a heavenly temple because on earth both Sabbath and feast require sacrifices.
Indeed, after noting that the Feast of Weeks was observed in heaven before it
was observed on earth, Jubilees goes on to ordain sacrifices for the Israelites
observance of the feast (6:22). Finally, Isaacs blessing of Levi depicts priests
on earth as counterparts of the angelic priests in heaven: May he make you
and your descendants (alone) out of all humanity approach him / to serve in his
Temple like the angels of the presence and like the holy ones (31:14).
Ancient Jews understood the Jerusalem temple as modeled on the heavenly
temple. Modern scholars are inclined to reverse the relationship and to view the
heavenly temple and its rituals as reflecting the earthly temple and its practices.
Yet, Jubilees provides an example of an effort to make the cult on earth more
like the cult in heaven through its stress on aroma and incense. Jubilees, then,
is an instance in which both ancient Jews and modern scholars are correct. The
picture of the heavenly temple is indeed formed by the rituals of the earthly
temple, but once sacrifice has been adapted to its new location, the adaptation
exerts its influence on the depiction of sacrificial practice on earth.
34M. Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York,
1993), 336.
5. Temple and Priests in the Book of the Watchers,
theAnimal Apocalypse, and the Apocalypse of Weeks
For much of the Persian and Hellenistic periods, the Jerusalem temple was un-
rivaled as the central institution of Jewish society, and the priests who served
in it constituted a well-defined elite with considerable political influence. Yet
precisely because of the temples importance, priests often found themselves
condemned for their incorrect understanding of the laws governing the temple
and for behavior inappropriate to their office. Such criticism is preserved for us
in works ranging from the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah through the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Further, disapproval of priestly behavior sometimes caused anxiety about
the status of the temple itself, for the impiety of the priests and their failure to
follow the laws of the Torah properly could have the effect of defiling the temple.
Here I would like to examine the attitude toward the temple and its priests
in three Enochic apocalypses, the Book of the Watchers (1Enoch 136), which
dates to the third century B.C.E., and two works that probably date to the period
after the Maccabean revolt and the Hasmonean assumption of the high priest-
hood, the Animal Apocalypse (1Enoch 8590) and the Apocalypse of Weeks
(1Enoch 93, 91). Though both of the later texts form part of larger Enochic
works, the Book of Dreams (1Enoch 8390) and the Epistle of Enoch (1Enoch
92105) respectively, neither of the larger works refers to the temple outside the
units on which I focus.
Each of the works considered here is critical of the Second Temple though
temples play a central role in each. The Book of the Watchers offers its criticism
of the Jerusalem temple and its priests indirectly: the only temple that appears
in its narrative is the heavenly temple with its angelic priests. But I shall argue
that the depiction of the watchers who descend to earth is intended as criticism of
some of the priests of the Jerusalem temple. The Animal Apocalypse, in contrast,
offers a straightforwardly negative evaluation of the Jerusalem temple: its cult
was polluted from the very start. The Apocalypse of Weeks simply ignores the
Second Temple altogether. Yet the priests who might have been held responsible
for the sad state of the Second Temple are conspicuously absent from both of
these later works. Further, all three works revere the ideal of the temple, as can
be seen from the heavenly temples of the Book of the Watchers and the Animal
Apocalypse and the eschatological temples of the Animal Apocalypse and the
Apocalypse of Weeks.
80 5. Temple and Priests
I begin with the most ancient of the works considered here, the Book of the
Watchers. As I just noted, the temple of the Book of the Watchers is not the Je-
rusalem temple but the heavenly one. It appears in the course of Enochs ascent
to heaven to plead the case of the fallen watchers (1Enoch 1216). Upon arrival
in heaven, Enoch finds himself standing before an awesome structure composed
of fire and ice, materials that could never coexist in the world we know. He is
terrified by the glory of what he sees, but he is able to pass through the outer wall
of the structure and its first chamber to stand at the entrance to the even more
glorious inner chamber, where he sees God enthroned, surrounded by a host of
angels (1En. 14:824).
Although it is never made explicit, the identity of the building Enoch enters
is clear.1 Like the earthly temple, the heavenly temple consists of an outer court
(1En. 14:9), a central chamber (1En. 14:10), and an inner chamber, the holy of
holies (1En. 14:15). The fiery cherubim on the ceiling of the central chamber
(1En. 14:11) recall the cherubim on the woven wall hangings of the wilderness
tabernacle (Exod 26:1,31; 36:8,35) and the walls and doors of Solomons temple
(1Kgs 6:29,32,35). Gods cherubim throne (1En. 14:18) clearly echoes the seat
composed of two cherubim with their wings spread forth that stood in the inner
sanctum of the tabernacle (Exod 37:69) and the temple (1Kgs 6:2328); it
owes its wheels to Ezekiels chariot (Ezek 1:1521). The crowd of angels that
stands before the divine throne is described using the verb approach (1En.
14:2223), a technical term for priestly service in the priestly corpus of the
Torah; the angels attendance by day and by night (1En. 14:23) may also have
cultic connotations.2
The idea of a heavenly temple has deep roots in the ancient Near East, where
temples were understood as replicas of the actual abodes of the gods in which
the gods made themselves available to their devotees. So too the Bible often
calls the Jerusalem temple the house of the Lord (e.g., Deut 23:19; 1Kgs
6:37; 7:40,45,48,51; 8:10,11,63,64), and Isaiah of Jerusalem (ch. 6) and many
psalms (e.g., Psalms 27, 122, 132, 134) attest that the Israelites believed that
the Lords presence could be found there. The understanding of heaven as the
Lords abode also gives rise to an alternate picture of heaven as temple in the
literature of the Second Temple period, the picture of heaven as royal palace.
This is the picture to be found in Daniel 7, for example, where the Ancient of
Days sits on his throne, surrounded by his courtiers, as the royal record books are
opened (Dan 7:910). The picture of heaven as temple and the picture of heaven
1For
discussion of the heavenly temple in 1Enoch 1216, G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch,
Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee, JBL 100 (1981): 5802; 1Enoch
1: A Commentary on the Book of 1Enoch, Chapters 136; 81108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2001), 25966; and M. Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apoca
lypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 916.
2For this point, Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, 585 n.37; 1Enoch 1, 2656.
5. Temple and Priests 81
as royal palace share an understanding of heaven as the abode of the Lord, the
king of the universe, though in one picture the angels are priests, while in the
other, they are courtiers.
Though the structure Enoch sees in heaven is undoubtedly a temple, it is not to
be identified with any of the temples described in the Bible: the tabernacle of the
Israelites travels through the wilderness, Solomons temple, or the eschatologi-
cal temple Ezekiel envisions (Ezekiel 4046). Indeed, the point of the elaborate
description of the extraordinary building blocks of the heavenly temple seems to
be the heavenly temples utter transcendence of the earthly temple and indeed of
earthly reality. A similar logic appears to underlie the description of the heavenly
temple in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. There the equipment of the cult and
the temple itself are frequently multiplied by seven, though singular and plural
stand side by side, a situation surely impossible on earth, if not in heaven.3
But despite the glorious appearance of the heavenly temple in the Book of the
Watchers and the Lords presence on the throne, all is not well, for some of the
angelic priests have descended to earth. The language in which God rejects the
petition of the fallen watchers makes it clear that their departure from heaven
meant abandoning their priestly duties:
Go and say to the watchers of heaven, who sent you to petition in their behalf, You
should petition in behalf of men, and not men in behalf of you. Why have you forsaken
the high heaven, the eternal sanctuary; and lain with women, and defiled yourselves
with the daughters of men? (1En. 15:23)4
By employing Enoch to mediate between them and God, the watchers have
reversed the proper order, in which they would perform the priestly function of
mediation on behalf of humanity.
Indeed, the contrast between the fallen watchers, who have abandoned the
heavenly temple, and Enoch, the righteous human being who fulfills a priestly
role in that very temple, is a central theme of the Book of the Watchers. The Book
of the Watchers calls Enoch a scribe (1En. 12:34), and Enochs ability to draw
up a petition for the fallen watchers (1En. 13:46) requires scribal expertise.
Yet, though it never says so explicitly, it is clear that it also regards Enoch as a
priest.5 As we have just seen, Gods rebuke to the watchers describes Enoch as
performing a priestly function rightfully theirs. Further, the very fact that Enoch
successfully traverses the structure of the heavenly temple to stand before the
throne of glory is an indication of priestly status. For anyone but a priest, enter-
ing the inner spaces of the sanctuary would constitute trespassing, and in several
3C. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (HSS 27; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1985), 49.

4Nickelsburg, 1Enoch 1, 267. All translations of 1Enoch are taken from Nickelsburg.
5On Enoch as priest and scribe, Himmelfarb, Ascent, 235.
passages the Torah, jealous of priestly prerogatives, warns that the alien who
approaches shall die (Num 3:10,38; 18:7).6
That heaven is a temple and Enoch a priest in the Book of the Watchers seems
to me clear. That is not to claim that all aspects of the account of the watch-
ers descent and Enochs ascent contribute to this picture. The teachings of the
watchers and their consequences, for example, reflect a different set of interests.7
Still, temple and priesthood are central to the Book of the Watchers, and several
scholars have suggested that it uses the story of angels taking human wives in the
service of its interest in priests, or rather its anxiety about them. The interpreta-
tions of the descent of the watchers of most interest to me here are those David
Suter and George Nickelsburg suggested a quarter of a century ago.8 Suter reads
the Book of the Watchers version of the myth of the descent of the watchers as an
attack on priests for defiling the temple by taking wives forbidden to priests, by
violating the laws of menstrual purity, and by misappropriating offerings brought
to the temple.9 He finds these concerns in the story of the descent of the watchers
in chs. 611 as well as in the account of Enochs ascent to heaven in chs. 1216.
Independently of Suter, George Nickelsburg makes a similar argument focused
on chs. 1216; he understands the forbidden wives not as the wrong kind of
Jewish women, but as foreign women.10
Before I attempt my own account of the criticism of priests implicit in the
watchers marriage to women, it is important to note one difficulty with reading
the story as critical of priests. In the context of the myth, the problem with the
watchers marriages is not their choice of wives, but the very fact of marriage. As
God points out in his rebuke of the watchers, human beings require marriage for
6See
J. Maier, Das Gefhrdungsmotiv bei der Himmelsreise in der jdischen Apokalyptik
und Gnosis, Kairos 5 (1963): 1840, with brief discussion of the Book of the Watchers, 223.
7On these interests, A.Y. Reed, Heavenly Ascent, Angelic Descent, and the Transfor-
mation of Knowledge in 1Enoch 616, in Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late
Antique Religions (ed. R. Boustan and A.Y. Reed; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 4766.
8The most recent interpretation of watchers as priests is that of E.J.C. Tigchelaar, The
Prophets of Old and the Day of the End: Zechariah, the Book of the Watchers and Apocalyptic
(Leiden: Brill, 1996), 198203. Tigchelaar argues that the watchers abandonment of heaven
to marry human women recalls the career of Manasseh, the brother of the high priest Jaddua,
who married Nikaso, the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. But the event on
which Tigchelaar bases his interpretation took place according to Josephus around the time of
the arrival of Alexander, that is, in the later fourth century B.C.E., considerably earlier than the
usual dating of the Book of the Watchers or even chs. 1216. Furthermore, the abandonment
of Jerusalem for priestly office elsewhere, if not marriage to Samaritan women, is a one-time
event rather than an ongoing problem. Nor are there any other indications of anti-Samaritan
sentiment in the Book of the Watchers.
9D. Suter, Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1Enoch 616,
HUCA 50 (1979): 11535; see also Suter, Revisiting Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest, Henoch
24 (2002): 13742.
10Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, 58485, and 1Enoch 1, 2301.
reproduction, but the watchers are immortal spirits for whom marriage is inap-
propriate (1En. 15:47). Thus there is a certain lack of fit between the myth and
the criticism implicit in it: watchers should not marry at all, while priests should
not marry the wrong kind of women.
With this problem in mind, I turn back to Suter and Nickelsburg. As noted
above, Nickelsburg understands the criticism of the Book of the Watchers as
directed at foreign wives. Yet while the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah attest that
intermarriage was a significant social problem in the Persian period, there is little
evidence that it continued to be an issue in hellenistic Palestine.11 The absence
of such evidence lends support to Suters view that the women the Book of the
Watchers views as forbidden are Jewish women who are somehow inappropriate
wives for priests. On the basis of the criticism of priestly marriages in Aramaic
Levi and 4QMMT, I suggest that the Book of the Watchers believes that priests
should marry only women from priestly families.
This understanding of the restrictions on marriage partners for priests appears
to derive from a particular way of reading the Torahs rules for priestly marriage.
For the high priest, the Torah decrees: A widow, or one divorced, or a woman
who has been defiled, or a harlot, these he shall not marry, but he shall take to
wife a virgin of his own people (( )Lev 21:14).12 The phrase of his own
people is ambiguous. While it could refer to the people of Israel, elsewhere in
Leviticus 21 (vv.1,4,15) it refers to a priests more immediate kin. Thus both
Philo (Special Laws 1.110) and Josephus (Jewish Antiquities 3.277) claimed
that the high priest was permitted to marry only women from priestly families.13
Although the Torah does not require that the wife of an ordinary priest be
of his own people, it does restrict the marriage choices of priests: They shall
not marry a harlot or a woman who has been defiled; neither shall they marry a
woman divorced from her husband (Lev 21:7). Like the high priest, then, or-
dinary priests are forbidden to marry harlots. During the Second Temple period
some texts come to use the terms harlot and harlotry for any kind of sexual
relations the author thought improper.14 The Damascus Document, for example,
labels as harlotry marriage to two women while both are alive (4.2), either po-
lygamy or remarriage after divorce. It is thus not surprising that some Jews in
the Second Temple period concluded that the harlot forbidden to priests was not
11M. Himmelfarb, Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarraige at the Time of the
Maccabean Revolt, JSQ 6 (1999): 124 (in this volume, 2747).

12All quotations from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are taken from the RSV trans-
lation.
13In Against Apion 1.3035, Josephus appears to hold the view that the high priest may
marry a suitable Jewish woman from a non-priestly family. See Himmelfarb, Levi, Phinehas,
9 (in this volume, 34).
14J. Kampen, 4QMMT and New Testament Studies, in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspec
tives on Qumran Law and History (ed. J. Kampen and M.J. Bernstein; SBLSymS 2; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1996), 1358.
an actual harlot, whose unsuitability would have been too obvious to require
mention, but a woman inappropriate in some other way. The rule for ordinary
priests in Lev 21:7 could then be read as requiring a wife come from the priestly
clan, just as for the high priest.
Aramaic Levi and 4QMMT appear to reflect this view. Isaacs exhortation to
Levi about proper marriage partners in Aramaic Levi contrasts a proper wife
from the family with harlots:
Keep yourself pure of all fornication and uncleanness, and of all harlotry. And you,
take for yourself a wife from my family so that you will not defile your seed with
harlots. For you are holy seed, and holy is your seed, like the holy place. For you are a
holy priest called for all the seed of Abraham. (1617)15
Isaacs from my family echoes Lev 21:14s of his own people; in its context
in Aramaic Levi it clearly refers to the priestly family rather than the family of
Israel. First, it comes in the course of Isaacs transmission of priestly lore to
his successor in the priesthood. Second, Aramaic Levi is already on record as
rejecting marriage to foreigners in its account of Levis role in the destruction
of Shechem after the rape of Dinah (13); the rhetoric of Isaacs speech makes
it clear that the restrictions he imposes on Levi and his descendants go beyond
those that fall on all Israel. Given the early stage of Israels history in which
Aramaic Levi is set, the distinction between high priest and other priests is not
relevant, but mention of Levis descendants without differentiating among them
suggests that Aramaic Levi intends its marriage rules for all priests.
The passage in 4QMMT (B7582) is unfortunately fragmentary at some cru-
cial points. It condemns the harlotry that takes place among the people (B75;
my translation), enumerates the Torahs prohibitions against the mixing of kinds
(Lev 19:19; B7678), and goes on to refer to Israel as holy, but Aaron as most
holy (B79). It then describes the behavior that it condemns, calling it relations
with harlots (B8082). It mentions priests as involved in these relations (B80),
but the identity of the remaining participants is lost. The passage is difficult, and
a number of scholars understand it to condemn marriage with gentiles.16 In my
view, however, the sexual relations in question are relations between priests, the
most holy seed of Aaron, and women from the merely holy seed of Israel, harlots
in the sense that they are forbidden to priests.17
15Trans. R.A. Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic
Levi to Testament of Levi (SBLEJL 9: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 96.

16Himmelfarb, Levi, Phinehas, 78 (in this volume, 3133), for references. See also C.E.
Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible
to the Talmud (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 8291, who criticizes my view
in Levi, Phinehas, and argues that the passage refers to marriage between native Jews and
converts to Judaism. I respond to Hayes position in A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and
Merit in Second Temple Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 278.
17For my argument in full see Himmelfarb, Levi, Phinehas, 612 (in this volume, 3137).
This is also the position of E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4. Miqat Ma ae ha-
Aramaic Levi and 4QMMT provide a plausible context for the Book of the
Watchers criticism of priests marriages. Aramaic Levi is probably roughly
contemporary with the Book of the Watchers, and it refers to Enoch (103),
though not necessarily to the Book of the Watchers. 4QMMT dates from the
middle of the second century, considerably later than the Book of the Watchers,
but it comes from a group that valued the Book of the Watchers. It is clear from
the polemical tone of Aramaic Levi and 4QMMT that their view that ordinary
priests must marry priestly women was a minority view. The priests who were
the objects of criticism probably chose wives from non-priestly families with a
clear conscience and viewed those who criticized them as extremists. The Book
of the Watchers, then, takes a restrictive approach to priestly marriage that must
have set it at odds with many priests of its day.
Both Suter and Nickelsburg understand the Book of the Watchers to accuse
the angelic priests not only of taking forbidden wives, but also of defiling
themselves through violation of the laws of menstrual purity.18 Both note the
passage in the Damascus Document that accuses the people of Israel of defiling
the temple in as much as they do not keep separate in accordance with the law,
but lie with a woman who sees the blood of her discharge (5.67).19 According
to Leviticus 1215, the impurity of menstruation and other physical conditions
can be conveyed to other people and objects, including the sanctuary (Lev 12:4).
Thus failure to observe the laws of menstrual impurity properly would put peo-
ple in a state of impurity so that they could then defile the temple by entering it.
Both Suter and Nickelsburg conclude that the Book of the Watchers is accusing
contemporary priests of defiling the temple in this way.
This reading of the Book of the Watchers seems to me somewhat problematic.
The only passage from chs. 1216 that refers to womens blood comes from
Gods rebuke of the watchers:
You were holy ones and spirits, living forever.
With the blood of women you have defiled yourselves,
and with the blood of flesh you have begotten;
And with the blood of men you have lusted,
and you have done as they do
flesh and blood, who die and perish. (1En. 15:4)
Torah (DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 1724 (this section is signed by Qimron).
The case presented there is weak, however, and I attempt to improve on it in Levi, Phinehas.
18Suter, Fallen Angel, 118, 130; Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, 585, and 1Enoch 1, 2712.
The references to defilement appear in 1En. 7:1, 9:8, 10:11, 12:4, and 15:4. Only 10:11 and
15:4 mention blood.
19Trans. M.A. Knibb, The Qumran Community (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of
the Jewish and Christian World 200 BC to AD 200 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987), 39.
The way blood is used in this passage leaves open a range of possibilities other
than menstrual blood for the cause of the watchers defilement. In the phrases
blood of flesh and blood of men, blood cannot be understood literally;
rather, it appears to mean something like what blood means in the phrase flesh
and blood at the end of the passage. The point of the passage is that the very
fact of marriage has defiled the watchers.20 Thus the defilement in question is not
the defilement caused by menstrual impurity. After all, even the most rigorous
observance of the laws of menstrual impurity would not redeem the watchers
marriages; the problem with these marriages is that angels should not marry at
all. Rather, the defilement in question appears to be the defilement Leviticus 18
and 20 attribute to forbidden sexual relations. In contrast to the impurity of the
physical states of Leviticus 1215, the impurity caused by forbidden sexual rela-
tions is not conveyed by contact and defiles only the sinner and the land.21 Thus
there is no reason to claim that the Book of the Watchers saw the Second Temple
as defiled. It is worth noting that when Nehemiah chases away a grandson of the
high priest Eliashib for marrying a foreign woman, he accuses him of polluting
the priesthood, not the temple (Neh 13:2829).
Finally, the criticism of the Book of the Watchers is not directed at all priests.
It pictures some of the watchers continuing their loyal service in the heavenly
temple, thus suggesting that some priests on earth have not defiled themselves.22
Indeed, one might argue that the Book of the Watchers picture of the failings of
the heavenly priests actually serves to defend the earthly temple against those
who saw it as hopelessly compromised, by showing that even the heavenly
temple, of which the sanctity could hardly be doubted, was experiencing prob-
lems with its priests.
I turn next to the Animal Apocalypse. This apocalypse takes its name from
its use of animals in place of human beings for its retelling of biblical and more
recent history, culminating in a prediction of the imminent eschaton. From the
patriarch Jacob on, the children of Israel with a few significant exceptions are
depicted as sheep; the other nations are represented by wild animals and birds of
prey. The Animal Apocalypse does not provide the angelic interpreter common
in late prophecy and apocalyptic literature for its vision, and most of the vision
is clear enough to be understood without explicit decoding. One point that is
not immediately clear, however, is the relationship between the tower and the
20This argument improves on my suggestion in Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, that the
defiling blood of women of 1En. 15:4 was the blood of virginity rather than menstrual blood
(21). This suggestion was an effort to take account of the fact that marriage in itself is defiling
for the watchers, but I now believe that blood should not be read as literally as I read it there.
21For a useful discussion of the two different types of impurity, see J. Klawans, Impurity and
Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2142.
22Nickelsburgs claim that the authors of chs. 1216 viewed the Jerusalem priesthood as
defiled and therefore under the irrevocable judgment of God does not take account of this fact
(1Enoch 1, 231).
house, the symbols the Animal Apocalypse uses for the sacred structures of its
history. This point, as Devorah Dimant has argued, is of central importance for
our understanding of the Animal Apocalypses attitude toward the temple.23
When the two structures appear together, there is no lack of clarity. The house
represents Jerusalem, and the tower, the temple. Thus at the time of Solomon,
That house became large and broad. And a large and high tower was built upon that
house for the Lord of the sheep. That house was low, but the tower was raised up and
was high. And the Lord of the sheep stood upon that tower, and they spread a full table
before him. (1En. 89:50)
The meaning of the spread table is also clear; it represents the sacrificial cult.
When Nebuchadnezzar conquers Jerusalem, the tower is burnt down, and the
house is demolished (1En. 89:66).
The same symbolism appears in the unflattering picture of the Second Temple,
where the Lord is absent and the cult polluted from the very start:
And behold, three of those sheep returned and came and entered and began to build all
that had fallen down from that house. And they began again to build as before and
they raised up that tower and it was called the high tower. And they began again to place
a table before the tower, but all the bread on it was polluted and not pure. And besides
all these things, the eyes of the sheep were blind. (1En. 89:7274)
The symbolism is also clear when the tower appears alone. Angels take Enoch
to a high place to view the course of history, and from it he sees a tower high
above the earth (1En. 87:3), that is, the heavenly temple.
The symbolism is less clear, however, when the house appears alone, as it does
in the wilderness and at the eschaton. In the wilderness, Moses builds a house
for the Lord of the sheep (1En. 85:36); thus the house appears to represent
the tabernacle. But then Moses makes all the sheep stand in that house (1En.
85:36). (Of course, all the sheep are only those who have survived the slaugh-
ter after the worship of the Golden Calf [1En. 89:3235].) Dimant suggests that
the presence of the sheep in the house represents the people of Israel engaged in
proper cultic service. But the Torah uses the wilderness tabernacle to legislate
for the Jerusalem temple, and many sources derive laws about the sanctity of
Jerusalem from the sanctity of the wilderness camp. Thus the correspondence
also suggests that the house represents not only the tabernacle but also the camp
of Israel. Dimant points particularly to the Temple Scroll, which offers a height-
ened sense of the holiness of Jerusalem, extending purity laws from the temple
to the city of the sanctuary.24
23D. Dimant, Jerusalem and the Temple in the Animal Apocalypse (1Enoch 8590) in
Light of the Thought of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Hebr.), Shnaton 56 (198182): 17887; see
also P.A. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse of 1Enoch (SBLEJL 4; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1993), 3651.
24Dimant, Jerusalem and the Temple, 1835.
Just as in the wilderness the house stands without a tower, so too at the
eschaton:
And I stood up to see, until that old house was folded up and they removed all the
pillars, and all the beams and ornaments of that house were folded up with it and they
removed it and put it in a place to the south of the land. And I saw until the Lord of the
sheep brought a new house, larger and higher than the first one, and he erected it on the
site of the first one that had been rolled up. And all its pillars were new, and its beams
were new, and its ornaments were new and larger than (those of) the first one, the old
one that he had removed. And all the sheep were within it. (1En. 90:2829)
The pillars, beams, and ornaments of the eschatological house suggest a temple
rather than a city; Dimant notes descriptions of Jerusalem in similar terms in 2
and 3Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, as well as in a number of later works in-
cluding the new Jerusalem text from the Scrolls.25 Further, the many temple-like
features of the house indicate that the absence of a tower in the eschatological
Jerusalem signals not the absence of a temple but rather that the whole city has
become sacred. Indeed, just as the house in the wilderness contained all the
sheep, so too at the eschaton all the sheep are in the house. Thus the eschaton is
marked by a return to what the Animal Apocalypse views as the idyllic condi-
tions of the wilderness, in which all of the sheep serve the Lord.26 If so, even the
First Temple, which the Animal Apocalypse depicts in far more positive terms
than the Second, represents a falling away from the ideal. Ideally, the tower that
is the heavenly temple should find its earthly counterpart in the broader space of
a house rather than the narrow confines of a tower.
Though he largely shares Dimants view of the house as sacred city, Nick-
elsburg nonetheless insists that the new house implies an end to the cult: If
the house is thought of as city and temple, it will be a temple in which God
dwells (v.34) and where no traditional cult is necessary both because of Gods
presence and because the human race has been fully and permanently purified
of sin.27 The most famous picture of the eschatological Jerusalem is explicit
about the absence of a physical temple, thus clearly if implicitly bringing an
end to the cult: And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord
God the Almighty and the Lamb (Rev 21:22).28 Yet the picture of the Animal
Apocalypse is quite different. Indeed, though the connection of the Lord of the
sheep to the eschatological house is guaranteed by the fact that he is the one
25Dimant,
Jerusalem and the Temple, 1889.
26Dimant,
Jerusalem and the Temple,189.
27Nickelsburg, 1Enoch 1, 405.
28Nickelsburg notes that the heavenly Jerusalem that descends to earth at the end of the Book
of Revelation offers a parallel to the eschatological house in the Animal Apocalypse (1Enoch
1, 405). Dimant (Jerusalem and the Temple, 190) points out that the new house of the Animal
Apocalypse is never said to descend from heaven.
who brings it,29 the Animal Apocalypse never mentions his presence in it; the
emphasis is rather on the presence of all the sheep in the house, an image, as
we have seen, of positive cultic activity. Nor does Gods presence in the First
Temple preclude a sacrificial cult there; the Animal Apocalypse mentions both
the presence of the Lord of the sheep and the table spread before him (1En.
89:50). Further, even the elimination of sin would not dispense with the neces-
sity of the daily, Sabbath, and festival sacrifices ordained by the Torah.
Let me return now to the Animal Apocalypses negative view of the Second
Temple and the reasons for it.30 The Animal Apocalypse does not explain why
it views the sacrifices of the Second Temple as impure from the very start, but
Nickelsburg suggests that its attitude reflects differences with the temple au-
thorities over purity laws just as, in his view, the Book of the Watchers negative
attitude toward the Jerusalem temple reflects such differences.31 As I have al-
ready indicated, I am not persuaded by Nickelsburgs reading of the Book of the
Watchers on this point, but there can be no doubt that the Book of the Watchers
is interested in priests and worries about defilement. The Animal Apocalypse, on
the other hand, says nothing at all that could be construed as relevant to purity
laws and hardly mentions priests. Aaron appears only when he goes to meet
Moses on Moses return from Midian to Egypt (1En. 89:18) and when he dies
(1En. 89:37). He is left out of the account of the Golden Calf (1En. 89:3235),
presumably to save his honor. While the Animal Apocalypse notes the role in this
incident of the Levites, the sheep who help Moses to slaughter the sheep guilty
of straying from the proper path (1En. 89:35),32 it never discusses their cultic
responsibilities. The only figure to whom the Animal Apocalypse gives an active
role in the cult is Moses, who makes all of the sheep stand in the house he has
built in the wilderness (1En. 89:36).
29Dimant (Jerusalem and the Temple, 188) notes that the explicit mention of the Lords
role in bringing the house (1En. 90:29) contrasts with the anonymous third-person plural for
those who remove the old house (1En. 90:28).
30For a suggestive discussion of the negative view of the Second Temple in the Animal
Apocalypse, the Apocalypse of Weeks, Testament of Levi 16, and Assumption of Moses 4, M.A.
Knibb, The Exile in the Literature of the Intertestamental Period, HeyJ 17 (1976): 25661.
31Nickelsburg, 1Enoch 1, 395. Indeed Nickelsburg claims that these attitudes were a central
part of the worldview of the group to which the author of the Animal Apocalypse belonged:
Their self-identity turns on a pervading eschatological consciousness born of their belief that
they have received revelation about the correct law for the conduct of the cult. Tiller, Com
mentary, 3940, considers disagreement over purity laws among other possibilities, but notes
that the Animal Apocalypse is notespecially interested in legal interpretation (40).
Conversely, A.Y. Reed (The Textual Identity, Literary History, and Social Setting of
1Enoch: Reflections on George Nickelsburgs Commentary on 1Enoch 136; 81108, ARG
[2003]: 2913) has suggested that Nickelsburgs view that the Book of the Watchers has a nega-
tive attitude toward the temple and cult is in part the result of his emphasis on the continuity
between the Book of the Watchers and the Animal Apocalypse and Apocalypse of Weeks.
32Nickelsburg, 1Enoch 1, 362, suggests on the basis of this passage that the author may
have been a Levite.

It is true that the constraints of animal symbolism present certain challenges

for the depiction of priests. But that alone cannot explain their absence, for the
Animal Apocalypse regularly represents the leaders of the people of Israel as
rams, and it surely could have found an appropriate way to mark some of the
sheep as priests. Rather, the absence of priests suggests that the Animal Apoca-
lypse is not particularly interested in them because it does not see their behavior
as having special significance for the fate of Israel. Indeed, it nowhere singles
out Israels leaders for blame; all the sheep are blind and go astray.
The Animal Apocalypse is not the only apocalypse to offer an account of
Israels past, including the Second Temple period when priests served as po-
litical leaders as well as temple officials, without paying much attention to
priests. Perhaps most relevant for this discussion, priests are absent also from
the Apocalypse of Weeks, to be discussed below. Nor do they appear in Daniel.
On the other hand, the Apocryphon of Jeremiah (4Q390) provides a fragmentary
example of a review of Israels history in which priests play a prominent and
negative role:
And a]gain I shall [deliver them] into the hand of the sons of Aar[on ] seventy years
[ ] And the sons of Aaron will rule over them, and they will not walk [in] my [wa]ys,
which I command you so that you may warn them. And they will do what is evil in my
eyes, like all that which the Israelites had done in the former days of their kingdom, ex-
cept for those who will come first from the land of their captivity to build the Temple.33
It is also worth mentioning the Testament of Levis prophecy of seven jubilees of

evil priests, with a distinctive form of bad behavior for each week (ch. 17). The
Second Temple is built in the fifth week of the seventh jubilee (T. Levi 17:10);
the priests of the seventh week are said to be arrogant idolaters who engage in
forbidden sexual relations (T. Levi 17:11). The passage appears to draw on an
earlier text that offered a more detailed account of the seven jubilees.34
Unlike the Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the source on which the Testament of
Levi drew, the Animal Apocalypse does not find the distinction between priests
and the rest of Israel relevant to its account of history or to its view of the pollu-
tion of the temple. Though its picture indicates that at the time of the building of
the Second Temple all the children of Israel, presumably including priests, were
blind (1En. 89:74), nowhere does it suggest that the sacrifices of the Second
33Trans. D. Dimant, Qumran Cave 4.XXI. Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic
Texts (ed. Dimant: DJD 30; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 238.
34Thus, M. de Jonge, Levi in Aramaic Levi and in the Testament of Levi, in Pseudepi
graphic Perspectives: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Proceedings of the [Second] International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the
Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 1214 January 1997 (ed. E.G. Chazon and M.E.
Stone; STDJ 31; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 76. For an elaborate but highly speculative effort at recon-
structing that historical reference in the text, R.T. Beckwith, The Significance of the Calendar
for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology, RevQ 10 (1980): 1739.
Temple were polluted because of improper observance of purity laws or other

mistaken practices. The Animal Apocalypses critique of the Second Temple is
more like the prophetic critique of the cult: even sacrifices offered properly are
repulsive to God when the people offering them continue to sin. Or, to put it a
little differently, with God absent from the temple, how could the sacrifices be
anything other than polluted?
Finally, I turn to the Apocalypse of Weeks, a brief account of human his-
tory from beginning to end structured in ten weeks, that takes a mere fifteen
verses. Here too, as Nickelsburg notes, the temple is of central importance.35 The
tabernacle in the wilderness appears in the fourth week (1En. 93:6). The First
Temple is built in the fifth week forever (1En. 93:7), though its destruction
takes place at the end of the sixth week (1En. 93:8). The eschatological temple
is built at the end of the eighth week (1En. 91:13). The Apocalypse of Weeks is
so brief that the very fact that it mentions the tabernacle, the First Temple, and
the eschatological temple indicates their importance. Further, while the language
in which the tabernacle is mentioned is neutral, both the First Temple and the
eschatological temple are described in very positive terms. The First Temple is
called the temple of the glorious kingdom (1En. 93:7),36 and the Apocalypse
of Weeks predicts that at the eschaton, The temple of the kingdom of the Great
One will be built in the greatness of its glory for all the generations of eternity
(1En. 91:12). The problematic Second Temple, however, is never mentioned.
Yet whatever was wrong with the Second Temple, it was presumably not the
fault of priests in particular since the Apocalypse of Weeks, like the Animal
Apocalypse, is silent on the subject of priests. Above I mentioned several texts
that offer accounts of history and eschatological timetables similar to those of the
Animal Apocalypse and the Apocalypse of Weeks. Like the Animal Apocalypse,
the Apocalypse of Weeks belongs with those that ignore priests. This lack of in-
terest in priests fits well its context in the Epistle of Enoch, a work that condemns
the rich and powerful for oppressing the weak in a variety of ways, but never
mentions priests for better or for worse.
Altogether, then, the Apocalypse of Weeks appears to share the attitude of the
Animal Apocalypse to the ideal of the temple, the reality of the Second Temple,
and the place of priests in Israels history. Both revere the temple as an institu-
tion and look forward to an eschatological temple, or, in the case of the Animal
Apocalypse, an eschatological city / temple. On the other hand, both reject the
Second Temple. But neither points to purity laws as the cause of the rejection,
and neither singles out priests for blame; indeed, neither appears to view priests
as particularly important to Israels history and fate since neither has anything
to say about priests.
35Nickelsburg,
1Enoch 1, 446, 449.
36This
is Nickelsburgs emendation; see his notes, 1Enoch 1, 4356.
As we have seen, the attitude of the Book of the Watchers is quite different. It
too reveres the temple as an ideal, as can be seen from its picture of heaven as a
temple, but it differs considerably from the later works in its attitude toward the
Second Temple and its priests. Priests play a central role in its thought, and as
with the temple, it reveres the ideal even as it criticizes the reality. Thus, even as
it accuses some priests of violating the marriage laws the Torah lays down for
them, it depicts its hero Enoch as a priest. And despite the failings of some of
the priests who serve in it, it does not understand the Second Temple as fatally
polluted.
6. Found Written in the Book of Moses:
Priests in the Era of Torah
Sometime in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., the Persian governor of
Yehud intervened in the affairs of the Jerusalem temple (Neh 13:49). While
the governor was away in Persia, the high priest Eliashib had designated a room
in the temple for the use of Tobiah the Ammonite. Tobiah was a long-standing
enemy of the governor (Neh 2:10, and passim), and the governor must have
understood Eliashibs friendship with Tobiah as a sign of hostility. Thus on his
return to Jerusalem the governor ejected Tobiah and had the room purified and
returned to its former use. Eliashib may have been the high priest, but the gov-
ernor had the power of the state behind him.
The governor in question was, of course, Nehemiah, hero of the biblical book
bearing his name, a pious Jew, or at least so the Book of Nehemiah presents
him, as well as a Persian civil servant. Eliashibs response to Nehemiahs inter-
ference is not preserved for us. He would probably have insisted that he knew
more about how the temple should operate than a mere layman like Nehemiah
and that Nehemiah could hardly be more concerned about maintaining its purity
than he. He might also have claimed that the rules he had learned at his fathers
knee made it perfectly acceptable to give space in the temple to a pious gentile
such as Tobiah, who after all bore a Yahwist name. Yet no matter what Eliashib
said, Nehemiah was the governor, and he won the argument because he had the
power to enforce his views.
But the editors of the Book of Nehemiah were not content with Nehemiahs
victory.1 They also wanted to show readers that his behavior was not arbitrary.
Thus they placed the account of the confrontation over Tobiah immediately after
a report on the reading of the Book of Moses on the day of the dedication of
the wall around Jerusalem:
It was found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite should enter the congrega-
tion of God for ever because they did not greet the children of Israel with bread and
1There is no consensus about the process of composition of the Books of Ezra and Nehe-
miah. For a recent discussion with extensive references, see J.L. Wright, Rebuilding Identity:
The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (BZAW 348; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004). I am
not persuaded, however, by Wrights account of the passages under discussion here (189204,
31517).
94 6. Priests in the Era of Torah
water and they hired Balaam to curse them, but our God turned the curse into a blessing.
And it happened, when they heard the Torah, that they separated all foreigners from
Israel. (Neh 13:13)2
The chronological relationship between the dedication of the wall and Nehemi-
ahs confrontation with Eliashib is not entirely clear, since the narrative implies
that the dedication of the wall took place in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes
(Neh 5:14, 6:15), the year in which Nehemiah was away. But whatever the his-
torical reality, if any, the placement of the reading of the Book of Moses has the
advantage of implicitly justifying the expulsion of Tobiah from the temple by
appeal to the Books prohibition of Ammonites in the congregation of God. Thus
the Book of Nehemiah represents Nehemiahs interference in the temple not as
the work of an angry governor threatened by a high-ranking officials alliance
with his enemy, but as the act of a pious Jew concerned for the sanctity of the
temple and the requirements of the Book of Moses.
By the Book of Moses, the editors surely meant the same work that Ezra
read to the assembled Judaeans as the Book of the Torah of Moses (Neh 8:1),
though the specific rules and practices that the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah at-
tribute to works bearing a variety of similar names make it difficult to identify
these books with the Torah as we know it today.3 Clearly, however, the Book of
Moses included material we find in Deuteronomy: the law excluding Ammonites
and Moabites from the congregation of the Lord in Deut 23:47 offers the same
explanation for their exclusion as the passage from Nehemiah, in almost identi-
cal language.
But whatever the contents of the work, the editors strategy for justifying the
expulsion of Tobiah from the temple demonstrates the potentially revolutionary
implications of the existence of an authoritative text. Deuteronomy was pub-
lished in 622 B.C.E., decades before the destruction of the First Temple, when
a king still sat on the throne in Jerusalem; indeed its publication was part of the
program of reform undertaken under the patronage of King Josiah. Yet Deuter-
onomy placed all Israel, including the king and his priests, under its authority.4
Similarly, in the incident just discussed, Nehemiah, a layman with no claim to
priestly authority, was able to appeal to the text to justify what in an earlier day
would have been understood by one and all as a usurpation of the high priests
prerogative.
2All
translations of the Bible and other ancient texts are mine unless otherwise indicated.
3C.
Houtman, Ezra and the Law: Observations on the Supposed Relation between Ezra and
the Pentateuch, Remembering All the Way: A Collection of Old Testament Studies Published
on the Occasion of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Oudtestametische Werkgezelschap in Ned
erland (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 10315. For names of the book in Ezra and Nehemiah, Houtman,
Ezra,104 n.67. For the collection of material attributed to the book, see 1046. I am not
convinced by Houtmans conclusions, however.
4Reform and regulation of the cult and thus of its priests is one of the central concerns of
Deuteronomy. For the king, see esp. the Law of the King, Deut 17:1420.
6. Priests in the Era of Torah 95
Now I would like to turn to a passage from the Mishnah that describes another
instance of lay interference in the domain of the priesthood on the basis of an
authoritative text. On the eve of the Day of Atonement, according to the pas-
sage, the elders of the court make the high priest take an oath: Sir high priest,
we are the representatives of the court, and you are our representative and the
representative of the court. We adjure you by Him who makes His name dwell in
this house that you change not a word of all that we have said to you (m. Yoma
1:5). By the end of the Second Temple era, the period to which the Mishnah
refers, there can be no doubt of the existence of the Torah as we have it. The
Mishnah itself does not explain why the oath is necessary, but according to other
rabbinic sources the Pharisees and Sadducees differed in their interpretation of
the instructions of Leviticus 16 and thus on the proper procedure for the high
priests incense offering.5
More than the ritual of any other day of the year the ritual of the Day of Atone-
ment depends on the high priest. Yet the passage from the Mishnah claims that
the high priest had to swear to follow the instructions of representatives of the
court, experts who need not have been priests of any kind, much less connected
to a high priestly family. The assumption of the courts ability to make the high
priest do its bidding may well be rabbinic fantasy, of a piece with the claim in
the next mishnah (1:6) that only if the high priest was himself a sage was he per-
mitted to expound Scripture on the evening of the Day of Atonement; otherwise
disciples of the sages were to expound before him. But even if it is fantasy, the
Mishnah points clearly to the tension between the Torah and traditional priestly
authority. Only because the laws of the temple ritual of the Day of Atonement
are contained in the Torah is it possible to imagine the court contesting the way
the high priest chose to perform the ritual.
The Torahs impact on the power and autonomy of the priesthood is also evi-
dent in a variety of texts from the period between Nehemiah and the Mishnah.
One striking example is 4QMMT, which offers an extended critique of the way
priests perform their rituals, leading the people astray through their errors. The
critique derives its power from its repeated references, implicit and explicit, to
passages in the Torah.6 The priests attacked by 4QMMT would presumably have
defended their practices, and their defense would surely have involved contest-
ing 4QMMTs interpretation of particular passages. This sort of dispute is pos-
sible only because both parties acknowledge the authority of the text.
The appeal to the Torah in other works critical of priests in the Second Tem-
ple period is often implicit. Thus the Book of the Watchers and Aramaic Levi
5T.
Yoma 1:8, y. Yoma 1:7, b. Yoma 19b, 53a; Sipra Aharei Mot 3.11.
6On
the use of Scripture in 4QMMT, see M.J. Bernstein, The Employment and Interpreta-
tion of Scripture in 4QMMT: Preliminary Observations, in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspec
tives on Qumran Law and History (ed. J. Kampen and M.J. Bernstein; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1996), 2951.
criticize, without ever citing the Torah, the same priestly marriage practice that
4QMMT objects to.7 For these writings to have cited the Torah would have been
anachronistic for their fictive settings in the pre-Sinaitic period; nonetheless,
their authors must have assumed that readers could be counted on to make the
connection to the Torahs laws. True, priests could certainly ignore the criticism
of these works, whose authors, unlike Nehemiah, had no means to impose their
positions. Nevertheless, the idea that priestly practice was open to discussion
on the basis of the contents of the Torah could not fail to weaken the traditional
authority of the priesthood.
The texts just discussed leave no doubt of the public character of the Torah
during the Second Temple period, in the sense that a learned elite had access to
copies that it studied carefully. The ideal of universal access to the authoritative
text is expressed in Deuteronomy, which decrees public reading every seven
years in Jerusalem during the festival of Sukkot (Deut 31:1011), but the evi-
dence for nonelite access is much more limited. Public reading every seven years
would hardly guarantee lay familiarity with the text, and in fact there is little
evidence to confirm that such reading was practiced during the Second Temple
period. Indeed, evidence for any kind of public reading is quite limited, and it
exists primarily for the Diaspora. Nor is there much evidence before the first
century C.E. for the institution in which ordinary people would be most likely
to acquire their knowledge of the Torah the synagogue.8
Despite the paucity of evidence, D.M. Goodblatt has recently argued for
knowledge of the Torah as one of the central components of Jewish national
identity in the Second Temple period. After surveying the limited evidence, he
points to another kind of evidence that, in his view, strongly suggests a practice
of public reading of the Torah in Judaea from the third century B.C.E. on: the
significant number of manuscripts of books of the Torah that survive among the
Dead Sea Scrolls, at Masada, and at sites in the Judaean desert associated with
the Bar Kokhba revolt, which must represent only a very small fraction of what
once existed. Goodblatt argues that the only way to understand the numbers in
light of the likely size of the population of Judaea and its low level of literacy
is to see the scrolls of the Torah as performance texts, intended for public
reading.9 If Goodblatt is correct, then even illiterate people were in a position
7M. Himmelfarb, Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of the
Maccabean Revolt, JSQ 6 (1999): 124; Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and
Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 258. To the
references there, add Bernstein, Employment, 46, in tentative support of reading the passage
in 4QMMT as insisting on priestly endogamy.
8D.M. Goodblatt, Elements of Jewish Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 2843.

9Goodblatt, Elements, 4348. He cites Keith Hopkinss comment that even for ancient
Egypt, with its favorable climatic conditions, the survival ratio [for texts] could be lower than
1:10,000 (Conquest by Book, in Literacy in the Roman World [ed. M.K. Beard et al.; Ann
to form opinions about whether priestly practice conformed to the dictates of

the Torah. Even if he is not, there can be no doubt that the existence of a written
document enabled at least a small group of learned experts to compare reality to
what the Torah prescribed.
Many scholars have assumed that the authors of texts such as 4QMMT, the
Book of the Watchers, and Aramaic Levi were priests, on the assumption that
only priests would be sufficiently interested in the details of priestly practice
to criticize the mistaken behavior of other priests. I reject this assumption: if
the fate of the people of Israel depended on what priests did in the temple,
surely even nonpriests would have wanted to see it done right. Still, it is quite
likely that the authors of at least some of these texts were of priestly ancestry,
for priests appear to have made up a significant portion of the learned class of
Judean society in the Second Temple period. Ezra, a scribe expert in the Torah
of Moses (Ezra 7:6), to whom the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah attribute the
establishment of the Torah as the constitution of the Jewish people, was a priest
by ancestry. Joshua ben Sira at the beginning of the second century B.C.E. is
often thought to have been a priest; he was undoubtedly a scribe by profession.
But even if the authors of 4QMMT, the Book of the Watchers, and Aramaic Levi
were priests, they offered their criticism of priestly practice not on the basis of
access to priestly tradition but on the basis of the text of the Torah.
Yet if the Torah made their life difficult, priests had only themselves to blame
for it.10 Nehemiah cites a passage from Deuteronomy as the justification for
overruling Eliashib, but the oath that elders of the court make the high priest
swear is necessary because of a dispute about a ritual described in P, the priestly
source of the Torah. In most ancient Near Eastern societies, knowledge of how
the cult and other rituals were to be performed was restricted to priests, and the
written instructions were kept secret.11 But the priests of ancient Israel or at
least those of them who stood behind P chose to make public the central as-
pects of their task in documents that became part of the Torah. We have already
Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1991], 133 n.2). Goodblatt suggests that in Judaea
one might expect an even lower survival ratio because the climate is not as favorable: it is no
accident that the manuscript finds come from the Judaean desert. My papyrologist colleague
AnneMarie Luijendijk expresses (in private correspondence) some skepticism about Hopkinss
ratio, and I might add that Hopkins himself is more cautious than the quotation above might
suggest: he goes on to say that the three surviving copies of the Oracle of the Potter reflect
the existence of anywhere from three to more than 35,000 copies. Nonetheless, whatever the
appropriate ratio, it is hard not to be impressed by the number of scrolls of books of the Torah
found at a small number of sites in the Judean Desert.
10So too J.W. Watts, Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 601.

11J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1434; A.L. Oppenheim,
completed by E. Reiner, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (rev. ed.; Chica-
go: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 181, 1867, 1923; S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient
Egypt (trans. D. Lorton; new ed.; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 356, 81, 91.
seen the consequences of the publication of P: criticism from lay people, who
were now in a position to form an opinion about how well priests were doing
their job, and from unhappy priests, who now had objective criteria to point to.
The Torah contains a second body of priestly material in addition to P, the
Holiness source known as H a somewhat later work that concerns itself not
only with cultic and ritual matters but also with the ethical behavior required for
Israel to be a holy people.12 H understands the entire land to be holy and thus,
like the sanctuary according to P, subject to defilement. As a result, lay people
become more important to maintaining sacred space in a state of purity. Thus,
Hs efforts to enlarge the definition of holiness also involve a certain shift of
power away from the priesthood.13 My discussion here, however, focuses on the
laws of P, which are concerned exclusively with the cult and ritual practices and
are thus in some sense the most essentially priestly.
There is no consensus about the date of P, or even whether it is preexilic
or postexilic,14 but for our purposes this does not really matter. For if P pre-
ceded Deuteronomy, it seems reasonable to conclude that priestly willingness
to publish a presentation of the central priestly activities grew out of the same
appreciation of the power of the written text reflected in Deuteronomy. If, how-
ever, its publication followed Deuteronomy, it was presumably in imitation of
Deuteronomy, with the intention of confirming the status of the cult in the era
of the Torah of Moses.
Although much of P consists of narrative, it is the laws of the first part of the
Book of Leviticus (chs. 116) and a significant portion of the Book of Numbers
that are of interest here. Many of these laws are instructions for the sacrificial
cult or other rituals performed by priests. Yet the rhetoric of these laws for-
mulated by priests and requiring priestly participation is inclusive. Again and
again God tells Moses to report his words to the children of Israel;15 only rarely
is Moses told to report them specifically to Aaron and his sons.16 Sometimes
God addresses priestly laws to both Moses and Aaron,17 but he speaks to Aaron
alone only rarely and in extraordinary circumstances.18 Thus the priestly authors
emphasize that the laws are directed to all Israel even when they can be fulfilled
only with the assistance of priests. It is also noteworthy that P requires lay par-
12My understanding of H and its relationship to P is most indebted to I. Knohl, The Sanc
tuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
13Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 623.
14For a recent discussion of the state of the question, with extensive bibliography, which
favors a postexilic date, see J. Blenkinsopp, An Assessment of the Alleged Pre-Exilic Date of
the Priestly Material in the Pentateuch, ZAW 108 (1996): 495518.
15E.g., Lev 1:2; 4:1; 5:20; 7:22; 12:1.
16E.g., Lev 6:1, 18.
17E.g., Lev 11:1; 13:1; 14:33; 15:1.
18Lev 10:8.
ticipation in the process of sacrifice.19 This practice stands in contrast to that of

other ancient cults in which priests performed rituals out of view of the laity.20 In
other words, the decision to make public the rules of the cult can be seen as part
of a larger priestly world view that is quite distinctive in the ancient Near East.
One other aspect of the public character of P should be noted. For all that
many modern readers find the priestly laws excessively detailed, there is a great
deal they do not tell us about how rituals were to be performed. Presumably
this missing information was part of the living tradition of priestly practice that
young priests learned as they came of age to serve. It is noteworthy that Isaacs
instructions to Levi in Aramaic Levi, a work composed in pre-Hasmonean times,
cover just the sort of subjects one would expect such oral tradition to include,
such as directions for additional ablutions beyond those decreed by the Torah,
an exhortation to avoid getting blood on priestly garments, and a list of types of
wood suitable for use on the altar. Although there are some points concerning
which the instructions in Aramaic Levi appear to stand in tension with the rules
of the Torah, such as the order in which the various parts of the sacrificial ritual
are to be performed, there is nothing to suggest that they reflect sectarian objec-
tions to the laws of the Torah, and they may well reflect actual temple practice.21
The descriptions of the working of the temple in the Letter of Aristeas, perhaps
from the second century B.C.E., and in the mishnaic tractate Tamid, from the
beginning of the third century C.E., even if they are entirely the product of
their authors imaginations, offer a good indication of another kind of material
missing in the priestly material of the Torah: principles for integrating the rather
individualistic picture of sacrifice in the Torah into the institutional framework of
the temple. Both rhetoric and content, then, make it clear that P is not a handbook
written for priests that was later published in the Torah. Rather, it was written to
represent the central aspects of priestly responsibilities not only to priests but to
the entire people of Israel.22
19E.g.,
Lev 1:45; 3:2, 8.
20Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 1434.
21See M. Himmelfarb, Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incense: The Law of the Priesthood
in Aramaic Levi and Jubilees, in Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Reli
gions (ed. R. Boustan and A.Y. Reed; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 10616
(in this volume, 6172); and L.H. Schiffman, Sacrificial Halakhah in the Fragments of the
Aramaic Levi Document from Qumran, the Cairo Genizah, and Mt. Athos Monastery, in Re
working the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran. Proceedings of a Joint Symposium
by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature and the
Hebrew University Institute for Advanced Studies Research Group on Qumran, 1517 Janu
ary, 2002 (ed. E.G. Chazon, D. Dimant, and R.A. Clements; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 177202.
22Watts, Ritual, offers a full-scale rhetorical analysis of Leviticus 116 (though without
much attention to chs. 1215), which he sees as priestly propaganda for the Aaronides mo-
nopoly on sacrifices, though he is more respectful of priests and their motives than this summary
might suggest.
Nehemiahs confrontation with Eliashib and the elders admonishment of the

high priest on the eve of the Day of Atonement demonstrate the potential for
tension between priests and expert interpreters of the Torah. Yet the composition
of P shows us that the priestly authors of P operated like scribes. The presenta-
tion and arrangement of Ps laws reflect a tradition of scribal practice parallel to
other biblical and ancient Near Eastern scribal traditions.23 The colophon, This
is the torah of , which serves to organize a significant portion of the material
of Leviticus and Numbers (Lev 6:2, 7, 18; 7:1, 11, 37; 11:46; 12:7; 13:59; 14:2,
32, 54, 57; 15:32; Num 5:29; 6:13; 19:14), is the priestly counterpart to the char-
acteristic colophons of prophetic and wisdom literature.24 The scribal activity
of the transmitters of the priestly corpus can also be detected in specifications,
clarifications, and exegetical resolution of tensions or contradictions within the
corpus.25 In the Second Temple period, as already noted, the combination of
priestly ancestry and scribal profession in a single individual was by no means
unusual. Indeed, the combination comes to represent an ideal. Thus Enoch in
the Book of the Watchers is explicitly a scribe of righteousness and implicitly
a priest, while the high priest Simon the Righteous is represented as the twin of
Wisdom herself in the Wisdom of Ben Sira. Teaching also figures as a priestly
duty in H (Lev 10:11),26 and frequently in Deuteronomy and in a variety of exilic
and postexilic works.27 True, it does not figure as a priestly duty in P, but the very
existence of P suggests the importance of priests who were also scribes for the
very formation of the Torah.
In several influential articles over the past two decades D.R. Schwartz has
argued that the fundamental difference between the priestly law of the Second
Temple period (that is, the law of the Sadducees and Qumran sectarians) and
Pharisaic-rabbinic law is that priestly law is realist while Pharisaic-rabbinic law
is nominalist.28 By this Schwartz means that the priestly system understands the
23Thus M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1985), 2632.
24Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 789; Fishbane, Biblical Colophons, Textual Criti-
cism and Legal Analogies, CBQ 42 (1980): 43849, esp. 43943; Fishbane, Accusations
of Adultery: A Study of Law and Scribal Practice in Numbers 5:1131, HUCA 45 (1974):
2545, esp. 325.
25Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 16670, 18994, 1979, 20910, 2167, 2208.
26Knohl, Sanctuary of Silence, 689; Milgrom claims that vv.1011 of Lev 10 comprise a
late interpolation (Leviticus 116, 617).

27Milgrom notes 2Kgs 17:27; Ezek 22:26; 44:23; Hag 2:11; Mal 2:7 (Leviticus 116, 52).
28See esp. Law and Truth: On Qumran-Sadducean and Rabbinic Views of the Law, in The
Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, (ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport; Leiden: Brill,
and Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992); Between Sages and Priests in the Time of the Second
Temple, in D. Schwartz, Studies in the Period of the Second Temple (Jerusalem: Merkaz
Zalman Shazar, 1996) (in Hebrew); From Priests on Their Right to Christians on Their Left?
Toward the Interpretation and Development of a Mishnaic Story (m. Rosh HaShanah), Tarbiz
74 (20042005): 2141 (in Hebrew); Justifications by Qal va omer as Sadducean Realism,
Massekhet 5 (2006): 14556 (in Hebrew). Those who have embraced Schwartzs analysis in-
laws of the Torah as reflecting and revealing the way the world really is (acts
are prohibited by the Torah because they are bad) while the Pharisaic-rabbinic
system understands the laws to create that reality (acts are bad because they are
prohibited by the Torah).29 In Schwartzs view it stands to reason that priests,
who owe their status to the natural fact of descent, would view the world in real-
ist terms, while Pharisees and rabbis, who derive their authority not from nature
but from expertise in the law itself, would embrace nominalism. In response to
critics, Schwartz has revised his argument to take account of a significant amount
of realism in Pharisaic-rabbinic law.30 He now suggests that the best evidence
for the underlying characteristics of each system is to be found in polemical
contexts and that the disputes between the two schools of law demonstrate that
the Pharisaic-rabbinic system is fundamentally nominalist.31
Though I find Schwartzs argument provocative and stimulating, I am skepti-
cal about the claim that the fundamental difference between priestly and Phar-
isaic-rabbinic law is the difference between realism and nominalism. In fact, I
must admit that I am not persuaded that such a fundamental difference exists,
nor am I convinced that there was a unified corpus of priestly law that stood in
contrast to protorabbinic law in the late Second Temple period, as the scholarly
consensus holds.32 The point I would like to make here, however, is independent
of the perhaps eccentric views to which I have just confessed. The point is this:
there are significant nominalist elements in the foundational text of priestly law,
the P document itself. Though Schwartzs argument concerns later interpreta-
tions of biblical law rather than biblical law itself,33 I believe that an analysis of
P is nonetheless relevant to it. For if my understanding of P is correct, it calls
clude C. Werman and A. Shemesh (see the references in Schwartz, Justifications, 146 n.3),
D. Rothstein (Sexual Union and Sexual Offences in Jubilees, JSJ 35 [2004]: 36384, esp.
371), and E. Regev (On Blood, Impurity, and Body Perception in the Halakhic Schools in the
Second Temple and Talmudic Period, AJSR 27 [2003]: 122, esp. 167 [1867], 22 [181] [in
Hebrew]).
29Justifications, 1456; see also the discussion of specific examples in Law and Truth,
2315. Schwartz cites Y. Silman, Halakhic Determinations of a Nominalist and Realistic

Nature: Legal and Philosophical Considerations, Dine Israel 12 (19841985): 24966 (in
Hebrew) as the source for his use of the categories (Law and Truth, 230 n.8; Justification,
145 n.2).
30Schwartz, Justifications, 1478. Schwartz also notes an instance of nominalism in
priestly law (148, esp. n.10), but he clearly perceives rabbinic realism as the problem for his
argument, presumably because there are more examples of rabbinic realism than of priestly
nominalism. This imbalance fits the argument of J.L. Rubenstein, Nominalism and Realism
in Qumranic and Rabbinic Law: A Reassessment, DSD 6 (1999): 1803, that realism is the
default mode for legal systems. Rubenstein (Nominalism, 15783) offers the most extended
critique of Schwartz of which I am aware; for other criticism and responses to Schwartzs argu-
ment, see Schwartz, Justifications, 146 nn. 4, 6.
31Justifications, 1478.
32Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 11214; A.I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish
Sects in the Maccabean Era (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 56, 7580.

33As Schwartz notes (Law and Truth, 236).
into question Schwartzs claim that the hereditary character of priestly authority
predisposes priests to legal realism.
The topics from P that I would like to consider, very briefly, are skin afflic-
tions in human beings and plague in houses, both termed tsara at in the text of
Leviticus. Schwartz comments on these laws in his first article on the realism /
nominalism divide, suggesting that they provide evidence for priestly realism
before the Second Temple period, but also noting some nominalist element in
the particular law for plague in houses that I discuss below.34 My goal is not to
call into question Schwartzs claim of realist elements in P but rather to insist on
the presence of significant nominalist elements as well. And though I focus here
on one category of Ps purity laws, I am confident that a careful examination of
the entirety of Ps laws would yield other examples of nominalism.
Ps purity laws constitute a system in the sense that the rules for one type of
impurity allow us to deduce rules for others. Thus, for example, although Lev
15:1924 does not mention bathing as part of the process of purification from
menstrual impurity, it is clear from elsewhere in the Bible (2Sam 11:24) that
bathing was required, as the rules for purification from other types of genital
discharge imply.35 The organic character of the system fits a realist understand-
ing of purity and impurity; a nominalist approach would presumably understand
each type of impurity, defined by its own laws, as distinct from the others and
without any bearing on them. Ps understanding of the way in which impurity is
transmitted also reflects a realist conception.36
Yet Ps laws for plague in houses include a remarkable instance of legal
nominalism:
When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an erup-
tive plague upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come
and tell the priest, saying, Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.
The priest shall order the house cleared before the priest enters to examine the plague,
so that nothing in the house may become unclean; after that the priest shall enter to
examine the house. (Lev 14:3436, NJPS)
A realist view of impurity would surely presume the contents removed from
the house to be impure on the basis of their exposure to plague before it was
diagnosed.
34The passage in which Schwartz discerns realism concerns the person who has already been
declared pure by the priest after having been quarantined for the required two periods of seven
days with ambiguous symptoms (Lev 13:3137). The immediate designation of the afflicted
person as impure is realist in Schwartzs view: the priest obviously got the facts wrong the first
time and corrects his mistake. A nominalist approach would require starting the whole process
over (Law and Truth, 236). The discussion of nominalism in the law for plague in houses
appears in a footnote (Law and Truth, 2367 n.22).
36See Rubenstein, Nominalism, 1701, who argues that rabbinic laws about transmission
of impurity also reflect a realist view.

Another indication of the presence of nominalist elements in P emerges from

comparison to ancient Mesopotamian rituals for treating fungus in houses. These
rituals understand the fungus as an omen of disaster and require its removal in
an effort to avert the disaster.37 But while the green or red eruptions of plague
in houses (Lev 14:37) sound quite unpleasant, P does not see them as an omen,
nor does it suggest that they reflect any wrongdoing on the part of the owner of
the house. In light of the realist attitude toward fungus indicated by the Meso-
potamian rituals, the absence of a connection in P between plague in houses and
immorality or an external evil can be seen as reflecting a nominalist approach to
impurity: the house is impure because the rules say so.
Nor is Ps nominalist understanding of the impurity of tsara at limited to
plague in houses. Elsewhere in the Bible skin afflictions are quite explicitly de-
scribed as punishment for sin. Thus, in a story in the Book of Numbers, Miriam
is visited with skin afflictions for speaking ill of Moses (Num 12:10), while in
the Book of Chronicles, King Uzziah is struck with scale disease in response
to his arrogant attempt to offer incense in the temple (2Chr 26:1619). P, in
contrast, never mentions sin in its laws of skin afflictions.38
True, there is a certain tension between Ps understanding of impurity and por-
tions of the rituals P decrees for purification, such as the release of a bird as part
of the process of purification from skin afflictions (Lev 14:47). This ritual is
an adaptation of Mesopotamian and Hittite rituals in which birds are released to
carry away illness, headache, or sin.39 But P never claims that skin afflictions are
the result of sin, so there is no sin to remove.40 And while P appears to understand
skin afflictions as disease, since it speaks of the sufferer being healed (Lev 14:3),
the impurity and the disease are not coextensive. Someone whose entire body is
covered with the afflictions, though surely ill, is pure (Lev 13:13), and the ritual
of purification does not take place until after the disease is gone (Lev 14:3). Thus
it is neither sin nor disease but only impurity that the bird carries away. Once
again Ps attitude toward impurity should be characterized as nominalist: skin
afflictions cause impurity not because they are a sign of immorality or disease,
but because the rules say so.
37Milgrom Leviticus 116, 865; see also S. Meier, House Fungus: Mesopotamia and Israel
(Lev 14:3353), RB 96 (1989): 18492.

38The same is true of Ps view of menstrual impurity (Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 89).
39Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 83435. Milgrom notes that the scapegoat ritual of the Day of
Atonement, which has a similar function, has been transformed to make it more suitable to Ps
worldview
40Note, however, that Milgrom finds evidence that P shared the popular view of the relation-
ship of skin afflictions to sin in the four different sacrifices P requires as part of the process of
purification from scale disease (Lev 14:1020); Milgrom sees these as an effort to expiate all
possible types of wrongdoing that might have led to the affliction (Leviticus 116, 858). Even
if Ps rituals take account of the popular understanding, however, this does not mean that P
shares the view.
In his critique of Schwartz, J.L. Rubenstein argues that living legal systems
are always realist because laws change when a societys understanding of reality
changes. Rubenstein thus takes it as obvious that biblical law is realist. What
nominalism there is in rabbinic law reflects the distance of the rabbis from the
society in which the biblical law they interpreted took shape; if the Dead Sea
texts display even less nominalism, it is a result of their greater proximity, both
chronological and ideological, to the society of the First Temple period.41 Ru-
bensteins general formulation about living legal systems may be correct, but,
as we have just seen, the worldview reflected in Ps purity laws stands at some
distance not only from that of other ancient Near Eastern societies but from that
of its own society as well. Despite the fact that their claim to authority rested in
their priestly ancestry, then, the authors of P not infrequently took the nominalist
approach Schwartz identifies with the rabbis.
I would like to conclude my discussion of P with Milgroms suggestive read-
ing of the negotiations between Aaron and Moses after the death of Aarons
sons (Leviticus 10) as Ps consideration of the relationship between priestly
and nonpriestly authority.42 In the passage Moses rebukes Aarons surviving
sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, for failing to eat the goat of the purification offering
brought on behalf of the people before the deaths of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 9:15)
as prescribed (Lev 6:19). In response to Moses criticism, Aaron points to the
disaster that has just befallen his family as justification for their behavior, and
Moses accepts Aarons answer (Lev 10:1920). The story thus represents Aaron
as a greater expert in ritual matters than Moses,43 but, more striking in a work
composed by priests, it nonetheless makes Moses the authority to whom Aaron
must answer. In accordance with his view that P dates to the period of the First
Temple, Milgrom understands the story as acknowledgment of priestly subservi-
ence to prophetic authority.44
Whatever the intention of the authors of the passage, the passage as it stands
clearly subordinates Aaron to Moses despite giving Aaron the last word. And the
attitude of this story toward Moses does not stand alone in the priestly corpus. As
41Nominalism,
1803.
42Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 57, 6267; for a discussion of why P thought Aarons sons
shouldnt eat of the purification offering and the meaning of Aarons justification for his sons
behavior, see 63540.
43For P, despite his role in Aarons ordination, Moses is not a priest (Milgrom, 57: Moses
does not get the right thigh, and the theophany occurs only after Moses has completed his task
and when Aaron and his sons are officiating).
44Watts, Ritual, offers a somewhat similar reading but emphasizes that the passage is at-
tempting to restore to priests some of the authority they have lost to the Torah (1147). In
contrast, Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 2268, understands the passage as an exegetical
effort to resolve the tension between the account in Leviticus 9 and the laws of Lev 6:911.
Furthermore, Fishbane believes that what Moses hears and accepts in Lev 10:20 is not Aarons
words, but an oracle of the Lord. Knohl, Sanctuary, takes Lev 10:611 as Hs work, connected
to Hs laws for mourning by the high priest (Lev 21:1012) (689).
already noted, P repeatedly depicts priestly rules as communicated to Aaron and

his sons through Moses, a picture that makes Moses the ultimate authority even
as it diminishes tension between priestly authority and the authority of Moses.
Finally, it is worth remembering that even if the authors of the story understood
Moses as a prophet, by the middle of the Second Temple period Moses would
have been understood also as archetype of the scribes, the expert interpreters of
the Torah of Moses.
But despite the similarities between priests on the one hand and scribes or
rabbis on the other, there is no denying a crucial difference: as Schwartz insists,
priests are born, scribes and rabbis are made. Priesthood in ancient Israel was in a
sense a profession, and young priests must have undergone some kind of training
before undertaking the responsibilities of priesthood. But even if skill or aptitude
made one priest a better priest than another, no amount of skill or aptitude could
make anyone a priest if he could not claim to be a descendant of Aaron.
In a way the hereditary character of ancient Israels priesthood is surprising.
The constellation of ideals and attitudes just discussed would be better served
by a priesthood constituted more along the lines of a civil service so that becom-
ing a priest would be more like becoming a scribe. In fact, other ancient Near
Eastern priesthoods were not hereditary, although certain prestigious priestly
offices might tend to run in families.45 And the stakes were higher for Jews, who
had only a single national priesthood on which to rely, than for other peoples
of the ancient Near East, who had a variety of priesthoods to serve the cults of
multiple gods.
There is, to be sure, a certain paradox in the existence of a national priesthood
in ancient Israel. If, as the Torah demanded, all Israel was to be a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation (Exod 19:6), what need was there for a special class
of priests? This problem certainly occurred to the writers of the Torah, who put
a similar question into the mouths of the wilderness rebels: All the assembly is
holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you exalt
yourselves over the congregation of the Lord? (Num 16:3).46 Yet for the most
part ancient Jews lived with the tension between the holiness of all Israel and the
existence of a special class of priests without too much difficulty. They seem to
have come to the conclusion that, in the words of 4QMMT, while all Israel was
holy, the priests were holy of holies.47
45Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 523 and references there.
46The
account of the rebellion appears to consist of three strands: the rebellions of Korah
and the Levites, of the leaders of the assembly (Num 16:2), and of Dathan and Abiram. The
passage quoted above belongs to the strand associated with the leaders of the assembly. For a
recent discussion, see Knohl, Sanctuary, 7385. Knohl identifies the question as coming from
the H source, which makes it all the more interesting.
474QMMT B 7582; see Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 278.
The tension between ancestry and merit, on the other hand, did cause some
ancient Jews considerable anxiety. The concern is clear as far back as the epic
strand of the Torah, which suggests that the descendants of Levi earned the
priesthood by putting their ancestors violent tendencies to pious use in the
service of Moses and the Lord after the incident of the Golden Calf (Exod
32:2629). Above I noted that Enoch in the Book of the Watchers and Simon the
Righteous in the Wisdom of Ben Sira reflect an ideal that combines priestly and
scribal elements. But the combination can also be seen as an effort to alleviate
anxiety about the hereditary right to priestly office by supplementing it with a
claim based on wisdom and piety.48
Most priests, however, probably lost little sleep over the problems inherent
in their hereditary right to their office and felt no need to reimagine the Jewish
priesthood as a meritocracy. Thus, though P offers an account of how Phinehas
earned the high priesthood for himself and his descendants, it does not present
the priestly status of Aaron and his descendants as something they somehow
earned but, rather, as Gods choice, in contrast to the epic strands account of
the ordination of the Levites. A similar attitude is reflected in Aramaic Levi and
the writings of Josephus. Aramaic Levi praises wisdom and has Levi encourage
his sons to acquire it (Ar. Levi 82105), but the wisdom in question is practical
and secular, Josephs sphere rather than Levis; for the task of the priest, proper
ancestry a subject about which Aramaic Levi feels strongly (Ar. Levi 1718)
is enough.49 Similarly, after the destruction of the Second Temple Josephus
brags of both his priestly ancestry and his learning, but he seems to see them as
two separate claims to prestige and does not draw a connection between them.50
I think it is safe to assume that most priests and most Jews as well shared the
confidence of Aramaic Levi and Josephus that descent from Aaron was enough
for priests, as, after all, the Torah itself decreed.
Furthermore, the problematic fact of being defined by genealogy was not
unique to the priesthood. It was shared by the entire people of Israel. Just as
the odds of individual priests fulfilling their mandate for holiness were not very
high, so too the odds of the people of Israel achieving holiness were low, for
the very same reason. Thus, sectarians intent on actualizing holiness moved
away from a genealogical definition of Israel. The Damascus Document claims
that the true Israel was constituted by members of the sect alone. The Qumran
yaad went even further. The Rule of the Community has little to say about Is-
rael. Rather, the members of the yaad are Children of Light, set apart from the
creation of the world from the Children of Darkness, that is, the gentiles and all
Jews who were not members of the sect. Like the sectarians of the Scrolls, early
Christians rejected genealogy in favor of holiness, though more consistently than
48Himmelfarb,
Kingdom of Priests, esp. 512.
49Himmelfarb,
Kingdom of Priests, 258, 4750.
50Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 501; see references to Josephus there.
the sectarians of the Scrolls they understood the true Israel to include believers
of both Jewish and gentile ancestry.51
In contrast to the Jewish priesthood, the rabbis constituted a profession or
class in which membership was determined at least in theory by aptitude, skill,
and piety. In reality, family and social status played a very significant role;52 but
even if the story of the poor shepherd who became Rabbi Aqiba is fiction, it is
a fiction that reveals something about rabbinic self-understanding. One great
advantage of the way in which the rabbinic class was formed is that it made
rabbis somewhat more likely than priests to live up to the standards they set for
themselves. Yet despite the way they constituted their own class, the rabbis none-
theless embraced a genealogical definition of the people of Israel. I have argued
elsewhere that their insistence that descent from Abraham in itself was enough
for membership in the holy people and that all Israel had a portion in the world
to come was in considerable part a response to Christian efforts to deny the title
Israel to descendants of Abraham according to the flesh even as they claimed it
for descendants of Abraham according to the promise.53
What difference, then, did 70 make? My argument has been that despite the in-
herent tension between the authority of priests and the authority of the Torah, the
ancient Israelite priesthood as represented in the P document was in many ways
surprisingly close in its ethos or at least its ideals to the scribes of the Second
Temple period and even to the rabbis of the period after the Destruction. The au-
thors of the priestly corpus of the Torah would perhaps have been offended that
Nehemiah and the elders of the court scolded high priests as Nehemiahs memoir
reports and the Mishnah instructs. But the priestly authors would have embraced
the idea that the behavior of the high priest and all other priests should conform
to the mandates of the authoritative text. Perhaps they would have differed with
the rabbis of the Mishnah over the procedure for the high priests incense offer-
ing. But the difference would have been over the meaning of Leviticus 16, not
over the authority of the passage.
But with the permanent loss of the temple, any tension between the temple and
the Torah was resolved once and for all in favor of the Torah. Priests retained a
certain prestige on the basis of their ancestry, but in the absence of the temple
they had no claim to power. Yet the triumph of the Torah was incomplete, for
without a temple or political sovereignty many of its dictates could no longer be
51Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 11542. On early Christian self-understanding as an
ethnos, D.K. Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2005). See also P. Townsend, Another Race? Ethnicity, Univer-
salism, and the Emergence of Christianity (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2009), which
includes a critical assessment of Buell.
52S.J.D. Cohen, The Rabbi in Second Century Jewish Society, in The Cambridge His
tory of Judaism vol. 3: The Early Roman Period (ed. W. Horbury, W.D. Davies, and J. Sturdy;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. 9413, 94856, 9747.
carried out. Some scholars have argued that the rabbis had little use for priests
and temple and did their best to minimize their importance.54 My own view is
that the rabbis were somewhat less unenthusiastic about the temple and hostile
to priests than these scholars claim.55 But either way, despite the priests loss
of their traditional tasks, the rabbis could not fail to acknowledge their signifi-
cance and to anticipate the restoration of those tasks at the eschaton because
the Torah demanded it. Thus, even as the authors of the P document opened
their descendants to the scrutiny of Torah experts and thus diminished priestly
authority, they succeeded in securing for the priesthood a permanent place in the
imagination of the heirs of those experts.
54See, e.g., P. Schfer, Rabbis and Priests, or: How to Do Away with the Glorious Past of
the Sons of Aaron, in Antiquity in Antiquity (ed. G. Gardner and K. Osterloh; Tbingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2008), 15572.
Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
7. Sexual Relations and Purity in the Temple
Scroll and the Book of Jubilees
The relationship between the Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll has been
a subject of discussion since the beginning of the study of the Scroll, when Y.
Yadins edition noted many parallels between the two works.1 The discussion
of the relationship has focused on the question of shared legal traditions.2 In
his programmatic sketch of the history of halakhah inspired by 4QMMT, Y.
Sussmann includes Jubilees and the Temple Scroll among the representatives of
ancient priestly halakhah.3 Several scholars who have undertaken more detailed
comparisons of the calendars and the associated laws of sacrifice have concluded
that despite certain differences the two works belong to the same legal and
exegetical tradition.4 The calendar has been of particular interest because Jubi
lees calendar appears to have been very similar to the calendar in use at Qumran.
A shared calendar would constitute a strong link between the Temple Scroll and
the Qumran community, and the scholars who believe that the Temple Scroll uses
the Jubilees calendar view the Scroll as a product of the community itself or of
1Y. Yadin,( 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Shrine of the
Book, 1977). B.Z. Wacholder, The Relationship between 11Q Torah (The Temple Scroll) and
the Book of Jubilees: One Single or Two Independent Compositions?, SBLSP 24 (1985): 205,
claims that Yadin cites Jubilees three times as often as any other work from the apocrypha or
pseudepigrapha.
2Wacholder has even argued that the two texts form a single work (The Relationship,
20517). Earlier, in The Dawn of Qumran: The Sectarian Torah and the Teacher of Righteous
ness (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1983), 4162, he understood the Temple Scroll
as a particularly important source for Jubilees.
3Y. Sussman, :-
, Tarbiz 59 (198990): 1176, esp. 2735 (English translation without extensive

annotation: Appendix 1: The History of Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Talmu-
dic Observations on MIQAT MA AE HA-TORAH [4QMMT], in E. Qimron and J. Strugnell,
eds., Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqat Ma ae ha-Torah [DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994],
179200, esp. 18791).
4J.M. Baumgarten, The Calendars of the Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, VT 37
(1987): 7178; G.J. Brooke, The Temple Scroll: A Law Unto Itself? in Law and Religion:
Essays on the Place of the Law in Israel and Early Christianity (ed. B. Lindars; Cambridge:
James Clarke, 1988), 3638; J.C. VanderKam, The Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees,
in Temple Scroll Studies (ed. G.J. Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 21136;
R.T. Beckwith, The Temple Scroll and Its Calendar: Their Character and Purpose, RevQ 18
(1997): 1319. The quotation is taken from VanderKam, Temple Scroll, 232.
112 7. Sexual Relations and Purity
its spiritual forbears.5 There have been some significant voices of dissent who
argue against the view that the Temple Scroll shares the Qumran calendar6 and
suggest a variety of different views about its relationship to the Qumran com-
munity.7 L.H. Schiffman, who has studied the law of the Temple Scroll more
thoroughly than anyone else, identifies the Scroll as Sadducean and sets it apart
from the sectarian literature of Qumran and from Jubilees while emphasizing
its similarities to 4QMMT.8
Here I would like to consider an aspect of the halakhah of Jubilees and the
Temple Scroll that has not previously received detailed comparison, the laws
governing sexual relations and related purity concerns. I believe that in this area
the two works show fundamental differences of approach that go beyond the
differences in emphasis one might expect in texts that rework different portions
of the Torah. These differences have implications not only for the relationship of
the works to each other, but also for their relationship to the Qumran community
and for the history of halakhah.
The Temple Scroll has sometimes been characterized as extending the priestly
rules of purity to all Israel.9 This characterization is somewhat misleading, for
the Torahs laws of purity on the whole do not distinguish between priests and or-
5For reservations about the centrality of calendar for sectarianism, see A. Baumgarten, The
Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (JSJSup 55; Leiden: Brill,
1997), 36 n.116, 78 n.130.
6E.g., B.A. Levine, The Temple Scroll: Aspects of its Historical Provenance and Liter-
ary Character, BASOR 232 (1978): 523; Levine, A Further Look at the Mo adim of the
Temple Scroll, in Archeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University
Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. L.H. Schiffman; JSPSup 8; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1990), 5366; L.H. Schiffman, The Sacrificial System of the Temple Scroll and the Book of
Jubilees, SBLSP 24 (1985): 21733 (VanderKam, Temple Scroll is a response to this paper);
H. Stegemann, The Institutions of Israel in the Temple Scroll, in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty
Years of Research (ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport; STDJ 10; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 16976.
7E.g., H. Burgmann, 11QT: The Sadducean Torah, in Temple Scroll Studies, 25763;
Burgmann, Die essenischen Gemeinden von Qumran und Damaskus in der Zeit der Hasmoner
und Herodier (130 ante-68 post) (ANTJ 8; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988), 191257; H. Stege-
mann, The Literary Composition of the Temple Scroll and Its Status at Qumran, in Temple
Scroll Studies, 12348; Stegemann, Institutions of Israel, 15685.
8See particularly L.H. Schiffman, The Temple Scroll and the Systems of Jewish Law of
the Second Temple Period, in Temple Scroll Studies, 23955; and Schiffman, The Place of
4QMMT in the Corpus of Qumran Manuscripts, in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on
Qumran Law and History (ed. J. Kampen and M.J. Bernstein; SBLSymS 2; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1996), 8198.
9Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983) 1.27780. Yadin
is particularly influenced by G. Alon, The Bounds of the Laws of Levitical Cleanness, Jews,
Judaism and the Classical World: Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple
and Talmud (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1977). Schiffman makes a more limited version of
Yadins claim, in relation to the impurity of the dead, The Impurity of the Dead in the Temple
Scroll, in Archeology and History, 152.
7. Sexual Relations and Purity 113
dinary Israelites.10 The laws of concern to us, the laws of genital flows, certainly
do not. Still, the purity laws have a greater impact on priests than on ordinary
Israelites because the primary consequence of impurity is that it prevents access
to the temple in which priests officiate and to the consecrated food on which they
and their families rely. The Temple Scrolls characteristic approach to the purity
laws is to intensify them, extending the duration of the period of impurity beyond
that mandated by the Torah and making the rituals of purification more elaborate.
In addition, because the Temple Scroll views the entire land as holy, it requires
confinement of bearers of impurity so as to avoid defiling not only the city of
the sanctuary, but ordinary cities as well. As a result, the difference between the
impact of the purity laws of the Temple Scroll on priests and their impact on
ordinary Jews is less than the difference for the purity laws of the Torah. In this
way, the Temple Scroll makes ordinary Jews more like priests.
Jubilees twice declares that Israel is a kingdom of priests (Jub. 16:18, 33:20),
and for Jubilees some of the everyday activities of ordinary Jews affect the
temple and its cult.11 Jubilees has little interest in the purity laws related to sexual
relations, but it claims that forbidden sexual relations defile the sanctuary; when
Jews engage in sexual relations, they are taking on priestly responsibilities for
guaranteeing the purity of the sanctuary. Thus, the Temple Scroll and Jubilees
make ordinary Jews more like priests in quite different ways.
The differences between the Temple Scroll and Jubilees on the question of
sexual relations and purity can be understood only against the background of the
priestly material of the Torah. Purity is a central concern in the legislation of the
Torah, but the laws relevant to sexual relations do not constitute a separate cat-
egory. In the priestly corpus proper12 laws with implications for sexual relations
appear in the context of laws for purification after the emission of fluids from the
genitals (Leviticus 12, 15). Sexual relations are inescapably connected to such
emissions, but the requirement for purification exists apart from sexual relations.
10See
the criticism of Yadin on this point by S. Japhet, The Prohibition of the Habitation
of Women: The Temple Scrolls Attitude toward Sexual Impurity and Its Biblical Precedents,
JANES 22 (1993, Comparative Studies in Honor of Yochanan Muffs): 7378. See also Schiff-
mans careful formulation on the Temple Scrolls extension of the laws of corpse impurity in
The Impurity of the Dead, 136: Afflictions which had disqualified priests from eating of
sacrifices now excluded Israelites entirely from the holy precincts. The instance Yadin pres-
ents as a classic example of the extension of laws for priests to all Israel, the Temple Scrolls
prohibition of the blind person entering the city of the sanctuary, does in fact do what Yadin
claims (Temple Scroll, 1.28991).
11M. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: The Democratization of the Priesthood in the
Literature of Second Temple Judaism, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997):
8998.
12I follow I. Knohls delineation of the contents of the priestly corpus (P) and the Holiness
Code (H) in The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapo-
lis: Fortress Press, 1995). For most of the material discussed here, however, the attribution to
one corpus or the other is not controversial.
Leviticus 12 contains instructions for a womans purification after childbirth,

while Leviticus 15 provides rules for purification after normal and abnormal
genital flow for men and women, of which only some instances are connected
to sexual relations. Normal genital flow for men is the emission of semen during
sexual intercourse or nocturnal emission; for women, it is menstrual bleeding.
Abnormal flow for men is any kind of discharge other than seminal emission; for
women, it is discharge of blood other than menstruation. The rules about genital
flow in Leviticus 12 and 15 are separated by rules for purification from eruptions
of the skin and of inanimate objects in Leviticus 1314. The laws of forbidden
foods of Leviticus 11 also rule that touching or carrying the corpse of creatures
unfit for eating causes impurity (vv.2440). Finally, contact, even indirect, with
the corpse of a human being conveys impurity (Num 19:1122). For P, then, the
rules about genital flow are part of a larger category of purity laws.13
For P, purity and impurity are objective categories without a moral compo-
nent. Ps preoccupation with impurity arises from a concern for defiling the
sanctuary, which is the location of Gods presence and the means for communi-
cating with him. All instances of impurity must be remedied so as to remove the
potential danger to the sanctuary.14 Thus, while it is not wrong to be impure, it
is wrong to delay purification.15
Not only is there no moral stigma to impurity, but it can even be a desirable
state or at least the consequence of desirable actions. An ancient Jew might hope
to get through life without incurring the impurity of skin eruptions or eruptions
on the walls of his home, but no one in Ps world would wish to avoid the impu-
rity caused by the types of normal genital flow without which sexual relations
and reproduction are impossible.
In addition to Ps laws about genital flows, the Holiness Code contains two
lists of forbidden sexual relations (Leviticus 18, 20:1021). The relationship of
these laws to the categories of purity is complex. From one point of view, they
have nothing to do with purity. Sexual relations with forbidden partners are
wrong even if purity laws are scrupulously observed. The Holiness Code uses
several distinctive terms to characterize these forbidden relationships. The most
common is , abomination or abhorrent thing (JPSV), used of homo-
sexual relations in both Leviticus 18 and 20 and a favorite term of the concluding
exhortation of ch. 18.16 Among the terms so used, however, is one that points to
the purity laws: ( Lev 20:21). P uses the term to refer to menstrual impurity. H
13J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 743, suggests that the
ordering of Leviticus 1215 corresponds to the length and complexity of the process of purifica-
tion required for the conditions discussed, moving from the longest and most elaborate to the
shortest and least elaborate. For an attempt to define the priestly concepts of purity and impurity,
see Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 76668, 10004.
14This is Milgroms position; for a strong summary statement, see Leviticus 116, 1007.
15See Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 31013, in his discussion of the sacrifices of Lev 5:113.
16Homosexual relations: Lev 18:22, 20:13; rhetorical conclusion: Lev 18:26, 27, 29, 30.
turns it into a substantive and applies it to sexual relations with a brothers wife,
thus bringing together the categories of forbidden marriages and the impurity
of genital flow.17
Another point of connection appears in the concluding exhortation of Leviti-
cus 18 (vv.2430), which warns against the defilement of the land that results
from the forbidden sexual relations. The passage repeatedly uses forms of the
verb ( Lev 18:24bis, 25, 27, 28, 30). The same root in Ps laws of purity
means impure. Thus, while P worries that the impurity caused by genital flows
will defile the sanctuary, H suggests that forbidden sexual relations will defile the
land, which H understands as holy and thus, like the sanctuary itself, susceptible
to defilement. Even within the Torah, then, there are different understandings of
the meaning of purity in sexual relations.
The Temple Scrolls laws of purity appear in cols. 4551.18 In keeping with its
biblical model, the Temple Scroll does not distinguish a separate category of laws
related to sexual relations. Rather, the laws governing the impurity of genital
flows appear as part of a larger category, including, as in the Torah, the impurity
of skin eruptions and corpse impurity. The Temple Scroll presents the purity laws
related to sexual relations in a form rather different from that of the Torah, as
prohibitions of entry into the city of the sanctuary and, inspired by Num 5:2, as
mandates of confinement outside the city of the sanctuary or outside ordinary
cities. In keeping with the structure of the Scroll,19 its legislation about purity
moves from inner to outer, from the city of the sanctuary to the cities of the land.
In between the laws related to the impurity of genital flows for the city of the
sanctuary and ordinary cities come laws regarding other aspects of the purity of
the city of the sanctuary (45.1247.18), laws of forbidden food (48.17), and
laws about the impurity of the dead (48.714). The juxtaposition of this variety
of laws indicates an understanding of purity very close to that of P.
Num 5:2 decrees the exclusion of three groups from the camp of Israel in the
wilderness: those with skin eruptions, those with abnormal genital flow, and
those who have incurred corpse impurity. While Leviticus 13 also decrees the
banishment of those with skin eruptions, it is clear that Leviticus 15 assumes that
17Elsewhere in the Bible is used in a more extended sense to mean rejected or despised.
Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 952, offers the following examples: Ezek 7:1920, Lam 1:17, Ezra
9:11. I would like to acknowledge a paper by Lauren Eichler for pointing out to me the way in
which H and then Ezekiel adapt the language of P for their own purposes.
18A. Wilson and L. Wills, Literary Sources for the Temple Scroll, HTR 75 (1982): 27588,
have argued that the Temple Scroll used several sources, of which one contained the purity laws
of cols. 4851. P. Callaway, Source Criticism of the Temple Scroll: The Purity Laws, RevQ
12 (198587): 21322, refutes their argument, to my mind persuasively, in relation to the pu-
rity laws. Further, Schiffman seems to me correct in claiming that the author / redactor of the
Temple Scroll had a strong and consistent attitude toward his material; thus the sources he chose
to use must also reflect his own positions (Systems of Jewish Law, 23940).
19J. Maier, The Temple Scroll: An Introduction, Translation and Commentary (JSOTSup 34;
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 56.

those with abnormal genital flow are living at home and that Numbers 19 makes
the same assumption about those who have incurred corpse impurity. Scholars
have long noted the contradiction between Num 5:2 on the one hand and Leviti-
cus 15 and Numbers 19 on the other. Knohl argues that Num 5:14 derives from
the Holiness School. Numbers 19, on the other hand, shows the editorial hand of
H, but is primarily the work of P. Knohl sees the expansion of the categories of
the impure to be excluded from the camp in Num 5:2 as reflecting Hs extension
of holiness to the land as a whole; thus H applies to the land purity rules that in
P apply only to the temple: Put them outside the camp so that they do not defile
the camp of those in whose midst I dwell (Num 5:3).20
The Temple Scroll directs the establishment of three places of confinement
to the east of the city of the sanctuary. They are to be used by those with skin
eruptions and those with abnormal genital flow, the first two categories of Num
5:2, but for the third category, those with corpse impurity, the Temple Scroll
substitutes men who have experienced a nocturnal emission (46.1618). These
places of confinement are presumably intended for those who contract their im-
purities while already in the city of the sanctuary; if the impurity was contracted
elsewhere, the bearer of the impurity would not have entered the city of the
sanctuary in the first place.
The Temple Scroll also mandates places of confinement outside ordinary cities
for three groups. Again these groups include the first two categories of Num 5:2,
those with skin eruptions and those with abnormal genital flow. For ordinary cit-
ies, the third category of people to be confined consists of women after childbirth
and menstruants (48.1417).
The Temple Scrolls adaptation of the places of confinement in Num 5:2 shows
a more severe attitude toward the impurity of genital flow than do the laws of
Leviticus 12 and 15 or even Num 5:2. The laws of the Torah clearly assume that
menstruants are living at home with their families, since they describe in some
detail how others incur impurity through contact with the menstruant herself, her
bedding, or other implements (Lev 15:1924). The comparison of the first stage
of the impurity of the woman after childbirth to that of the menstruant (Lev 12:2)
suggests a similar assumption for her. There is no hint anywhere in the Torah
that women in these states of impurity were to be exiled from their households.
The Torah contains two different rules for those with abnormal genital flow.
While Num 5:2 exiles such people from the camp of Israel, Leviticus 15 clearly
assumes that they remain at home because, as for the menstruants, it devotes
considerable space to the impurity others may incur by contact with them or
things they have touched (Lev 15:412 for a male; Lev 15:2627 for a female).
20See Knohl, Sanctuary of Silence, 86, 18485, on Num 5:14; 9294, on Numbers 19. The
translation of Num 5:3 and all other translations of the Bible are taken from NJPSV.
Here the Temple Scroll chooses the more stringent of the possibilities in the
Torah.
But the Temple Scrolls intensification of laws governing impurity is by no
means restricted to instituting these places of confinement. It also lengthens the
duration of impurity for several types of genital flow and requires more elaborate
rituals of purification. According to the Torah, the impurity of seminal emission
is easy to remedy and of short duration: a man who has experienced a seminal
emission need only bathe and wait for the sun to set (Lev 15:16). The laws of
the war camp in Deut 23:1015 exile from the camp a man who has experienced
a nocturnal emission (23:11), but this is because of the special holiness of the
war camp in which God himself is present (23:15); the period of impurity and
the procedure for purification of Leviticus 15 are deemed adequate even for the
special holiness of the war camp (Deut 23:12).
According to the Temple Scroll, on the other hand, a man who has had a
nocturnal emission is excluded from the sanctuary until he has undergone a
three-day process of purification involving bathing and washing his clothes on
the first and third days. Only after the sun has set on the third day is the man
deemed pure (45.710). The Temple Scroll describes the impurity of those who
have had nocturnal emissions as ( 45.10). Yadin translates, their
niddah-like uncleanness.21 The Temple Scroll here extends the meaning of
beyond its proper sense of menstrual impurity to apply to another type of impu-
rity. At the end of the text, as we shall see below, the Temple Scroll echoes Hs
use of the term to describe a forbidden sexual relationship, a further extension
of the concept of impurity.
A man who has had a seminal emission as a result of sexual relations is also
excluded from the city of the sanctuary for three days (45.1112).22 No ritual of
purification is specified, but since the Torah requires the same process of puri-
fication after nocturnal emission and sexual relations (Lev 15:1618), it seems
likely that the Temple Scroll assumes that the process of purification required of
the man who has had a nocturnal emission also applies to the man who has had
sexual relations. There is no place of confinement outside the city of the sanc-
tuary for men impure as a result of sexual relations because the Temple Scroll
cannot imagine sexual relations taking place in the city of the sanctuary. Thus,
it is enough to forbid entrance of men in such a state.
Yadin suggested that the intensified rules for purification after seminal emis-
sions derive from Gods instructions to the Israelites as they camp before Mt.
Sinai: Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow. Let
them wash their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day (Exod 19:10
21Yadin,
Temple Scroll, 2.192.
22I
do not understand there to be a significant difference between the whole sanctuary
(45.8) and the whole city of the sanctuary (45.1112). See Japhet, Prohibition, 75 n.25,
86, and Levine, Temple Scroll, 1417.
11). Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman (Exod 19:15). The
Temple Scroll understands the city of the sanctuary as analogous to the camp
of Israel before Sinai, and thus derives the process of purification necessary to
enter the city from the process of purification imposed before the revelation at
Sinai, which includes both of the innovations of the Temple Scroll the three-
day period of impurity and washing clothes.23 However, such an explanation
addresses only one type of impurity, and we have seen that the Temple Scroll
intensifies other types as well.
While the influence of Exodus 19 is insufficient to account for the develop-
ments of the Temple Scroll, Japhet argues that the Temple Scroll does share the
strong sense of opposition between the sexual and the sacred found in Exodus
19 and 1Samuel 21, an opposition that goes well beyond Ps rather mild view
of the impact of genital flows. In her view, the Temple Scrolls specifications for
both sets of places of confinement reflect a more lenient stance toward corpse
impurity than toward source impurity.24
Yet, does the Temple Scroll really treat corpse impurity with less severity
relative to the biblical rules than it treats the impurity of normal genital flows?
It is certainly true that the Temple Scroll does not include those with corpse
impurity on the list of those to be confined outside ordinary cities and the city
of the sanctuary, where Num 5:2 would lead us to expect to find them. Still, the
Temple Scroll does say explicitly that those with corpse impurity are banned
from the city of the sanctuary until purified (45.17). Japhet suggests that exclu-
sion rather than confinement is an indication that the Temple Scroll understood
corpse impurity as less severe than the impurities of genital flows.25 However,
in other respects the Temple Scrolls treatment of corpse impurity is quite in
keeping with its intensification of the impurity of genital flow. The Temple
Scroll does not increase the seven-day period of impurity the Torah decrees for
corpse impurity, but it expands the ritual of purification. It decrees bathing and
washing the clothes on the first day, for which the Torah prescribes no ritual,
and adds bathing and washing clothes to the biblical procedure of sprinkling on
the third day (49.1650.4; Num 19:1819). Indeed, the Temple Scroll engages
in considerable elaboration of the Torahs terse command to sprinkle the tent in
which someone died and the vessels that were in it on the third and seventh days
(Num 19:1819). The Temple Scroll describes a much more rigorous cleansing
of the house (no longer a tent) and offers a listing of the various types of vessels
23Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.28788; J. Milgrom, Studies in the Temple Scroll, JBL 97
(1978): 513; Milgrom, The Qumran Cult: Its Exegetical Principles, in Temple Scroll Studies,
174; Milgrom, The Scriptural Foundations and Deviations in the Laws of Purity of the Temple
Scroll, in Archeology and History, 8991; Schiffman, Exclusion from the Sanctuary and the
City of the Sanctuary in the Temple Scroll, HAR 9 (1985): 308.
24Japhet, Prohibition, 7679, 8387. Source is a euphemism for genitals that appears in
Leviticus (12:1, 20:18) and the Temple Scroll.

25Japhet, Prohibition, 7677.
and other belongings requiring purification; the process takes place on the first
day (49.112l).26
In a series of publications over the last two decades, J. Milgrom has argued
that the Temple Scrolls elaboration of biblical laws of purity reflects a consistent
program based on an understanding of impurity as layered.27 Removal of the first
layer permits contact with the realm of the ordinary, but it is only with removal
of the second layer that contact with the realm of the sacred can resume. For
example, the Temple Scroll requires bathing on the first and third days for those
with seminal emissions before they can enter the city of the sanctuary. For con-
tact with the ordinary, the first days ablution, prescribed by Leviticus as well,
is enough. It is for this reason that there is no place of confinement for men who
have had a seminal emission in ordinary cities. There is simply no need to con-
fine them because they can become sufficiently pure for life in an ordinary city
at the end of the day. For contact with the sacred, and so entrance into the city
of the sanctuary, however, the second layer must be removed thus the ablution
of the third day is required before entering the city of the sanctuary. Milgroms
understanding of the Temple Scrolls assumptions shows that source impurity
is not singled out as particularly virulent. The laws for other types of impurity are
also elaborated in keeping with the theory just noted, as some of the examples
above indicate.
Milgroms understanding helps to make sense of the groups designated for
places of confinement outside ordinary cities, although it does not resolve all
the difficulties. In Milgroms view, bearers of impurity for whom the process of
purification removed a layer of impurity on the first day need not be excluded
from an ordinary city. Thus, as just noted, there was no need to confine men who
had had a seminal emission, whose ablution on the first day is of biblical origin,
or the corpse impure, for whom the Scroll decrees bathing on the first day.
On the assumption that the Temple Scroll designates places outside the city
of the sanctuary only for those whose impurity comes upon them suddenly and
through circumstances beyond their own control, there is clear logic to the choice
of impurities that require confinement. Sexual intercourse does not take place in
the temple complex; thus no place outside the city of the sanctuary for men who
have had a seminal emission as a result of sexual intercourse is required, since
they would not enter the city of the sanctuary in the first place. Nocturnal emis-
sions, on the other hand, are beyond the individuals control and can occur even
26On
the day on which they bring the dead man out from it (49.11); Yadin, Temple Scroll,
1.331, takes this to mean the first day.
27See especially Milgrom, Studies in the Temple Scroll, 51218; and Milgrom, First
Day Ablutions at Qumran, in The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International
Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 1821 March 1991 (ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and L.
Vegas Montaner; STDJ 11; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 2.56170.
within the temple complex. Similarly, a man might discover abnormal genital
discharge or skin eruptions while already in the city of the sanctuary.
But why no place for menstruants? Women were not excluded from the city
of the sanctuary, although their access was limited to the outer court (39.7). A
woman after childbirth would not come to the city of the sanctuary, but men-
strual impurity might overtake a woman while she was in the city of the sanctu-
ary. Perhaps the Temple Scroll regards such an occurrence as unlikely because
menstruation is a regular event rather than an entirely unexpected one like the
outbreak of skin eruptions or abnormal genital discharge and because it did not
imagine women spending a great deal of time in the city of the sanctuary.
Corpse impurity poses another problem for Milgroms understanding. As we
have seen, the Temple Scroll does prohibit those with corpse impurity from en-
tering the city of the sanctuary, but surely someone might incur corpse impurity
while already in the city of the sanctuary in the event of a sudden death within
the city. Thus, on Milgroms theory there should be a place set aside for those
with corpse impurity outside the city of the sanctuary; for the Scrolls first-day
ablution, while sufficient to permit entrance to an ordinary city, does not remove
the second layer of impurity necessary for entrance to the city of the sanctuary.
Milgroms own discomfort with the absence of the corpse impure from the
Temple Scrolls list can be felt in his suggestion that they did appear in the
lacuna at the top of col. 47.28 This suggestion would be more attractive if the
extant text did not specifically decree setting up three separate places (46.17).
The insistence that the places be separate makes it unlikely that more than one
type of impurity was to be contained in each.
Japhet, as already noted, saw the absence of confinement for corpse impurity
as a sign that the Temple Scroll was more worried by source impurity than
corpse impurity. The Temple Scrolls substitution of men with nocturnal emis-
sions for the bearers of corpse impurity mentioned in Num 5:2 does suggest that
the Scroll saw an underlying similarity between the impurity of seminal emission
and the impurity of the occupants of the other places of confinement, those with
abnormal genital flow and skin eruptions. All three types of impurity involve
some kind of bodily function, and the three are treated in the same section of
Leviticus. Corpse impurity results from contact with something outside the one
who becomes impure, and the rules governing it appear in the Book of Numbers.
What is clear by now, I hope, is the sense in which the Temple Scroll can
be said to extend priestly purity laws to all Israel. Like the priestly code of the
Torah, the Temple Scroll understands laws of purity to apply equally to priests
and lay people. Thus, in one sense there is nothing priestly about the purity laws
at all. But because impurity requires separation from the realm of the sacred,
the laws have a greater impact on priests, who must be in ongoing contact with
28Milgrom,
Studies in the Temple Scroll, 515 n.44.
the sacred, than on lay people. The Temple Scroll found Ps attitude toward
impurity too lenient. Surely, its authors believed, impurity must have more
severe consequences and thus demand more care than P suggested. In the order
the Temple Scroll envisions, the special impact of purity laws on priests would
remain, but the Temple Scroll brings ordinary Jews closer to priests by making
the purity laws more elaborate and thus heightening their impact on both priests
and lay people. For example, Ps treatment of menstrual impurity means that
priestly families will experience far more inconvenience than lay families. Only
in priestly families, which regularly eat consecrated food, would the menstruant
be forbidden to prepare food for the family. By confining menstruants away from
their families, the Temple Scroll insures that lay families too will feel the impact
of menstrual impurity.29
The Temple Scrolls extension of the impact of the laws of purity is not ac-
complished by conflating the categories of priest and lay person. Indeed, the
Temple Scroll sometimes emphasizes the boundaries between priests and laity in
passages such as the instructions for preventing the mixing of the sin and guilt
offerings of the people with the sin offerings and goats of the priests (35.1015).30
Rather, the Temple Scroll extends the realm affected by impurity and heightens
the intensity of impurity, thus increasing its impact on non-priests. Here the
influence of the Holiness Code can be seen. While P restricts the impact of
impurity to the temple and the holy things associated with it, such as sacrificial
food, H insists on the holiness of the land. The Temple Scrolls theory of places
of confinement, as we have seen, is based on the view that severe impurity pol-
lutes the land as well as the temple, although the temple of course remains more
sensitive, subject to defilement by even the least severe forms of impurity.
The Holiness Codes laws of forbidden marriages make their influence felt
only at the very end of the Temple Scroll. The concluding portion of the Temple
Scroll is based on Deuteronomy and follows Deuteronomy in treating a series of
laws concerning sexual relations, the laws of the bride accused of loss of virgin-
ity, the betrothed woman who has been raped, and the unmarried girl who has
been seduced (col. 66; Deuteronomy 22). The Temple Scroll concludes with sev-
eral incest laws, which must have continued onto col. 67, the final column of the
Scroll, on which no writing is preserved. The occasion for the inclusion of these
laws is Deuteronomy 23 and 27, but their formulation clearly draws on Leviticus
20 and perhaps on Leviticus 18 with their lists of forbidden sexual relationships.
29For a discussion of the lack of evidence for the seclusion of menstruants in turn-of-the-era
Judaism, see E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM
Press, and Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 14951, 15562.
30See also the Temple Scrolls instructions for building booths on the roofs of the structures
in the third courtyard for the leaders of the people (42.1017). On both these points, see the
discussion of I. Knohl, Post-Biblical Sectarianism and the Priestly Schools of the Pentateuch:
The Issue of Popular Participation in the Temple Cult on Festivals, in Madrid Qumran Con
gress, 6067, esp. n.14.
The Temple Scroll says of marriage to a brothers wife, ( 66.13), of mar-

riage to a sister and marriage to a niece, ( 66.14, 17), and of marriage
to an aunt, ( 66.15). All three phrases appear in Leviticus 18 and 20.31
Again we see the Temple Scroll using in an extended sense, although here it
is clearly under the influence of H in Leviticus 20. The major innovation of the
Temple Scroll relative to biblical law is the addition of a prohibition on a mans
marriage to a niece (66.1617).32
The Temple Scroll, then, thought the incest laws important enough for its pur-
poses that it found a way to integrate them into its reworking of Deuteronomy.
Their placement at the very end of the Scroll serves to give them a certain
emphasis. Yet, while the Scroll includes some of the biblical laws of incest and
makes good what it must have viewed as the Torahs unfortunate failure to make
explicit the prohibition against marriage with nieces, it does nothing to exploit
the rhetorical possibilities that the Holiness Code suggested. H insists emphati-
cally that improper sexual alliances are dangerous because they defile the land:
Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways, for it is by such that the nations that I am
casting out before you defiled themselves. Thus the land became defiled; and I called it
to account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants. But you must keep
My laws and My rules, and you must not do any of those abhorrent things, neither the
citizen nor the stranger who resides among you; for all these abhorrent things were
done by the people who were in the land before you, and the land became defiled. So let
not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nations that came before
you (Lev 18:2428; see also 20:2224).
The use of the term in its law prohibiting sexual relations with a brothers
wife is the only indication that the Temple Scroll saw the forbidden sexual rela-
tionships as producing impurity of the kind that threatened the sanctuary. In mat-
ters having to do with sexual relations, the Temple Scroll understands impurity
much as P does, as the result of certain physical processes. It does not insist on
the defilement to be caused by forbidden sexual relations as H does. On the other
hand, it shares Hs view of the land as holy; it clearly worries that the sanctity
31( Lev 18:17, 20:14); ( Lev 18:22; also in Lev 20:13 in a different construction,
( ) Lev 18:23); ( Lev 20:17); and ( Lev 20:22). The term , used of mar-
riage to a sister, is difficult, and this may explain why the Temple Scroll replaces it with in
its prohibition of marriage with a sister in 66.14 (so too Schiffman, Laws Pertaining to Women
in the Temple Scroll, in Forty Years of Research, 226). Of all these terms of opprobrium in
Leviticus 18 and 20, is the most prominent because of its frequency in the conclusion to
the list of forbidden sexual relationships of Leviticus 18 (vv.26, 27, 29, 30).
32As is well known, the Damascus Document condemns the practice of marriage to a niece
and offers an exegetical justification for its prohibition (5.711). However, as Levine, Temple
Scroll, 1213, and Schiffman, Laws Pertaining to Women, 227, point out, despite the rabbis
positive view of such marriages, the practice is condemned in a wide range of sources and thus
need not indicate sectarian origin for the Temple Scroll.
not only of the temple area but even of ordinary cities could be compromised by
the impurity of genital flows.
At the center of Jubilees interest in sexual behavior are not the purity laws,
which were the focus of the Temple Scrolls concern, but rather the laws of for-
bidden sexual relations, which play a less prominent role in the Temple Scroll.
Yet, Jubilees does treat one set of purity laws, and the differences between its
treatment and that of the Temple Scroll are significant.
It is a well-known feature of Jubilees that it retrojects into the primeval his-
tory and the period of the patriarchs laws that the Torah presents as revealed to
Israel in the wilderness. Jubilees places the establishment of the laws of interest
to us the laws of impurity for a woman after childbirth at the very beginning
of human history, with Adam and Eve. One aspect of the treatment of these
laws, however, is not typical of Jubilees: the association with Adam and Eve
seems intended to explain a puzzling feature of the laws. Leviticus 12 makes
the length of the two periods of impurity after childbirth depend on the gender
of the child born. Contemporary students of Leviticus too have struggled to
explain the rationale for the longer period of impurity following the birth of a
girl.33 Jubilees explanation depends on its chronology of the creation of Adam
and Eve and their entrance into the Garden of Eden. A close parallel to Jubilees
theory appears in a recently published fragment from Qumran, 4Q265,34 which
suggests that the uncharacteristic attempt at explanation derives from the source
Jubilees used here.35
According to Jubilees, Adam, who contained within him the rib that would be-
come Eve, was created on the sixth day of the first week of creation (Jub. 2:14),
while Eve was separated from Adam on the sixth day of the second week (Jub.
3:16). According to Leviticus, the mothers initial period of severe impurity,
equivalent to menstrual impurity, lasts a week after the birth of a boy (Lev 12:2),
but two weeks after the birth of a girl (Lev 12:5). Jubilees claims that the timing
of the creation of Adam and the separation of Eve accounts for this difference
(Jub. 3:8). The rationale Jubilees proposes is by no means clear, but perhaps the
reasoning runs something like this: Leviticus 12 notes the boys circumcision
33Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 75051.

34J.M. Baumgarten, Purification after Childbirth and the Sacred Garden in 4Q265 and
Jubilees, in New Qumran Texts and Studies: Proceedings of the International Organization
for Qumran Studies, Paris 1992 (ed. G.J. Brooke with F. Garca Martnez; STDJ 15; Leiden:
Brill, 1994), 310.
35Jubilees used sources outside the Bible at a number of points. See, e.g., on Noah, M.
Himmelfarb, Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature, Tracing the Threads:
Studies in the Vitality of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha (ed. J.C. Reeves; SBLEJL 6; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1994), 12735 (in this volume, 36268); on Levi, for opposing views about the
nature of the sources, R.A. Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from
Aramaic Levi to Testament of Levi (SBLEJL 9; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 14655; and C.
Werman, Levi and Levites in the Second Temple Period, DSD 4 (1997): 21622.
on the eighth day, the day after the completion of the mothers period of severe
impurity (Lev 12:3). Thus, the severe impurity comes to an end as the baby
boys body reaches completion for membership in the people of Israel. Since
Eve was completed a full week after Adam, there must be a lengthier period of
severe impurity following the birth of a girl. But there is a problem in this line of
reasoning. According to Leviticus 12, it is the mother who becomes impure after
childbirth. The story of Adam and Eve offers no mother, and Jubilees account
might be read to suggest by analogy the impurity of the offspring.36
The relationship between the second, less severe period of impurity and
Jubilees account of the careers of Adam and Eve is clearer. Leviticus only re-
strictions on a woman during the second period of impurity are that she may not
enter the sanctuary and have contact with holy things (Lev 12:4).37 This period
of impurity lasts thirty-three days beyond the original seven after the birth of
a boy for a total of forty days, and sixty-six days beyond the original fourteen
after the birth of a girl for a total of eighty days (Lev 12:45). While Genesis
2 tells us that God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden immediately after his
creation (Gen 2:8) and that Eve was created there (Gen 2:2122), Jubilees offers
quite a different chronology. According to Jubilees, Adam and Eve were created
elsewhere; after forty days, angels brought Adam from that place into the Gar-
den of Eden, while they brought Eve into the Garden only on the eightieth day
(Jub. 3:9). One reason that Jubilees delays Adam and Eves entrance into the
Garden is its discomfort with the idea of sexual relations in the Garden, which,
as we shall see in a moment, it understands as a holy place, equivalent to the
sanctuary.38 The difference in the length of time Adam and Eve are kept outside
the Garden of Eden is the model for the difference in the duration of the periods
of impurity caused by male and female offspring in Leviticus 12 (Jub. 3:914).
Once again the analogy is somewhat strained. In Leviticus 12 it is the mother,
not the offspring, who is excluded from the sanctuary.
Jubilees aetiology for the laws of Leviticus 12 requires an understanding of
the Garden of Eden as a holy place, equivalent to the sanctuary, , of Lev
12:4. This is indeed Jubilees view, as it makes quite clear here (It is the holiest
in the entire earth [Jub. 3:12]) and elsewhere (For there are four places on
earth that belong to the Lord: the Garden of Eden, the mountain of the east, this
36Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 764, notes that there is a Hittite ritual for purifying the child
as well as the mother. Baumgarten, Purification, 6 n.5, notes that a Life of Adam quoted by
Syncellus assumes the impurity of the infants as well as the mother.
37A recently published Damascus Document fragment from Qumran, 4Q266 6 ii, seems to
understand the mothers impurity as precluding her nursing her own child (J.M. Baumgarten,
ed., with J.T. Milik, S. Pfann, and A. Yardeni, Qumran Cave 4.XIII: The Damascus Document
(4Q266273) [DJD 18; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 5557).
38G.A. Anderson, Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden? Reflections on Early Jewish
and Christian Interpretation of the Garden of Eden, HTR 82 (1989): 12830.

mountain on which you are today Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion[Jub. 4:26]).39
Indeed, one important result of Jubilees struggle to connect the chronology of
Adam and Eves creation and entrance into the Garden with the chronology of
impurity in Leviticus 12 is to emphasize the status of the Garden of Eden as holy
place.40 A similar emphasis can be discerned in 4Q265.41
As we have seen, the Temple Scroll intensified biblical purity laws by extend-
ing the duration of impurity and by making rituals of purification more elaborate.
Jubilees attempts to account for the rules of Leviticus 12, but it does nothing to
intensify them. Its claim that the Garden of Eden is a holy place covered by these
laws could have no practical consequences. Thus, the one instance of Jubilees
treatment of purity laws shows a very different set of interests from the Temple
Scroll.
There are several stories in Genesis that provide Jubilees with an opportunity
to treat the laws of forbidden sexual relations. The story of Joseph and Potiphars
wife receives rather little attention, probably because the author of Jubilees did
not worry that Genesis had left important questions unresolved. Joseph behaves
in a praiseworthy manner, and Genesis duly reports the successes that follow.
The stories of Reuben and Bilhah and of Judah and Tamar, on the other hand,
were troubling. In both incidents a son of Jacob behaves very badly indeed,
but in neither case is he punished.42 True, according to the Blessing of Jacob,
Reubens loss of the status of first-born is the result of his behavior with Bilhah:
Reuben, you are my first-born,
My might and first fruit of my vigor,
Exceeding in rank
And exceeding in honor.
Unstable as water, you shall excel no longer;
For when you mounted your fathers bed,
You brought disgrace my couch he mounted!
(Gen 49:34)
Jubilees, however, provides both a clearer condemnation of Reubens behavior

and an explanation for why he did not receive the more severe punishment due
him according to biblical law. A lengthy angelic tirade, to which I shall turn in a
moment, provides both the condemnation and the information that explains the
absence of that punishment: While the law against sleeping with ones fathers
wife already existed, it had not yet been revealed (Jub. 33:1516).
39All translations of Jubilees are from J.C. VanderKam, trans., The Book of Jubilees (CSCO
511, Scriptores Aethiopici 88; Louvain: E. Peeters, 1989).

40See J. Milgrom, The Concept of Impurity in Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, RevQ 16
(199394): 27779.
41See the interesting comments of Baumgarten, Purification, 810.
42See the discussion in G.A. Anderson, The Status of the Torah Before Sinai: The Retell-
ing of the Bible in the Damascus Covenant and the Book of Jubilees, DSD 1 (1994): 1929.
Jubilees explanation for the lack of punishment for Judahs behavior is rather
different. In contrast to its treatment of the story of Reuben and Bilhah, Jubilees
does not claim that the law Judah violated was unknown to him, but rather that
he was guilty only of inadvertent sin since he did not recognize Tamar and thus
did not realize her forbidden status as his daughter-in-law (Jub. 41:25). Further,
Judahs repentance is described at some length (Jub. 41:23). While the angel
reports that Reuben was forgiven (Jub. 33:15), no mention is made of his repen-
tance. Yet, more is at stake for Jubilees in the figure of Judah, Jacobs second
most important son in its view, than in the figure of Reuben. Judahs importance
may also explain why this story does not become the occasion for a long sermon
as the story of Reuben and Bilhah does: To make it such would be to place too
much emphasis on the failings of Judah.
As I just noted, the importance for Jubilees of observing the biblical laws re-
garding sexual relations can be heard in the angels diatribe on the sin of Reuben.
Jubilees interprets Reubens sin in terms of impurity.43 The speech concludes,
No sin is greater than the sexual impurity which they commit on the earth because
Israel is a holy people for the Lord its God. It is the nation which he possesses; it is a
priestly nation; it is a priestly kingdom; it is what he owns. No such impurity will be
seen among the holy people. (33:20)
While the speech as a whole emphasizes the forbidden nature of Reubens par-
ticular sin, sleeping with his fathers wife, the concluding lines speak of sexual
sin in general, thus extending the relevance of the association with impurity. (It
is hard to imagine that sexual relations between a man and his fathers wife were
ever very common.) The Ethiopic of Jubilees is a translation of a translation of
the Hebrew original, but it seems safe to assume that the repeated use of the
language of impurity44 reflects the influence of the Holiness Code, particularly
Lev 18:2430, which repeats the verb six times in the course of its sermon
on the defiling effect on the land of forbidden sexual relations.
There is one other incident in Genesis that in Jubilees reading is relevant
to our theme. This is the rape of Dinah. Jubilees understands the attack on
Shechem by Levi, Simeon, and their brothers as a highly praiseworthy defense
of endogamy (Jubilees 30). If the brothers had permitted the marriage that ac-
cording to Gen 34:617 they had negotiated with the rapist and his father, a
43See Milgrom, Concept of Impurity, 28182, on Jubilees extension of impurity to for-
bidden sexual relations.

44The heavenly tablets ordain that a man is not to lie with his fathers wife because it is
impure; the man and woman are to die together because they have done something impure
(Jub. 33:10). There is to be nothing impure in Gods chosen people (Jub. 33:11). Moses
is to order the Israelites to observe this law because it is an impure thing (Jub. 33:13). No
man who commits this sin will be allowed to live because he is despicable and impure (Jub.
33:14). All who commit this sin are impure, something detestable, a blemish, and something
contaminated (Jub. 33:19).
terrible outrage would have occurred, because a marriage between an Israelite,

male or female, and a gentile, falls under the prohibition of offering children to
Molech (Lev 18:21).45
The association of intermarriage and idolatrous child sacrifice is another in-
stance of Jubilees debt to the Holiness Code, where the law against offering a
child to Molech just cited follows the long list of forbidden sexual relationships
in Leviticus 18. The placement of this prohibition of idolatry in this context and
the problematic language of the prohibition, literally, You shall not give of your
seed to cause to pass to Molech, led some rabbis and targumim to read the verse
as a prohibition of sexual intercourse (give of your seed) with pagan women.46
But while the verse in Leviticus is best suited to condemning the marriage of
a Jewish man to a gentile woman or his sexual relationship with her, the angels
diatribe (Jub. 30:523) emphasizes the evils of marriage between a Jewish
woman and a gentile man since the potential intermarriage with which Jubilees
is concerned involves Dinah and Shechem. The Torah has rather little to say
about intermarriage or sexual relations with gentiles, but it places somewhat
more emphasis on the dangers posed by foreign women than by foreign men.47
Jubilees use of Lev 18:21 may be a conscious effort to claim this verse to con-
demn the marriage of a Jewish woman to a gentile man.48
The angelic narrators speech after the incident at Shechem expresses Jubi
lees understanding of the implications of the observance of the laws of forbid-
den sexual relations: violation of these laws has an impact on the people as a
whole and defiles the sanctuary.
If one does this [marries a foreigner] or shuts his eyes to those who do impure things
and who defile the Lords sanctuary and to those who profane his holy name, then the
entire nation will be condemned together because of all this impurity and this contami-
nation. There will be no favoritism nor partiality; there will be no receiving from him
of fruit, sacrifices, offerings, fat, or the aroma of a pleasing fragrance so that he should
accept it. (So) is any man or woman in Israel to be who defiles his sanctuary. (30:1516)
If the Holiness Code extends some of the status P reserves for priests to all Is-
rael by emphasizing the holiness of the people,49 Jubilees goes even further. We
have already seen its appeal to the idea of Israel as a kingdom of priests in the
45See C. Werman, Jubilees 30: Building a Paradigm for the Ban on Intermarriage, HTR
90 (1997): 122.
46G. Vermes, Leviticus 18:21 in Ancient Jewish Bible Exegesis, in Studies in Aggadah,
Targum and Jewish Liturgy in Memory of Joseph Heinemann (ed. J.J. Petuchowski and E.
Fleischer; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, and Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981),
10824.
47Deut 7:15 warns against marriage with both sons and daughters of the inhabitants of
the land. Exod 34:1516 warns against daughters only, and the account of the apostasy of the
Israelites at Ba al Pe or in Num 25:111 dramatizes the dangers of foreign women.
48Vermes, Leviticus 18:21, 11920.
49Knohl, Sanctuary of Silence, 18089.
exhortation to sexual purity after the account of Reubens rape of Bilhah (Jub.
33:20). The aftermath of the rape of Dinah makes this theme even clearer. Fail-
ure to observe the ban on intermarriage results in defilement of the temple. Even
ordinary Jews are thus given a sort of priestly power. Only if they observe Gods
commandments regarding sexual relations will sacrifices, the priestly work par
excellence, be acceptable.
What is more, according to Jubilees, it is the zeal Levi shows in avenging his
sisters rape and preventing her marriage to a foreigner that earns his descen-
dants the right to be priests and Levites (Jub. 30:18).50 Levi himself has been
recorded on the heavenly tablets as a friend and a just man (Jub. 30:20). This
status, however, is not reserved for Levi; the angel tells us that Israelites who do
not sin but keep the covenant are also recorded as friends (Jub. 30:21). Thus, any
Jew who obeys Gods commands follows in Levis footsteps. Certainly the effect
of this rhetoric is to lessen the gap between Levi the priest and ordinary Jews.
Unlike P, which limits the consequences of impurity to the temple, H un-
derstands Israels impurity to affect not only the temple, but the land as well,
because the land too is holy and therefore susceptible to defilement. Thus Leviti-
cus 18 warns that the land will vomit out those who defile it. In Jubilees, as we
have seen, the angel warns that marriage with a gentile will defile not the land,
but the sanctuary. Jubilees follows H in extending the category of impurity to
forbidden sexual relations, but it follows P in limiting the geographical extent
of susceptibility to impurity to the temple. The angels rhetoric in the speech
against intermarriage quoted above, which refers to thosewho defile the
Lords sanctuary and to those who profane his holy name (Jub. 30:15), actu-
ally reflects a passage from H condemning Molech worship: And I will set My
face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he
gave of his offspring to Molech and so defiled My sanctuary and profaned My
holy name (Lev 20:3). Jubilees, however, restricts defilement by impurity to
the temple not only here, but throughout the work. B. Halpern-Amaru suggests
that this failure to adopt Hs view of the land as holy is a result of Jubilees de-
emphasis of the promise of the land in its retelling of the stories of the Patriarchs
and the Exodus. For Jubilees, Israels chosenness goes back to the creation of
the world, and it claims that the land was allotted to Israel at the time of Noah.
Thus, the link between the election of Israel and the promise of the land is sup-
pressed. With the origins of the relationship between God and Israel placed in
the context of creation, Jubilees eschatology looks forward to the restoration
50Jubilees
account of the choice of Levi as priest contains other elements as well (Jub
31:1317, 32:19), although in my view they are all the result of Levis act of zeal. On the
choice of Levi as priest in Jubilees and related texts, see J. Kugel, Levis Elevation to the
Priesthood in Second Temple Writings, HTR 86 (1993): 164; Kugler, From Patriarch, 155
69; VanderKam, Jubilees Exegetical Creation of Levi the Priest, RevQ 17 (1996): 35973;
Werman, Levi and Levites, 21622.
of the conditions of primeval times rather than to the restoration of the land.
Halpern-Amaru sees this perspective as reflecting the conditions of the later
Second Temple period, when the restoration to the land had been accomplished
but without the hoped-for eschatological effects.51
There is one element that is striking by its absence from Jubilees treatment of
forbidden sexual relations: menstrual blood. Blood is a favorite subject for Jubi
lees; it devotes considerable attention to the defilement caused by its improper
shedding and consumption and the atonement achieved through its pouring in
the course of sacrifice.52 Yet, while it is absent from Jubilees, menstrual blood
is invoked as a source of defilement for the sanctuary in both the Damascus
Document and the Psalms of Solomon. Between its condemnation of polygamy
(CD 4.205.6) and uncle-niece marriage (CD 5.711), the Damascus Document
complains, They also pollute the sanctuary because they do not distinguish ac-
cording to the Torah, but lie with one who sees her blood flowing (CD 5.67). In
the Psalms of Solomon, impurity from contact with menstrual blood appears with
incest and adultery as one of the secret sexual sins of the people of Jerusalem,
and it is explicitly connected to the defilement of the temple: They trampled
the altar of the Lord, coming straight from all kinds of uncleanness, and with
menstrual blood they defiled the sacrifices as though they were common flesh
(Pss Sol. 8:12).53
In light of its fascination with blood and its view that forbidden sexual rela-
tions defile the sanctuary, Jubilees failure to include violation of the laws of
menstrual impurity in its condemnation of forbidden sexual relations must be
read as purposeful. Perhaps the omission is meant to underscore Jubilees claim
that improper sexual relations even without violations of the purity laws defile
the sanctuary. It is also noteworthy that in its effort to depict Israel as a kingdom
of priests, Jubilees emphasizes such obviously forbidden practices as eating
blood and having sexual relations with fathers wives or gentiles. If only Jews
avoid these sins, it implies, they will be acting as befits a priestly people. The
emphasis on sins everyone could agree on may be intended to win adherents
to Jubilees calendar, which stands at the heart of its program and which was
highly controversial. But the Damascus Documents charge that its opponents
fail to distinguish according to the Torah suggests a dispute about the proper
observance of purity laws. If so, Jubilees might have chosen to omit menstrual
51See B. Halpern-Amaru, Rewriting the Bible: Land and Covenant in Post-Biblical Jewish
Literature (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), 2554; on the stories of sexual
sin and the Holiness Code, 4445; on eschatology, 4854.
52C. Werman, The Rules of Consuming and Covering Blood in Priestly and Rabbinic Law,
RevQ 16 (1995): 62136 (A slightly different Hebrew version appeared as idem,

, Tarbiz 63 [199394]: 17383); Himmelfarb, Kingdom
of Priests, 9395.
53S.P. Brock, trans., The Psalms of Solomon, AOT, 666.
impurity because it was a controversial subject in its effort to gain a sympathetic

hearing for its calendar.
In their treatment of laws related to sexual relations, then, Jubilees and the
Temple Scroll offer two different models for making ordinary Jews more like
priests. The Temple Scroll elaborates and intensifies the laws of purity of Leviti-
cus 12 and 15. While these laws apply to all Jews, priests and non-priests alike,
their impact on priests is much greater because priests must enter the temple on a
regular basis and rely on consecrated food. The Temple Scroll does not eliminate
the boundaries between priests and other Jews; indeed, in other areas, it insists
on these boundaries. Rather, the Temple Scroll makes purity a more relevant
category for all Jews and thus narrows the gap between priests and others.
Jubilees, on the other hand, confers on all Jews the status of priests by claim-
ing that violations of the laws of prohibited sexual relations affect the temple
itself. By observing those laws, all Jews assure the purity of the temple; by
violating them, they defile the temple. Unlike the Temple Scroll, Jubilees never
stresses priestly prerogatives.
True, the differences between Jubilees and the Temple Scroll are in the end
theoretical differences. That is, the author of Jubilees surely accepted the purity
laws of Leviticus 12 and 15 although they were not at the center of his thought,
and it is by no means impossible that he would also have accepted the places of
confinement the Temple Scroll called for. So too the author of the Temple Scroll
must have accepted those laws of forbidden sexual relations in Leviticus 18 and
20 that he did not reproduce in his work. But even if differences in outlook do
not mean differences in practice, they are nonetheless significant.
In his comparison of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll on calendar and sacrifice,
J.C. VanderKam argues that to a large extent the differences between the works
reflect the portions of the Torah they rework. Thus, Jubilees lacks a number of
festivals that appear in the Temple Scroll because it restricted itself to festivals
for which it could find some basis in Genesis and the first part of Exodus.54
The differences between the works in the area of sexual relations and purity,
however, cannot be explained in this way. To be sure, Jubilees does not treat
the portions of the Torah that contain purity laws. Yet it does introduce the laws
of Leviticus 12 into its account of Adam and Eves entrance into the Garden of
Eden. Its treatment of these laws shows none of the characteristics of the Temple
Scrolls approach. As for the Temple Scroll, the portions of the Torah it treats
contain the laws of forbidden sexual relations so important to Jubilees, but the
Temple Scroll is not particularly interested in them. Rather than elaborating
and intensifying them as for the purity laws, it compresses them dramatically,
although it does add one law not found in the Torah.
54VanderKam,
Temple Scroll, 21725.
Y. Sussmann has characterized the priestly halakhic tradition to which he be-

lieves Jubilees and the Temple Scroll belong as consistently stringent in contrast
to Pharisaic and rabbinic leniency.55 In a study of the halakhah of the festival
cult, I. Knohl offers a basis for this difference. He suggests that the positions
of the sects of the Second Temple period reflect their debt to the ideologies of
different strands of biblical law. The Pharisees support for greater popular par-
ticipation in the festival cult goes back to the position of H, while the Sadducean
anxiety about such participation derives from the austere cultic rules of P. Knohl
sees Qumran law generally and the Temple Scroll, which he takes as sectarian, in
particular, as close to the Sadducees and thus as indebted primarily to P. But he
makes the intriguing suggestion that where H offers greater stringency than P, the
Qumran community followed H, although he does not work out the details of this
suggestion.56 Knohls schema works rather well for the Temple Scrolls use of H
to extend the purity laws of P, which certainly provides an example of stringency
relative to the biblical text and later rabbinic law. Jubilees, on the other hand,
for all its intense condemnation of sexual sins, might well be characterized as
lenient; the sins condemned are major and indisputable, and in the one instance
it treats a purity law, it does not extend it beyond the demands of the biblical
text. In the area of sexual relations, at least, Jubilees appears to be using H as
Knohl suggests the Pharisees did, to provide Jews who are not priests with the
opportunity for greater participation in the temple cult, although in this case the
participation takes place at a distance.
J. Klawans has recently argued that the conflation of categories of purity
and morality is typical of the Qumran sectarian texts and indeed central to the
ideology of the Qumran community.57 In 1QS 4.1011, for example, a series of
moral failings including hypocrisy and blasphemy stand in apposition to
, ways of uncleanness in the work of impurity.58 Thus the
conflation of categories here and elsewhere in the sectarian texts goes beyond
Hs understanding of sexual immorality, bloodshed, and idolatry as causes of
impurity,59 but it is not difficult to trace a trajectory from H through Jubilees to
the sectarian literature.
The Temple Scroll also contains an example of the conflation of impurity
and immorality.60 In its reworking of Deut 16:1820, the Temple Scroll uses
the language of impurity to claim that taking bribes not only perverts justice,
55Sussman, ; Sussman, Appendix 1, Qimron and Strugnell, DJD 10.
See also Werman, The Rules of Consuming, 62136; and Werman, Jubilees 30, 13, 2122.
See the criticism of this position by Y. Elman, Some Remarks on 4QMMT and the Rabbinic
Tradition: or, When Is a Parallel Not a Parallel? in Reading 4QMMT, 99128.
56Knohl, Post-Biblical Sectarianism, 6019; see esp. 609 n.20.
57J. Klawans, The Impurity of Immorality in Ancient Judaism, JJS 48 (1997): 710.
58Klawans, Impurity of Immorality, 89.
59Klawans, Impurity of Immorality, 3.
60I would like to thank I. Knohl for pointing out this example to me.
but also defiles ( )the House (51.1315). This is the only such instance
in the Scroll, however, and it appears to represent exegesis of a specific biblical
passage rather than a more general stance. In Deuteronomy, the prohibition of
bribery is followed by the exhortation to pursue justice that you may thrive and
occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you (16:20). The Temple
Scroll offers a similar exhortation to pursue justice in order to flourish in the
land (51.1516) and demands the death penalty for anyone who accepts a bribe
(51.1718). Its claim that accepting a bribe defiles the temple can be under-
stood as an attempt to make explicit what it must have viewed as implicit in
Deuteronomy. If pursuing justice allows Israel to thrive and occupy the land,
then failing to pursue justice must have negative consequences for the peoples
relationship to the land. The move from land to House emphasizes the nega-
tive consequences, and it is a natural move since the temple is the most sensitive
part of the land. Furthermore, the Scrolls insistence that the purity laws apply
beyond the temple to the land as a whole has prepared it to substitute one for the
other. Once again the Temple Scroll and Jubilees show the influence of different
aspects of H. The Temple Scroll learned from H that the entire land is holy and
subject to impurity, while Jubilees, like the sectarian texts Klawans discusses,
learned that sexual immorality among other sins has consequences in the realm
of purity. It is worth noting that Jubilees stands closer to the sectarian texts in its
approach than does the Temple Scroll.
The differences in the treatment of laws of sexual relations and purity in Ju
bilees and the Temple Scroll are only one aspect of the relationship of the works
to each other and to the Qumran community. However, the differences do point
away from the close relationship between the two works that some have claimed
on the basis of the study of the calendar. They also point away from identifying
the Temple Scroll as a sectarian work. It should be noted that even if we accept
the conclusion that the Temple Scroll uses the same calendar as Jubilees, the
implications of this conclusion depend on our understanding of the history of
the calendar. If it was an invention of the sects predecessors, use of the calendar
clearly implies sectarian associations. However, if it is an older priestly calendar,
its use does not necessarily suggest sectarian sympathies.61 Of course, any judg-
ment about the provenance of the Scroll must take into account all of its laws
and their relationship to clearly sectarian works as well as the evidence for the
status of the Scroll at Qumran.
Finally, the differences between the Temple Scroll and Jubilees also argue
against the existence of an easily characterized essence of priestly law, just as the
complex pattern of use of P and H makes it difficult to draw direct lines between
61For a careful discussion of this difficult topic, see J.C. VanderKam, The Origin, Char-
acter, and Early History of the 364-Day Calendar: A Reassessment of Jauberts Hypotheses,
CBQ 41 (1979): 390411.
the different corpora of priestly law of the Torah and the sects of the Second
Temple period.62 If Jubilees and the Temple Scroll do come from the same legal
and exegetical tradition,63 that tradition could be shaped and developed in very
different ways by those who drew on it.
62See
the comments of Baumgarten, Flourishing, 56, 7580.
63VanderKam,
Temple Scroll, 232.
8. Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512
In the conclusion to his discussion of the purification rituals of 4Q512, J.M.

Baumgarten writes,
Rabbinic traditiontended by and large to treat ritual impurity as a morally neutral
phenomenonIn this respect the penitential tone of the Qumran blessings after any
kind of immersion seems to reflect another facet of the specifically sectarian view on
uncleanliness. For if impurity is inherent in all transgressors of divine law (1QS V4),
might one not suppose conversely that all who are impure are in need of atonement for
their trespasses? The dividing line between uncleanliness and sin at Qumran is thus
not sharply drawn1
The view that the Qumran community conflated the categories of impurity and
sin is widespread.2 It has recently been placed in a larger context by J. Klawans
in his study of the relationship between impurity and sin in ancient Judaism.3
Although neither Baumgarten nor Klawans defines the corpus of texts he regards
as sectarian, each draws in his discussion on texts widely regarded as products
of the sect. The passage just quoted comes from Baumgartens discussion of
4Q512; he has recently suggested that several passages in the 4QD fragments
also reflect the sectarian conflation of impurity and sin.4 Klawans bases his argu-
ment on the sectarian document par excellence, 1QS, with parallels from other
texts that can plausibly be viewed as sectarian.
Because he is a leading expert on the halakhah of the Scrolls, Baumgartens
opinion carries particular weight. Still, I hope to show that a careful examina-
tion of 4QDs laws of eruptions of the skin and genital impurity and the relevant
1J.M. Baumgarten, The Purification Rituals in DJD 7, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years
of Research (ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport; STDJ 10; Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Yad
Izhak Ben-Zvi; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 209.
2See J. Klawans, The Impurity of Immorality in Ancient Judaism, JJS 48 (1997): 8 n.40,
for a partial listing of scholarship that holds this view.

3Impurity of Immorality, 710. For this article, completed in early September 2000, I
was not able to see Klawans book, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford
University Press), which appeared later in 2000.
4J.M. Baumgarten, ed., with J.T. Milik, S. Pfann, and A. Yardeni, Qumran Cave 4.XIII: The
Damascus Document (4Q266273) (DJD 18; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 56 (comment to
4Q266 6 ii 2) and 146 (comment to 4Q270 2 ii 12); Baumgarten, Zab Impurity in Qumran and
Rabbinic Law, JJS 45 (1994): 275. Baumgartens work makes it clear that he views all of the
halakhic texts found among the scrolls as sectarian, including the Temple Scroll, and he treats
all of them as part of a single halakhic system.
136 8. Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512
material in 1QS and 4Q512 calls into question generalizations about a sectarian
association of impurity and sin. I shall argue that the purity laws of 4QD do not
conflate impurity and sin, indeed that there is nothing distinctively sectarian
about these laws at all. While 1QS and 4Q512 use the language of impurity in
ways that go beyond its meaning in the priestly corpus of the Torah, there are
significant differences between them that make it difficult to see the association
of impurity and sin as characteristic of the Qumran sectarians.
The background to the relationship between impurity and sin at Qumran is
of course the relationship between impurity and sin in the Torah. The priestly
material of the Torah offers a system of purity rules that treat food, childbirth,
skin eruptions, eruptions in houses and fabrics, genital flow, and contact with
corpses (Leviticus 1115, Numbers 19). In these laws, which come from P,5 im-
purity is understood as a natural and unavoidable state, sometimes even a desir-
able one, as, for example, the impurity accompanying menstruation and sexual
relations, which make child bearing possible, and childbirth itself. Nor are the
consequences of most types of impurity dire: the impure person is barred from
the sanctuary and from contact with holy things (Lev 12:4). The consequences
of skin afflictions are somewhat more severe: the afflicted person must be quar-
antined away from home during his period of impurity (Lev 13:46). The rituals
of purification and the duration of the process of purification appear to be related
to the severity of the impurity. Thus, for example, the impurity of a woman after
childbirth, skin eruptions, and abnormal genital flow require sacrifice in addi-
tion to the bathing and laundering required for normal genital flow (Lev 12:67;
14:132; 15:1415, 2930).
J. Milgrom has argued that the impurities that require sacrifice as part of the
process of purification were understood to pollute the sanctuary even from afar.6
He deduces this from the fact that these sacrifices always include a ( Lev
12:6; 14:12, 19; 15:14, 30), the purification offering intended to cleanse the
sanctuary of the pollution caused by the person bringing the sacrifice. A woman
in a state of menstrual impurity or a man who has had a seminal emission can
avoid polluting the sanctuary by taking care not to enter it. It is impossible,
however, for a person bearing one of the more severe types of impurity to avoid
polluting the sanctuary since his impurity affects it even from afar. Still, despite
the inevitability of pollution in these cases, the sacrifice provides a remedy.
For P impurity is an objective, ritual state, not a moral one. Impurity is wrong
only if one neglects purification (Lev 5:113). This understanding of impurity
was clearly not the popular view in biblical times. Elsewhere in the Bible, for
5I. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minne-
apolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 6970, 9294, sees indications of Hs editorial hand in Leviticus
11 and 15 and Numbers 19.
6Milgrom, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976):
39293; Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 25478.
8. Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512 137
example, skin eruptions are associated with sin. God punishes Miriams slander
of Moses with skin eruptions (Num 12:10), and he similarly afflicts King Uz-
ziah just in time to prevent him from offering incense, a usurpation of the role
of the priests (2Chron 26:1621). Elsewhere too , the term P uses for the
state of menstrual impurity, is applied to idolatry and other types of sin (Ezek
36:17, 2Chron 29:5). While some of these examples are drawn from texts that
postdate P, their conflation of sin and impurity surely reflects a view with a long
history. Ps understanding of impurity as a state without moral implications is a
rejection of this view.
Ps idea of impurity is transformed in the second corpus of priestly law, the
Holiness Code (Leviticus 1726 and elsewhere in the Torah).7 To begin with, H
uses Ps terminology of impurity to claim that certain sins are defiling: idolatry
(Lev 18:21; 20:15), forbidden sexual relations (Leviticus 18, 20), and murder
(Num 35:3334).8 P insists that the bearer of impurity be excluded from the
sanctuary to avoid defiling it; if the impurity is severe, the bearer must bring a
sacrifice to undo the damage he has done from afar. H believes that the sinner
who incurs impurity defiles the land, from which it is impossible to exclude
him, thus threatening not only the sinner but the community as a whole: So let
not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came
before you. All who do any of those abhorrent things such persons shall be cut
off from their people (Lev 18:2829).9 Nor does H suggest any means to undo
the effects of impurity.
H does not claim that all sins bring impurity in their wake, but only three
particularly severe sins. Sexual sin, the variety to which H devotes the most
attention, can be seen as spanning the categories of morality and ritual. While
adultery and some of the forms of incest forbidden by H can be understood as
moral offenses, sexual relations with a woman and her daughter or granddaugh-
ter (Lev 18:17), for example, are not so much moral offenses, offenses against
other human beings, as offenses against a concept of right order. Further, given
the prominent place of genital flow in the purity system of P, it is perhaps not
surprising that H understands immoral actions involving the genitals to have
7I follow Knohls division of the priestly corpus into P and H in Sanctuary of Silence, and
I accept his view that H follows P.

8Num 35:3334 comes from H according to Knohl, Sanctuary of Silence, 99100. I would
note in passing that the passage in Numbers uses not only the verb familiar from P and the
H passages in Leviticus 18 and 20, for defiling the land, but also the root , which is used in
this sense in Jeremiah (3:12, 9), Psalms (106:38), and perhaps Micah (4:11), but which appears
nowhere else in the Torah. Taken together with the absence of bloodshed as a sin in Leviticus
18 and 20, this difference in terminology suggests that bloodshed as a cause of defilement of
the land has a different prehistory from forbidden sexual relations and idolatry as causes of
defilement of the land.
9All quotations from the Hebrew Bible are taken from the NJPS translation, unless otherwise
indicated.
consequences for purity even when they do not violate the purity laws. The
conflation of ritual and morality is well illustrated in Lev 20:21, which terms
relations between a man and his brothers wife, , menstrual impurity. In the
course of branding a moral transgression as ritually impure, this passage also
implies that the ritual impurity of the menstruant is morally problematic. I have
already noted the use of for idolatry and immorality generally elsewhere in
the Bible, but the use by the Holiness Code in the laws of sexual morality is more
pointed, reflecting the close relationship between P and H, and it is particularly
striking to the reader because the Holiness Code appears in Leviticus almost im-
mediately after Ps purity laws.10 The other sins H sees as defiling, idolatry and
murder, can also be seen as spanning the categories of ritual and morality. Idola-
try is a ritual sin in the sense that it is a sin against God rather than other human
beings, but it is more than a merely ritual sin because it attacks the foundation
of the system and thus has profound moral consequences. Murder is obviously
a moral offense, but the significance of blood in food and sacrifice, about which
H has a great deal to say (Leviticus 17), lends a ritual dimension to the crime
because it involves the spilling of blood.
The legacy of P, then, is a radical separation between the realms of purity
and morality. It is wrong to try to enter the sanctuary or have contact with holy
things in a state of impurity, and it is wrong not to undergo purification. But be-
ing impure is not a sign of any moral lack. For H, on the other hand, moral sins
have ritual consequences: they render the sinner impure and the land as well,
thus threatening the safety of the community as a whole, and there is no ritual
means to repair the damage. Conversely, Hs use of the term for forbidden
sexual relations suggests that impurity is morally suspect. The authors of the
Damascus Document, the Community Rule, and 4Q512, of course, did not dis-
tinguish between P and H. Yet as they attempted to understand the Torahs laws
regarding purity and morality, they necessarily had to contend with the tensions
between the different outlooks they encountered.
Damascus Document
I have already noted that Baumgarten suggests that sin and impurity are closely
connected in the Damascus Document. He makes his argument on the basis of
the halakhic material of 4QD, but he might have pointed to support from the
Admonition as well. There the term , detached from its specific meaning in P,
is used as a term of condemnation ([ 2.1], [ 3.17]). Impurity
is clearly understood not only as a physical but also as a spiritual state: Let him
10I owe the insight about Hs transformation of Ps use of the term to the junior paper of
Lauren Eichler Berkun (Spring 1993).

separate himself from all impurities ( )according to their precept; and let
no man defile ( )his holy spirit as God distinguished for them (7.34).11
The root appears in the food laws of Leviticus (11:1023); NJPS translates
abomination for the noun form and abominate for the verb. But the Damas
cus Document does not restrict itself to the language of impurity in its quest for
damning metaphors. It draws also on the vocabulary of sexual misconduct so
prominent in Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, although neither of the phrases it
uses, eyes of harlotry (( ) 2.16) and ways of harlots (( ) 8.5),
has a biblical antecedent. The Damascus Documents favorite way of character-
izing sin, however, is neither as impurity nor as harlotry, but rather as willful-
ness, the wantonness of the heart ( with various pronominal suffixes)
(2.1718; 3.5, 1112; 8.8, 19). The phrase appears in Jeremiah and elsewhere.12
Yet despite these instances of a more figurative understanding of impurity in
the Admonition, the legal material of the Damascus Document in my view stands
largely in the tradition of P, with purity and impurity understood as objective cat-
egories. While the Genizah version of the Damascus Document contains almost
nothing about the laws of impurity of Leviticus 1215,13 4QD treated the laws
at some length, although a considerable portion of the treatment has now been
lost. It refers to its laws of purity as rules, in construct with the appropriate
category, for example, ( ][ 4Q266 6 i 14, 4Q272 1 ii 3).14 The
term appears more widely in the Damascus Document, as a glance at the
concordance at the end of DJD 18 shows. But its use in relation to the impurities
of Leviticus 1215 is distinctive, at least for 4QD, and appears to represent an
interpretation of the use of in those chapters to introduce and to conclude
bodies of law.15 4Q266 6 i preserves enough continuous text to show that the
rule of skin eruptions (lines 114) was followed by the rule of the man with a
flow (lines 1416), while frag. 6 ii contains the conclusion of the discussion of
the menstruant and the woman with abnormal flow (lines 14) followed by the
discussion of the parturient (lines 513). 4Q272 also provides evidence for the
treatment of the purity laws of Leviticus 1215 as a unit: frag. 1 ii contains the
conclusion of the rule of skin eruptions (lines 12), the rule of the man with a
11Trans. J.M. Baumgarten and D. Schwartz, Damascus Document, The Dead Sea Scrolls:
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations. Vol. 2: Damascus Document, War
Scroll, and Related Documents (ed. J.H. Charlesworth; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck]; Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 25.
12Deut 29:18; Jer 3:17, 7:24, 9:13, 11:8, 13:10, 16:12, 18:12, 23:17; Ps 81:13.
13See below for a discussion of CD 12.12, Let no man lie with a woman to defile the city
of the sanctuary with their pollution (Baumgarten and Schwartz, Damascus Document, 51).
14See also [( ]4Q266 6 i 5; parallel in 273 4 ii 10, which breaks off after
the ), ( ][ 4Q266 6 i 13), and ( [ ]4Q272 1 ii 7).

15Introductions: the laws of the parturient (Lev 12:7) and the ( Lev 14:2). Conclusions:
the laws of of fabrics and leather (Lev 13:59), a topic not treated in 4QD; the offering
of the poor ( Lev 14:32); the laws of generally (Lev 14:54, 57); the laws of genital
discharge (Lev 15:32).
flow (lines 37), and the beginning of the rule of the woman with a flow, which
includes the menstruant and perhaps also the parturient (lines 718).16 My brief
summary of the contents of Ps laws of purity above operates on an assumption
that must be made explicit to facilitate discussion of 4QD. The assumption is that
because the laws of impurity constitute a meaningful system, the rules for each
type of impurity have implications for the other types.17 For example, for the
parturient the consequences of impurity are spelled out: she is not to have contact
with consecrated things or to enter the sanctuary (Lev 12:4). These consequences
are not mentioned for the other types of impurity in the Torah, but with other
readers, ancient and modem, I assume that they apply to them as well. But the
applicability of rules for one type of impurity to other types is not always clear.
Leviticus 15 decrees laundering and bathing for the man with a flow at the end
of the period of purification (Lev 15:13) and bathing for a man who has had a
seminal emission and for a woman who has had contact with semen in sexual
relations (Lev 15:16, 18). Yet it mentions neither bathing nor laundering for
the menstruant or the woman with abnormal flow. Still P surely assumes such
bathing and laundering. Its failure to specify them may reflect its confidence
that the analogy with the man with a flow and the man with a seminal emission
would be obvious,18 and there is evidence elsewhere in the Bible, outside of P,
for the practice of bathing after menstruation (2Sam 11:4). But if the silence of
Leviticus 15 is due to its already having laid out the rules in the first portion of
the chapter, why does its discussion of the woman with an abnormal flow repeat
the requirement of sacrifice (Lev 15:2930) in language virtually identical to
that it uses for the man with a flow (Lev 15:1415)? The assumption that Ps
laws form a system by no means explains all aspects of their literary expression.
Furthermore, once the text itself has become authoritative, its very mode of
expression invites exegesis. To a considerable extent, 4QDs rules of impurity
attempt to resolve the tension between the laws of Leviticus as they are written
and the requirements of its understanding of the Torahs system of impurity.
Skin Eruptions
In its treatment of the rules of skin eruptions, , the Damascus Document is

apparently engaged in an effort to clarify and systematize the rather confusing
16As this summary suggests, 4QD understands the root , flow, as an overarching cat-
egory including both emissions and flows; see below in the section, The Man with a Flow,
for discussion.
17For a treatment of the laws of purity that seeks to explicate the system, Milgrom, Leviticus
116, 9761000.
18According to Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 93435, impurity is always brought to an end
with ablutions; Leviticus 15 fails to mention bathing for the menstruant and the because it
assumes it.
laws of Leviticus 1314.19 One example of this effort is the definition of the
of Lev 13:2 (NJPS: rash; RSV: eruption) as a scab caused by a blow
from wood, stone, or any other blow (4Q269 7 in combination with 4Q272 1 i);
this definition helps to distinguish from the companion afflictions of Lev
13:2, ( NJPS and RSV: swelling) and ( NJPS: discoloration; RSV:
spot). Another example of the attempt at clarification is 4QDs application
of the term , malignant, used in Leviticus only of eruptions of fabric
(13:5152) and houses (14:44), to eruptions in human beings (4Q266 6 i 5). The
term permits clarity about the state of the disease that is characterized in a rather
confusing way in the Torah. In Leviticus 13 the judgment that the condition
causing impurity is present is indicated by a variety of expressions, including
it is ( the affliction of skin eruptions; NJPS: a leprous affection)
(vv.3, 27); it is ( skin eruptions; NJPS: leprosy) (v.8); it is ( an
affliction; NJPS: an affection) (v.22); or it is ( NJPS: scall), it is
(skin eruptions; NJPS: a scaly eruption) of the head (NJPS: in the hair) or
beard (v.30). But when covers the whole body, the one who suffers from
it is pure. Could one say of this , It is ?The introduction of the term
resolves this difficulty neatly.
In addition to attempting to rationalize the biblical laws of skin eruptions,
4QD brings to them some non-biblical medical concepts. It appears to attribute
the affliction to a spirit that takes hold of the artery and causes blood to move
up and down; healed flesh means that the spirit of life moves up and down
(4Q272 1 i 28 in combination with 4Q269 7). Baumgarten is clearly correct that
, spirit, in this context cannot be construed to mean a demonic or angelic
spirit, as elsewhere in the Scrolls. Rather, he suggests, it is a medical term, used
in a manner similar to that of the attributed to Asaph.20 The 4QD
fragments also introduce a comparison of the yellow hair of the afflicted person
to a plant eaten by a worm (4Q266 6 i). Baumgarten cites parallels to this simile
in Leviticus Rabbah and suggests that the understanding of the human being
as composed of blood and water in the midrashic passages reflects the medical
theory behind the 4QD fragments.21
19For
the composite text of 4Q266, 4Q269 (according to DJD 18; it is identified in the article
as 4Q268), and 4Q272, J.M. Baumgarten, The 4Q Zadokite Fragments on Skin Disease, JJS
41 (1990): 15860.
20Baumgarten, Skin Disease, 16263; Baumgarten notes that this understanding of
reflects the biblical understanding of blood as the spirit of life.

21Baumgarten, Skin Diseases, 165.
The Man with a Flow
The discussion of skin eruptions in 4QD is followed by the rule of the , the man
with a flow (4Q266 6 i 1416 and 4Q272 1 ii 37). The rule is not well preserved,
but it appears to list three types of :
[And the r]ule concerning one who has a discharge: Any man with a [dis]charge from
[his] flesh, [o]r one [who] brings upon himse[lf] lustful thoughts or one22 who [ ].23
According to the categories of Leviticus 15, it is odd to find the discharge caused
by lustful thoughts attributed to the man with a flow; such discharge would seem
rather to be an instance of the seminal emission of Lev 15:16.24 I shall return to
this problem in a moment.
First, I want to ask what made 4QD think that there were three types of . In
the portion of Leviticus 15 devoted to male impurity, the root is used only
for abnormal male genital discharge; the term for seminal emission is .
This is not because the root has anything to do with abnormality, but rather
because it refers to flow and thus is not properly applied to ejaculation.25 In what
follows, I use flow to refer to genital discharge that does not involve ejacu-
lation; I use discharge as an overarching category, including both flow and
ejaculation. Thus in English I use three different terms, flow, ejaculation,
and discharge, while the Hebrew of the Torah has only two, corresponding to
flow and ejaculation, but lacks a term that would include both. As we shall
see, the absence of such a term causes some confusion.
In men, normal discharge is ejaculation; only abnormal discharge is flow. In
women, both normal and abnormal genital discharge are flow. Thus Leviticus
introduces its discussion of menstruation, normal female genital discharge,
When a woman has a flow (), her flow being blood from her body, she shall
remain in her impurity seven days (Lev 15:19).26 Indeed this is the only time
the form appears in the Bible. While Leviticus 15 repeatedly refers to the
man with the abnormal flow as a ( Lev 15:4, 69, 1113), the use of as the
female equivalent, that is, a woman with abnormal discharge, is not biblical but
22I have added one to Baumgartens translation, DJD 18.53, 190. If the first is
translated one who, then this should also be translated one who.
23I indicate lacunae only where neither 4Q266 6 i nor 4Q272 1 ii preserves text.
24Baumgarten points out that m. Zabim 2:2 exempts discharge from being considered a sign
of impurity if it can be connected to sexual stimulation (DJD 18.54; Zab Impurity, 275).
But his comment on the passage in 4QD, It would appear from the context that a discharge
resulting from lustful thoughts was considered as coming under the category of zab and would
therefore be defiling (DJD 18.54, comment to 4Q266 6 i 15), is somewhat misleading. Any
discharge is defiling, but according to Leviticus 15 normal seminal emission defiles for a much
shorter period than the emission of the and far less effort is required to remove the impurity.
25Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 934, to Lev 15:19.
26I have changed NJPSs discharge to flow twice in the portion of the verse I quote.
rabbinic, although it is such a convenient term that it makes its way into many
discussions of the Bible and pre-rabbinic texts, including this one.
It is clear that this aspect of the meaning of the root was lost to many
readers quite early. The editor responsible for Lev 15:3233 certainly did not
understand it: Such is the ritual concerning him who has a flow (): concern-
ing him who has an emission of semen and becomes unclean therebyand
concerning anyone, male or female, who has a flow (vv.3233).27 Neither did
4QD, as the inclusion in the category of the one who brings upon himself
lustful thoughts shows.
As we have seen, the surviving text of 4QD indicates the existence of a third
type of , but breaks off before describing him. I suspect that he is the man who
has had a seminal emission in the course of sexual relations (Lev 15:18). Since
4QD did not understand the verb to exclude ejaculation, it could read the
opening of Leviticus 15 as a preface to the discussion of male impurity gener-
ally; the NJPS translation, When any man has a discharge ( )issuing from his
member (Lev 15:2), is appropriate to 4QDs understanding of the passage.
Since 4QD understands the root to mean discharge generally rather than
flow, it could find in Leviticus 15 three types of , the man with abnormal
flow (Lev 15:215), the man with a seminal emission outside of sexual relations
(Lev 15:1617), and the man with a seminal emission in the course of sexual
relations (Lev 15:18).
4Q272 1 ii allows us to see that the discussion of the occupied only another
two lines after the definition of the category:
[ ] his contact is like that of [ ] / he shall launder his clo[th]es and bathe in water [ ]/
him, who touches him shall ba[the
The vocabulary suggests that 4QD is summarizing Leviticus 15s rules of puri-
fication for a person who has had contact with the , his spittle, or anything he
lies, sits, or rides upon (Lev 15:510). The touch of a man who has had a seminal
emission does not convey impurity, but only the semen itself (Lev 15:1618).
Yet 4QD does not appear to have distinguished between the impurity of the
proper (Lev 15:215) and of those with seminal emissions (Lev 15:1618).
Rather, because 4QD understood those with seminal emissions to fall into the
category of , it also understood the more severe impurity of the man with a
flow to apply to those who had had seminal emissions: the little Leviticus 15
says about their impurity is thus not the full story, but the completion of what
has already been indicated about the .
Because 4QD is preserved only in fragments, it is sometimes difficult to
evaluate the absence of elements of Leviticus laws of impurity. But it is clear
from 4Q272 1 ii that the rule of the occupied only four and a half lines, and
27I
have changed NJPSs discharge to flow twice in the portion of the verses I quote.
there is no trace in these lines of the sacrifices the purified must bring accord-
ing to Leviticus 15 (vv.1415). Perhaps 4QD is silent because it could not insist
on sacrifice after seminal emission. But it must be noted that as far as we can tell
4QD mentions the requirement of sacrifice neither for the , although it clearly
distinguishes her from the menstruant (4Q266 6 ii 24), nor for one with skin
eruptions. Were it not for the mention of the sacrifice of the parturient (4Q266
6 ii 1213), one might suggest that 4QD omitted sacrifices altogether because it
found the Torah sufficiently clear on the subject. Since the fragment breaks off
in the midst of the parturients sacrifice, it is possible that instructions for the
other sacrifices followed. If so, however, this would be the only place in 4QDs
treatment of the purity laws in which impurity resulting from male genital dis-
charge is treated together with impurity resulting from female genital discharge.
The result of 4QDs understanding of a man who has had a seminal emission
as a is a view of the impurity of seminal emission far more severe than that
of P. As we shall see, male genital discharge is not the only case where 4QD
reads Leviticus 1215 to arrive at greater severity. Nor is 4QD alone among
ancient legal works in offering such a reading. The Temple Scroll engages in a
systematic revision of the purity laws of P in the direction of greater severity.
For seminal emission, it turns the one-day waiting period for purification into
a three-day period and requires laundering and bathing on both the first and the
third days (45.712). The Temple Scroll does not decree that contact with the
man who has had a seminal emission defiles, but this position does appear in
4QTohorot A (4Q274): And when [a man has] an emiss[ion] of semen his touch
is defiling (1 i 8).28 Since the subject of much of 4QTohorot A is what happens
when a bearer of impurity comes into contact with a bearer of a different type of
impurity, it is possible that the rule applies only if the one touching is counting
the days to purification.29 Given the lacuna in the text, certainty on this point is
unlikely, but 4QDs stringent regulations for the man with a seminal emission
28Trans.
Baumgarten, 4QTohorot A, Qumran Cave 4.XXV: Halakhic Texts (ed. Baumgar-
ten et al.; DJD 35; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 101. This translation reflects the restoration
] [ .
29This is Milgroms understanding, based on the restoration, ( [ ] Mil-
grom, 4QTOHORAa: An Unpublished Qumran Text on Purities, in Time to Prepare the Way
in the Wilderness: Papers on the Qumran Scrolls by Fellows of the Institute for Advanced
Studies of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 19891990 [ed. D. Dimant and L.H. Schiffman;
STDJ 16; Leiden: Brill, 1995], 5968). (Baumgartens first discussion of the text, The Laws
about Fluxes in 4QTohoraa [4Q274], in Time to Prepare, 18, also uses this restoration.) In
Milgroms reading, the man with the seminal emission is the man referred to in the previous line
as counting the days of purification. Milgrom argues that the touch of this man defiles after the
seminal emission because as a former who has not yet completed the waiting period before
the ritual of purification he was still somewhat impure even before the seminal emission; the
seminal emission serves to increase his impurity so that his touch is now defiling. This argu-
ment rests on Milgroms view that 4QTohorot A implies first-day ablutions for the impurities it
discusses (4QTOHORAa, 6667).
strengthen the case for reading the defiling touch of 4QTohorot A as independent
of the previous state of purity of the man with a seminal emission.
The Woman with a Flow
Following the rule of the , 4QD moves on to the rule of the ( 4Q272 1 ii
7).30 The subject of the fragmentary text is first the , the menstruant, who is
introduced in Lev 15:19 with the verb ( 4Q272 1 ii 718 preserves the begin-
ning of the passage; 4Q266 6 ii 12 preserves the conclusion of the discussion
of the ), and then the in the rabbinic sense (4Q266 6 ii 24). The rule
begins by noting the seven-day duration of menstrual impurity and goes on to
consider what happens to others who touch the menstruant (line 10); this was
also the concern of the rule of the . Very little of this portion of 4Q272 1 ii is
preserved; the words ( line 15), waters of purification, and [( ]line
16) in this context, fresh, are visible. , fresh water, is the term for the
water in which the man with a flow is to wash himself at the end of the process
of purification (Lev 15:13); the term suggests that 4QD understood the condition
of the menstruant as analogous to that of the . The term waters of purification
suggests a more distant analogy; it is the special water sprinkled on those with
corpse impurity in Numbers 19. The fact that the waters are called may
contribute to their association with menstrual impurity. Indeed Baumgarten sug-
gests that the Qumran community used sprinkling following bathing to remove
genital impurity and other types of impurity as well as corpse impurity.31
The discussion of the menstruant preserved in 4Q266 6 ii 12 either contin-
ues or returns to the question of the impurity imparted by the impure woman to
those who touch her. The specific case with which 4QD is concerned is the man
who has sexual relations with the menstruant, of whom 4QD says, []
(4Q266 6 ii 2). This passage led Baumgarten to comment, The association of im-
30While Baumgarten has to supply the word , the term does appear in the next line, and
the context leaves no doubt that it should appear at the beginning of the passage.
31DJD 35.8387. The most important piece of evidence for this claim appears in 4QTohorot
Bb 1 ii 710,
And those [who receive] th[e lust]ration water shall (first) immerse themselves in water and
be cle[an]sed of [human?] corpse defilement [and of every] other [defilement when the pri]est
[spr]inkles the lustration water upon them to purify [them, for they cannot] [be sanctified] unless
they are cleansed and their flesh is c[lean.]
Baumgarten points also to the language of 1QS and 4Q512, to be discussed below. See also
S.J.D. Cohens discussion of the Karaite practice of sprinkling for purification from men-
strual impurity, Purity, Piety, and Polemic: Medieval Rabbinic Denunciations of Incorrect
Purification Practices, in Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law (ed. R.R.
Wasserfall; Brandeis Series on Jewish Women; Hanover and London: Brandeis University
Press, 1999), 9394.
purity with sin ( )is characteristic of the Qumran outlook.32 But this comment
ignores the biblical text. Sexual relations with a menstruant is the only instance
of contact with an impure person that Leviticus treats as a sin; it is prohibited in
both Leviticus 18 (v.19) and Leviticus 20 (v.18), the lists of sexual abomina-
tions in the Holiness Code; according to Leviticus 20, which supplies punish-
ments for the offenses it notes, the couple will be cut off from the people. It is
not the impurity of the menstruant that 4QD associates with sin; rather, the is
the transgression of sexual relations with the menstruant. Thus 4QD transforms
Lev 15:24, , her impurity is communicated to him, to .
Following its discussion of the menstruant, 4QD turns to the , whom it
defines as a woman who sees a blood flow again, that is, not during the seven-
day span of her menstrual impurity (4Q266 6 ii 23). Here 4QD describes the
consequences of impurity for the first time, at least in the material preserved:
She shall not eat anything hallowed, nor co[me] into the sanctuary until sunset
on the eighth day (4Q266 6 ii 34). This rule echoes the language of Leviticus
12s prohibition for the parturient, She shall not touch anything hallowed,33 nor
enter the sanctuary until her period of purification is completed (Lev 12:4), but
with some significant changes. First, it replaces , touch, with ,34 eat,
making explicit the most significant aspect of the prohibition on touching holy
things: eating was the primary way in which a non-priest might have contact
with holy things.35 According to the Torah, consecrated food, or , in-
cludes both the portions of sacrifices consumed by priests and their households
(Lev 22:116) and tithes (Lev 22:12, Num 18:19, Deut 26:1213). The Torah
prohibits priests in a state of impurity from eating these foods (Lev 22:39). It
also prohibits lay people from eating those sacrificial portions available to them
in a state of impurity (Lev 7:1921 [the well-being sacrifice]; Num 9:914 [the
paschal sacrifice]), but it does not term these sacrificial portions . In other
words, the Torah contains no general prohibitions of eating this food in a state
of impurity, but rather a number of specific rules, some directed to priests alone,
some to lay people. Still, when P is treated as a system, it is clear that a bearer
of impurity must avoid contact with the holy. 4QD assumes quite reasonably
that the Torahs prohibition on the parturient applies to other bearers of impu-
rity as well and offers a more pointed version of Lev 12:4 for the woman with
abnormal flow.
The second significant way in which 4QD alters Lev 12:4 is that it changes
the phrase until her period of purification is completed, to until sunset on the
32DJD
18.56, to 4Q266 6 ii 2.
33NJPS:
any consecrated thing; I have changed the translation to show that 4QD and
Leviticus use the same term, .
34Forms of the root are usually spelled without the in 4QD (see the concordance in
DJD 18).
eighth day. The meaning of the phrase in Lev 12:4 depends on its context. For
the woman who has given birth to a boy, the subject of Lev 12:4, the length of
time designated by the phrase is forty days (Lev 12:24); for a woman who has
given birth to a girl, it would be eighty days (Lev 12:5). 4QD might have used
the phrase for the ;surely it would have been clear that in this context the
phrase meant eight days (Lev 15:29). But the phrase that 4QD uses is more spe-
cific than the language of Lev 15:29, which requires the woman with abnormal
flow to bring the sacrifice that is the final step in her purification on the eighth
day. Indeed the language of 4QD clarifies or corrects Lev 15:29, which leaves
the impression that the offering of the sacrifice restores the to purity at any
time on the eighth day. Yet while Leviticus 15 does not indicate at what point
on the last day of impurity the process of purification is complete for the other
categories of genital impurity, the , the menstruant, and the , it says explic-
itly that the impurity of men who have had seminal emissions and women who
have sexual relations, as well as that of clothing and leather that have had contact
with the emission (Lev 15:1618), lasts until evening. For the , the menstruant,
and the , however, it repeatedly notes that those who have contact with them
(: Lev 15:7; menstruant: Lev 15:19) or those of their belongings that convey
impurity (: Lev 15:5, 6, 8, 10, 11; menstruant: Lev 15:2123; : Lev 15:27)
are impure until evening.
Because it understands the purity laws of Leviticus as constituting a system,
4QD deduces that the process of purification for the is not complete until
sunset on the eighth day. This deduction is quite in keeping with 4QDs desire
to make the laws of the Torah more stringent. Presumably 4QD also drew the
conclusion that purification was not complete until sunset for the menstruant.
While the extant text does not contain any reference to sunset, 4Q272 1 ii, which
preserves part of the beginning of the rule of the ( 4Q272 1 ii 7), of which the
first category is the menstruant, refers to seven (line 8)36 and the seven days
(line 9), and there is certainly room in the lacunae of the poorly preserved text
for a reference to sunset. There is also room for a reference to sunset in the rule
of the ( 4Q266 6 i 1416; 4Q272 1 ii 37).
M. Parah 3:7 reports a disagreement between the Sadducees and the Pharisees
about the priest who burnt the ashes of the red heifer. While the Sadducees re-
quired that the priest be in a state of complete purity (presumably after seminal
emission), with the sun having set after his immersion, the Pharisees claimed
that it was enough for him to have immersed and that the sun need not have set.
Indeed, in their rejection of the position of the Sadducees, the Pharisees come
to insist that the sun not have set on the day of the purification; to enforce their
position, according to m. Parah 3:7, they used to defile the priest as he set out
to perform his task. They expected that he would then immerse himself before
36Only
the first two letters, , are preserved.
performing the ritual, but they have insured by the timing of the act of defile-
ment that the sun could not set before the ritual of the burning of the red heifer
was performed.37
In his commentary, Baumgarten connects 4QDs insistence on the sun setting
on the eighth day before the is pure to this dispute, just as he had previously
done for the Temple Scrolls specification of sunset as a requirement for the
completion of purification for nocturnal emission (45.9), corpse impurity (50.4),
and contact with the corpse of an impure animal (51.5).38 But the Torah says
explicitly that all of the Temple Scrolls instances of impurity last until evening
(nocturnal emission: Lev 15:16; corpse impurity: Num 19:19; contact with
corpse of an impure animal: Lev 11:31). Thus it is difficult to read the Temple
Scroll as polemical.
The two references to the role of sunset in purification in 4QMMT, on the
other hand, appear in the context of a polemical work, and the first comes in
relation to the ritual of the red heifer (B 1316). Here 4QMMT puts forward
the opinion the Mishnah rejects and associates with the Sadducees.39 It is worth
keeping in mind, as M. Kister writes, that it is the view of the Pharisees that
requires explanation; the opinion of the Sadducees and 4QMMT is natural from
the point of view both of exegesis of the biblical text and of special concern for
the purity of this exceptionally important sacrifice.40 The second instance in
4QMMT concerns purification from skin eruptions (B 6472). 4QMMT insists
that one who has had skin eruptions is not eligible to eat consecrated food until
the sun sets on the eighth day of the process of purification. The Mishnah (m.
Neg. 14:3), on the other hand, considers one who has had skin eruptions ready
to eat holy things after bringing his offering on the eighth day, with no require-
ment to await sundown. Yet even if the passages in 4QMMT reflect a dispute,
there is nothing to suggest polemic in the language of 4QD or the Temple Scroll.
Perhaps the position of the Pharisees had not yet emerged or was not yet known
to the authors of 4QD and the Temple Scroll.
4QDs discussion of the parturient is separated from the treatment of the
by a blank space (4Q266 6 ii 4). The new topic is not introduced with the term
, which suggests that 4QD understands the parturient as a third type of ,
37On the astonishing nature of the Pharisees position according to m. Parah, see M. Kister,
, , : , Tarbiz 68 (1999): 33031.
384QD: DJD 18.56 (to 4Q266 6 ii 34). The Temple Scroll: The Pharisaic-Sadducean Con-
troversies about Purity and the Qumran Texts, JJS 31 (1980): 15761. On the Temple Scroll,
see also L.H. Schiffman, The Temple Scroll and the Systems of Jewish Law of the Second
Temple Period, in Temple Scroll Studies (ed. G.J. Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1989) 24748.
39E. Qimron, The Halakha, Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqat Ma ae ha-Torah (ed. Qimron and
J. Strugnell; DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) 15254; Schiffman, Temple Scroll,
24748.
40Kister, , 33035.
just as it treats all of Leviticus men with genital flow as classes of . The rules
governing the parturient follow Leviticus 12 rather closely at first, although with
some rearrangement. The passage begins by delineating the different lengths of
the two periods of impurity depending on the sex of the child. 4QD then repeats a
version of the prohibition on contact with holy things of Lev 12:4. Unfortunately,
the passage is extremely fragmentary. It is clear that 4QD again substitutes eat-
ing holy things for touching them (4Q266 6 ii 9), but the passage does not ap-
pear to make any reference to completion of the period of purification. Instead it
concludes by terming the violation of the prohibitions a capital offense, ][
( 4Q266 6 ii 10).41
Next comes a law that does not appear in Leviticus 12 and that represents a re-
markable instance of intensification of those laws: 4QD forbids the new mother
to nurse her child. Rather, it appears, she is to give the child to a nurse who can
nurse the child in purity (4Q266 6 ii 1011).42 While the practical implications
of this ruling are astonishing, the logic of 4QDs position is quite powerful. The
laws of P explicitly compare the parturients initial impurity, which lasts one or
two weeks depending on the sex of the child, to menstrual impurity (Lev 12:3,
5); enough of the text of 4QD is preserved to see that it makes the same compari-
son (4Q266 6 ii 6, 8). According to P a person who touches a woman in a state
of menstrual impurity becomes impure until evening (Lev 15:19); presumably
this person must launder and bathe since laundering and bathing are required for
a person who touches the menstruants bedding or any object on which she has
sat (Lev 15:2122). If the parturients initial impurity is like menstrual impurity,
4QD concludes that during that initial period the infant she nurses would incur
impurity by touching her, its clothes would require laundering, and it would
require bathing daily in order to become pure again at sundown. The extra work
such bathing and laundering would have caused in a world without running
water much less washing machines is so considerable that the wet nurse might
have seemed a more practical solution. 4QDs reading of the text of Leviticus
is so persuasive that it is hard not to agree that P must have shared the view that
the parturient conveyed impurity to those who touched her during the first stage
of her impurity. Surely it would not have escaped Ps notice that the newborn
baby could not avoid such contact. Yet Leviticus 12 betrays no anxiety about this
contact.43 Perhaps P ignores the question because it does not think it important.
The consequences of impurity as specified in Leviticus 12 are hardly relevant to
a newborn, who is most unlikely to have the opportunity to enter the sanctuary
41Baumgarten
(DJD 18.56) refers to Num 19:20, which threatens a bearer of corpse impurity
who does not undergo purification with being cut off from among the congregation because
he has defiled the sanctuary, but neither the crime nor the terminology is very close to 4QD.
42The text is extremely fragmentary, but it is difficult to imagine an interpretation of the
surviving letters, ]][ , that does not involve a nurse.

or touch holy things and who is certainly incapable of eating sacrificial meat and
other kinds of consecrated food. Nor is the severity of the impurity incurred by
contact with the mother sufficient to affect the sanctuary from afar.
The List of Transgressors
Finally, I want to consider the list of transgressors in 4QD, which Baumgarten

considers another piece of evidence for sectarian conflation of impurity and im-
morality. This list, preserved in 4Q270 2, probably formed part of the Admoni-
tion. It includes a variety of sinners, from idolators to fornicators to traitors, as
well as the man with skin eruptions and the man with a discharge. These two
categories are listed together, [( ]4Q270 2 ii 12),
and then the line breaks off. The next line has moved on to the traitor, one who
reveals a secret of his people to the gentiles (line 13).
It is possible that the lacuna following the man with skin eruptions and the
man with a discharge contained another category of transgressor, now entirely
lost to us. But it is also possible indeed I believe likely that the transgression
of the man with skin eruptions and the man with a discharge was not their im-
purity, but rather a form of behavior specified in the lacuna. The sexually active
widow of Baumgartens reconstruction of the text provides a model for a sin
indicated in a subordinate clause: ( ] [ 4Q270 2 i 17).
Possible transgressions for the bearers of impurity would be violations of the
restrictions imposed on them by their impurity, such as eating consecrated food
or entering the sanctuary, or failure to undergo purification. The left margin of
4Q270 2 ii is nowhere preserved. Although Baumgarten says that 4Q270 aver-
ages fifty-seven letter spaces per line,44 most of the lines in his restoration of
4Q270 2 ii are considerably shorter. A clause such as , who does
not undergo purification, would bring line 12 to forty-six spaces including the
letters Baumgarten has supplied at the beginning and end of the lacuna, quite in
keeping with his reconstruction of other lines of this fragment. ,
who enters the sanctuary, would provide a fifty-space line; 45 ,
who eats sanctified food, provides forty-six spaces. The important point is that
there is no reason to believe that the transgression of the man with skin eruptions
and the man with a discharge consists simply of being in a state of impurity.
44DJD
18.137.
45As
noted above, in 4QD forms of usually lose the .
Purity in 4QD
For P the undesirability of impurity is primarily practical: it prevents contact

with the holy for those who need to be in contact with it, namely, priests minis-
tering in the sanctuary, and for those who are entitled to eat holy food, namely,
priests, their families, and lay people who have brought certain sacrifices. The
types of impurity severe enough to affect the sanctuary from afar are in practice
not particularly worrisome since the damage they cause can be repaired through
the sacrifice. 4QDs insistence on a nurse to replace the mother so as not
to convey impurity to the newborn baby suggests a somewhat different point of
view in which purity is valued for its own sake. A heightened concern for purity
for its own sake might lead to the association of impurity and immorality. As far
as I can see, however, outside of the two figurative uses of the term in the
Admonition, 4QD provides no evidence for such a view.
What is distinctive about 4QDs treatment of skin eruptions in comparison to
Ps is the understanding of skin eruptions as a medical condition. 4QD gives no
indication of the view, foreign to P but important elsewhere in the Bible, that
skin eruptions are punishment for sin. The lewd thoughts that according to 4QD
cause the condition of one kind of reflect not an association of the with
sexual impropriety, but rather the effort to bring nocturnal emission under the
heading of the rule of the . The man who has sexual relations with a woman
in a state of menstrual impurity bears the sin of her impurity according to 4QD,
but this is because Leviticus forbids sexual relations with a , not because 4QD
associates menstrual impurity with sinfulness. Altogether, I think it is accurate
to say that 4QD maintains Ps view of impurity as a ritual state without moral
implications, although the requirement of a nurse for the newborn baby hints at
a desire for purity for its own sake that does not appear in P.
It is interesting to compare 4QDs purity laws to those of the Temple Scroll. I
have already noted that like 4QD the Temple Scroll makes the purity laws of the
Torah more severe. Yet despite their shared desire to remedy what they see as Ps
too lenient approach to impurity, the texts go about their task quite differently,
and the results are also quite different. The Temple Scroll rightly recognizes
the impurity contracted from corpses (Numbers 19) as closely related to the
impurities of genital discharges and skin eruptions (Leviticus 1215) and treats
them together. It intensifies and elaborates the laws of Leviticus and Numbers:
impurity lasts longer, and the rituals required for its removal are more complex.
The most distinctive development of the Temple Scroll is the confinement of the
impure so that they will not defile the city of the sanctuary or even the other cities
of the Holy Land; this results in its non-biblical system of places of confinement
outside the cities.
The connection between the Temple Scrolls system and CDs prohibition on
sexual intercourse in the city of the sanctuary (12.12) has long been noted. We
now have the passage from CD preserved in 4Q271 5 i 1718; enough is pre-
served to show that the context, Sabbath laws, laws of prayer, and the prohibition
on communicating with ghosts, is the same. Thus there is no reason to see CD
as an abridgment of this portion of 4QD; the prohibition stands apart from its
context and from the other laws concerning genital discharge in 4QD that do not
appear in CD. Nowhere else in what survives of its treatment of the purity laws
is 4QD concerned with the city of the sanctuary, nor is confinement a concern.
Unlike the Temple Scroll, which integrates types of impurity treated in dif-
ferent portions of the Torah, 4QD offers a close reading of Leviticus 1215; its
development of the laws of impurity is to a considerable extent an attempt to
resolve difficulties it found in the text of the Torah. 4QDs mode of intensifying
the impurity laws also differs significantly from that of the Temple Scroll. Rather
than lengthening the period of impurity and making the ritual of purification
more elaborate for each type of impurity, 4QDs exegetical approach extends
the more stringent requirements of certain types of impurity to other types.
Thus 4QD applies the more severe restrictions placed on a man with abnormal
genital discharge to a man who has had a seminal emission. So too it comes to
the remarkable but logical conclusion that a nursing mother in the first stage of
post-partum impurity, which Leviticus compares to menstrual impurity, conveys
impurity to her child.
Finally, while the compiler of 4QD placed the purity laws in a sectarian text,
there is nothing sectarian about them. The laws are directed at all Israel, not at a
pious remnant.46 The same is true, of course, of the Temple Scroll. Yet it is worth
noting that despite their common desire to intensify the purity laws of the Torah,
the rules of the Temple Scroll and the rules of 4QD are not only different from
each other, but actually incompatible. The implications of this observation for
current theories about a body of priestly halakhah that stands in opposition to
proto-rabbinic law need to be developed.
1QS
In contrast to the Damascus Document, 1QS has nothing to say about the sources
of impurity so important to the Torah. This silence is due, at least in part, to the
character of the rules of 1QS. Unlike the Damascus Document, 1QS does not
elaborate laws of the Torah. Rather, it delineates the special rules that govern the
life of the community while, apparently, assuming the laws of the Torah. Since
1QS has nothing to say on a whole range of topics discussed by the Torah laws
of social life, laws of sacrifice, the festival calendar, to offer some examples it
46C. Hempel, The Laws of the Damascus Document: Sources, Tradition and Redaction
(STDJ 29; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 50, 7072, assigns these laws to the halakhah stratum of 4QD,
that is, the stratum that does not show a connection to a specific community (26).
would be a mistake to read any special significance into its lack of attention to
purity laws.
Still, although it does not concern itself with purity laws, 1QS does use the
language of purity, primarily in highly rhetorical passages that represent those
outside the community as sinful and impure in contrast to those who join the
community and are cleansed of their sin and impurity. The description of this
cleansing draws on Ps terminology of impurity and ritual purification, but de-
ploys it in a very different way. Terms that in P refer to quite specific physical
states and ritual equipment are applied in 1QS to spiritual states and processes.
The first extended passage in 1QS to use the language of purity is the condem-
nation of one who refuses to enter into the covenant, apparently after having
shown interest in joining the community:
No one who refuses to enter [into the covenant of Go]d so that he may walk in the
stubbornness of his heart [shall enter into the comm]unity of truth. He shall not be
made clean by atonement, or purified by waters for purification, or made holy by seas
and rivers, or purified by any water for washing. Unclean, unclean shall he be as long
as he rejects the precepts of God by refusing to discipline himself in the community of
his counsel. For it is through a spirit of true counsel with regard to the ways of man that
all his iniquities shall be wiped out so that he may look on the light of life. It is through
a holy spirit uniting him to his truth that he shall be purified from all his iniquities. It
is through a spirit of uprightness and humility that his sin shall be wiped out. And it
is through the submission of his soul to all the statutes of God that his flesh shall be
purified, by being sprinkled with waters for purification and made holy by waters for
cleansing. (1QS 2.25; 3.49)47
This passage draws liberally on Ps language of purity: the root , purify or

become pure (3.4, 5, 7, 8); the technical term , waters of purification, the
waters made from the ashes of the red heifer to be sprinkled on those suffering
from corpse impurity (3.4, 9); and finally, Unclean, unclean shall he be (3.5),
an allusion to Lev 13:45, where one suffering from skin eruptions must call out,
Unclean! Unclean! But the passage goes beyond Ps language. It constructs
terms that have no biblical parallels such as , water for washing (3:5),
and , waters for cleansing (3:9). It also uses biblical vocabulary in ways
not found in the Torah: ( 3.4, 9), in the hitpa el or otherwise, is never used
in the Torah for purification by ablutions or sprinkling.48 Only at the very end
of the passage does the purification of the body come into view. Until then, the
purification described is purification of the soul, a topic that P would have found
quite incomprehensible. 1QS uses the language of purity in an almost poetic
47Trans. M.A. Knibb, The Qumran Community (Cambridge Commentaries on Writings
of the Jewish and Christian World, 200 BC to AD 200, 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 9091.
48The verb is used of Bathshebas purifying herself after menstruation in 2Sam 11:4.
fashion to condemn those who have rejected the community in the strongest
language it can.
A similar use of the language of purity appears in 1QSs description of the
eschatological purification of humanity:
Then God will purify by his truth all the deeds of man and will refine for himself the
frame of man, removing all spirit of injustice from within his flesh, and purifying him
by the spirit of holiness from every wicked action. And he will sprinkle upon him the
spirit of truth like waters for purification (to remove) all the abominations of falsehood
(in which) he has defiled himself through the spirit of impurity. (1QS 4.2022)49
This passage blends the terminology of purity with a more abstract language:
purification takes place by means of Gods truth and the spirit of holiness. The
technical term sprinkle, , used in the Torah of sacrificial blood (e.g., Lev
4:6, 17) as well as of the waters of purification (Num 19:4, 18, 19) is completed
by the spirit of truth, which is compared to waters of purification, but is not
a physical entity.
As we have seen, H also associates impurity with sin, but in a manner quite
different from 1QS. Hs view of sin as impure appears clearly at the conclusion
of the first set of incest laws:
But you must keep My laws and My rules, and you must not do any of those abhorrent
things. for all those abhorrent things were done by the people who were in the land
before you, and the land became defiled. So let not the land spew you out for defiling
it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you. (Lev 18:2628)
Despite the rhetorical flourishes, the sins to which the passage refers are those
it has just detailed at some length, forbidden sexual relations (Lev 18:620) and
idolatry (Lev 18:21). These are specific sins, quite different from 1QSs spirit of
injustice, abominations of falsehood, and spirit of impurity (4.2022).
Further, while the Holiness Code uses Ps language of impurity to exhort the
people of Israel to stop certain sins from taking place, it never invokes language
of purification. It decrees punishments for the sins that defile the land and the
sinner (Leviticus 20, Num 35:3031), but it does not explain how the impurity
of land or sinner can be removed except through the lands rest as the people
endure exile (Lev 26:43). 1QS, on the other hand, prescribes modes of purifica-
tion for the impurity caused by sin. Of course the means of purification are just
as abstract as the sins from which they purify: a spirit of true counsel, a holy
spirit uniting him to his truth, submission of his soul to all the statutes of God,
spirit of holiness, and spirit of truth. 1QS, then, draws on both sides of Ps
language of purity, the language of defilement and the language of cleansing,
but uses the language in a way considerably further removed from its concrete
applications in P than does H, which draws only on the language of defilement.
49Trans.
Knibb, Qumran Community, 101.
In his discussion of impurity and sin at Qumran, Klawans claims that the pun-
ishment of being denied access to the food and drink of the community50 that oc-
curs several times in 1QS (7.23, 1516, 1820; 8.1618, 2024) for violation of
the communitys code of conduct is further evidence for the sectarian view of sin
as defiling. Klawans does not spell out his argument, but it appears that he reads
1QS as treating the food of the community as equivalent to consecrated food.51
But I think there is reason to doubt that 1QS understood exclusion from the
communitys food in terms of the purity laws of the Torah. In 1QS the pure food
is closely associated with membership in the community (8.1619, 2124).52
Exclusion from the purity means exclusion from the community. But surely
if 1QS was concerned with enforcing the purity rules of the Torah relevant to
50
The purity of the community, ( in the passage just quoted, ) ,
has been the subject of discussion ever since the discovery of the Scrolls; for a recent treatment,
including a review of earlier discussions, see F. Avemarie, Tohorat ha-Rabbim and Mashqeh
ha-Rabbim Jacob Licht Reconsidered, in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of
the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995,
Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten (ed. M. Bernstein, F. Garca Martnez, and J.
Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 21529.
51Klawans, Impurity of Immorality, 9. This understanding of the meaning of the pure food
and drink of the community is by no means certain, although there is some support for such
usage in some of the appearances of the term in the Temple Scroll and perhaps 4QMMT
(Avemarie, Tohorat Ha-Rabbim, 22224). The Torahs use of the root , on the other
hand, suggests a different understanding of 1QSs . The Torah never uses the noun
of food, but it does term some forbidden animals impure (Lev 11:48, Deut 14:79,
19), and it refers to permitted birds as pure (Deut 14:11). It also decrees that contact with
the corpse of an impure swarming thing renders impure earthen vessels and their contents,
dampened food and drink, and ovens and stoves (Lev 11:3335). Thus it is possible that in
referring to its food as , the Qumran community was simply emphasizing that it met the
standards of the Torah. Surely there were many whose food did not; in an agricultural society
without refrigeration avoiding prohibited contact with the corpses of impure creatures was
probably not an easy task. Indeed, E.P. Sanders, Did the Pharisees Eat Ordinary Food in Pu-
rity? Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia:
Trinity Press International, 1990), 24647, suggests that the Pharisees may have been the only
lay people who actually observed these laws. (Sanders reads Lev 11:3335 as concerned with
insects as well as the eight creatures that swarm on the earth listed in Lev 11:2930 [Did the
Pharisees, 138], but this does not seem to me to be the plain sense of Leviticus.) For a recent
argument for the view that concern for purity was widespread in ancient Israel, drawing in part
on archeological evidence, E. Regev, Pure Individualism: The Idea of Non-Priestly Purity in
Ancient Judaism, JSJ 31 (2000): 176202. There is no indication in the Torah that pure food,
as opposed to consecrated food, must be eaten in a state of purity.
52Knibb, Qumran Community, 136, argues against the view that the second passage is a
continuation of the first on the grounds that the first constitutes a separate paragraph in the
manuscript passage and that the second passage is preceded by an introductory formula:
These are the rules by which the men of perfect holiness shall walk with one another (8.20).
He prefers to read the two passages as alternate forms of the rule, reflecting the development
of the rule over time. In addition to the passage about baptism cited above, the section about
membership in the community that follows the penal code twice refers to exclusion from the
pure food for those who violate the rules, although the relationship between the rulings of the
two passages is less than clear.
consecrated food, members of the community in good standing would also have
been excluded from time to time on the basis of physical impurity, which would
have been impossible to avoid entirely even in a community of celibate men.
1QS does not legislate at all for this eventuality.
Further, as M. Weinfeld has shown, the penal code of 1QS has close parallels
in the rules of other Greco-Roman cult organizations and guilds.53 These rules
contain a number of instances of exclusion from the organization as punishment;
sometimes the exclusion is temporary, sometimes permanent.54 Exclusion from
the pure food and drink of the community is probably best understood not as a
measure related to purity concerns but as a way of enforcing exclusion from the
community. The punishment is thus independent of concepts of purity, although
no doubt 1QSs view of outsiders as impure made it a particularly resonant
punishment.
The theory and practice of baptism provide one further possible example of
the conflation of impurity and sin in 1QS. Baumgarten argues that the language
of spiritual baptism in the passages cited above points to some sort of actual
baptismal rite as part of the ritual for joining the Qumran community.55 The
clearest indication of such a practice in 1QS is a passage that appears in the in-
structions for new members of the community: He shall not enter the waters in
order to touch the purity of the men of holiness, for men are not purified unless
they turn from their evil (1QS 5.1314). The passage is difficult; it fits poorly in
its context,56 and it does not appear in the 4QS fragments that preserve parts of
the surrounding passage (4QSb and 4QSd). Still, the point seems clear. Baptism
does not purify people who have not repented; thus those who have not repented
should not be permitted the rite of baptism, which entitles them to partake of the
communitys food, a privilege that indicates full membership in the community.
The use of baptism, a ritual of purification, to mark repentance is not restricted
to Qumran; John the Baptist and his followers and the other groups of baptiz-
ers alluded to in ancient sources made the same connection.57 1QS permits us
53M. Weinfeld, The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect
(NTOA2; Fribourg: ditions Universitaires, and Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).
54M. San Nicol, Zur Vereinsgerichtbarkeit im hellenistischen gypten, :
Heinrich Swoboda Dargebracht (Reichenberg: Verlag von Gebrder Stiepel Gesellschaft,
1927), 28081, with references to the rules.
55He notes, however, that one early discussion understood 1QS 3.45, He shall not be made
clean by atonement or purified by waters for purification, or made holy by seas and rivers, or
purified by any water for washing, as evidence for a polemic against baptism (Purification
Rituals, 199; the reference is to M.H. Gottstein, Anti-Essene Traits in the Qumran Scrolls,
VT 4 [1954]: 14546).
56Knibb, Qumran Community, 11011.
57For an interesting discussion of the parallels between Qumran literature, particularly 1QS,
and the thought of John the Baptist as far as it can be recovered, see D. Flusser,
in :( ed. Y. Yadin and C.
Rabin, assisted by J. Licht; Jerusalem: Shrine of the Book, 1961), 20939, esp. 20917.
to learn something about how the Qumran community understood the ritual;
we can only guess at what the ritual meant to groups that did not leave us texts.
As I read 1QS, the physical states that P designates as impure do not play a
role in its rules. This does not mean that 1QS was unconcerned with Ps impuri-
ties, but rather that they were not relevant to the rules it added to those of Torah
to govern the life of its community. On the other hand, it is clear that purity
and impurity, transformed into spiritual rather than physical categories, were
central to the thought of 1QS. Ps technical terminology figures prominently in
the hortatory passages of 1QS, but it has been given new meaning in metaphors
for sin and repentance. It is here rather than in the realm of halakhah that 1QS
conflates sin and impurity.
4Q512
4Q512 is an extremely fragmentary text that contains blessings to be recited

upon completion of purification.58 In his publication of the fragments M. Baillet
suggests that cols. 37 and 911 of the work treat sexual impurity; col. 4, priests;
col. 8, skin eruptions; frag. 67, eruptions of houses; and col. 12, corpse impu-
rity.59 As Baumgarten comments, Not all of these identifications are equally
convincing.60
The difficulty of identifying the types of impurity to which individual bless-
ings are connected is due not only to the texts poor state of preservation. Rather,
despite the poor preservation, it is clear that 4Q512 purposely blurs the distinc-
tions between the various categories of impurity found in the Torah. The phrase
, the affliction of menstrual impurity (5.17; 12.16) provides a good
example of 4Q512s slippery use of the terminology of impurity. The phrase
combines a term that refers to skin eruptions ( )with the term for menstrual
impurity (). Further, the second instance of the phrase appears in the con-
text of holy ashes (12.3) and sprinkling (12.6), as well as water for washing
(12.5); according to the biblical purity laws, the only type of impurity treated
by sprinkling with water mixed with ashes is corpse impurity (Numbers 19). I
have already noted Baumgartens suggestion that the Qumran community used
sprinkling as part of the ritual of purification for other types of impurity in ad-
58In addition to 4Q512, there are two other manuscripts containing purification liturgies,
4Q284 and 4Q414, recently published in DJD 35.

59M. Baillet, Qumrn Grotte 4.111 (4Q4824Q520) (DJD 7; Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982) 263.
60Baumgarten, Purification Rituals, 200.
dition to corpse impurity. If he is correct, there is a halakhic dimension to the

conflation of categories of impurity.61
Still it is clear that the thrust of the blessings in 4Q512 is not halakhic defini-
tion, but the evocation of human imperfection. Phrases such as , the
shamefulness of our flesh (3.17), and , the shamefulness of (menstrual)
impurity (7.9) appear to point to impurity associated with the genitals:
is used as a euphemism for the genitals in Leviticus 15 (vv.2, 19), in the
sense of nakedness is used repeatedly in the list of forbidden sexual relations in
Leviticus 18, and in its most limited sense refers to menstrual impurity. But
Baumgarten points out that and are used elsewhere at Qumran to indi-
cate the inferiority of the corporeal aspect of human nature to the spiritual.62 We
have already seen used in a way that goes beyond its meaning in P to serve
as a term of condemnation, and it is worth noting that despite the prominence of
the term in 4Q512 the speaker in all of the liturgies is male.63
For 4Q512, then, the significance of the various types of impurity carefully
delineated by P is the same: all point to human frailty and failing. But impurity
as an indication of human imperfection is not the same as impurity as a result of
sin or impurity as in and of itself sinful. Because 4Q512 is so fragmentary, it is
impossible to be certain about the relationship between impurity and sin. Some
of the blessings give thanks not only for purification from impurity, but also for
forgiveness of sin:
[to] ask mercy for all the hidden guilty actsyou who are righteous in all your
deedsfrom the affliction of impurity (( ) 5.1517)
Blessed are you [God of Israel, who have saved me from al]l my sins and purified me
from the indecency of impurity (( ) 7.9)64.
But in both passages, while impurity and sin stand side by side, they remain
separate. The fragmentary phrase [to serv]e you in the purity of righteousness
(frags. 4041 [col. 13?], lines 45) is the closest 4Q512 comes to applying the
614QTohorot A (4Q274) also suggests the conflation of categories of impurity in a halakhic
context. This very fragmentary text contains rules for the separation of bearers of one type of
impurity from bearers of a different type. It is thus remarkable that its first three preserved lines
describe an impure man drawing on terminology associated with different types of impurity in
Leviticus. Because the impure man occupies a bed of sorrow and a seat of sighing (trans.
Baumgarten, DJD 35.101), Baumgarten argues that he is a : the is the only male bearer
of impurity whose bedding and seat are mentioned in Leviticus (Lev 15:46) (Laws about
Fluxes, 34; DJD 35.1012). Milgrom identifies the man in question as a because the
passage goes on to insist on his isolation, quoting Lev 13:45, He shall call out, Unclean!
Unclean! in which the warns others of his presence (4QTOHORAa, 61.)
62Baumgarten, Purification Liturgies, 203.
63Baumgarten, Purification Rituals, 2001, 208, notes that the term is used in 4Q512
in a variety of contexts that do not appear to concern menstrual impurity.

64My translation is inspired by the RSV translation of in Deut. 24:1 as some
indecency.
language of impurity to sin or rather, the language of purity to righteousness, as

in 1QS.65 But there is nothing in what is preserved of 4Q512 that suggests that
sin causes impurity as H believed or that impurity is sinful, the view Baumgarten
thought he found in the list of transgressors in 4QD. The passages quoted suggest
rather that sin and impurity are understood as two aspects of human finitude,
corresponding to soul and body. This view is quite similar to the understanding
of the significance of baptism for new members of the community in 1QS.
Conclusions
While the purity laws of 4QD were obviously valued by the sect, I doubt very
much that they are a sectarian composition. 4QD offers a close reading of Leviti-
cus that results in more rigorous purity laws, but aside from its greater rigor, it
stands squarely in the tradition of P. Impurity is a ritual category; it has no moral
significance, no association with sin. 4QDs only significant departure from P
in its attitude toward purity is its rule that the parturient must give her child to a
nurse during the first stage of her impurity to avoid communicating impurity to
the baby. For P impurity is an inconvenience to be avoided for practical reasons.
Since the newborn baby would not be inconvenienced in any way, this rule sug-
gests an attitude that values purity for its own sake in a way that goes beyond P.
There is no disputing the sectarian provenance of 1QS, and 4Q512 also ap-
pears to be a sectarian composition. 1QS certainly associates impurity and sin
through its adaptation of Ps terminology of impurity and purification to describe
human imperfection and restoration. But neither the punishment of exclusion
from the communitys food nor the rite of baptism suggests that 1QS understood
sins as defiling. Like 1QS, 4Q512 uses the terminology of impurity in a poetic
or evocative way. Sin and impurity appear side by side, as two aspects of human
imperfection. Yet no passage in 4Q512 clearly connects the two categories as
cause and effect. The most striking feature of 4Q512s use of the language of
impurity is the way it blends the various categories of impurity that P so care-
fully distinguishes. I think it is fair to conclude that the association of sin and
impurity in 1QS and 4Q512, and perhaps at Qumran altogether, was primarily
evocative rather than halakhic.66
65On
this phrase, see Baumgarten, Purification Rituals, 201.
66I
would like to thank Cana Werman for her helpful criticism of this paper.
9. The Purity Laws of 4QD:
Exegesis and Sectarianism
The laws of skin eruptions and genital discharge in 4QD stand out among the
laws of the Damascus Document for their distinctive form. Unlike most of the
laws of the Damascus Document,1 they are intimately linked to the Torah; it
would be impossible to make sense of them without reference to the discus-
sion of these topics in Leviticus 12, 13, and 15. I shall argue here that they are
intended as a sort of commentary on the text of Leviticus. They display an un-
derstanding of the purity laws of the Torah as a system, and they use elements
of that system to explicate other elements, focusing on aspects of the text of
Leviticus they found particularly difficult. Although they now form part of a
sectarian work, there is nothing sectarian about their rhetoric, nor do they give
any indication of the communal setting evident elsewhere in the Damascus
Document.2 Nonetheless, I shall argue that the laws of genital discharge reflect
a sectarian ethos.
Each section of the purity laws in 4QD refers to itself as a rule, , the
construct form with the appropriate category. Thus, for example, the unit on
skin eruptions concludes, ] [], This is the rule of skin eruptions3
(4Q272 1 ii 2),4 while the section on male genital flow begins, ][ ,
1The communal laws of the Damascus Document are independent of the Torah, while most
of the laws that draw on the Torah, such as laws of the Sabbath (CD 10.1411.18) and laws of
oaths (CD 16:1012), are presented as positive and negative commandments, usually without
reference to the text of the Torah. On the formal features of the laws of the Damascus Docu
ment, see C. Hempel, The Laws of the Damascus Document: Sources, Tradition and Redaction
(STDJ 29; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 3038; and A. Shemesh and C. Werman, Halakhah at Qumran:
Genre and Authority, DSD 10 (2003): 11219. My analysis of the treatment of Leviticus 12 in
the purity laws of 4QD is quite different from that of Shemesh and Werman.
2Hempel assigns these laws to what she calls the halakhah stratum of the Damascus Docu
ment, the stratum that does not show a connection to a specific community (Laws, 3839, 50).
3All translations of material from 4QD unless otherwise noted are taken from J.M. Baumgar-
ten, Qumran Cave 4.XIII: The Damascus Document (4Q266273) (DJD 18; Oxford: Clarendon,
1996). For my rule of skin eruptions above, Baumgarten translates, rule of ara at (190).
For material that appears only in CD, the translation is that of F. Garca Martnez and E.J.C.
Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 2000).
4Baumgartens reconstruction yields the somewhat redundant ][ for the
parallel in 4Q266 6 i 13 (DJD 18.52).

162 9. The Purity Laws of 4QD
[And the r]ule concerning one who has a discharge (4Q266 6 i 14, 272 1 ii
3).5 In this usage, appears to be an interpretation of the term as it is
used in Leviticus 1215, where it appears in the construct state, introducing and
more frequently concluding discussion of a particular kind of impurity, for ex-
ample, , This is the law for her who bears a child (Lev 12:7);
or, , This is the law for him who has a discharge (Lev 15:32).6 The
substitution of for may reflect the eclipse of the meaning of in
Leviticus 1115, law or teaching, as the term came to designate the Book of
the Torah; it may also be a way of signaling that these laws are not intended as
competition for the laws of the Torah, but rather as interpretation.
The term appears more widely in the Damascus Document, but only
in one other instance does it have the same meaning it has in the passages dis-
cussed here: , Concerning the law of donations (CD 16.13,
4Q271 4 ii 1213).7 This title belongs to a larger group of headings with ( CD
10.10//4Q270 6 iv 20, 10.14, 16.10, and perhaps 4Q266 6 iii 34//4Q270 3 ii
128); the others lack . 4QOrdinancesa also contains an instance of this type
of heading (4Q159 1 ii 6).9 Elsewhere the Damascus Document uses the term
, rule, as a heading in a fashion similar to in the purity laws, either
with the demonstrative or without: And this is the rule for the judges of the con-
gregation (CD 10.4; also 12.19, 2223; 13.7; 14.3, 12). The term appears to
be associated particularly with sectarian communal regulations. Most instances
of all three types of heading are preceded by a vacat. The and headings
appear exclusively at the beginning of sections. The use of in at least one
5See also [ ], And the rule for a scall of the head or the bea[rd] (266 6
i 5; parallel in 273 4 ii 10, which breaks off after the ;)and [ ], [And] the law [of a
woman who has a discharge] (272 1 ii 7). All come at the beginning of the relevant laws with
the exception indicated above.
6Introduction: the laws of purification for one with skin eruptions (Lev 14:2). Conclusions:
the laws of permitted and prohibited animals (Lev 11:46); the laws of the impurity of the par-
turient (Lev 12:7); the laws of eruptions of fabrics and leather (Lev 13:59), a topic not treated
in 4QD; the offering of the poor man with skin eruptions (Lev 14:32); the laws of eruptions
generally (Lev 14:54, 57); the laws of genital discharge (Lev 15:32). The same usage appears
also in Lev 6:2, 7, 18 and Lev 7:1, 11, introducing different types of sacrifice; Num 5:29, con-
cluding the laws of the woman suspected of adultery; and Num 6:13, 21, introducing sections
of the laws of the Nazirite.
All translations of biblical texts are taken from the RSV unless otherwise noted.
7The first item following the heading prohibits vowing any unjust gain to the altar. It is worth
noting that the Torah juxtaposes vowing and the term in Num 6:21: This is the law ()
for the Nazirite who takes a vow. Unlike the purity laws, however, the passage on donations
to the sanctuary is not closely linked to a single passage in the Torah. There are other places in
the Damascus Document (e.g., CD 10.14, 15.7, 16.12) where means something like rule
but it is not in the construct nor is it used as the heading or conclusion for a specific set of laws.
8This rubric involves some reconstruction by Baumgarten; most important, the word
appears only in 4Q266, where it is crossed out (DJD 18.58).

9As Shemesh and Werman note (Halakhah, 115).
9. The Purity Laws of 4QD 163
instance as a conclusion echoes the practice of the Torah in Leviticus 1115,

where is used only once as a heading but six times as a conclusion.10
As I have noted elsewhere, the purity laws of 4QD attempt to clarify the diffi-
cult language of Leviticus 13.11 They define the obscure ( RSV: eruption;
NJPS: rash) as a scab caused by a blow (4Q269 7 12//4Q272 1 i 12), clearly
distinguishing it from other types of skin eruption; and they adopt the term
, malignant, used in Leviticus only of eruptions of fabric (13:5152) and
houses (14:44), to clarify the status of skin eruptions in human beings (4Q266
6 i 5//4Q272 1 i 13). This portion of the purity laws also signals its relationship
to the text of the Torah by offering an explicit interpretation of Lev 13:33 in an
otherwise unknown version (4Q266 6 i 89//4Q272 1 i 17).12
As far as we can tell from the preserved material, the laws of skin eruptions
in 4QD follow the order of the laws in Leviticus. The opening of the passage is
lost, but the preserved text begins with the definition of , a term that appears
at the very beginning of Leviticus discussion (Lev 13:2).13 Thus the amount of
material lost in 4QD may have been quite small, perhaps only an introduction.14
The passage concludes with a discussion of scall of the head or beard, which
comes toward the end of Leviticus procedures for judging the purity status of
skin eruptions (Lev 13:2937); the concluding formula has been preserved.
The laws of genital discharge, on the other hand, clearly and purposefully re-
arrange the laws of Leviticus. Leviticus 15 opens with the laws of abnormal male
genital discharge (Lev 15:115), moves on to normal male genital discharge
(seminal emission; Lev 15:1618), then to normal female genital discharge
(menstruation; Lev 15:1924), and concludes with abnormal female genital
discharge (Lev 15:2530). The laws of 4QD follow the lead of Leviticus 15 by
treating the varieties of male genital discharge together before female genital
discharge. But unlike Leviticus they place the discussion of the parturient (Le-
viticus 12) together with that of the menstruant and the woman with abnormal
genital discharge under the rubric of the rule of the ( 4Q272 1 ii 7).15 While
10For a list of occurrences in Leviticus 1115, see n.6 above. I count Lev 14:54, 57 as a
single instance. Elsewhere in the Torah, the term appears seven times as an introduction and
twice as a conclusion (n.6 above).
11M. Himmelfarb, Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512, DSD 8 (2001): 16 (in this
volume, 141), with more detailed discussion of the treatment of and .

12See Baumgarten, DJD 18.54.
13Toward the beginning of the passage on skin eruptions, Leviticus switches to the variant
( Lev 13:68). The term appears again only in the summary of the laws of eruptions
in Lev 14:56.
14There is about two-thirds of a column lost before the preserved material. The last third of
col. 2 in 4Q266 5 is missing, as is the first third of col. 1 of 4Q266 6. This judgment is compat-
ible with what is preserved in 4Q273 4 i and ii.
15In the single manuscript containing the laws of the parturient, the discussion of the woman
with abnormal flow concludes in the middle of a line and the discussion of the parturient begins
on the next line (4Q266 6 ii 45). But despite this possible indication of a new unit, the absence
Leviticus does not use the crucial root , flow, in its discussion of the par-
turient, it compares the first stage of the impurity of the parturient to menstrual
impurity (Lev 12:2, 5).
The key to this reconfiguration of the laws of Leviticus, as well as to the radi-
cal rereading of the laws of male genital discharge to which I shall turn in a mo-
ment, is the interpretation of the root . In the portion of Leviticus 15 devoted
to the impurity of male genital discharge, the priestly source uses the root
for abnormal discharge only: means flow and thus is not properly applied
to seminal emission, which involves ejaculation.16 For normal male genital
discharge, that is, seminal emission, P uses the term ( Lev 15:1618).
It does not make any difference whether the seminal emission takes place in the
course of sexual relations or without sexual relations; the purity consequences
are the same in either case. For women, both normal and abnormal genital dis-
charges are flow. Thus the discussion of menstruation begins: When a woman
has a flow () , her flow being blood from her body, she shall be in her
impurity seven days (Lev 15:19).17 For the priestly authors of the body of
Leviticus 15, then, the root has nothing to do with abnormality; it has only to
do with the mode of discharge.
But biblical Hebrew lacks a term equivalent to English discharge that in-
cludes both flow and seminal emission. The absence of such a term caused con-
fusion as far back as biblical times. This confusion is evident in the contribution
of the editors of Leviticus 15, who employ the root as an umbrella category
for all the types of genital discharge with which Leviticus 15 is concerned, in-
cluding seminal emission, in their concluding summary of the chapter: This is
the law for one who has a flow (): for him who has a seminal emission (
)and becomes impure from it, and for her who is sick with her impurity, and
for a man or woman who has a flow () , and for a man who lies with
an impure woman.18 In other words, they use the root to mean not only its
proper referents, the various types of genital flow, but also seminal emission.
The rule for male genital discharge in 4QD is only four and one-half lines
long,19 and it is not well preserved. I have argued elsewhere that it uses the term
in the extended sense of the conclusion of Leviticus 15 (vv.3233), rather than
in the more limited sense of the laws of Leviticus 15:231.
of an introductory phrase with and the active rearrangement of the material of Leviticus
1215 to place the impurity of the parturient together with the other types of impurity of genital
discharge strongly suggests that the parturient is here treated as a third type of .
16J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 934.
17My translation.
18My translation.
19Both fragments in which the passage is preserved contain the opening heading. While
4Q266 6 breaks off before the end of the passage, 4Q272 1 ii 7 contains the opening heading
for the topic that follows, female genital discharge.
[And the r]ule concerning one who has a discharge () : Any man/ with a
[dis]charge from [his] flesh, [o]r one [who] brings upon himse[lf ] lustful thoughts or
one20 who/ [ ] his contact is like that of [ / he shall launder his clo[th]es and [bathe
in water21]/ him, who touches him shall ba[the. (4Q266 6 i 1416//4Q272 1 ii 37)22
Baumgartens translation of ( 4Q266 6 i 14/4Q272 1 ii 3) as one who

has a discharge is in the spirit of the editors of Leviticus 15, and it responds
to the inclusion in this category of the one whose discharge is caused by lust-
ful thoughts. Such discharge is surely an instance of seminal emission without
sexual relations (Lev 15:16).23 Like the editors of Leviticus 15, then, the purity
laws of 4QD make no distinction between flow and seminal emission. Thus I
have suggested that the third type of , whose existence is indicated by the last
, or who, but whose description is unfortunately lost to us, is the man
who has had a seminal emission in the course of sexual relations (Lev 15:18). As
far as I can see, Leviticus 15 provides no other candidates for the role, and the
evident inclusion of the man who has had a seminal emission outside of sexual
relations in the category makes plausible the appearance of the man who has
had one in the course of sexual relations. The missing line after might
have read something like, , has a seminal emission in the
course of sexual relations with a woman.24 This restoration is drawn from the
language of Lev 15:18; it is certainly possible that the language of the descrip-
tion was less closely related to Leviticus 15, as for the second type of .
The process of purification Leviticus decrees for the man with abnormal flow
is very different from the process for the man with a seminal emission. The
man who has had a seminal emission has only to bathe and wait for sundown to
become pure (Lev 15:16, 18). The man with abnormal discharge, on the other
20I have added one to Baumgartens translation (DJD 18.53, 190). If the is trans-
lated or one who, then this should also be translated or one who. The translation
of Garca Martnez and Tigchelaar rightly suggests three categories: Regula[tion concerning
the man with a disch]arge. Eve[ry man] [with a di]scha[rge from his flesh, or who brings upon
himself a] lustful thought or who[] (Study Edition, 1.625).
21The words, bathe in water, are Baumgartens reconstruction, as his transcription of the
Hebrew indicates, but in the translation the words are not placed in brackets (DJD 18.190). I
have corrected this error in the quotation above.
22I have combined Baumgartens translations of the two relevant fragments (DJD 18.53,
190). I indicate lacunae only where neither fragment preserves the text, and I have not made
any effort to show the actual size of the lacunae.
23Baumgarten points out that m. Zabim 2:2 exempts discharge from being considered a
sign of impurity if it can be connected to sexual stimulation (DJD 18.54; Zab Impurity in
Qumran and Rabbinic Law, JJS 45 [1994]: 275). But his comment on the passage in 4QD, It
would appear from the context that a discharge resulting from lustful thoughts was considered
as coming under the category of zab and would therefore be defiling (DJD 18.54), is somewhat
misleading. Any discharge is defiling, but according to Leviticus 15 normal seminal emission
defiles for a much shorter period than abnormal discharge and far less effort is required to
remove the impurity.
24My proposal leaves room for several other words on the line.
hand, washes his clothes and bathes on the seventh day after the cessation of the
flow; on the eighth day, he offers a sacrifice (Lev 15:1315). Anyone who has
physical contact with the man with abnormal discharge, or with his spittle, or
anything he lies, sits, or rides upon also becomes impure (Lev 15:510); he must
wash his clothes and bathe, and he remains impure until evening (Lev 15:1112).
In contrast, the touch of a man who has had a seminal emission does not convey
impurity; only the semen itself does so. The impurity caused by the semen is
removed by bathing for human beings and by laundering for garments and skins,
and then by waiting until evening (Lev 15:1618).
Unfortunately, the text of 4QD is too fragmentary to permit certainty about
the nature of its procedures for purification for the man with genital discharge.
Still, the brevity of the text makes it extremely unlikely that it offered different
procedures for men with abnormal discharge and men with seminal emission.
The references to laundering as well as bathing (4Q272 1 ii 6) and the emphasis
on the problem of contact with the ( 4Q272 1 ii 5, 7) appear to reflect Leviti-
cus rules for the man with abnormal discharge.25 The fragmentary conclusion
of the preceding line suggests that the subject of the laundering and bathing is
the one who has had contact with the rather than the himself. It is not clear
from what is preserved whether the rule ordains laundering and bathing for the
man with the discharge himself or indicates the length of his period of impurity.
One aspect of Leviticus purification procedure that is almost certainly missing
is the sacrifice the man with abnormal discharge must bring on the eighth day. I
shall return to this problem in my discussion of the treatment of the parturients
sacrifice, but it is worth noting here that the purity laws of 4QD appear to assume
participation in the temple cult.26
Despite their fragmentary state, it is virtually certain that the purity laws of
4QD understand the man who had had a seminal emission without sexual rela-
tions to convey impurity to others. If I am correct that the third type of is the
man with a seminal emission in the course of sexual relations, he too was under-
stood to convey impurity by his touch. This is an extraordinary intensification
of the impurity of seminal emission, but it is not without parallel. 4QTohorot A
(4Q274) claims that the impurity of seminal emission can be communicated by
contact: And when [a man has] an emiss[ion] of semen his touch is defiling
(1 i 8).27 Indeed, the recognition that the purity laws of the Torah constitute a
25It is frustrating that the phrase, his contact is like that of (4Q266 6 i 16 / / 4Q272 1
ii 5) breaks off where it does. Perhaps contact with the is compared to contact with the ,
which is apparently the subject a few lines later (4Q272 1 ii 910).
26Hempel considers the assumption of participation to be characteristic of the legal material
in the Damascus Document (Laws, 3738).

27Trans. J. Baumgarten, 474. 4QTohorot A, Qumran Cave 4.XXV: Halakhic Texts (ed.
J. Baumgarten et al.; DJD 35; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 99110. This translation
reflects the restoration ] [ . Milgrom restores the texts differently:
] [ , 4QTOHORAa: An Unpublished Qumran Text on Purities, in Time
system might encourage such intensification. Seminal emission is exceptional

among the types of discharge discussed in Leviticus 15: the period of impurity it
causes is far shorter than those caused by other types of discharge, and only the
discharge itself, but not the one with the discharge, conveys impurity to others.
As just noted, the state of the text does not permit certainty about whether it
reiterated Leviticus requirements of laundering and bathing for the man with
abnormal discharge or indicated the duration of the impurity. It is perhaps more
likely that it did not. Yet since it is clear that the purity laws of 4QD offer only
a selective treatment of the laws of Leviticus, this probably means not that they
rejected these requirements, but rather that they assumed them. But how could
the authors of these laws have ignored the plain sense of Lev 15:1618 and ap-
plied the longer period of impurity and more complex rituals of purification for
a man with abnormal discharge to a man with seminal emission? Perhaps they
noted that while the Torah refers to the man with abnormal discharge becoming
pure (Lev 15:13), it states that the man with seminal emission bathes and remains
impure until evening (Lev 15:16, 18). This mode of expression surely implies
the return to a state of purity, but the absence of explicit mention perhaps made
it easier to argue that the Torah really intended that the longer period it decrees
for the man with abnormal discharge applies also to the man with a seminal
emission. Arguing for laundering in addition to Leviticus requirement of bath-
ing would have been relatively easy since the text of Leviticus 15 elsewhere
fails to mention a ritual it surely assumed, i.e., bathing for the purification of
the menstruant.28
If, as I have suggested, the laws of 4QD treat a man with a seminal emission
as belonging to the category of the and thus as bound by the laws of purifica-
tion for a man with abnormal discharge, the consequences for married life are
profound. Even non-priests would need to plan carefully so as to be in a state of
purity for the occasions on which they wished to bring sacrifices. But for priests
to Prepare the Way in the Wilderness: Papers on the Qumran Scrolls by Fellows of the Institute
for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 19891990 (ed. D. Dimant and
L.H. Schiffman; STDJ 16; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 5968. (Baumgartens first discussion of the
text, The Laws about Fluxes in 4QTohoraa [4Q274], Time to Prepare, 18, also uses this
restoration.) In Milgroms reading, the man with the seminal emission is the man referred to
in the previous line as counting the days of purification. Milgrom argues that the touch of this
man defiles after the seminal emission because as a former ( in Leviticus sense) who has not
yet completed the waiting period before the ritual of purification, he was still somewhat impure
even before the seminal emission; the seminal emission serves to increase his impurity so that
his touch is now defiling. This argument rests on Milgroms view that 4QTohorot A implies
first-day ablutions for the impurities it discusses (4QTOHORAa, 6667). 4QDs attribution
of a defiling touch to a man who has had a nocturnal emission is virtually certain even if the
attribution of such a touch to the man who has a seminal emission during sexual intercourse
is less so. It seems to me that this strengthens the case for Baumgartens reading, in which the
defiling touch of 4QTohorot A is independent of the previous state of purity of the man who
has had the seminal emission.
and their families, ordinary married life would have been virtually impossible if
they wished to be able to eat sanctified food, including not only portions of vari-
ous sacrifices, but also tithes. Thus the impact of these laws would have been felt
beyond the two-week period of service of a particular priestly watch. Nor is this
intensification of the regulations for seminal emission the only place where the
laws of 4QD go beyond the laws of Leviticus in a way that would seem likely to
wreak havoc with everyday life. They also require that infants be nursed by a wet
nurse as long as the mother is in a state of postpartum impurity. This requirement
is presumably the result of the quite reasonable inference that according to the
principles of Leviticus the mother would convey her post-childbirth impurity
to her baby. Leviticus apparently did not find the idea of a baby in a state of
impurity troubling.29
Despite their radical intensification of the laws of Leviticus, the laws of 4QD
are presented in a matter-of-fact manner, without any rhetorical flourish, as if
there were nothing surprising about them at all. They appear to be directed at all
Israel, not at a pious remnant; they give no hint of the communal organization
reflected in other portions of the Damascus Document. Yet surely most Jews
would have found their demands intolerable. They would have been quite suit-
able, however, for the married Essenes who, according to Josephus, did not have
sexual relations during pregnancy because they saw the purpose of marriage
as procreation, not pleasure (Jewish War 2.16061). Among such Jews, sexual
activity would at least ideally be quite limited. It is worth noting that 4QDs list
of transgressors appears to include a man who has had sexual relations with his
pregnant wife (4Q270 2 ii 1516).30 The legislation in 4QDs version of the pe-
nal code about a man who comes near to fornicate with his wife contrary to the
law (4Q270 7 i 1213) may also be relevant.31 Further, if sexual relations were
to be limited to efforts at procreation, the purity laws of 4QD might have been
somewhat easier to observe. Perhaps a man did not undertake the full process
of purification after each act of sexual intercourse, but waited until his wife had
become pregnant to undergo the process. Such an approach would do little to
mitigate the impact of these laws on priests, however.
As I have already noted, the rule of the in 4QD treats the menstruant,
the woman with abnormal flow, and the parturient. But while the treatment of
the three types of male genital discharge was remarkable for offering a single
set of rules for all three, the laws of 4QD present the regulations for each of the
29Himmelfarb,
Impurity and Sin, 2526 (in this volume, 14850).
30The
words pregnant woman are preserved, but not enough else survives to be certain of
the nature of the transgression. See J. Baumgarten, A Fragment on Fetal Life and Pregnancy
in 4Q270, in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish and Near Eastern
Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (ed. D.P. Wright, D.N. Freedman, and
A. Hurvitz; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 44548.
31M. Kister, Notes on Some New Texts from Qumran, JJS 44 (1993): 28081.
three types of female discharge separately. Thus the treatment of female genital
discharge is considerably longer than that of male discharge.
4QDs understanding of the purity laws of the Torah as a system is visible also
in its treatment of the consequences of impurity. The only place that the laws of
Leviticus spell out the restrictions on someone in a state of impurity is in relation
to the first case it discusses, the parturient: She shall not touch any hallowed
thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until her days of purifying are completed
(Lev 12:4). The laws of 4QD applied these prohibitions to the woman with
abnormal discharge as well, but with some significant changes in the wording:
She shall not eat any hallowed thing,32 nor co[me] into the sanctuary until
sunset on the eighth day (4Q266 6 ii 34). This version of the prohibitions is
more pointed than that of Lev 12:4, indicating more precisely the nature of the
contact to be avoided by changing Leviticus , touch, to ,33 eat; eating
was the primary way in which a non-priest, whether a lay person or a member
of a priestly family, might have contact with holy things.34 The laws of 4QD
apparently repeated at least a portion of this passage for the parturient; only the
prohibition on eating survives, and there does not appear to be room for a time
limit (4Q266 6 ii 9).
The passage in Leviticus 12 refers to the period of the parturients purification
without mentioning the actual length of time: until her days of purifying are
completed. This is a convenient expression in its context because the length of
the period differs depending on the sex of the baby (Lev 12:45). But while the
language of Lev 12:4 could be applied to any type of impurity, the laws of 4QD
prefer to specify the length of time for the woman with abnormal discharge:
until sunset on the eighth day. Perhaps the authors were wary of confusing the
time required for purifying the woman with abnormal discharge and the time
required for the parturient. But they may also have intended to resolve another
question raised by the text of Leviticus: When does the woman suffering from
abnormal genital discharge become pure? On the one hand, the Torah tells us that
after counting seven days from the cessation of the flow, the former sufferer re-
turns to a state of purity (Lev 15:28; Lev 15:13 for men). On the other hand, she
(or he) is required to bring a sacrifice on the eighth day (Lev 15:29; Lev 15:14
for men). Despite the Torahs explicit reference to becoming pure on the seventh
day, the fact that the procedure is not complete until the eighth day permits the
authors of these laws to decide that purity is restored only on the eighth day.
The stringent approach of the laws of 4QD does not stop there, for they insist
that the former sufferer does not achieve a state of purity until sunset. This rule,
32Baumgarten, DJD 18.56, anything hallowed; I have changed the translation slightly to
make it clear that 4QD and Leviticus here use the same term, .
33Forms of the root are usually spelled without the in 4QD (see the concordance in
Baumgarten, DJD 18.202).

too, reflects a reading of the Torahs purity laws as a system. While Leviticus 15
does not indicate at what point on the last day of impurity the process of purifi-
cation is complete for the other categories of genital impurity, it says explicitly
that the impurity of seminal emission lasts until evening (Lev 15:1618). So too
it notes repeatedly that the impurity caused by contact with bearers of impurity
(Lev 15:7, 19) or with those of their belongings that convey impurity (Lev
15:511, 2123, 27) lasts until evening. The conclusion of the purity laws of
4QD that the Torah intended the same timing to apply to the purification of the
woman with abnormal discharge is not at all unreasonable.
Some scholars have read the insistence that purification is complete only at
sundown as representing the Sadducean side of a debate with the Pharisees.35
They identify the Pharisees position on the basis of the remarkable report in m.
Parah 3:7 that the elders of Israel used to render impure the priest who was to
burn the red heifer. Thus he would have to perform the task after he had bathed
but before the sun had set, making him, in the terminology of the rabbis, a
. Space does not permit full discussion of this topic. Let me note only that
neither the passage from 4QD on the woman with abnormal discharge nor the
relevant passages in the Temple Scroll offer any indication that they understood
the requirement of waiting for sunset to be the subject of controversy.36 Even
4QMMTs references to waiting for sunset for purification from skin eruptions
and for the burning of the red heifer are not polemical in tone. I would suggest
that the emphasis on waiting for sunset is intended not to oppose an early version
of the rabbinic concept of the , but to apply systematically the principle
of waiting until sundown to all types of impurity.
At the end of the rule of the comes a rather complete paraphrase of the
beginning of Leviticus 12 and its laws for the parturient, including two signifi-
cant additions, a death sentence for contact with the holy (4Q266 6 ii 10) and
the requirement of a wet nurse for a newborn (4Q266 6 ii 11), noted above. But
the rule clearly did not contain all of the instructions for the parturients sacri-
fice (Lev 12:68). Rather, it appears to have skipped the standard sacrifice (Lev
12:67) in order to clarify the somewhat unusual provision for a less expensive
bird sacrifice if the woman cannot afford a lamb (Lev 12:8). Thus it replaces
Leviticus 12s rather uncommon term for affords, , literally, her hand
finds,37 with the expression, [ ], literally, her hand reaches (4Q266
6 ii 12); the imperfect of this expression is used for all the other sacrifices that
35Baumgarten, DJD 18.56; Baumgarten, The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Pu-
rity and the Qumran Texts, JJS 31 (1980): 15761; L.H. Schiffman, Pharisaic and Sadducean
Halakhah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of Tevul Yom, DSD 1 (1994): 28599.
36Himmelfarb, Impurity and Sin, 2325 (in this volume, 14648).
37The expression and its variations appear a number of other places in the Bible (Judg 9:38;
1Sam 10:7; Isa 10:10, 14; Hos 2:9; Job 31:25; Eccl 9:10), but it means afford only in one
other instance (Lev 25:28).
permit the substitution of less expensive alternatives to the preferred sacrifice.38

The remaining words in the fragment also appear to be intended to clarify the
nature of the procedure in Leviticus: ]][ ][ , [and she] shall substitute
[it for the ] (4Q266 6 ii 13). The term substitute does not appear in the To-
rahs laws for this sacrifice or the others in which a less expensive alternative is
indicated, but the Torah uses the term in the prohibition on exchanging an animal
for one set aside for sacrifice (Lev 27:10, 33). If an allusion to that passage is in-
tended, it is presumably meant to contrast permitted substitution with forbidden.
The parturients sacrifice (4Q266 6 ii 1213) is the only one of the purifica-
tion sacrifices of Leviticus 1215 that appears in 4QD. Enough of the text is
preserved to show that the portions of the text devoted to skin eruptions39 and
the woman with abnormal discharge40 did not treat sacrifices; their absence is not
merely the result of partial preservation. The text of 4QD breaks off in the midst
of the parturients sacrifice, and there is a little more than half a column lost be-
fore the beginning of a new topic, the laws of agriculture. Thus it is possible that
mention of some other sacrifices followed. The feature of the parturients sac-
rifice that attracted attention was the possibility of substituting a less expensive
offering. Thus the sacrifice after skin eruptions might have required comment,
but not that after abnormal discharge. Still, the apparent absence of discussion
of the sacrifice after skin eruptions is not altogether surprising, for the topic of
skin eruptions in general seems to have been of less concern to the authors of
these purity laws than that of genital discharge. Perhaps this is because the laws
of skin eruptions were of less importance for defining the sectarian way of life.
I have emphasized the way the laws of 4QD construe the Torahs laws of geni-
tal discharge as a system. But they also reflect the influence of another relevant
part of the Torah, the laws of forbidden sexual relations in the Holiness Code.
Nowhere in the course of Leviticus 15 does P prohibit sexual relations with a
menstruant.41 It mentions such relations in order to lay out their implications
for the purity of the man who engages in them. The Holiness Code, however,
prohibits them twice (Lev 18:19, 20:18). Well aware of these prohibitions, the
authors of the laws of 4QD change the rather neutral description of the result of
sexual relations with a menstruant in Leviticus 15, , her impurity is
38Lev
5:11; 14:22, 30, 31, 32. It is also used for sacrifices that do not involve substitution
(Num 6:21; Ezek 46:7), and it appears in other contexts as well with the meaning afford (Lev
25:26 [perfect], 47; 27:8).
39The conclusion of the rule for skin eruptions is preserved, and as I noted above, the laws
of skin eruptions in 4QD follow the order of the Torah, where the sacrifice is treated at the end
of the discussion.
40Although it is very fragmentary, 4Q266 6 ii 24 seems to contain the complete treatment
of the woman with abnormal discharge, and there is no indication of a discussion of sacrifice.
41See Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 940, for a discussion of the absence of a prohibition in P. I
am not sure that P is as obsessed with purity as Milgrom thinks; the purity laws discussed here
obviously thought it insufficiently obsessed.
upon him (Lev 15:24), to ][ , the sin of menstrual impurity [is] upon
him (4Q266 6 ii 2). It is not the impurity of the menstruant that 4QD associates
with sin; rather, the sin is the fact of sexual relations with her.42
The formulation of these forbidden relations in the purity laws of 4QD is also
indebted to the Holiness Code. The verb P uses in Leviticus 15 for sexual rela-
tions with a menstruant is emphatic and straightforward, , lies, or as
the KJV translates in an effort to capture the emphasis, lie with her at all. One
of the prohibitions of sexual relations with a menstruant in the Holiness Code
uses the same verb without the infinitive absolute (Lev 20:18), but the other
uses the euphemism , approaches (Lev 18:19). The laws of 4QD adopt the
euphemism, apparently without an infinitive absolute, although lacunae in the
text make it impossible to be certain (4Q266 6 ii 1). The behavior was perhaps
sufficiently shocking to require a euphemism.
The laws of 4QD take the Torahs purity laws as a system, but a system that the
Torah fails to present as clearly as it might. Thus they organize the purity laws
of Leviticus more clearly than Leviticus does and make explicit connections
that the Torah fails to make. The laws explicate difficult language, particularly
in the section on skin eruptions, but the dominant concern in the laws of genital
discharge is to systematize. The best explanation for the contours of these laws,
as far as their partial preservation allows us to discern it, is that they focus on
difficulties in the text of Leviticus. It is in this light that we should understand the
absence of significant portions of Leviticus laws of skin eruptions, the lack of
purification procedures for men with genital discharge, and the treatment of only
one type of purification sacrifice. The subjects not treated were those where the
text of the Torah was sufficiently clear or sufficiently in line with the thinking
of the authors of the laws.
The distinctive form of the purity laws of 4QD suggests that they existed in
writing before their inclusion in the Damascus Document, and there is nothing
in their language to connect them to the communal organization described in
the Damascus Document. Yet the demands they make are extreme, and it is dif-
ficult to imagine their observance outside of a sectarian community or at least a
community on a trajectory toward sectarianism. I have noted their suitability for
the Essenes as they are depicted in our sources, and I have also pointed to other
evidence from the Scrolls for the ideal of limiting sexual relations even within
marriage. While I have argued that these laws are genuinely exegetical, like all
exegesis, theirs is informed by a particular view of the world. The use of the verb
in Leviticus 15 certainly poses problems, but the particular resolution to the
problems in these laws reflects an inclination to limit sexual relations. The con-
42Baumgartens comment on this passage, The association of impurity with sin ( )is
characteristic of the Qumran outlook (DJD 18.56), thus ignores Leviticus 18 and 20. See Him-
melfarb, Impurity and Sin, 2122 (in this volume, 14546).
clusion that an infant requires a wet nurse because the new mother is in a state
of impurity rests on a plausible reading of Leviticus 12, but only a community
prepared to disrupt daily life for the purposes of higher levels of purity would
permit such a conclusion to be drawn.
10. The Polemic against the evul Yom: A Reexamination
With the publication of the legal texts from among the Dead Sea Scrolls over
the course of the last decades, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest
in the history of halakhah. Texts such as the Temple Scroll, 4QMMT, and 4QD
have opened up the possibility of bridging the gap of many centuries between
the Torah and the Mishnah.1 The dominant view of the studies of the last decades
has been that the Scrolls reflect a priestly legal tradition that is often in disagree-
ment with the halakhah of the rabbis.2 Scholars who hold this view use rabbinic
literature to illumine the legal texts among the Scrolls, arguing that the concerns
of rabbinic literature permit us to see the significance of language and concepts
in the Scrolls that might otherwise be missed. Further, these scholars argue that
by confirming the reports about the position of the Sadducees in rabbinic ac-
counts of disputes between Pharisees and Sadducees, the Scrolls also permit us
to identify as Pharisaic aspects of tannaitic halakhah that stand in opposition to
the position of the Scrolls.
There can be no denying the many important insights into the Scrolls that arise
from comparison to rabbinic literature, but such an approach inevitably involves
the danger of reading later ideas back into earlier texts. Here I would like to dis-
cuss one instance in which I believe that the lens of rabbinic literature has been
distorting. This instance is the detection in the Scrolls of a polemic against the
rabbinic concept of the evul yom, as the rabbis call a person who has laundered
his clothes and bathed but still awaits the coming of evening to complete a pro-
cess of purification mandated by the Torah. The Mishnah devotes an entire trac-
tate to the implications of this liminal status, during which, according to the rab-
bis, some actions forbidden to a person in a state of impurity are permitted since
the state of impurity has been partially remedied (m. Neg. 14:23; see below).
1For a useful history of the discussion, see L.H. Schiffman, Halakhah and Sectarianism
in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. T.H. Lim;
Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 12342.
2See, e.g., the influential programmatic essay of Ya aqov Sussman, The History of the
Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Talmudic Observations on Miqat Ma ae
Ha-Torah (4QMMT), Tarbiz 59 (198990): 1176 (Hebrew; an English translation without
extensive annotation appears as Appendix I, in Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqat Ma ae Ha-Torah,
[ed. E. Qimron and J. Strugnell; DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994], 179200). The literature on
this topic is considerable. See, for example, the articles of L.H. Schiffman and J.M. Baumgar-
ten cited below.
176 10. The Polemic against the evul Yom
The claim that the concept of the evul yom was a point of dispute between the
Essenes and the Pharisees goes back twenty-five years to Joseph M. Baumgar-
ten, who made his argument on the basis of the Temple Scroll alone.3 The claim
was developed in greater detail by Lawrence Schiffman in an article in the first
volume of Dead Sea Discoveries in 1994.4 In this article Schiffman collected all
of the passages relevant to the concept of the evul yom from the Temple Scroll
and from two texts that had only recently become available, 4QD and 4QMMT.
While he noted that no rabbinic text identifies the evul yom as a Pharisaic con-
cept, he argued that opposition to the concept in the Scrolls demonstrates that
the idea goes back to the Pharisees as the pre-70 predecessors of the tannaim.5
Here I would like to reexamine the passages Schiffman considers and sug-
gest a different way of looking at them that understands them not as a polemic
against the position of the Pharisees, but rather as a response to ambiguities
and difficulties in the laws of the Torah.6 Let me begin with some observations
about the place of sundown as the final element in purification in the Torah. The
types of impurity that the priestly source of the Torah designates as lasting until
evening are, with a single exception, mild types of impurity that last for no more
than a twenty-four-hour period. One group of such impurities is produced by
contact with the carcass of a forbidden insect or animal (Lev 11:24, 25, 27, 28,
31), eating a permitted animal that dies of itself, or contact with its carcass (Lev
11:3940). The Torah requires the arrival of evening before the one who has
had such contact returns to a state of purity. So, too, one who enters a house that
has been shut because it is afflicted with ara at becomes impure until evening
(Lev 14:46). Several other states of short-lived impurity are produced by contact
with someone in a state of more severe impurity, or with objects with which the
person with the more severe impurity has had contact. Thus, for example, any-
one who touches the bed of a menstruant (Lev 15:21), or of a man (Lev 15:5)
or a woman (Lev 15:2627) with abnormal genital flow, becomes impure. Like
the impurity caused by contact with an animal carcass, this type of impurity is
removed by laundering, bathing, and the arrival of evening. The impurity of
seminal emission, too, whether in the context of sexual intercourse or not, for
3J.M. Baumgarten, The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the Qumran
Texts, JJS 31 (1980): 15661.

4L.H. Schiffman, Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The
Case of Tevul Yom, DSD 1 (1994): 28599. Schiffman was unable to make use of the DJD
editions of 4QMMT and 4QD, which did not appear until 1994 (the same year as Schiffmans
article) and 1996, respectively.
5Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah, 299. While Schiffman is admirably careful on this
point, Baumgarten, Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies, attributes the concept of evul yom

to the Pharisees without qualification (158).
6Below I discuss all of the passages Schiffman considers in Pharisaic and Sadducean
Halakhah, with the exception of a passage from 4QOrdinancesc col i, which Schiffman thinks
may be relevant, but which does not mention waiting until evening (298).
10. The Polemic against the evul Yom 177
both the man who emits the semen and his female partner if there is one, lasts
until both man and woman have bathed and evening has arrived; any garment or
leather that has come in contact with the semen becomes pure after laundering
and the arrival of evening (Lev 15:1618). Finally, the Holiness Code decrees
that the one who eats an animal unfit for consumption because it died on its own
or was killed by other animals is impure until evening (Lev 17:15).
The Torah also decrees that impurity disappears only at evening for those who
incur the short-lived impurity caused by various stages in the manufacture of the
ashes of the red cow; these ashes form part of the waters sprinkled on a person
during the process of purification from corpse impurity. The priest in charge of
the sacrifice of the cow (Num 19:7), the person who burns the cow (Num 19:8),
and the person who gathers the ashes (Num 19:10) all become impure and must
launder, bathe, and wait until evening to return to a state of purity.7 The person
who sprinkles the waters on those impure from contact with a corpse also be-
comes impure, as does anyone who touches the waters, and the impurity lasts
until evening (Num 19:21), although here the text is not as clear as it might be,
a point to which I shall return.
For only one type of impurity that lasts more than a single day does the Torah
legislate an evening terminus. This is the impurity caused by contact with a
corpse, the type of impurity removed by sprinkling with water mixed with the
ashes of the red cow: The pure person shall sprinkle upon the impure on the
third day and on the seventh day; thus on the seventh day he shall cleanse him,
and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and at evening he shall
be pure (Num 19:19).8 Perhaps it is the association of corpse impurity with the
burning of the red cow that leads the Torah to state explicitly that corpse im-
purity disappears only at evening. Otherwise it is hard to see why the end-time
should be specified for corpse impurity but not for other types of longer-lasting
impurity. Of the longer-lasting types of impurity, corpse impurity is more easily
remedied than most, but less easily remedied than menstrual impurity, which
requires nothing other than a seven-day waiting period (Lev 15:19) and presum-
ably bathing, though bathing is not explicit in the text of the Torah.9 Purification
from corpse impurity is more complicated since it requires sprinkling, presum-
ably by a priest, on the third and seventh days, with the waters containing the
ashes of the red cow. But it is less demanding than purification from childbirth
(Lev 12:68), skin eruptions (Lev 14:132), and abnormal genital flow (Lev
7The text does not mention bathing as a requirement for the one who gathers the ashes (Num
19:10), but presumably it assumes such a requirement, since laundering typically goes together
with bathing. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 66768, argues
that where P mentions laundering, it assumes bathing as well.
8I use the RSV translation, but I substitute pure for RSVs clean and impure for
RSVs unclean.
15:1315, 2829), because it does not require a sacrifice of its own; one red cow,
after all, served to supply ashes for many, many people contaminated by corpse
impurity. Nor does it require as extended a period of purification as childbirth,
or as complex a set of rituals as purification from skin eruptions.
In contrast to the types of impurity for which it decrees that purity is restored
only at evening, the Torah offers no indication of the time of day when purity is
restored after childbirth, skin eruptions, abnormal genital flow, or menstruation.
Had the Torah not mentioned waiting until evening for purification from corpse
impurity, it would have been reasonable to conclude that the requirement to
wait until evening applies only to types of impurity that last twenty-four hours
at most. But the laws of corpse impurity make matters more complicated. Es-
pecially since the process of purification from corpse impurity lies somewhere
between the extremes in the continuum of complexity and length of such pro-
cesses, the mention of waiting until evening raises the question of whether that
requirement is implicit in all of the processes of purification in the Torah.
The Temple Scroll
With this problem in mind, I turn to the passages from the Scrolls relevant to the
evul yom. I begin with the Temple Scroll, which follows the dictates of the Torah
in noting three types of impurity that require waiting until evening: the impu-
rity of seminal emission (Lev 15:1618); the impurity of contact with a corpse
(Num 19:11); and the impurity of contact with carcasses of swarming things
(Lev 11:39). Like other texts from among the Scrolls, the Temple Scroll finds the
Torahs attitude toward impurity too relaxed. Its purity laws seek to remedy this
problem. One distinctive aspect of its approach, inspired by the rigorous rules
for exclusion from the wilderness camp in Num 5:2, is the provision of places
of confinement outside the city of the sanctuary for men with genital discharges
or skin eruptions (TS 46.1618), and outside ordinary cities for people with skin
eruptions, menstruants, and parturients (TS 48.1417). But the Temple Scroll
elaborates the Torahs rules in other ways as well, with the goal of intensifying
the consequences of impurity.
For the Torah, as we have seen, seminal emission belongs among the least
severe forms of impurity. The Temple Scroll works out its view of the conse-
quences of seminal emission in relation to nocturnal emission rather than sexual
relations. In place of the Torahs brief period of impurity from the moment of
the emission until evening as long as bathing and laundering have occurred it
decrees a three-day period and specifies not only bathing, but also laundering for
both the first and third days (TS 45.79). Like the Torah, the Temple Scroll says
explicitly that the state of purity returns only at evening (TS 45.910). The rule
for sexual relations insists on the three-day period but otherwise provides little
detail (TS 45.1112); it does not mention waiting until evening.
The language in which the Temple Scroll refers to the arrival of evening af-
ter the sun has set is different from that of the P source, which consistently
uses the phrase, until evening.10 The Temple Scroll takes this language from
the Holiness Codes summary of the constraints on priests right to eat holy food
as a consequence of various types of impurity delineated by P: a priest who
incurs one of the short-lived impurities shall be impure until the evening, and
he shall not eat of the holy things unless he has washed his body in water and
the sun has set. Then he becomes pure, and afterward he may eat of the holy
things (Lev 22:47; quotation, 67).11 Thus the Holiness Code clarifies Ps
somewhat ambiguous terminology, leaving no doubt about the moment when
impurity comes to an end.12 This clarity must have appealed to the authors of
the Temple Scroll.
Though even the rabbis would prohibit the evul yom from entering the
temple,13 Schiffman argues that the strong language that accompanies the Temple
Scrolls requirement of waiting for evening in the case of a man with a nocturnal
emission They shall not enter my temple with their unclean impurity (
)and defile it (TS 45.910) points to a polemic against the concept
of the evul yom.14 He takes the emphatic phrase, with their unclean impurity,
as an attack on those who hold the rabbis view that the man is no longer in a
state of complete impurity as he awaits evening. But the Temple Scroll has just
dramatically altered the Torahs rules by requiring a three-day period of purifica-
tion from seminal emission; thus it seems to me that those who prefer the Torahs
single day of purification to the Temple Scrolls lengthier and more elaborate
process are more likely targets of the Temple Scrolls ire.
The Temple Scroll also found the Torahs remedy for corpse impurity insuf-
ficient. Thus it decrees washing the house and its utensils (TS 49.1116), as well
as laundering and bathing, on the first day (TS 49.1617), a day for which the
Torah prescribes no rituals at all. It also elaborates the Torahs ritual for the third
day by requiring laundering and bathing in addition to sprinkling (TS 49.18).
On both the third and seventh days, the utensils of the house are to be included
in the laundering (TS 49.1820). Like the Torah, the Temple Scroll notes that
10Lev 11:24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 39, 40; 14:46; 15:5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22,
23, 27; Num 19:7, 8, 10, 21, 22.

11Translation and italics mine. Betsy Halpern-Amaru points out to me that Deut 16:6 men-
tions evening and sunset in its instruction about the time of the slaughter of the paschal sacrifice,
but there the time in question is at evening, not until evening.
12So too Milgrom, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1855; he also
suggests that H is consciously invoking Ps terminology elsewhere in this passage (185455).

13Sifre Deuteronomy 256, cited by Schiffman, Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah, 292.
14Schiffman, Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah, 293. All translations from the Temple
Scroll, 4QD, and 4QMMT are mine.

after undergoing purification from corpse impurity, one becomes pure only at
evening, but it mentions this twice (TS 49.20, 50.4); the context of the second
mention is unfortunately unclear because it is fragmentary.
The Temple Scroll also insists on the necessity of the arrival of evening for pu-
rification in two special cases that immediately follow its treatment of those who
have had contact with a corpse in a house. The first, contact with a corpse or parts
of a corpse lying in a field (TS 50.49; pure at evening, 50.89), is included
in the Torahs discussion of purification from corpse impurity (Num 19:1619),
and so the insistence on waiting until evening is not an innovation of the Temple
Scroll. The second special case, a woman carrying a dead fetus (TS 50.1019),
does not appear in the Torah. This case is connected to the Temple Scrolls larger
anxiety about graves, which the Torah includes in a list of the possible sources of
corpse impurity in the field (Num 19:16). Immediately preceding the discussion
of the impurity of a corpse in a house, the Temple Scroll warns, You shall not do
as the gentiles do. They bury their dead everywhere. They even bury them within
their houses (TS 48.1112). The text goes on to decree setting aside places re-
served for burial, one for every four cities (TS 48.1214). For the Temple Scroll,
the woman carrying a dead fetus within her is impure like a grave (TS 50.11);
any house she enters becomes impure as if it had a corpse in it (TS 50.1112),
and anyone who has contact with the house is impure until evening (TS 50.12).
Anyone who enters a house with the woman contracts an impurity that, to judge
by the mode of removal, appears to be equivalent to standard corpse impurity
(TS 50.1215) and disappears only at evening (TS 50.1516).
As in its treatment of the laws of seminal emission, the overarching concern
of the Temple Scroll in its treatment of the laws of corpse impurity is to offer
a more adequate response to impurity than, in its view, the Torah does. While
waiting until evening plays an important part in the Temple Scrolls expanded
laws of corpse impurity, on this point these laws simply follow the Torah. The
only possible exception is the woman with the dead fetus, a case that does not
appear in the Torah. Still, the Torah does require waiting for evening at the end
of the process of purification from contact with a grave, and the Temple Scroll
clearly understands the woman as a type of grave. In the Temple Scrolls insis-
tence that only after sundown is it permitted for the person who has undergone
purification from corpse impurity to touch all their pure things ()
(TS 49.21), Schiffman finds a rejection of the view later held by the rabbis that
the evul yom may touch any non-sacral food without rendering it impure.15 But
in contrast to the heated rhetoric of the Temple Scrolls prohibition on entering
the temple after seminal emission, there is no hint of polemic in the language
of the Temple Scroll here. Without other reasons to assume that a dispute about
the concept of the evul yom lies in the background, this passage could easily
15Schiffman,
Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah, 29394.
be read as a straightforward statement of the rules governing purification from

corpse impurity.
The Temple Scroll contains one last set of laws that involve waiting until
evening, i.e., the laws for purification from contact with animal carcasses (TS
50.2051.5); again, the Torah, too, requires waiting for evening after such con-
tact (Lev 11:3940). For this type of impurity as well, the Temple Scroll goes
beyond the laws of the Torah or makes explicit what is only implicit in the Torah:
purification requires not only laundering, as the Torah indicates (Lev 11:40), but
also bathing (TS 51.35). Here, too, Schiffman detects polemic in the language
of the Temple Scroll: Anyone who carries some of their bones or of their car-
cass, whether hide, flesh, or nail, shall launder his clothes and bathe in water.
When the sun sets, afterward he will be pure (TS 51.45). In Schiffmans view,
afterward is emphatic, implicitly rejecting the possibility of the partial purity
of the evul yom.16 I would suggest instead that this passage shows the Temple
Scrolls debt to the formulation of the Holiness Code quoted above (Lev 22:67),
which specifies that Ps until evening means after sundown;17 in other words,
the language is emphatic, but it is the Holiness Codes emphasis, intended to
clarify Ps ambiguous language. Thus there is no need to invoke the existence of
the concept of the evul yom to explain the Temple Scrolls language.
We shall see shortly that 4QD and 4QMMT go beyond the Torah by applying
the requirement to wait until evening to types of impurity to which the Torah
does not apply it. The Temple Scroll, on the other hand, makes the Torahs laws
of purity more demanding in a variety of ways, but it does not go beyond the
Torah in requiring the arrival of evening for the return of a state of purity.
4QD
There is nothing sectarian in the rhetoric of the purity laws of 4QD, although I
have argued elsewhere that the rules governing sexual relations, which involve
a quite radical intensification of the laws of the Torah, presuppose a sectarian
context in which sexual relations are valued only for purposes of procreation.18
Thus, for example, 4QD conflates the impurity of seminal emission with the
impurity of abnormal male genital flow, which would introduce an eight-day
period of purification after sexual relations. As this example suggests, the purity
16Schiffman,
17Schiffman
points out that the rabbis use the passage from Leviticus 22 to demonstrate the
existence of the category of the evul yom (Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah, 29596); their
reading is hardly straightforward, however.
18M. Himmelfarb, The Purity Laws of 4QD: Exegesis and Sectarianism, in Things Re
vealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in Honor of Michael E. Stone (ed.
E.G. Chazon, D. Satran, and R.A. Clements; JSJSup 89; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 15569 (in this
volume, 16173).
laws of 4QD, like those of the Temple Scroll, read the purity laws of the Torah
as a system; but the exegetical character of 4QD is more evident than that of the
Temple Scroll, which presents itself as an alternate Torah.
The only passage in 4QD that preserves an allusion to the necessity of waiting
for evening for purification is the discussion of the woman with abnormal genital
flow, or in rabbinic terminology, the zavah. Here, then, 4QD takes the step of
applying the requirement to wait to a type of impurity beyond those to which the
Torah applies it: She shall not eat anything sanctified, nor shall she [enter] the
sanctuary until sunset on the eighth day (4Q266 6 ii 34). The phrase, until
sunset, , integrates the vocabulary of the Holiness Codes clause,
( Lev 22:7), with the form of Ps recurrent phrase, .
4QDs approach to the purity laws as a system is very much in evidence in this
passage. She shall not eat anything sanctified, nor shall she enter the sanctuary
until sunset on the eighth day is a paraphrase of the rule that appears in relation
to the woman after childbirth (Lev12:4), the only passage in P to specify the
consequences of being in a state of impurity lack of access to holy things. The
passage in 4QD makes explicit what is surely implicit in the Torah, i.e., that the
same prohibitions apply to other types of impurity. But perhaps with the Holi-
ness Codes rule for priests in mind (Lev 22:47), 4QD sharpens the Torahs
prohibition on touching holy things by replacing touch with eat, since the
primary form of touching holy things, especially for a woman, is eating.
To turn to the point relevant for us, 4QD specifies the time at which the zavah
returns to a state of purity as sunset on the eighth day. This is a significant inno-
vation in relation to the text of the Torah. The Torah says that the zavah counts
seven days from the time of the cessation of the flow and afterwards she is pure
(Lev 15:28). On the eighth day she brings her sacrifice (Lev 15:2930). 4QD is
clearly troubled by two pieces of information that fit together only imperfectly.
On the one hand, the zavah is pure on the seventh day. On the other, since she
must bring a sacrifice on the eighth day, the process is not yet complete on the
seventh day, and therefore, perhaps her state of purity on the seventh day is not
complete either. In light of the desire it shares with the Temple Scroll to intensify
the Torahs laws of impurity, it is not surprising that 4QD prefers the more strin-
gent possibility, that purity is restored only on the eighth day. But even when the
question has been resolved in favor of the eighth day, another question remains.
Does the state of purity return with the offering of the sacrifice, or, as for those
forms of impurity for which the time of termination is specified, must the zavah
await evening? Once again 4QD gives the stringent answer to the question.
I see no reason why 4QD would have confined this type of reasoning about the
duration of the period of impurity to the zavah when it would also have been rel-
evant to the woman after childbirth, the zav, those suffering from skin eruptions,
and perhaps also the menstruant, though her process of purification according to
the Torah does not involve stages. No such requirements are preserved in 4QD,
but its purity laws are quite fragmentary, and it is certainly possible that the
complete text included them.
I have suggested that 4QD can be read as responding to questions raised by
the text of the Torah. But does 4QD betray awareness of an opposing position?
In m. Neg. 14:3 the rabbis discuss the status of a person undergoing purification
from skin eruptions, a process even more complex than the process for a zav or
zavah, at several moments in the process. They consider him to have achieved
the status of evul yom after immersion on the seventh day and a further level of
purity after sundown on the seventh day. Full purity, however, is restored only
after he offers his sacrifice on the eighth day. The passage goes on to note that
there are also three stages in the return to purity of a woman after childbirth.
While the rabbis never offer a staged view of the return to purity of the zav or
zavah, it is certainly fair to say that the perspective of m. Nega im, with stages
of purity and a return to full purity immediately after sacrifice without awaiting
sundown, stands in contrast to 4QDs prescription for the zavah, in which purity
returns not in stages, but all at once after sundown on the last day of the process.19
Still, this does not mean that 4QDs rule for the zavah is a polemic against a point
of view like that of m. Nega im; indeed, there is nothing in 4QDs straightfor-
ward presentation of its rule to suggest polemic. If 4QD had opponents in view,
it is perhaps more likely that they are people who concluded on the basis of the
language of the Torah that the zav and zavah returned to a state of purity on the
seventh day before offering sacrifice on the eighth day.
4QMMT
4QMMT is usually read as a polemic against the views of others, most often the
priestly establishment in Jerusalem at a time when it was under Pharisaic influ-
ence, though this understanding of 4QMMT is by no means unproblematic, as
Steven D. Fraade has recently argued.20 4QMMT contains two passages relevant
to the discussion of evul yom; one treats skin eruptions, the other the ritual of the
red cow. As we shall see, the passage about skin eruptions does have a polemical
tone, but the polemic has nothing to do with a disagreement about the status of
a evul yom and the practice being criticized is unlikely to have been that of the
priestly establishment. In the passage about the red cow, on the other hand, the
moment of the return of purity is indeed the central topic. I shall argue, however,
that the concern of the passage is not polemic, but rather exegesis.
19Schiffman, Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah, 29798, notes points of contact between
the views of the rabbis and this passage in 4QD, but characterizes 4QD as much more extreme
in its requirement of awaiting sunset on the eighth day.
20S.D. Fraade, To Whom It May Concern: 4QMMT and Its Addressee(s), RevQ 19
(2000): 50726.
In the case of skin eruptions, 4QMMT introduces a requirement of waiting for

evening that does not appear in the Torah, just as 4QD introduces such a require-
ment for the zavah. The passage in 4QMMT begins by complaining of failure to
observe the Torahs rule that those undergoing purification from skin eruptions
must stay outside their houses for seven days after shaving, laundering, and
bathing (Lev 14:8): It is written that from the time he shaves and launders, he
should dwell outside [his tent seven da]ys. But now while their impurity is still
with them, [those with skin eruptions] enter a house with communal pure food
(( ) B6668). While the continuation of the passage is fragmentary, it
appears to require that anyone who violates this rule bring a purification offering
and to label him a slanderer and a blasphemer (B6970). Finally, it permits one
undergoing purification from skin eruptions to eat sanctified food ( )[]only
after sundown on the eighth day, the day on which he would bring his sacrifice
according to the Torah (B7172); the relationship between sanctified food and
pure food in this passage is never clarified in the extent text.
4QMMT is clearly in disagreement with the position of m. Nega im, which
permits the consumption of sanctified food ( )at any time on the eighth day
after the offering of the sacrifice (and of second tithe and heave offering even
earlier in the process of purification); indeed, Schiffman sees the earlier text
as engaged in a polemic against contemporaries who follow the practice later
delineated by the Mishnah.21 The emphasis of the passage in 4QMMT is not on
waiting for sundown on the eighth day, however, but rather on the evils of enter-
ing ones home during the seven-day period after the first stage of purification.
This emphasis strongly suggests that 4QMMT is worried not about adherents of
views like those of m. Nega im, but rather about people who violate the explicit
command of the Torah to remain outside ones tent for seven days (Lev 14:8), a
requirement that rabbinic law, too, embraces (m. Neg. 14:2).22
Finally I turn to 4QMMTs treatment of the sacrifice of the red cow:
And also concerning the purity of the cow of the purification offering: the one who
slaughters it and the one who burns it and the one who gathers its ashes and the one
who sprinkles the [waters for] purification for all of them, the sun must set for them
to be pure so that a pure person will sprinkle the impure person (Num 19:19). For the
sons of Aaron should be[ (B 1317)
This passage undoubtedly places emphasis on waiting for sunset for purification.
But is it a polemic, as Schiffman and Baumgarten suggest, against the insistence
21Schiffman,
22M. Neg. 14:2 requires that the person at this stage of purification remain outside his house,
though he may go inside the city wall; and it explicitly prohibits sexual relations, a prohibition
that is perhaps implicit in the Torahs requirement of remaining outside the house.
of m. Parah 3:7 that the burning of the red cow should be accomplished only by
a priest in the state of a evul yom?23 Here is the relevant portion of the mishnah:
The elders of Israel used to go early on foot to the Mount of Olives, where there was
a ritual bath. They would render impure the priest who was going to burn the cow
because of the Sadducees, so that they would not say, it was done only by those on
whom the sun had set.
It is astonishing that this passage not only permits, but apparently requires ret-
rospectively that the priest who burned the cow be a evul yom.24 It is worth
noting that while the passage from the Mishnah mentions the Sadducees, it does
not refer to the protagonists as Pharisees, but rather as the elders of Israel. But the
real problem with reading 4QMMT in light of this passage is that the Mishnah
is concerned with the status of the one who burns the cow. 4QMMT includes
the one who burns the cow in its list, but its focus is on the one who does the
sprinkling: For all of them, the sun must set for them to be pure so that a pure
person will sprinkle the impure person.
If 4QMMT is not engaged in a polemic against the Pharisees, why the need for
emphasis? For three of the four roles listed by 4QMMT, the Torah is quite clear
that purity returns only at evening. In insisting that the slaughterer, the burner,
and the gatherer do not become pure until evening, 4QMMT is simply restating
what the Torah says (Num 19:7, 8, 10) if you assume, as 4QMMT apparently
does, that the priest who throws the cedarwood, hyssop, and scarlet stuff into
the burning cow (Num 19:6) is to be identified with the one who slaughters the
cow. The requirement to await evening for the return of purity is not as clear for
the sprinkler, however. Indeed, the Torahs formulation of the requirements for
the sprinklers purification is somewhat confusing: The one who sprinkles the
waters for impurity shall launder his clothes and the one who touches the waters
for impurity shall be impure until evening (Num 19:21).25 The language of the
passage appears to suggest a distinction between the one who sprinkles the
waters and the one who touches the waters. But if they are distinct people, it
is not clear who the one who touches them might be; the only plausible candi-
date, the person undergoing purification from contact with a corpse, has already
been accounted for (Num 19:19). Thus 4QMMTs equation of the sprinkler with
the one who touches the waters, an identification implicit in its inclusion of
23Schiffman,
Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah,, 28790; J.M. Baumgarten, The Red
Cow Purification Rites in Qumran Texts, JJS 46 (1995): 112.
24M. Kister, Studies in Miqat Ma ae Ha-Torah and Related Texts: Law, Theology,
Language and Calendar, Tarbiz 68 (1999): 31771 (Hebrew), comments on the remarkable
character of this requirement (pp. 33031).
25I follow RSV in translating as, waters for impurity.
the sprinkler in a list of those who must await evening to be restored to purity,
is quite reasonable.26
The motive provided by 4QMMT for its concern about sunset so that a
pure person will sprinkle the impure person shows that its real concern is for
the sprinkler rather than for the participants in the production of the ashes. The
Mishnah presumably exaggerates in claiming that from the time of Moses only
seven or nine red cows had ever been sacrificed (m. Parah 3:5), but the sacrifice
of a red cow was clearly a rare event, and the tasks of slaughtering the cow,
burning it, and gathering its ashes would not be performed very often. Thus,
the return to a state of purity of the one who slaughtered the cow, the one who
burned it, and the one who gathered the ashes, though surely of importance to
these men themselves, especially since they were probably priests who needed
to reincorporate themselves into the ongoing temple ritual, was irrelevant for the
proper conduct of the red cow ritual in its own right.
Sprinkling to remove corpse impurity, on the other hand, must have been per-
formed frequently. Here the requirement to await evening for purification would
have had a real impact: no one could perform more than a single sprinkling in
one day. In other words, although the language of the Torah decrees the moment
at which the sprinkler becomes pure again after sprinkling, it has implications
for the beginning of the process, for it prohibits anyone from sprinkling more
than one impure person per day: so that a pure person will sprinkle the impure
person.27 The same concern may also be reflected in the Torahs emphasis on
the purity of the sprinkler as he sprinkles the person in a state of corpse impurity
(Num 19:19). 4QMMTs concern with the moment when the sprinkler returns
to a state of purity is similarly directed at assuring that the sprinkler begins the
activity in a state of purity. In other words, rather than polemic, 4QMMT appears
to be engaging in careful exegesis of the text of the Torah.28
Conclusions
I have argued that the Scrolls treatment of the requirement to wait until evening
for purity to be restored can be explained by reference to two factors: the Torahs
264QMMT does not seem concerned that the Torah neglects to mention bathing together
with laundering for this person, just as for the one who gathers the ashes (Num 19:10).
27I would like to thank Ruth Clements for this point.
28Baumgarten, The Red Cow Purification Rites in Qumran Texts, 11819, argues that
another aspect to the Scrolls polemic against the rabbinic procedures for the red cow is their
insistence that the sprinkler be an adult priest, not a young boy. The material Baumgarten con-
siders (4Q277 and 4Q271 [4QD]; m. Parah 3:23; Barn. 8.1) deserves further consideration,
though, as Baumgarten himself notes, the rabbinic texts that make young boys responsible
for the preparation of the ashes never mention the boys as sprinklers, the very task the Scrolls
prohibit them from performing.
sometimes ambiguous language and less than completely consistent system

of treating impurity; and the Scrolls desire to intensify the purity laws of the
Torah. Not only is there no need to invoke a polemic against the rabbinic idea
of the evul yom, first indisputably attested only centuries later,29 to make sense
of the Scrolls language and rules, but even in those cases in which the Scrolls
do appear to be engaged in a polemic, there are other more plausible candidates
for their target.
Finally, I would like to make two related points about the implications of my
argument about the evul yom. First, I would suggest greater caution about in-
voking the dichotomy priestly halakhah / halakhah of the sages. In the case
of the evul yom, I hope I have shown that there is no reason to assume that the
Scrolls are reacting against a Pharisaic version of the position that later appears
in rabbinic literature. Surely not every point at which the rabbis hold a different
position from that of the Scrolls reflects the position of the Pharisees. Frequently,
the points of contact between the Scrolls and the rabbis, whether similarities
or differences, reflect the contours of the Torahs laws. Nor is it surprising that
the positions of the rabbis would correspond to some of the positions of their
predecessors now known to us from the Scrolls and react against others. The
position the rabbis embrace in relation to the burning of the red cow, which so
clearly contradicts the plain sense of the Torah, may actually reflect their desire
to differentiate themselves from their predecessors at a time when the sacrifice
of the red cow was safely in the past. Indeed, it may be that the concept of the
evul yom is possible only after the destruction of the temple.
But there is another reason for caution about this dichotomy. Although I did
not highlight this point in my discussion here, the contents of the texts I have dis-
cussed certainly raise reservations about the idea of a unified priestly halakhah.
It is true that as far as we can tell from what has been preserved, the laws of the
Temple Scroll, 4QD, and 4QMMT are consistent with each other concerning
the requirement of waiting for evening for the return of purity. The same cannot
be said of other aspects of their purity laws, however. For example, the Temple
Scroll decrees three days of purification for seminal emission; 4QD, on the other
hand, appears to treat seminal emission as equivalent to abnormal male genital
flow. The Temple Scroll confines those in particular states of impurity to special
places; 4QD does not appear to know of such places. Thus, while the lens of
29A. Solomon, The Prohibition Against Tevul Yom and Defilement of the Daily Whole Of-
fering in the Jerusalem Temple in CD 11:2112:1: A New Understanding, DSD 4 (1997): 120,
argues that CDs ame kavus is the equivalent of the rabbis evul yom (1217). While Solomon
makes a persuasive case that CDs term refers to someone at the same stage in the process of
purification as the evul yom, the very limited evidence gives no indication that the status of the
ame kavus stands between pure and impure. According to CD he is simply impure. Solomon
reads the passage in CD as a polemic against the Pharisees understanding of the privileges of
the evul yom (16), but it might better be understood as criticism of lax popular practice, as I
suggested above for the rules about skin eruptions in 4QMMT.
rabbinic literature has helped to illumine many aspects of the legal material of
the Scrolls, it seems to me that it has also encouraged us to move too quickly to
a picture of two relatively unified, opposing streams of halakhah in the centuries
before the destruction of the temple.30
30I would like to thank Steven Fraade, Ian Werrett, and Ruth Clements for their helpful com-
ments on this paper, and the participants in the Orion Symposium, especially Moshe Bernstein
and Lawrence Schiffman, for helping me to clarify its argument.
Judaism and Hellenism
11. Judaism and Hellenism in 2Maccabees
Second Maccabees, an account of the Jewish rebellion led by Judah Maccabee

against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV in the middle of the second century
B.C.E., is the first text to present Judaism and Hellenism as opposing categories.
In order to describe the confrontation between the way of life of the Jews and
the way of life of the Greeks during the crisis that preceded the revolt and during
the revolt itself, the author of 2Maccabees invented the term Ioudaismos and
used the term Hellenismos, which had previously referred only to language, in a
new way.1 Yet, as many students have noted, 2Maccabees itself combines these
antithetical categories: It is at once Jewish in its piety and Greek in its mode of
expression. Thus Elias Bickerman, who inaugurated a new era in the study of
the Maccabean revolt, refers to 2Maccabees synthesis of narrowly orthodox
theology with the most powerful Hellenistic rhetoric.2 More recently, Christian
Habicht writes, The uniqueness of 2Maccabees lies in the fact that the book
is characterized by two apparently contradictory features. From the point of
view of the history of theology, the book is purely Jewish; from the point of view
of the history of literature, primarily Greek.3
Habicht is correct to characterize the Jewish and Greek features of 2Mac-
cabees as apparently contradictory (my emphasis), although unfortunately
he does not develop this observation.4 My goal here is to illumine the nature of
the relationship between Judaism and Hellenism in 2Maccabees by describing
it with greater precision. I begin by discussing the understanding of Hellenism
and its confrontation with Judaism found in 2Maccabees. I then turn to the re-
lationship between Judaism and Hellenism that is reflected in the work itself, a
1Christian Habicht, Hellenismus und Judentum in der Zeit des Judas Makkabus, Jahr
buch der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (1974): 98; Martin Hengel, Judaism and
Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (2 vols.;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1.12.
2Makkaberbcher (I. und II.), in Paulys Real-Encyclopdie der klassichen Altertumswis
senschaft (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1930), 14.792; quoted approvingly by Hengel, Judaism and
Hellenism, 1.98. Oddly, in the English translation of Judaism and Hellenism, the word Hel-
lenistic is omitted from the translation of Bickermans description.
32. Makkaberbuch (Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1976), 185; my translation.
4He does, however, note that the Greek literary form of 2Maccabees represents more than
superficial Greek influence (Hellenismus und Judentum, 1089; 2. Makkaberbuch, 18990).

192 11. Judaism and Hellenism in 2Maccabees
relationship both more complicated and more cordial than 2Maccabees rhetoric
of opposition suggests.
Second Maccabees is one of two histories of the Maccabean revolt to have
come down to us from antiquity. The other is 1Maccabees; despite the tradi-
tional nomenclature, the two texts are independent works.5 First Maccabees is
a dynastic history propaganda for the Hasmonean family, Israels new high
priests and rulers. While 2Maccabees restricts itself to the persecution of Antio-
chus and Judahs revolt, concluding with Judahs defeat of Nicanor, the Seleucid
governor of Judea under Demetrius I, 1Maccabees covers a longer period. It
devotes considerable attention to Mattathias, the father of the Maccabee brothers
and founder of the line, and, after recounting the revolt led by Judah and Judahs
death, it goes on to describe the reigns of his brothers Jonathan and Simon, con-
cluding with the reign of Simons son John Hyrcanus. The passing of power to
the next generation establishes the Hasmoneans as a dynasty. First Maccabees
compares its heroes to the great heroes of Israels past: Mattathias is implicitly
identified with Phinehas, Aarons grandson and the recipient of a special priestly
covenant, while Judah is depicted as a new David.
First Maccabees reaches us only in Greek and in translations from the Greek,
but it was composed in Hebrew. Its style and plan imitate the biblical histories,
particularly the books of Judges and Samuel.6 The choice of biblical literary
models and the use of Hebrew rather than Aramaic reflect conscious archaiz-
5In addition to these histories, two other books entitled Maccabees survive. Third Mac-
cabees has nothing at all to do with the Maccabees. It seems to have received its title because
its themes, persecution and miraculous deliverance, are similar to those of 1 and 2Maccabees,
but it is set in Alexandria, and the persecution, by one of the Ptolemies, is legendary rather than
historical. Like 2Maccabees, 3Maccabees expresses its disdain for the Greek ruler in good
Greek style, indeed in a style somewhat similar to that of 2Maccabees, although the conven-
tions of 3Maccabees are those of romance rather than of history. It should also be noted that
the Ptolemys persecution of his Jewish subjects is set in motion when his attempt to enter the
holy of holies in the Jerusalem temple is met by a divine defense that leaves him near death, a
story with obvious parallels to the tale of Heliodorus failed attempt to empty the temple of its
treasure with which 2Maccabees opens. Third Maccabees is usually dated to the first century
B.C.E., but a date in the first century C.E. is also possible (see, e.g., Emil Schrer, The History
of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 3, part 1 [rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus
Millar, and Martin Goodman; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986], 53742). Fourth Maccabees
is a discourse in praise of reason; its understanding of Jewish piety is informed by Stoic and
Platonic philosophy, and its primary examplars of pious submission to the dictates of reason are
the martyrs whose stories are told in 2Maccabees 67. Like 2 and 3Maccabees, 4Maccabees
was composed in Greek. The work is usually dated to the first century C.E. (Schrer, History,
vol. 3, part 1, 58893).
6See, e.g., Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin
of the Maccabean Revolt (trans. Horst R. Moehring; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 95; trans. of Der
Gott der Makkabaer: Untersuchungen uber Sinn und Ursprung der makkabaischen Erhebung
(Berlin: Schocken, 1937); and F.-M. Abel, Les Livres des Maccabes (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1949),
xxiiixxiv.
11. Judaism and Hellenism in 2Maccabees 193
ing in the service of 1Maccabees praise of the Hasmoneans.7 This turn toward
the great tradition of the past is one characteristic mode of Hellenistic literary
expression among Greeks and others as well as among Jews.8
Second Maccabees more limited chronological focus precludes the dynastic
concerns of 1Maccabees, and it pays little attention to Judahs family.9 First
Maccabees describes the victories of its heroes according to the pattern of the
biblical traditions of holy war; but while Gods role in the victories is clear, it
is worked out through human agents. Second Maccabees, on the other hand,
introduces divine manifestations into its account of some of the Jewish vic-
tories. It also devotes considerable attention to the martyrs, who are mentioned
only briefly in 1Maccabees, emphasizing their role in securing the divine favor
required for the Maccabees victory.
Second Maccabees was written in Greek in an elevated and highly rhetorical
style, and it provides the only complete example to survive of the pathetic mode
of writing history that was popular during the Hellenistic period. As it has come
down to us, it is the end product of a rather complicated literary process. It presents
itself as the epitome of a five-volume history by an otherwise unknown historian,
Jason of Cyrene (2:1932). Scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the
question of narrative sources for 2Maccabees.10 A considerable body of scholar-
ship believes in such sources, though the scholars rarely agree on the nature of
these sources, most of them no longer extant, or on the manner of use.11 I agree
with Doran that no evidence exists for such sources in the technical sense.12
7Seth Schwartz, Language, Power, and Identity in Ancient Palestine, Past and Present
148 (1995): 26.

8See the suggestive comments of Schwartz, Language, 2931.
9Jonathan A. Goldstein sees in this lack of attention a rejection of the claims of the Hasmo-
neans and thus views 2Maccabees as a polemic against 1Maccabees (I Maccabees [AB 41;
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976], 6489; II Maccabees [AB 41A; Garden City, N.Y.: Dou-
bleday, 1983], 1719, 8283). Robert Doran, who dates 2Maccabees by what he perceives as
opposition to the policies of John Hyrcanus I, rejects Goldsteins position (Temple Propaganda:
The Purpose and Character of 2Maccabees [Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association
of America, 1981], 112, esp. n.11; see also Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the
Jews [trans. S. Applebaum; 1959; repr., New York: Athenaeum, 1974], 383).
10The four letters included in chapter 11 clearly constitute sources, but not narrative sources;
they are widely recognized as authentic (e.g., Bickerman, Makkaberbcher, 14.789, with
references to earlier scholars); see the detailed examination in Habicht, Royal Documents in
Maccabees II, HSCP 80 (1976): 718.
11See, e.g., Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 923; Klaus-Dietrich Schunck, Die Quellen
des I. und II. Makkaberbuches (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1954); Jochen G. Bunge, Untersuchungen
zum zweiten Makkaberbuch. Quellenkritische, literarische, chronologische, und historische
Untersuchungen zum zweiten Makkaberbuch als Quelle syrisch-palstinenischer Geschichte
im 2. Jh. v. Chr. (Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitt, 1971); Goldstein, I Mac
cabees, 3754, 90103; Goldstein, II Maccabees, 3541; Habicht, 2. Makkaberbuch, 17277.
12Doran, Temple Propaganda, 1223; quotation, 23. My discussion of the story of the
mother and her seven sons below bears on Habichts view of ch. 7 as drawn from a different
source (2. Makkaberbuch, 17677).
The epitomator tells us that his purpose was to make Jasons lengthy account
more accessible by condensing and ornamenting it (2:2431). He compares his
own contribution to 2Maccabees to that of the painter responsible for decorat-
ing a house (2:29), suggesting that the rhetorical flourishes are his. With the loss
of Jasons work, we have only the epitomators word to go on in evaluating the
relationship of 2Maccabees to its source, but I think there are some grounds for
arguing that Jason himself was the source of much of the pathos and rhetoric of
2Maccabees. It is true that some scenes in 2Maccabees are written in a far more
elaborate rhetorical style than others,13 but to a considerable extent the different
styles reflect the subject matter of the passages. The rather hurried conclusion of
the work, which fails to exploit the melodramatic potential of the martyrdom of
Razis, for example, suggests that the epitomator omitted elements of the original
in the process of abridging it.14
In its present form 2Maccabees is prefaced by two letters sent by the Jews of
Jerusalem to the Jews of Egypt, urging them to observe the festival commemo-
rating the rededication of the temple by the Maccabees after its liberation from
the forces of Antiochus. The first letter contains the date of its own composition,
124 B.C.E., but this is not necessarily the date of the body of 2Maccabees,
for the letters could have been joined to the already completed work by a third
party.15
Whatever conclusion we come to about the relation between the letters and
the rest of 2Maccabees, there are good grounds for viewing Jason as a contem-
porary of the events he describes; if so, the middle of the second century would
be a plausible date for his work.16 The epitomator must have completed his work
before the arrival of Pompey and the Romans in Jerusalem in 63 B.C.E. since
2Maccabees concludes with the claim that Jerusalem had remained in Jewish
hands from the time of Judah on (15:37).
13For an attempt to distinguish the rhetorical additions of the epitomator from the more
prosaic narrative of Jason, see Solomon Zeitlin, ed. and Sidney Tedesche, trans., The Second
Book of Maccabees (New York: Harper, 1954): 2024. Like the other points Solomon Zeitlin
argues here, for example, that the epitomator was a Jew from Antioch, this attempt is clever
but not persuasive.
14For discussion of other examples of abridgment, see Abel, Livres des Maccabes, xxxiii
xxxiv, xxxvi, esp. n.1.

15Doran, Temple Propaganda, 312.
The first letter is quite brief (2Macc 1:19); it greets the Jews of Egypt and summarizes an
earlier letter that explained the reasons for the festival. The second letter is considerably longer
(1:102:18) and includes a review of temple dedications in Israels past. Several scholars sug-
gest that the epitome was composed to be sent with the first letter and that the date of the letter
thus provides a date for the epitome, though not for the work of Jason of Cyrene; see Arnaldo
Momigliano, The Second Book of Maccabees, CP 70 (1975): 83; Habicht, 2. Makkaber
buch, 174. But the letter itself is very brief and provides no notice of the existence of the epito-
me, nor does its version of the history of the festival fit well with the account in 2Maccabees.
16E.g., Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 38285.
From the time of the return from the Babylonian exile, under both the Persians
and the Hellenistic empires, the high priest had served as the head of the Jewish
people in the eyes of the foreign ruler. According to 2Maccabees, the events
that led to the Maccabean revolt were set in motion by the efforts of the evil
Jason to seize the high priesthood from his pious brother, Onias III. With the
accession to the throne of Antiochus IV, Jason undertook to persuade the new
Seleucid king to appoint him high priest in his brothers place. As an inducement
to Antiochus, Jason offered not only a down payment and the promise of future
payments for the office itself, but also a payment in return for permission to
establish a gymnasium and a body of youth for it, and to enroll the men of
Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch (4:9).17 Jasons promises were well received,
and he returned to Jerusalem as Antiochus IVs designated high priest.
The meaning of the last provision, the right to enroll the men of Jerusalem
as citizens of Antioch, has been the subject of considerable discussion.18 Here I
follow Victor Tcherikovers view, but in fact the precise nature of the new situ-
ation in Jerusalem is not crucial to my argument. In Tcherikovers view, Jason
was granted the right to turn Jerusalem into a new legal entity, a polis known
like so many other cities in the Seleucid empire as Antioch.19 Upon his conquest
of Palestine, Antiochus III had granted the Jews the right to live according to
their ancestral customs; with the establishment of a new legal basis for the gov-
ernance of Jerusalem, the Torah was no longer the constitution of the city. Still,
the establishment of the polis did not mean that the practice of Jewish customs
was forbidden or discouraged, only that they were no longer the legal basis for
the governance of the city.20
17All quotations from 1 and 2Maccabees and the Bible are taken from the Revised Standard
Version (RSV) translation, unless otherwise indicated.

18Even the translation is controversial. RSVs translation, quoted above, follows the un-
derstanding of Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 4047. See Bickerman, God of the Mac
cabees, 3840, for a different understanding. The translations of Goldstein (II Maccabees),
to draw up the list of the Antiochenes in Jerusalem, and Habicht (2. Makkaberbuch), die
Liste derer aufzustellen, die in Jerusalem Brger von Antiocheia sein sollten, are close to
Bickermans understanding, although Goldstein proposes his own theory of the meaning of
Antiochene citizenship (I Maccabees, 11022).
19A similar development from non-Greek city to polis appears to be attested for Sardis; see
Susan Sherwin-White and Amlie Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the
Seleucid Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 18084. Citizenship in any
polis was limited; in Jasons Jerusalem, it was apparently restricted to the aristocrats, and the
path to citizenship for the young was membership in the ephebate, the body of youth. Most
inhabitants of Jerusalem, too poor to bear the costs of the associated education, would have
remained mere residents, metoikoi (metics) or katoikoi in the terminology of the polis.
20Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 16169, 4049; Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism 1.
27879. Tcherikover developed his interpretation against the groundbreaking work of Bicker-
man. Bickerman argued that Jason received permission to form a corporation of Antiochenes,
composed of the Jerusalem elite; the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem remained subject to
the ancestral laws, while the Antiochenes now lived by Greek laws (God of the Maccabees,
3842; for annotation, see German original). Goldsteins suggestion that Jasons project reflects
The changes that took place upon Jasons return from his successful interview
with the king had a profoundly negative effect, in the view of 2Maccabees.
He destroyed the lawful ways of living and introduced new customs contrary to the
law. For with alacrity he founded a gymnasium right under the citadel, and he induced
the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat. There was such an extreme of
Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways because of the surpassing
wickedness of Jason, who was ungodly and no high priest, that the priests were no
longer intent upon their service at the altar. Despising the sanctuary and neglecting the
sacrifices, they hastened to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the wrestling arena
after the call to the discus, disdaining the honors prized by their fathers and putting the
highest value upon Greek forms of prestige. (4:1115)
The word translated as Hellenization in the Revised Standard Version is

Hellenismos. I would prefer to translate it as Hellenism since 2Maccabees
clearly intends it to serve as the opposite of Ioudaismos. As noted above, this
use of Hellenismos to mean the Greek way of life appears to be the coinage of
2Maccabees.
For 2Maccabees, Hellenismos is defined by the gymnasium and the behavior
associated with it. We hear nothing in the passage quoted above or anywhere else
in 2Maccabees about the introduction of the cult of Greek gods to Jerusalem be-
fore Antiochus persecution.21 Yet while the Torah, not surprisingly, has nothing
to say about the gymnasium or the proceedings of the wrestling arena, 2Mac-
cabees claims that participation in the life of the gymnasium involves customs
contrary to the law (paranomous ethismous) (4:11). If, as 1Maccabees claims,
those who participated in the gymnasium tried to remove the evidence of their
circumcision (1Macc 1:15), such participation might be termed unlawful. But
2Maccabees does not mention the attempt to reverse circumcision, nor does it
complain that the aristocratic youth of Jerusalem exercised naked, which would
also clearly be contrary to the laws of the Torah. The failure to mention such
behavior strongly suggests that 2Maccabees did not believe it had taken place.22
But for 2Maccabees, and surely for other opponents of the reforms as well, the
force of the law went far beyond the written Torah. The laws (hoi nomoi), or
less frequently, the law (ho nomos), serves in 2Maccabees as a designation
for the Jewish way of life, elsewhere Ioudaismos, which stands in contrast to
Antiochus IVs adoption of a Roman notion of citizenship (I Maccabees, 11022) has not met
with acceptance.
21Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 16567; Klaus Bringmann, Hellenistische Reform
und Religionsverfolgung in Juda: Eine Untersuchung zur jdisch-hellenistischen Geschichte

(175163 v. Chr.) (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 83; Edouard Will and Claude
Orrieux, Ioudasmos-hellnismos: essai sur le judasme juden lpoque hellnistique (Nan-
cy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1986), 119; against Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 41.
22Goldstein, II Maccabees, 230.
Hellenismos.23 Thus 2Maccabees describes the tranquility that reigned in Jeru-

salem before the conflict in relation to the laws: The holy city was inhabited in
unbroken peace and the laws were very well observed (3:1). This understand-
ing of the laws also leads to describing the establishment of the gymnasium as
involving customs contrary to the law (4:11).
Despite its tone and its insistence that the gymnasium brought with it behav-
ior that violated the Torah, 2Maccabees gives us no evidence for its view that
Jasons followers were disloyal to the God of Israel. If Jason and his friends held
a more limited view of the demands of the Torah than 2Maccabees, they could
embrace Greek institutions such as the gymnasium with a good conscience as
long as the cult of the Lord was maintained as it always had been.24 The account
in 2Maccabees of the fate of the donation Jason sent to Tyre lends support to the
view that the reformers were not disloyal to the laws as they understood them.
Jason, 2Maccabees tells us, intended the donation to be used for the sacrifices
to Hercules at the games, but the messengers charged with delivering it, who
were drawn from the Antiochenes in Jerusalem, found this use of the money
unacceptable and gave it instead for the construction of triremes (4:1820).25
Thus while 2Maccabees claims that Jason had moved beyond the limits of Jew-
ish monotheism, it grants that the messengers, who were Antiochenes and thus
23Second Maccabees never applies the terms nomos and nomoi to anything but the Jewish
law. Other terms are occasionally applied to Jewish laws or customs: ethos (11:25), ethismos
(12:38), and nomimos (4:11, 11:24). It is worth noting that two of the uses of these other terms
appear in the letter of Antiochus V to the Jews. Whether this document is genuine or not, it is
not the work of the author of 2Maccabees, who accepted its authenticity. In any case nomos
and nomoi are far and away the dominant terms for Jewish law and custom in 2Maccabees.
The most common use of the terms is without any modification, simply the laws or the law.
Forms of nomos appear twenty-four times in 2Maccabees outside of the preliminary letters,
eighteen times in the plural (2:22; 3:1; 4:2, 17; 5:8, 15; 6:1, 5, 28; 7:2, 9, 11, 23, 37; 8:2, 36;
11:31; 13:14), and six times in the singular (6:1; 7:30; 10:26; 12:40; 13:10; 15:9). (The term
appears in two other passages, 5:10 and 7:24, in one of the two main witnesses to 2Maccabees,
but in both places it is the inferior reading.)
All statistics for the occurrence of words in 2Maccabees and other texts of the Greek Bible
are drawn from Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the
Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament (Including the Apocryphal Books (3 vols.; Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1897; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1983).
See B. Renaud, La loi et les lois dans les livres de Maccabes, RB 68 (1961): 5567, for
discussion of nomos/nomoi; Renauds position is treated below. I would like to thank Daniel
Schwartz for calling this article to my attention.
24Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 16567; Goldstein, II Maccabees, 8587; Will and
Orrieux, Ioudasmos, 13436.

25See Ben Zion Wacholder, Eupolemus: A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature (Cincinnati:
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1974), 1516, for an interesting discussion
of how this incident may have affected Eupolemus and his account of the donation of Solomon
to the temple of Zeus in Tyre.
members of the gymnasium elite, had no intention of abandoning Judaism and

rejected Jasons course.26
In the Hebrew Bible, the Deuteronomic tradition and many of the prophets
looked for evidence of idolatry to explain Israels defeats and suffering at the
hands of her neighbors. First Maccabees stands close to the biblical tradition.
While no instances of idolatry are described before the persecution, we are told
that the lawless men who introduced the gymnasium and removed the marks of
circumcision abandoned the holy covenant (1Macc 1:15). First Maccabees
also indicates that many Jews were happy to adopt the worship of the gods of
the Greeks at the time of Antiochus decree (1:43); indeed it uses the willing-
ness of these Jews to sacrifice to the Greek gods as a foil to the zealous piety of
Mattathias (2:1528).
For 2Maccabees, Antiochus prohibition of the practice of Judaism and the
terrible persecution that followed are punishment not for idolatry but for the
gymnasium. And 2Maccabees does not attempt to underline the greatness of
its martyrs, whom it sees as heroes of the revolt equal to Judah and his men,
by emphasizing the willingness of other Jews to save their lives by worshiping
foreign gods. The failure of some Jews to resist the persecution is glimpsed only
occasionally, as, for example, when Judah gathers to him those men who had
continued in the Jewish faith (Ioudaismos) , about six thousand men (8:1).
The only instance of even attempted idolatry in the account of the period before
the persecution is Jasons failed attempt to donate money for sacrifices to Her-
cules at the games at Tyre; even if Jasons contribution had been used for the
purpose intended, it hardly represents a very ardent form of idolatry.
Once we recognize that the gymnasium did not bring idolatry with it, 2Mac-
cabees real complaint becomes clear: The gymnasium represents new values.
With its establishment, the youthful flower of the Jerusalem priesthood, the
heirs of Aaron, no longer defined success in traditional terms but rather in Greek
terms, that is, in terms of athletic prowess: Despising the sanctuary and neglect-
ing the sacrifices, they hastened to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the
wrestling arena after the call to the discus, disdaining the honors prized by their
fathers and putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige (4:1415).
The almost comical picture of the young priests abandoning the altar as they rush
to train for competition in the games is surely meant to recall the crowd of priests
around the altar not many years earlier when Heliodorus threatened to violate
the sanctity of the temple: The priests prostrated themselves before the altar in
26Tcherikover, Hellenistic
Civilization, 16667; Bringmann, Hellenistische Reform, 83; Will
and Orrieux, Ioudasmos, 136. Goldstein, II Maccabees, 23233, suggests that the donation was
simply the standard entrance fee for participation in the games, which usually was used to pay
for sacrifices to the god in whose honor the games were being held. Thus, even Jason might not
have viewed the contribution as idolatrous: He was simply paying the required fee, and it was
in the hands of the sponsors of the games to determine how the money was to be used.
their priestly garments and called toward heaven (3:15). In 2Maccabees view,
Hellenism is not evil in itself. Rather, it is bad for Jews because it leads them
away from their proper way of life.
From one angle, the evil of innovation at the core of 2Maccabees objection to
Hellenism is part of an old story. In his farewell to the people of Israel in the Book
of Deuteronomy, Moses predicts that they will go astray by worshiping gods their
fathers knew not, who were not apportioned to them (Deut 29:25). Similarly, God
complains through Jeremiah that the people are burning incense to gods neither
they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah knew (Jer 19:4).27 What is different
about Hellenism is that it promotes dangerous innovation without actual idolatry.
While the Bible describes idolatry as the worship of gods ones fathers did not
know, it has no term to express its belief that piety is inherited from the fathers. In
2Maccabees, adjectives meaning ancestral are prominent.28 In three instances,
2Maccabees refers to the laws as ancestral (patrios or patros).29 This usage
may echo Seleucid usage: The decree of Antiochus III upon his conquest of the
territory of the Jews grants them the right to continue to live according to their
ancestral laws (kata tous patrious nomous) (Josephus, Ant. 12:142).30 But the
phrase was not peculiar to the Seleucid royal chancellery, and its use was not
restricted to the Jews: In 201 B.C.E., Philip V of Macedon granted the inhabit-
ants of the recently conquered island of Nisyros the right to continue to use their
ancestral laws (nomois tois patriois).31 Second Maccabees also uses these adjec-
tives for ancestral and a third, etymologically distinct, adjective, progonikos, in
relation to other significant nouns, such as honors (4:15) and government (8:17),
and most notably, to language (7:8, 21, 27; 12:37; 15:29), a subject to which
I shall return.32 The three adjectives for ancestral are virtually absent from the
27See
also Deut 32:17; Jer 44:3.
28Renaud,
La loi, 6364.
29Second Maccabees usually refers to the laws and the law without any modifiers; when
they are modified, it is usually to associate them with God. Forms of nomos appear without an
adjective in twelve instances (2:22; 3:1; 4:2; 5:8, 15; 6:5; 8:21; 10:26; 12:40; 13:10, 14; 15:9).
In seven instances they appear in association with God (4:17 [divine laws]; 6:1 [Gods law]; 7:9,
11, 23 [his laws]; 7:30 [law given to our fathers through Moses]; 8:36 [laws ordained by him]).
Perhaps 6:28 (solemn and holy laws) should also be included here. A letter of Antiochus V
refers to their own laws (11:31). Designation of the laws as ancestral (6:1; 7:2, 37) does
not imply doubt about their divine origin, as is clear from the dominance of the association of
the laws with God and, in one case, the juxtaposition of the ancestral laws with Gods law
in a single sentence (6:1).
30Bickerman, La charte sleucide de Jrusalem, in Studies in Jewish and Christian His
tory, part 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 6971; repr. from REJ 100 (1935).
31Bickerman, La charte sleucide, 7071; for two examples of papyri that use the phrase
ancestral law in the singular, see Renaud, La loi, 6364.

32Patrios and patros together appear thirteen times in 2Maccabees (4:15; 5:10; 6:1, 6;
7:2, 8, 21, 24, 27, 37; 12:37, 39; 15:29). But at several points the two major witnesses to
2Maccabees, MS A and R, the sixteenth-century Sixtine edition, differ in the terms they of-
fer. Thus in what follows I treat the two adjectives together and do not attempt to distinguish
books of the Greek Bible that are translated from Hebrew;33 indeed, as I just
noted, there is no comparable term in the Hebrew Bible. While these adjectives
appear a few times in other books of the Greek Bible that were composed in
Greek, the large majority of the instances are found in 2Maccabees and 4Mac-
cabees, which drew on 2Maccabees.34 The importance of these terms for 2Mac-
cabees suggests how times have changed since Deuteronomy and Jeremiah: The
inherited is no longer taken for granted, but needs to be made explicit.
For 2Maccabees, then, Hellenism is a threat to traditional values. It is hard
to imagine the prophets coining terms like Assyrianism or Babylonianism. For
Isaiah of Jerusalem there was no Assyrian culture apart from Assyrian might
and Assyrian gods. Opposing empires existed only as sources of domination and
idolatry, even when they were ultimately doing Gods work. For 2Maccabees,
gentiles are not the enemy.35 It assumes, for example, that most gentiles were
horrified by the murder of Onias III (4:35). Rather, the Greek way of life is the
enemy because it is the agent of a dangerous transformation of values that can
occur without actual idolatry, as the description of the priests who prefer exercise
to sacrifice recognizes.
Yet even as it campaigns on behalf of Judaism and the ancestral laws, 2Mac-
cabees exemplifies the transformation of values under the influence of Hel-
lenism. The evidence I concentrate on, the depiction of 2Maccabees heroes,
has received little attention. But before turning to the heroes, I would like to
touch briefly on two other aspects of 2Maccabees debt to Hellenism that have
received more consideration its style and its treatment of Jerusalem as polis
and the Jewish way of life as a politeia.
Second Maccabees receptiveness to the conventions of contemporary Greek
historical writing and its often highly rhetorical style are clear and noteworthy
in light of its view of Hellenism as an insidious threat to the Jewish way of life.
One might have expected that an author holding such views would attempt a
specifically Jewish style for his work, perhaps an imitation of the style of the
between them. LSJ 1968, s.v. patros, suggests a distinction in Attic prose usage: Patrios
describes customs and institutions; patros, possessions. But despite Dorans findings about
2Maccabees attention to the fine points of style and the influence of Attic forms on it (Temple
Propaganda, 2627, 4546), I see no evidence for this distinction in relation to patrios /
patros, even in the readings where the witnesses are unanimous. Progonikos appears twice
in 2Maccabees (8:17; 14:17).
33Patros appears once in the Greek of Proverbs, where it translates av, father (27:10),
and in a corrupt passage in 2Esdras (the translation of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) (7:5).
Patrios appears only in a corrupt passage in Isaiah (8:21). Progonikos does not appear in the
Greek Bible outside 2Maccabees.
34Patrios occurs once in the introduction to Ecclesiasticus, which was written in Greek by
the translator of Ben Siras Hebrew, and twice in 3Maccabees, which is not related to 2Mac-
cabees. Patros appears once in 3Maccabees. The two adjectives together appear a total of
fourteen times in 4Maccabees, with some interchange and some problematic instances.
35See, e.g., Doran, Temple Propaganda, 11011.
Greek version of the biblical books that provided the models for 1Maccabees,
Samuel, and Kings.36 There is good reason to question the existence of an actual
genre of the tragic or pathetic history 2Maccabees has often been viewed as
representing.37 (It is perhaps worth noting that except for 2Maccabees, all other
supposed examples of the genre survive only in fragments.) But the features the
genre is said to contain are common in Hellenistic history writing and important
in 2Maccabees.38 The melodramatic style, evident in the accounts of the torture
and deaths of the martyrs or the death of Antiochus, the concern to show the
decline and fall of the wicked as recompense for their overweening ambition
and their persecution of the righteous, and the narrators comments on the events
he describes, are all characteristic of contemporary Hellenistic history writing,
although, as Doran rightly points out, there are also biblical antecedents for the
theme of the punishment of the wicked for their arrogance and the role of the
persecution of the righteous in bringing about their downfall.39
The divine manifestations, epiphaneiai, that come to the aid of the Jews at
a number of important moments in 2Maccabees provide a striking example of
the recasting of biblical themes in the style of Hellenistic history writing.40 Such
epiphaneiai are also an important feature in other Hellenistic local histories;
the best preserved is the Greek inscription from the isle of Rhodes, known as
the Lindos Chronicle.41 The manifestations of 2Maccabees take the form of
splendid heavenly warriors, often with beautifully caparisoned horses. The idea
of divine warriors appearing to help Israel has well-established precedents in
biblical literature, but the descriptions of the heavenly figures of 2Maccabees
with their shining armor and elegantly equipped horses owe more to Greek lit-
erature than to the Bible.42
The next example of Hellenism in 2Maccabees reflects a transformation that
goes beyond the inevitable effect of form on content. For 2Maccabees, Jerusa-
lem is a polis, the Jews are its citizens, and their way of life is a politeia. Renaud
has argued that the dominance in 2Maccabees of the plural nomoi as opposed
36
Goldstein, I Maccabees, 14, believes that the translator of 1Maccabees into Greek purpose-
ly chose a style that imitated the Greek Bible although he was capable of more literary Greek.
37See, e.g., Habicht, 2. Makkaberbuch, 18990.
38The question whether pathetic history constitutes a genre is much discussed; see Doran,
Temple Propaganda, 8489, for a brief summary of this discussion. Following Walbank, Doran
(8687 nn. 4346) denies the existence of a genre (97); rather he sees 2Maccabees as sharing
topoi with other histories that describe events in a dramatic fashion (9097).
40More or less elaborate epiphaneiai are described at the repulse of Heliodorus (3:2434);
before Antiochus invasion of Jerusalem (5:24); protecting Judah in the battle against Timo-
thy (10:2930); at the defeat of Lysias at Beth Zur (11:810). See also the references in the
programmatic statement (2:21); in prayer as a quality of God (14:15); and in the final battle of
the work (15:27).
to the singular nomos, which is virtually without precedent in the Greek Bible,
reflects this political understanding of the Jewish way of life: Nomoi is the proper
Greek terminology for the codified laws of a community. Nomos, Renaud argues,
would indicate the Torah, and while the Torah might be viewed as the soul of
the body of the laws, the use of the term nomoi points to a communal, politi-
cal understanding. The adjectives for ancestral that sometimes modify the laws
and the term patris, literally native land, used in 2Maccabees according to
the Greek conception of the nation conceived as a moral entity all point in the
same direction, as does the use of terms associated with the polis such as polits
and politeusthai.43
Renaud overstates the difference between nomos and nomoi and the degree of
conscious choice on the part of the author of 2Maccabees.44 Surely the descrip-
tion of the laws plural as divine, noted by Renaud himself, argues against
as sharp a distinction as he wishes to make.45 The exaggeration of the distance
between nomos and nomoi reflects an explicit Christian preference for the out-
look of the author of 2Maccabees, whom Renaud calls a humanist,46 against
1Maccabees piety of works, in which, according to Renaud, the Law is more
important than God himself.47 Still, Renauds claim that 2Maccabees has come
to understand the Jewish people and their way of life through categories drawn
from the life of the polis is a powerful one.
I turn now to 2Maccabees descriptions of its heroes, Judah himself, Onias III,
and the martyrs, who play a crucial role in 2Maccabees. Only after the two grue-
some accounts of the deaths at the hands of the Seleucid enemies (6:187:42)
of pious Jews who refuse to betray their ancestral traditions does Judah take up
arms and win his first victory. First the aged Eleazar refuses to save himself by
even pretending to consume the flesh of the idolatrous sacrifice (6:1831). Next
the mother and her seven sons resist the blandishments of Antiochus himself,
preferring a pious death to life with wealth and power (ch. 7). The connection
between Judahs victory and the deaths of the martyrs is clear. The last of the
seven brothers to die in ch. 7 prays that the deaths of the brothers may bring
an end to Gods anger against his people (7:3738); before their battle, Judah
and his men beseech God to have mercy on his suffering people, to look at the
destruction wrought in Jerusalem, and to hearken to the blood that cried out to
him (8:24; quotation from 8:3). It is surely no accident that Judahs victory
over Nicanor, the final episode of the work, is preceded by the suicide of the
pious Razis (14:3746), which appears as a form of martyrdom.
43Renaud,
La loi, 5565.
44Renaud,
La loi, 65, in relation to 2Macc 13:1011 [nomos] and 13:14 [nomoi].
45Renaud, La loi, 64.
46Renaud, La loi, 6667.
47Renaud, La loi, 5152; quotation, 52.
Before I proceed, let me address briefly the question of the relationship of ch.
7 to the rest of 2Maccabees. Scholars have long noted that ch. 7 stands apart
from the rest of the work in certain significant ways.48 Habicht offers the full-
est statement of the case. He claims that ch. 7 is an addition to the work, from
the hand neither of Jason nor of the epitomator, but of a later reviser. The most
important evidence for this view includes the style of the Greek, which Habicht
views as reflecting a Hebrew original, and the centrality of resurrection, which
sets this chapter apart from the martyrdom of Eleazar in ch. 6 and from 2Mac-
cabees as a whole.49
I think Habicht is correct in these two observations. The prose style of the
martyrdom of ch. 7 is less elaborate than that of the martyrdom of ch. 6. Further,
a considerable number of later Hebrew versions of the story of the mother and
her seven sons exist, some of which do not appear to be dependent on 2Mac-
cabees 7.50 Thus, the suggestion that the influence of a Hebrew original, with a
more paratactic style, is what sets the style of ch. 7 apart is quite plausible. I also
accept Habichts point about the central role of resurrection in ch. 7 in contrast
to its absence in ch. 6.
Nonetheless I agree with those who argue that ch. 7 plays a central role in
2Maccabees and has been fully integrated into it. Ulrich Kellerman, who em-
phasizes considerations having to do with the structure and content of 2Mac-
cabees, sees ch. 7 as stemming from a source incorporated by Jason himself.51
Jan Willem van Henten uses vocabulary to support his view that ch. 7 must be
48See, e.g., Benedictus Niese, Kritik der beiden Makkaberbcher (Berlin: Weidmannsche
Buchhandlung, 1900), 3738.

49Habicht, 2. Makkaberbuch, 17177, 233.
In Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1013, G.W.
Bowersock moves far beyond previous scholarship in suggesting that not only ch. 7 but also
the martyrdom of Eleazar is a later addition to 2Maccabees. He suggests a date in the middle
of the first century C.E. for the martyrdoms. Thus, they are roughly contemporary, in his view,
with the period during which the gospels were being composed. They are not sources for the
gospels, but rather reflect the same conditions that gave rise to the Christian concept of martyr-
dom, although Bowersock makes much of the fact that the term martyr is entirely absent from
2Maccabees. While Bowersock can claim considerable support for his view of ch. 7 as a later
addition to 2Maccabees, its differences from the martyrdom of Eleazar are an important part of
the argument for this position, and these differences serve to undermine Bowersocks treatment
of the two passages as a unit.
50Doran, The Martyr: A Synoptic View of the Mother and Her Seven Sons, in Ideal
Figures in Ancient Judaism (ed. George W.E. Nickelsburg and John J. Collins; Chico, Calif.:
Scholars Press,1980), 189221; for Dorans position on the relationship of the texts he con-
siders, 200. For a more extensive sampling of later literature, see Gerson D. Cohen, Hannah
and Her Seven Sons in Hebrew Literature, in Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 3960; repr. from Mordecai M. Kaplan: Ju
bilee Volume on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Moshe Davis; New York: Jewish
Theological Seminary of America, 1953), English vol., 10922.
51Ulrich Kellerman, Auferstanden in den Himmel: 2Makkaber 7 und die Auferstehung der
Mrtyrer (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1979), 5460.

considered in the context of 2Maccabees as a whole, noting the continuities

in this regard between ch. 7 and the account of Antiochus death in ch. 9.52 My
discussion below also points to continuities in vocabulary between ch. 7 and the
rest of 2Maccabees. Thus, while it may be impossible to decide whether ch. 7
was part of Jasons work or was incorporated by the epitomator, it is an integral
part of the work that has come down to us.
In what follows I try to show that 2Maccabees understands its heroes, the
champions of Judaism, in terms drawn from Greek culture. My approach is
rather different from that of Louis Feldman, who has written extensively on
Josephus use of Greek categories in his accounts of biblical heroes.53 Feldman
argues that Josephus retelling of the stories of a range of biblical heroes reflects
the canons of Greek rhetoric and philosophy. Thus Josephus attributes to his
heroes noble ancestry and beauty as well as the four cardinal virtues of wisdom,
courage, temperance, and justice, with the addition of a fifth virtue also known
to the Greeks, piety.54 Feldman understands Josephus intended audience for the
Antiquities as both nonJews and Jews and sees his purpose as apologetic: The
Jews, too, have produced great men worthy of universal admiration.55
I understand 2Maccabees adoption of Greek categories for its heroes as less
conscious, and more complicated, than Josephus reshaping of biblical narra-
tives to Greek norms. Since most of 2Maccabees characterization of its heroes
occurs through explicit evaluation rather than the more indirect medium of nar-
rating actions, much of my discussion concerns 2Maccabees terminology of
praise. What is striking about this vocabulary is that its background is clearly
not biblical but Greek.
The favorite words of praise in the accounts of the martyrs and indeed in
2Maccabees generally are forms of the adjective gennaios (noble); the adverb
gennais is the most common.56 In the face of torture and death, Eleazar pro-
claims his intention to remain true to the laws. By manfully [andreis] giving
up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young
a noble [gennaion] example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly
52Jan Willem van Henten, Das jdische Selbstverstndnis in den ltesten Martyrien, in Die
Entstehung der jdischen Martyrologie (ed. J.W. van Henten; Leiden: Brill, 1989), 13233,
esp. n.12.
53See Louis H. Feldman, Use, Authority, and Exegesis of Mikra in the Writings of Jose-
phus, in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading, and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient
Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. Martin Jan Mulder and Harry Sysling; LJPSTT1; CRINT
section 2; Assen: Van Gorcum, and Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 48594, for a programmatic
statement; for more than twenty relevant articles see the bibliography in Feldman, Jew and
Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 59496.
54Feldman, Use, Authority, and Exegesis, 48694.
55Feldman, Use, Authority, and Exegesis, 47071, 48086.
56The adjective appears three times (2Macc 6:28, 7:21, 12:42); the adverbial form, eight
times (2Macc 6:28; 7:5, 11; 8:16; 13:14; 14:31, 43; 15:17). The related abstract noun appears
once (2Macc 6:31).
[gennais] for the revered and holy laws (6:2728). Upon his death, Eleazar
is said to leave an example of nobility [gennaiottos] for the whole people
(6:31). In the next chapter, the brothers and mother encourage each other to die
nobly (gennais) (7:5); one of the brothers speaks nobly (gennais) (7:11); and
the mother, in another instance of the association of nobility with manliness, is
filled with a noble [gennaii] spirit as she fire[s] her womans reasoning with
a mans courage (7:21). The behavior of the martyr Razis is described with
terms based on the related adjective eugens literally, well-born.57 Surrounded
by Nicanors men, Razis falls on his own sword: He prefer[red] to die nobly
[eugens] rather than to fall into the hands of sinners and suffer outrages unwor-
thy of his noble birth [eugeneias](14:42). But in the tumult, Razis misses the
point of his sword. Then, we are told, he nobly58 [gennais] ran up on the wall,
and manfully [androds] threw himself down into the crowd (14:43).
But noble behavior in 2Maccabees is not restricted to the martyrs. Judah
himself is the beneficiary of the only adjectival use applied to a person (12:42).
Twice Judah exhorts his men to fight nobly [gennais] (8:16; 13:14). The
adverb is also used in the description of the mens reaction to such an exhorta-
tion before the final battle against Nicanor: The men resolve to attack nobly59
[gennais](15:17). These uses are quite consistent with the ones in the mar-
tyrological contexts. The last adverbial use is more unusual. When Judah un-
derstands that Nicanors attitude toward him has changed, he goes into hiding
with some chosen men (14:30), and Nicanor realizes that he has been cleverly
outwitted by the man [gennais hupo tou andros estrategtai] (14:31), in the
RSV translation. The verb stratege in this context means something like out-
generaled,60 and I think that it is a mistake not to translate gennais literally.
I suspect that 2Maccabees is attempting to head off a response not unlikely
among its readers, that Judahs flight was shameful, and that the manly thing
would have been to meet the enemy head-on, as Judah will do after the intensi-
fication of Nicanors persecution and the martyrdom of Razis. In other words,
gennais and derivatives in 2Maccabees almost always describe courage in the
face of force, whether of torturers or an opposing army.
We have seen that the adjectives for ancestral are barely represented in the
books of the Greek Bible translated from Hebrew. Gennaios and its derivatives
appear not at all in these books, while eugens and derivatives appear twice.61 It
is clear, then, that 2Maccabees does not use these terms to recall the Bible. It is
57The root appears four times, twice in two verses: the adjective and another problematic
form in 2Macc 10:13, the adverb and abstract noun in 2Macc 14:42.
58My translation; RSV: bravely.
59My translation; RSV: bravely.
60See LSJ 1968, s.v. stratege.
61The two instances of translation from Hebrew are Eccl 7:7 and Job 1:3. Of the remaining
eighteen instances (some are not unanimous readings) of forms of eugens and related terms in
the Greek Bible, all but one come from 2 and 4Maccabees.
more difficult to characterize the sphere of Greek literature from which gennaios
and eugens are drawn because they appear in a wide range of texts.62 Forms
of gennaios are frequent in Plato, but the most characteristic form there is the
vocative, a usage that is prominent also in writers influenced by Plato such as
Philo and Plutarch.63 This usage is absent in 2Maccabees.
In 2Maccabees the most common form of the root is the adverb gennais.
An author who shares with 2Maccabees a marked preference for the adverbial
form is Polybius.64 Again and again Polybius uses gennais in relation to mili-
tary matters and death, contexts in which the connection to manful behavior
is clear. Let me offer a single example: On this occasion as on others they [the
Romans] gallantly [gennais] faced opponents who largely outnumbered them
(The Histories 1.17.12).65 Polybius was a contemporary of Jason of Cyrene
and thus only a generation or two older than the epitomator. One important set
of associations of gennaios at the time 2Maccabees was composed, then, was
courage of a masculine kind. Second Maccabees insists that the behavior of the
martyrs as well as of Judah and his men deserves this praise.66
Another striking instance of 2Maccabees appropriation of Greek values
comes in the description of Onias III as he appears to Judah in a vision before
the battle with Nicanor: a gentleman67 [kalon kai agathon], of modest bearing
and gentle manner, one who spoke fittingly and had been trained from childhood
in all that belongs to excellence (15:12). From the fifth century on, the phrase
kalos kai agathos, literally, beautiful and good, embodied what Greeks consid-
ered admirable.68 The term can mean a gentleman in merely the social sense but
62Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1974), 9395. I would like to thank Froma Zeitlin for the refer-
ence to Dover.
63My figures are based on word searches done on the Ibycus computer program. I would
like to thank John Keaney for his help in using it.

Plato contains roughly 100 uses of gennaios and related forms. Plutarch contains perhaps
120, while Philo contains about forty. The great size of these corpora means that these terms
are relatively far less frequent in these authors than in 2Maccabees.
64Of sixty-nine instances of the root in Polybius, forty-six by my count are the adverb. Al-
though Josephus uses the root roughly ninety times, I see little kinship to the use in 2Maccabees.
65Polybius: The Histories, vol. 1 (trans. W.R. Patton; LCL; London: William Heinemann,
and New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1922), 45.

66Van Henten, Das jdische Selbstverstndnis, 14549, emphasizes the connection be-
tween the martyrs and Judahs soldiers, pointing to passages in which Judah urges his men to
fight to the death for the very things for which the martyrs die. He finds the origins of the ideal
of martyrdom in the Roman soldiers devotio, his willing death for his country; a similar ideal
is found among the greatest warriors of the Greeks, the Spartans, who also figure as friends (and
relatives) of the Jews in 2Maccabees.
67My translation; RSV: a noble and good man.
68Dover, Greek Popular Morality, 4145; Walter Donlan, The Aristocratic Ideal in Ancient
Greece: Attitudes of Superiority from Homer to the End of the Fifth Century (Lawrence, Kans.:
Coronado, 1980), 129. I would like to thank Froma Zeitlin for the reference to Donlan.
it also possesses a moral sense: perfect character.69 The term is quintessentially

Greek; there is no comparable biblical expression.70
Even the very brief description of Onias gives some indication of the content
of kalokagathia according to 2Maccabees. First there are Onias personal quali-
ties: He is of modest bearing and gentle manner. Then there is his upbringing
and education: He has been trained from childhood in excellence, and he is
one who spoke fittingly (15:12). Onias eloquence comes as a bit of a surprise
since 2Maccabees has never before had occasion to mention it. But speak-
ing well is something a Greek gentleman, and only a gentleman, would have
learned.71 It is not surprising that 2Maccabees is silent about the other side of the
Greek gentlemans education, which began earlier and was perhaps more than
anything else formative for the ideal of kalokagathia as popularly understood,
the physical training of the gymnasium.72
The ideal of the kalokagathos informs not only the description of Onias III,
where the adjectives are actually used, but also the descriptions of Onias co-ap-
parition, the prophet Jeremiah, of the martyr Eleazar,73 and even to some degree
of the mother of the seven sons. The descriptions of Jeremiah and Eleazar echo
some aspects of the description of Onias and add one aspect of kalokagathia
that is missing from Onias description. Jeremiah appears distinguished by his
gray hair and dignity, and of marvelous majesty and authority (15:13). Eleazar
is described as advanced in age and most beautiful in appearance74 (6:18).
His reasoning75 is worthy of his years and the dignity of his old age and the
gray hairs which he had reached with distinction and his excellent life even
from childhood (6:23). The beauty of the body trained in the activities of the
gymnasium that Greeks admired was an aspect of gentlemanliness that 2Mac-
cabees preferred to forget. But 2Maccabees can safely praise the appearance of
Eleazar and Jeremiah, where age eliminates fitness as the physical ideal, and can
thus claim that its Jewish gentlemen were by no means inferior to the Greeks in
regard to beauty either.
69
LSJ 1968, s.v. kalokagathos.
70In addition to 2Maccabees, the phrase appears in the Greek Bible in 4Maccabees and,
more surprising, in the Book of Tobit. In 4Maccabees the phrase occurs only once (4:1), but the
noun kalokagathia, which is also common in Greek literature, appears several times (1:8 [MS
S], 10; 3:18; 11:22; 13:25; 15:9). The occurrences in Tobit (5:13, where it describes lineage, not
a person; 7:7 [MSS BA]; and 9:6 [MS S]) are unexpected since the Greek Tobit is a translation
from Aramaic. But since the Aramaic has been lost, the original of kalos kai agathos cannot be
determined. Outside the Greek Bible, the author of the Letter of Aristeas also used these terms
to describe Jews, the high priest Eleazar (3) and the translators of the Torah into Greek (46)
(Goldstein, II Maccabees, 499).
71Donlan, Aristocratic Ideal, 15859.
72Donlan, Aristocratic Ideal, 15658.
73As noted by Abel, Livres des Maccabes, 474; Habicht, 2. Makkaberbuch, 277.
74My translation; RSV: of noble presence.
75My translation; RSV: decision.
Like Onias, Eleazar has been properly brought up from childhood on. While
Eleazar is never described as speaking well, his brief but eloquent speeches
with their careful structure testify to his ability. Eleazars refined reasoning76
(logismon asteion) (6:23) is another aspect of his gentlemans skills. For 4Mac-
cabees the reasoning of the martyrs was philosophy, in the technical sense, but
in 2Maccabees description of Eleazar it is the wisdom of the gentleman who
plays a part in public affairs.
Speech also plays a central role in the account of the martyrdom of the mother
and her seven sons. Each son addresses his torturers as he dies, but only briefly;
the last sons speech and the mothers two speeches are somewhat longer, and
they are no less rhetorical and carefully wrought than those of Eleazar. It is
notable that the mother strengthens her womans reasoning [logismon] with
a mans courage (7:21) before her first speech. The attention to the fact of
reasoning reminds us of Eleazar; the reference to a mans courage recalls the
association of noble behavior with manliness.
This martyrdom story also provides the occasion for a final twist to 2Macca-
bees admiration for Greek eloquence. Three times in the course of the account
2Maccabees notes that the sons speak in their ancestral language (7:8, 21, 27).
This for 2Maccabees is surely Hebrew. Seth Schwartz has recently argued that
it was in the later part of the Second Temple period that Hebrew began to enjoy
a kind of symbolic significance because of its association with the Torah and the
temple. He finds the first clear evidence for this use of Hebrew to assert Jewish
identity in the period just after the revolt, in the choice of archaizing Hebrew
for the composition of 1Maccabees, in 2Maccabees report about the use of the
ancestral language, and in the coinage of John Hyrcanus I.77
In 2Maccabees 7, Hebrew functions to assert defiance and resistance.78 Ac-
cording to 2Maccabees, Antiochus himself is present at the martyrdom of the
mother and her seven sons. The presence of the king serves to intensify the ten-
sion of the fictive linguistic setting: The Jewish martyrs are confronting not just
Greek-speaking bureaucrats and soldiers, but the Greek-speaking tyrant himself.
We are never told that the brothers require a translator to understand the ques-
tions and the taunts of their executioners, but when the second brother refuses
his torturers invitation to eat of the sacrifices with the simple word, No, the
text insists that he speaks in his ancestral language, patrii phoni (7:8). To
claim that this single word was uttered in Hebrew is to underscore the brothers
76My translation; RSV: worthy decision. Especially because of the parallel language in
the story of the mother and her seven sons, I would here insist on a more literal translation of
logismon.
77Schwartz, Language, 2128; for the standard understanding of the linguistic situation in
Palestine in the Second Temple period, Schrer, History of the Jewish People, vol. 2 (rev. and
ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew Black; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1979), 2028.
78Cf. Schwartz, Language, 27, on the Hebrew language and paleo-Hebrew script of the
silver coins of the revolt against Rome and the Bar Kokhba revolt.
defiance. Surely any subject of the Hellenistic empires could have made this
answer at least in Greek.
The mothers speeches and the reaction of Antiochus to them emphasize the
defiance implicit in the use of Hebrew. Because the mother delivers the speech
2Maccabees characterizes as nobly masculine in the ancestral language (7:21),
Antiochus felt that he was being treated with contempt, and he was suspicious
of her reproachful tone (7:24). The word here translated tone, phon, is the
same word elsewhere translated language. Antiochus response to the mothers
words surely reflects the fact that he does not know what she is saying because he
cannot understand her. To the youngest and last surviving son Antiochus offers
wealth and honor if only he will obey his commands (7:24). When the son fails
to respond, the king attempts to enlist the mothers aid in persuading him (7:25).
Finally the mother consents to try (7:26), but again she speaks in her ancestral
language, urging the son to die rather than accept the tyrants offer (7:2729).
The use of Hebrew allows the mother to urge her son to behave in exactly the
reverse of the manner the king wishes.
The other mentions of use of the ancestral language, by Judah and his men,
indicate not so much defiance as allegiance to the cause of Judaism. Before his
defeat of Gorgias Judah gives the battle cry in the ancestral language (patrii
phoni) (12:37), and at the conclusion of the book, after their triumph over
Nicanor, Judahs men praise God in the ancestral language (patrii phoni)
(15:29).
For 2Maccabees, then, noble speech, a quality clearly associated with the
Greek gentleman rather than the biblical hero, is an important aspect of the great-
ness of the martyrs. Can the claim that the martyrs and other heroes used Hebrew
at certain crucial moments be taken as a sign of uneasiness about the embrace
of the Greek value of eloquence? Rather, it seems to me that the depiction of the
mothers eloquent speeches as delivered in Hebrew serves to integrate further
an aspect of Greek gentlemanliness into Ioudaismos.
To some degree, 2Maccabees embrace of Greek categories may represent a
polemic. Just as 2Maccabees at one point refers to the forces of Antiochus as
barbarian hordes (2:21), it also suggests that its heroes are more truly gentle-
men than the Greeks who frequent their gymnasia. But the prominence of Greek
categories in the depiction of the heroes surely reflects something deeper than
polemic. The Greek gennaios, which does not correspond to any biblical term,
plays such a dominant role that one can only conclude that nobility has become
2Maccabees own criterion for judging human behavior. So too for the ideal of
the kalokagathos.
Second Maccabees, then, condemns the gymnasium for introducing new
values while praising its own heroes in terms that reflect those values. Yet, as
we have seen, 2Maccabees was not a passive recipient of Greek influence; the
process of adapting those aspects of Hellenismos that it wished to incorporate
into Ioudaismos involved considerable transformation. The dialectic of adapta-

tion can be seen clearly in an understanding of gentlemanliness that excludes
physical culture in favor of verbal skill or in the description of the behavior of
the martyred mother in terms more often used for the physical courage of men
at war. Thus, despite its claim of opposition between Judaism and Hellenism,
2Maccabees embodies a far more complex relationship between the two cul-
tures in which defining features of Hellenism undergo a transformation that
makes them central aspects of Judaism.79
79I would like to thank Erich Gruen, Milton Himmelfarb, and David Stern for their helpful
comments on this paper.

12. Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism
Alexander the Great could not have realized that from the point of view of later
generations the most momentous result of his campaign of world conquest was
neither the unification of all Greece nor the fall of the Persian empire, but rather
the exposure of the Jews a small and unimportant people to the culture of
their new rulers. The Jews, for their part, seem to have recognized Greek culture
as qualitatively different from the cultures of earlier conquerors. No prophet
had ever stopped to consider that there might exist an Assyrian or a Babylonian
culture apart from idolatry. But the author of 2Maccabees, even as he excori-
ates the Jews who succumbed to the attractions of Greek culture, characterizes
that culture not by reference to its (false) gods, but by the gymnasium (2Macc
4:717). He treats Judaism and Hellenism, Ioudasmos and Hellenismos, as ut-
terly opposed, indeed as locked in mortal combat, but also as comparable; thus
the pair of abstract nouns. Ioudasmos appears to have been his coinage, intended
to serve as a counterpart for the already existing term Hellenismos, whose mean-
ing, however, he transformed; the term usually referred to language rather than
way of life.1 For more than two thousand years since, the pairing of Judasim and
Hellenism has been of profound significance for the self-understanding of the
West, as indicated by repeated struggles over the nature of the relationship and
indeed over the meaning of the terms themselves.
The hero of my essay is Elias Bickerman, whose contribution to our under-
standing of the relationship between Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity seems
to me unsurpassed. Bickerman saw the hellenization of the Jews as involving
what I am going to call the restructuring of ancient Judaism. (I borrow the term
from the title of a book by my colleague Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of
American Religion.)2 By restructuring, I mean the adaptation of Greek institu-
tions and practices to Judaism and the consequent changes in Judaism. Where
other scholars attempt to measure how much is Jewish and how much Greek in a
particular text, Bickerman concerned himself with the dynamics of the reception
1On the terms, see Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in
Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1974), 1.12.
2Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World
War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

212 12. Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism
of Greek culture by the Jews: he questions how the Jews transformed Hellenism
and how, in turn, Judaism was transformed.
Most of Bickermans writing on the Jews reflects on the problem of the rela-
tionship between Judaism and Hellenism either implicitly or explicitly but as
far as I know Bickerman never set out a formal theory on the subject. The only
methods he would have acknowledged were the tools of the ancient historians
craft as traditionally understood: philology and careful reading, which he used
to remarkable effect. The closest he came to a general statement of his approach
is that wonderful semi-popular juxtaposition of two previously published essays,
From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees,3 and it is to this work more than any-
thing else he wrote that I found myself turning in an effort to trace the outlines
of his views.
Until the middle of this century, the dominant context for the discussion of
Judaism and Hellenism was New Testament scholarship, in which the two cat-
egories are treated as the background for Christianity.4 The existence of a more
hellenized Judaism in the diaspora is noted,5 but the term Judaism is used to
refer primarily to Palestinian Judaism, the religion of the Jews in the Land of
Israel, Jews who spoke and wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic and who are assumed
to have remained free of the influence of Hellenism. In this picture Christianity
provides the solution to the failings of its predecessors, legalism and exclusivism
in Judaism,6 the lack of personal relationship to God or the problem of dualism
in Hellenism.7
But even this sketch, with its clearly theological coloring, provides a starting
point for a more complex and historically accurate picture in its recognition of
the existence of communities of Jews who spoke and wrote Greek. Indeed, the
corpus of Jewish literature in Greek is considerably larger than that of any other
subject people of the Hellenistic empires. The last half century has seen a sig-
nificant body of research that develops the picture further by showing the deep
3Elias Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post-Biblical
Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1962). This volume consists of two essays, the first originally
published as The Historical Foundations of Postbiblical Judaism, in The Jews: Their His
tory, Culture, and Religion (ed. Louis Finkelstein; New York: Harper, 1949), and the second as
The Maccabees: An Account of Their History from the Beginnings to the Fall of the House of
the Hasmoneans (trans. Moses Hadas; New York: Schocken, 1947). Ch. 7 of The Historical
Foundations is omitted in From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees.
4For a fine example of this genre, see Rudolf Bultmann, Primitive Christianity in Its Con
temporary Setting (trans. R.H. Fuller; London: Thames and Hudson, 1956).
5Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, devotes a chapter (94100) to this issue at the end of his
section on Judaism.
6Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, 5979. Legalism in this negative sense has been a
favorite category for describing the Judaism of Jesus time in New Testament scholarship until
very recently.
7The problem of dualism is Bultmanns choice. See Primitive Christianity, especially
16271. Bultmann also comments on the problem of (lack of) freedom, as understood by the
philosophical elite in Stoicism and the masses in astrology (13555).
12. Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism 213
penetration of Greek language and Greek ideas among the Jews of Palestine. In
addition to Bickermans work, I think here particularly of the groundbreaking
work of Victor Tcherikover,8 who treated not only Egypt but Palestine; of Martin
Hengels monumental contribution;9 of Morton Smiths work;10 and, for the rab-
binic period, of the pioneering studies of Saul Lieberman11 and Henry Fischel.12
But even as scholars have discovered the richness and variety of Jewish
responses to Greek culture, they have had trouble describing the interaction
between Judaism and Hellenism. The dominant model which goes all the way
back to Droysen and the invention of the idea of hellenization has been influ-
ence, that is, the influence of Hellenism on Judaism. Hengel writes about the
limited influence of Stoic philosophy and Greek customs on Joshua ben Sira,
the early second-century BCE teacher and author of the Wisdom of Ben Sira
(Ecclesiasticus), whom he sees as a conservative hostile to Greek culture.13 On
the other hand, Tcherikover denies that Ben Sira was influenced by Hellenism
at all because he returned from his travels abroad an orthodox Jew.14 Implicit
in both of these views is an understanding of Judaism as the passive recipient
of Greek influence. Further, inasmuch as Judaism becomes hellenized, it also
becomes less Jewish.
As the tone of these scholars formulations suggests, there is more at stake
here than the best possible understanding of an ancient text. Hengel is alone
among the scholars I have mentioned in approaching ancient Judaism as a
student of the New Testament; it is not hard to detect the influence of Christian
theology on his work.15 Tcherikover, on the other hand, was an ancient historian
who came to his work on Jewish history only after writing a book on the foun-
dation of cities in the Hellenistic empires.16 He was also a Zionist. For Hengel,
8Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (trans. S. Applebaum; 1959;
repr., New York: Atheneum, 1974).

9In addition to Judaism and Hellenism, see Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians: Aspects of
the Hellenization of Judaism in the pre-Christian Period (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1980).
10
His programmatic statement is the semi-popular Palestinian Judaism in the First Cen-
tury, in Israel: Its Role in Civilization (ed. Moshe Davis; New York: Seminary Israel Institute
of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1956). Many of his essays are also relevant.
See the bibliography through 1973 in Christianity, Judaism, and Other Greco-Roman Cults:
Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (ed. Jacob Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 4.190200.
11Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1942); Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1950).
12Henry A. Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1973).
13Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1.13153.
14Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 14251; travels and return as orthodox Jew, 143
44.
15See especially Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:306314.
16Tscherikower, Die hellenistischen Stdtebegrndungen von Alexander dem Grossen bis
auf die Rmerzeit, Philologus, Supplementband 19.1 (1927; repr., New York: Arno, 1973).
resistance to Hellenism is a sign of Jewish exclusivism, while for Tcherikover

accepting Greek ideas implies assimilation. Of course the positions of both
scholars are more nuanced than my very brief discussion indicates, but I do not
believe that my characterizations are unfair.
Between the New Testament scholars preference for Hellenic universalism,
and the Zionist or simply Jewish disapproval of hellenization as assimilation,
Bickerman took not a middle path but an altogether different one, emphasiz-
ing the character of the interaction between Judaism and Hellenism rather than
charting the presence and degree of Greek influence on Jews. Like Tcherikover,
Bickerman was an ancient historian by training; both men, as refugees from the
Russian Revolution, found themselves studying ancient history at the Univer-
sity of Berlin in the early 1920s.17 Bickermans first book on a Jewish subject
was Der Gott der Makkaber in 1937;18 it reflects his profound knowledge of
Seleucid imperial practice, the subject of his Institutions des Sleucides, which
appeared the next year.19 He was already the author of a considerable body of
work on other aspects of ancient legal and institutional history.
Bickermans work as a general Hellenistic historian gave him a broad perspec-
tive on the problem of Judaism and Hellenism. The Jews were certainly not the
only people of the Near East with a well-developed sense of identity and an an-
cient literary tradition to fall under the sway of the Greeks, and Bickerman, more
than most who wrote about these questions, kept this point firmly in view. In his
pithy formulation, Whether or not to accept [Greek] culture was a question
of life and death for every people . [T]he problem was actually solved by
only two peoples, the Romans and the Jews.20 The Roman solution, of course,
Note the spelling of Tcherikovers name, which, like Bickermans, was spelled differently in
different linguistic settings.
17For Tcherikovers biography, I rely on the article by Alexander Fuks, Encyclopedia Ju
daica 15.875876. For Bickermans, I am dependent on the biographical note by Morton Smith
at the beginning of the third volume of the collection of (many of) Bickermans essays, Studies
in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 197686), 3.xixii. I have not been able to see
the autobiographies of Bickermans father, Joseph, and brother, Jacob, which Jacob published
under the title, Two Bikermans (New York, 1975). (The family name was spelled in various
ways after the family left Russia.) Arnaldo Momiglianos essay, The Absence of the Third
Bickerman, in Momigliano, Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism (ed. Silvia Berti; trans.
Maura Masella-Gayley; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 217221, discusses some
of the information about Elias Bickerman to be gleaned from this work.
18Bickermann, Der Gott der Makkaber: Untersuchungen ber Sinn und Ursprung der
makkabischen Erhebung (Berlin: Schocken, 1937). Note the spelling of Bickermans name
here and in the next note. In what follows I will refer to the English translation, The God of
the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean Revolt (trans. Horst R.
Moehring; Leiden: Brill, 1979).
19Bikerman, Institutions des Sleucides (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1938).
20Bickerman, From Ezra, 104; see also the remarks in his conclusion to the essay on the
Maccabees in From Ezra, 178180. Arnaldo Momigliano, the third great Jewish ancient histo-
rian of that generation, makes a similar observation in Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Helleniza
tion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 1011.
was conquest, a solution unavailable to the Jews. Since Bickerman wrote, some
historians of the Hellenistic empires have been arguing for greater dynamism in
the native responses to Hellenistic rule than earlier scholars had assumed.21 But
in the long term, from the perspective of the end of the second Christian millen-
nium, Bickerman was surely correct. His attention to the comparative dimension
of the question has the advantage of placing in relief certain crucial aspects of
Judaism such as the centrality of the Torah.
Bickermans approach to the relationship between Judaism and Hellenism can
be seen in his treatment of Ben Sira, which stands in contrast to that of Hengel
and Tcherikover. Like them, Bickerman takes Ben Sira as a conservative; he
contrasts his attitude toward Hellenism with those of the accommodationists
on the one hand and the radical traditionalists on the other. (I shall turn to this
paradoxical formulation in a moment). Yet, he sets himself apart when he writes:
Historians classify, but lifes strands are inextricably interwoven. The traditionalist Ben
Sira is at the same time the first Jewish author to put his own name to his work and to
emphasize his literary personality and individuality. He is bringing doctrine for
all those who seek instruction and, like a Greek wandering philosopher of his time,
proclaims: Hear me, you great ones of the people and give ear to me, you, rulers of the
congregation. He not only accepts the figure of personified wisdom , which appears
in Proverbs, but puts this profane knowledge on a level with the book of the Covenant
of the Most High, the law which Moses commanded a rather bold effort to reconcile
the synagogue with the Greek Academy, Jerusalem with Athens.22
Thus, Bickerman suggests that traditionalists such as Ben Sira were also trying
to come to terms with Greek culture. To me, this is a more persuasive reading of
Ben Siras book than the alternatives of Hengel or Tcherikover.
Bickermans understanding of radical traditionalism, of which his favorite
example is the Book of Jubilees, rests on a similar basis.
As it often happens, in order to uphold traditional values, their apologists themselves
propose the most radical innovations. The author of the Book of Jubilees outdoes the
later talmudic teaching in his severity as to the observance of ritual prescriptions. But
to assert the everlasting validity of the Torah, this traditionalist places his own composi-
tion beside and even above Scripture. In his paraphrase the author of Jubilees attacks
the lunisolar calendar and strongly urges the adoption of his own system of a year of
364 days in which each holiday always falls on the same day of the week as ordained
by God. The reason for his revolutionary idea is significant: the irregularity of the
moon confuses the times. Thus, without realizing it, this traditionalist succumbs to the
seduction of the Greek penchant for rationalization.23
21See,
for example, the essays in Hellenism in the East: Interaction of Greek and non-Greek
Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia After Alexander (ed. Amlie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-
White; London: Duckworth, 1987), which tend to emphasize the persistence of native culture
alongside Greek.
22Bickerman, From Ezra, 6365; quotation, 6465.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls came too late to have much of an impact
on Bickermans already well-developed views about ancient Judaism,24 but they
do confirm this observation about radical innovation in defense of traditional
values.
Bickermans account of Ben Sira hints at what he clearly identified as the most
important aspect of the restruturing of Judaism in the Hellenistic period, the
formation of a Jewish intelligentsia, different from the clergy and not dependent
on the sanctuary, that is, the scribes. Earlier, the scribe had been a civil servant,
an advisor to kings, and thus a purveyor of wisdom. But for the Jews, from the
Persian period, the scribe as civil servant became the interpreter of the Torah, the
law of the Jewish people. Originally, among the Jews as among the other peoples
of the ancient Near East, the functions of teaching and interpreting religious lore
belonged to the priests. As Bickerman sees it, it is this democratizing separation
between heredity and authority that will make possibly the more thoroughgoing
democratization of the Pharisees a few generations later.25 (The language of de-
mocracy here is mine, not Bickermans, but I believe it captures his meaning.)
In another context Bickerman might have offered some refinements to this
bold schema. The relationship between scribe and priest in ancient Judaism
remained extremely close, if sometimes tense. Many of the scribes known to
us by name, including Ezra and Ben Sira, were in fact priests by heredity.26 Yet
Bickerman is right to insist that the existence of the role of scribe apart from the
priesthood is an essential feature of ancient Judaism, one that sets it apart from
other Hellenistic cultures.
The great innovation of the Pharisees, according to Bickerman, is their claim
that Wisdom, that is, the Torah, should be available to all Jewish men. Ben Sira
still assumed that only the wealthy could become wise. Not so the Pharisees.
While their goal was the biblical goal of making Israel a holy nation, the belief
in the power of education to achieve such a goal is Greek, indeed Platonic;
it was the Greeks who introduced to the world the idea that membership in a
civilization could be achieved by education rather than birth, an idea that had a
profound influence on Judaism, though the hereditary aspect of Jewish identity
certainly remained central. Nor is this the only idea the traditionalist Pharisees
learned from the Greeks. Bickerman notes also the importance of the afterlife.27
Bickerman argues in From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees that it was the
success of the Maccabean revolt that led to this type of hellenization among the
Jews: The reform party wished to assimilate the Torah to Hellenism; the Mac-
24The
Scrolls receive some attention in Bickermans posthumously published The Jews in
the Greek Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
26On this subject see Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apoca
lypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 2325, and references there.
27Bickerman, From Ezra, 16065.
cabees wished to incorporate Hellenic culture in the Torah.28 He provides the

following example: Barbarians throughout the Hellenistic world claimed kin-
ship with the Greeks; but the letter in 1Maccabees (ch. 12) from the Spartans to
Jonathan which is, of course, a Jewish fabrication has the Spartans embrace
the Jews as brothers, claiming descent from Abraham.
This is a powerful example, but Bickerman himself has shown beyond any
doubt that the same sort of incorporation took place in the Wisdom of Ben Sira
and many other works before the revolt. Bickermans periodization reflects his
view of the Maccabean revolt as a turning point of crucial significance to the
course of Jewish history. But it is by no means obvious that the pace of such
incorporation intensified after the Maccabean revolt. Indeed, the success of the
Maccabees and their emergence as a dynasty in the Hellenistic style provokes a
traditionalizing reaction of which the Qumran community is the most striking
example that complicates the picture. Of course, as Bickerman pointed out,
traditionalizing need not mean the absence of hellenization.
There are other points at which Bickerman is less than entirely satisfactory,
for instance in his treatment of pseudepigrapha such as the Enochic corpus, the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and Jubilees. What little Bickerman says
about 1Enoch seems to me misguided; I take the Book of the Watchers to be
less sectarian and more influential than Bickerman does, and not merely the
reading matter for zany zealots.29 Bickerman pays a great deal of attention
to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which he explicates in terms of
the recasting of biblical stories in light of concerns introduced by contact with
Greek culture.30 The comments are typical Bickerman, perceptive and sugges-
tive. But Bickerman shows no signs of anxiety about the Jewish character of the
composition, whether in his revision during the 1970s of his 1950 article on the
date of the Testaments31 or in The Jews in the Greek Age;32 in the revised version
of the article he notes the work of Marinus de Jonge, who has offered power-
ful arguments for the Testaments as a Christian product, only to dismiss it.33 In
relation to Jubilees, I can only lament the unfootnoted character of The Jews in
the Greek Age, which makes it possible for Bickerman to claim that the written
28Bickerman,
From Ezra, 156.
29Bickerman,
Greek Age, 210211.
30Bickerman, Greek Age, 205211.
31Bickerman, The Date of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Studies in Jewish and
Christian History 2.123; first published in JBL 69 (1950): 24560.

32Bickerman, Greek Age, 204210, 268274, 302304, and passim.
33Bickerman, Date, 23, esp. n.5. Bickerman refers there to de Jonges essays in Studies
on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Text and Interpretation (ed. Marinus de Jonge;
Leiden: Brill, 1975). De Jonge has not abandoned the position that the Testaments is a Christian
work, although he has refined it considerably over the years. See his essays on the Testaments
included in Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs: Collected Essays of Marinus de Jonge (Leiden: Brill, 1991).
text of Jubilees was accompanied by a secret oral teaching that revealed the
eschatological significance of the dates for past events, without offering any
defense of this position.34 (My inclination is to attribute this deviation from his
usual moderation to the influence of his good friend on Morningside Heights,
that well-known proponent of secret oral teachings, Morton Smith.)
But all these objections are quibbles. Nonetheless, there is one more profound
problem in Bickermans work as I see it. Bickermans treatment of the Helle-
nistic reform and the Maccabean Revolt, surely his most famous contribution
to the discussion of ancient Jewish history, offers an understanding of Judaism
and Hellenism that contrasts with the dialectical understanding I have just dis-
cussed. Bickerman first put forward his reading of the Hellenistic reform in Der
Gott der Makkaber in 1937; he offered it again in the second essay in From
Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees. Its outlines are well known: the reform was
the effort of a Jewish elite to revise Judaism in keeping with the critique of the
Greek intellectuals who admired its monotheism which made the Jews a
race of philosophers while they viewed most of its customs as misanthropic
superstition. The persecution was the result of the attempts of the reformers to
force their reform upon an unwilling people.35
Bickerman claims, uncharacteristically, it seems to me, that the reformers
had utterly abandoned Judaism. The introduction of the gymnasium, he insists,
must have involved participation in idolatrous worship; there could be no games
without libations to the gods.36 This view has been rejected by several recent
scholars.37 Why not a Jewish gymnasium without idolatry, a gymnasium that
some Jews could see as not in violation of the laws of the Torah, a document
which, after all, has nothing to say about gymnasia? We learn in 2Maccabees
of the ambassadors sent from Jerusalem to Tyre who could not find it in their
hearts to use the 300 silver drachmas they carried as a contribution for sacrifices
to Herakles as per the instructions of the high priest Jason, the arch-reformer;
instead they used the money to have triremes built for Tyre (2Macc 4:1820).
We see that although Jason had no problem with sacrifices to other gods, some
of his supporters clearly did.38 Would these ambassadors have been willing to
participate in a gymnasium that included the cult of foreign gods?
34Bickerman, Greek Age, 215.

35Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 7692; From Ezra, 93111.
36Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 7692; From Ezra, 93111.
37See, for example, Klaus Bringmann, Hellenistische Reform und Religionsverfolgung in
Juda: Eine Untersuchung zur jdisch-hellenistischen Geschichte (175163 v. Chr.) (Gttin-

gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 83; Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 166;
Edouard Will and Claude Orrieux, Ioudasmos-hellnismos: essai sur le judasme juden
lpoque hellenistique (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1986), 119.
38Bringmann, Hellenistische Reform, 83; Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 166167;
Will and Orrieux, Ioudasmos-hellenismos, 136.

For Bickerman, monotheism itself was at stake in the reform. If the Mac-
cabees had not resisted, there would be no Judaism today nor would there be
Christianity or Islam.39 True, the Jews of the diaspora would have remained it
is important for Bickermans view that they were untouched by the persecu-
tion40 but with the temple itself a temple of idols, the traditions of Judaism
could not have been preserved for long.41
In From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, though not in The God of the Mac
cabees, Bickerman quickly returns to form, noting that the Maccabees establish-
ment of a festival to mark the occasion of their liberation and purification of the
temple reflected the Greek practice of marking important events, and that aspects
of the observance of the festival parallel features of Greek festivals.42 Still, the
stark picture of the meaning of the persecution and revolt remains, even in From
Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees.
The explanation for Bickermans treatment of the Maccabees lies outside
scholarship. We learn from the introduction to the English translation of The
God of the Maccabees that for Bickerman the resistance of the Maccabees was
associated with the fate of the Jews under the Nazis. The final draft of my book
was written three years later [1936] and its style naturally reflected the new po-
litical situation. (For instance, I wrote that the Maccabees identified their own
party with the Jewish people.) Nevertheless I was surprised that my academic
and even pedantic book (published by Schocken, Jdischer Buchverlag) could
offer consolation to the persecuted Jews in Germany, as several letters I received
from my readers told me.43 With such a terrible lens through which to read these
ancient events, it is hardly surprising that Bickerman ends the introduction by
reasserting a position that in other circumstances a historian as careful as he
might well find problematic: There can be no doubt that Menelaos Reforma-
tion would have succeeded in Jerusalem and become a new orthodoxy, and the
remaining Old Believers would [have] be[en] only a small heretic minority
among the paganized Jews if the Maccabees had lost. Except the Lord keeps
[a] city, the watchman waketh but in vain (Ps. 127:1).44 The second essay in
From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, the one on the Maccabees, is dedicated
To T.B., Deported by the Germans, Ps.35:17.45
One can only sympathize with Bickermans response to the horror of the
events he lived through. And The God of the Maccabees remains a seminal con-
tribution to the study of the Maccabean revolt and the sources that describe it; no
39Bickerman,
God of the Maccabees, 62.
40Bickerman,
God of the Maccabees, 7980.
41Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, 91.
43Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, xii.
44Bickerman, God of the Maccabees, xii.
one can write about the revolt without reference to it. But despite the importance
of The God of the Maccabees, I believe that Bickermans greatest scholarly
legacy is the picture of the restructuring of Judaism in From Ezra to the Last of
the Maccabees. It is his signal contribution to have looked beyond the fact of
the influence of Hellenism on Judaism to show us the many ways in which Jews
actively drew from Greek culture and reshaped Judaism in the process.
13. The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem:
Jewish Difference in Antiquity
In the conclusion to From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, Elias Bickerman
sums up his view of the Jews encounter with Greek culture:
Contact with the enlightened and universal culture of Hellenism could only be salu-
tary for one who, wrestling as Jacob did with the angel, did not allow himself to be
overcome but extorted its blessing, not losing himself in Hellenism, but coming safely
away with enhanced strength. Only two peoples of antiquity succeeded in doing so,
the Romans and the Jews. The Romans succeeded because they became the rulers even
of the Hellenic world. To be sure, they lost much in the process, a good part of their
national religion, for instance, whose gods Greek gods supplanted. The Jews succeeded
because their knowledge of the oneness of God and of his world rule in a word, the
singular character of their faith set up an inner barrier against surrender and separated
them from the rest of the world.1
The essay in which this passage appears was first published in 1947. Many
contemporary scholars would reject on both ideological and historical grounds
Bickermans view of Greek civilization as a superior force with which the sub-
ject peoples of the Hellenistic empires necessarily had to come to terms. Recent
scholarship tends to emphasize the continuity of native culture and the relatively
limited impact of Hellenism on these peoples.2 In such a context, the survival of
1From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism (New York:
Schocken, 1962). This volume consists of two previously published essays, The Historical
Foundations of Postbiblical Judaism, from The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (ed.
Louis Finkelstein; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), and The Maccabees: An Account
of Their History from the Beginnings to the Fall of the House of the Hasmoneans (New York:
Schocken, 1947). Ch. 7 of The Historical Foundations is omitted in From Ezra. Bickerman
wrote another general treatment of ancient Judaism, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge,
Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), published after his death. It seems to me
that Bickermans mode of approach to ancient Judaism is clearer in the slimmer From Ezra.
2For both ideological rejection of the centrality of Hellenism for ancient history and empha-
sis on continuity of the Seleucid empire with the Persian, see, e.g., a work I very much admire,
Susan Sherwin-White and Amlie Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the
Seleucid Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), esp. 15,
14187.
222 13. The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem
Judaism no longer seems exceptional, and some scholars have played down the
Hellenization of the Jews as well.3
Yet I have come to think that Bickerman was right.4 Despite the thrust of much
recent scholarship, I think there is a great deal to be said for his view of Hel-
lenization and the significance of Greek culture, though I will not try to defend
that point here. Nor can I offer a thorough evaluation of the encounters of other
ancient civilizations with the Greeks, though I hope that some comparisons will
make Bickermans claim about the uniqueness of the Jewish case persuasive.
Rather, I am going to take Bickermans view of the unusual success of the Jew-
ish encounter with Greek culture, a view shared by Arnaldo Momigliano,5 as my
starting point. What I would like to focus on here is how to explain it. As my
title indicates, I believe the answer is to be found at least in considerable part in
the Torah. That the Torah to a large extent determines the character of ancient
Judaism is a claim that surely requires no defense. My point is somewhat differ-
ent. At the center of Jewish culture stood a single document, available at least in
principle to all who could read Hebrew and, by some time in the third century
B.C.E, Greek. I want to argue that this fact does a great deal to explain why Jews
were able to adapt Greek culture in a variety of ways for their own purposes as
no other people of the ancient Near East could.
Bickermans account of the encounter of Judaism and Hellenism runs some-
thing like this:6 Some Jews, impelled by their aversion to idolatry, resisted the
Hellenistic reform initiated by other Jews and imposed by Antiochus IV and
thus saved monotheism and their traditional way of life.7 Yet the survival of
monotheism, for which the Maccabees deserve credit, was not enough to en-
sure the flourishing of Judaism, for merely to protect Judaism from Hellenism
would have led to spiritual mummification and the loss of the intellectual
elite. The true contribution of the Maccabees was that their victory permitted
Jews after the revolt, from their new position of strength, to adapt Greek ideas
3See, e.g., the quite different approaches of Fergus Millar, The Background of the Mac-
cabean Revolt: Reflections on Martin Hengels Judaism and Hellenism, JJS 22 (1978): 121,
and Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from
Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 344.
4See Himmelfarb, Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism, in The Jewish Past Revisi
ted: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (ed. David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman;
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) (in this volume, 21120), for an appreciation of
Bickermans contribution with attention to the twentieth-century circumstances under which
he wrote.
5Alien Wisdom: the Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975),
1011.
6As I explain in Bickerman, 200 (in this volume, 21112), I find that Bickermans views
about the dynamics of the encounter of Jewish culture with Greek are expressed most clearly
in From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, and it is thus to this work that I refer rather than
The Jews in the Greek Age.
7From Ezra, 93135. The claim that Jews were the initiators of the reform is of course
controversial.
13. The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem 223
so as to transform and strengthen Judaism. Thus the triumph of the Maccabees

enabled Jewish monotheism to flourish because it permitted the development of
a synthesis of Judaism and Hellenism in which Greek ideas were fitted into the
system of the Torah.8
Thus while Bickerman mentions the Torah, he places the emphasis on mono-
theism. It is the Jews knowledge of the oneness of God and of his world rule
that motivates their resistance to Antiochus and ultimately allows the produc-
tive encounter of Judaism with Hellenism.9 Indeed Bickerman suggests that
the centrality of the Torah is to some extent a result of the impact of Greek rule
starting in the third century B.C.E.10 For example, he sees the Pharisees ideal of
Torah study for all Jewish men, not only priests or the wealthy, as a Judaization
of the Platonic belief in the power of education.11 Further, in Bickermans view,
the very rise of the Pharisees is a result of Greek rule, for the Pharisees are the
heirs of the scribes, professionals who began to replace priests as teachers and
interpreters of Torah, to serve the administrative needs of Hellenistic rulers.12
Yet surely we should not lose sight of the fact that by sometime in the fifth
century B.C.E. a different imperial power, Persia, had made the Torah the con-
stitution of the Jewish people by the hand of Ezra, the scribe skilled in the law
of Moses (Ezra 7:6).13 Indeed, in order to understand the role of the Torah in the
Second Temple period, we should look back even further, to the publication of
the Book of Deuteronomy in the seventh century B.C.E., well before the Jews
encountered the Greeks. Deuteronomy set forth a program of reform of which
the most notable feature was the prohibition of sacrifice outside the Jerusalem
temple (Deuteronomy 12). By closing the ancient high places where sacrifices
had traditionally been offered, the reformers hoped to bring an end to the worship
of other deities alongside the Lord. But the reform Deuteronomy envisioned went
beyond the cult. It also mandated reorganization of the judicial system and limits
on the power of the king. I shall return to both of these aspects of the reform.
As far as we know, Deuteronomy is the first book in Israels history. It repeat-
edly refers to itself as this book (Deut 28:58, 29:26) or this book of the Torah
(Deut 28:61; 29:19, 20; 30:10; 31:26). Its authors give their book authority by
presenting it as the words of Moses.14 Nor do they simply attach Moses name
8From
Ezra, 15365, 17882. Mummification: 182. Fitted into the system of the Torah:
181.
9From Ezra, 179.
10From
Ezra, 6771.
11From Ezra, 16064.
12From Ezra, 6771.
13Bickerman himself emphasizes the role of imperial power in establishing the Torah as the
law of the land (From Ezra, 910).

14See the comments of Morton Smith, Pseudepigraphy in the Israelite Tradition, Pseud
epigrapha I (ed. Kurt von Fritz; Entretiens sur lantiquit classique; Geneva: Fondation Hardt,
1972), 20308.
to the work and rest there. Rather, they frame the anonymous legal material that
forms the core of the book and delineates its program of reform (Deuteronomy
1226) with speeches in which Moses alludes to the events of the Exodus, from
the redemption in Egypt through the complaints of the people in the wilderness
to the encounters with enemies as the people Israel stands poised to enter the
land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 111 and much of 2734). Further, the reform-
ers did not simply produce the book for public reading but arranged to have it
dramatically discovered in the temple in the course of repairs there (2Kings 22),
as befits an ancient book. A long period of concealment in the temple served to
explain why its central demands had not been fulfilled without undercutting its
authority.
The use of a written document to convey the words of someone who is absent
was clearly a significant innovation in seventh-century Jerusalem.15 Thus it is
perhaps not surprising that Deuteronomy shows some anxiety about the power
of the written word despite its attention to writing as a way to remember (Deut
6:9; 11:20; 27:3, 8). Its use of the speech form is surely not accidental, and the
speeches valiantly attempt to make the past present to the real audience with
expressions such as, before your eyes, your eyes have seen, or you have
seen.16
Ultimately, however, Deuteronomy cannot really hope to persuade listeners
that they were present at the events it describes. Rather, it insists that the cov-
enant with the Lord belongs to them too even though they had not personally
experienced the Exodus. It emphasizes the duty to teach children and childrens
children about the momentous events of the Exodus (Deut 4:910, 6:2025,
11:19, 31:1013), thus assuring its listeners that the problem of distance from the
formative events of the past was by no means a new one. It has Moses proclaim
that the covenant is not only with the generation of the wilderness: Nor is it with
you only that I make this sworn covenant, but with him who is not here with us
this day as well as with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our
God (Deut 29:1314 [29:1415 Eng.]). Finally, to make sure that its message is
available to the entire people, Deuteronomy provides for itself to be read aloud
every seven years before all Israel when the people assemble in Jerusalem for
the festival of booths (Deut 31:1011). Bickerman points to the contrast between
the Torah, which requires that all Jews hear it, and the sacred books of other
ancient Mediterranean peoples, which were the private possession of priests,
15See
also Jeremiah 36.
16Before
your (sing. and pl.) eyes: Deut 1:30, 4:34, 9:17, 29:1 (Eng. 29:2). Your (sing.
and pl.) eyes saw / have seen (perfect or participle): Deut 3:21; 4:3, 9; 7:19; 10:21; 11:7; 29:2
(Eng. 29:3). You (pl.) saw/have seen: Deut 1:19, 29:1 (Eng. 29:2).
Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1972), 17178, offers several other examples from Deuteronomy itself and the Deuteronomic
history; for your eyes see and you have seen, 173.
purposely kept from lay people.17 The Torah as public document, to borrow the
phrase of Albert Baumgarten, begins with Deuteronomy.18
The other strands that make up the Torah say nothing about a king. Deuter-
onomy puts a king at the head of the people, but limits his power drastically: he
is forbidden to multiply horses, wives, or silver and gold, and he is forbidden to
return the people to Egypt (Deut 17:1617). What is more, Deuteronomy insists
that the king enact his acceptance of these limits and indeed his subordination to
the laws of Deuteronomy by copying the book himself (Deut 17:1819).19 Thus
the book of the Torah, which contains the covenant between God and Israel,
integrates the king into that covenant and subordinates him to its regulations for
him. Further, while in one sense Deuteronomy legitimizes the king by including
him in its legislation, in another sense, by subordinating him to the book itself,
it unconsciously prepares for the loss of kingship. It is surely remarkable that
the reformers had a royal patron.
With its emphasis on its form as a book, it is perhaps not surprising that Deu-
teronomy legislates officials who are forerunners of the scribe as legal expert.
Deuteronomys provisions for the legal system include judges as an alternative
to the usual legal authorities, the priests.20 These lay officials, working for an
Israelite king rather than a foreign emperor, could resort to a written text more
than a century and a half before Ezra. Thus the growth of the scribal profession
in the Hellenistic era had deep roots.
I have noted that Deuteronomy was discovered in the temple, and the
Torah was closely linked to that other central institution of ancient Judaism as
long as it stood. Much of the Torah is concerned with rituals that take place
in the temple. By the time Ezra read the Torah to the people of the Persian
province of Judah (Nehemiah 8), the book of the Torah consisted of more than
Deuteronomy alone. One important component was a large corpus of priestly
law.21 As Bickermans comments suggest, the publication of priestly law is a
17The Septuagint as a Translation, Studies in Jewish and Christian History, part 1 (Leiden:
Brill, 1976), 19899; repr. from PAAJR 28 (1959).

18
The Torah as Public Document in Judaism, SR 14 (1985): 1724.
19Moshe Weinfeld argues that Deuteronomys law of the king should be read as an ex-
ample of an ancient Near Eastern genre of the mirror for kings. He cites other ancient Near
Eastern texts that place limits on the king and encourage him to pious behavior, including an
Assyrian text roughly contemporary to Deuteronomy. A colophon to the text has the king say,
I wrote it in tabletsand put it in my palace to my constant reading (Deuteronomy 111
[AB 5; New York: Doubleday, 1991], 5657, quotation 56; see also Weinfeld,
, Shnaton 3 [197879]: 22426).
20To the Levitical priests, and to the judge who is in office in those days (Deut 17:9);
before the priests and the judges (Deut 19:17).

21In his discussion of the Torah as public document, which also emphasizes the importance
of Deuteronomy, Baumgarten points to the passage in Deuteronomy about the laws of skin
eruptions: Take heed, in an attack of leprosy, to be very careful to do according to all that the
Levitical priests shall direct you (Deut 24:8). This passage, he notes, assumes that the priests
laws known to us from Leviticus 1314 were not available to all. But once P had been integrated
striking innovation. Indeed, it is truly remarkable that priests permitted it, for
by offering a public account of the requirements of the cult and other priestly
ritual, they opened the door to criticism of their actual practice. The Bible of-
fers one striking example of lay interference in priestly business, Nehemiahs
expulsion of Tobiah the Ammonite from the temple chamber in which Eliashib
the high priest had installed him (Neh 13:19). Presumably Eliashib, who surely
felt a chamber in the temple was his to dispose of, was less than delighted with
Nehemiahs intrusion into his sphere. Nehemiah invokes Deuteronomy (Neh
13:1, apparently referring to Deut 23:35) rather than the laws of P to justify
his interference, but the writing down of priestly law could only provide further
opportunities for both outsiders and insiders to call priests to account for their
failure to live up to their own rules.
The relationship between the Torah and the temple points to another aspect of
the centrality of the Torah, its unifying force. Deuteronomy, and thus the Torah,
insist that the Jews are permitted only a single temple, the temple in Jerusalem.
Several temples existed outside Jerusalem at different times during the Second
Temple period, but none ever offered real competition to the Jerusalem temple.
As Gideon Bohak points out, the Jews were unusual among ancient Mediter-
ranean people in having a single cultic center.22 Elsewhere among the Greeks as
among their subjects, each city had its patron god and its own temple. The Jews
had only one god, and that god had only one temple. Bohak argues that the fact
that all Jews, whether in Palestine, Egypt, or elsewhere, looked to Jerusalem as
the holy city served to unite them. The Torah, a single document acknowledged
by all Jews as defining their peoples relationship with God, must also have
served to bind Jews together. Of course, the opposite side of the unifying func-
tion should be noted: the fact of a single cult site and a single authoritative text
promotes sectarianism. An Egyptian unhappy with the practices of one temple
could find another one, dedicated to the same god or some other. A Jew could
not. Thus the many disputes about how the temple should be run and the Torah
interpreted.23
The Torah contains not only laws, but also stories of Israels past. Deuter-
onomy places its legal reforms in the context of the Exodus from Egypt without
providing a great deal of detail about the Exodus. It also alludes to the patriarchs,
the heroes of Israels more distant past, but it does tell their stories. It clearly
into the Torah as we know it, those laws, including the laws of skin eruptions, became public
(Torah, 17).
22Theopolis: A Single-Temple Policy and Its Singular Ramifications, JJS 50 (1999): 316.
23On the temple, Bohak, Theopolis, 1516, and Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of
Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: an Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 69. Surprisingly
little has been written about the Torah in this regard, perhaps because the point seems obvious.
For an interesting discussion of the relationship between literacy and ancient Jewish sectarian-
ism, Baumgarten, Flourishing, 11436.
assumes that those stories were well known to its listeners. In its final form, the
Torah includes an elaborate account of Israels founders and its liberation from
Egyptian bondage. The combination of full-scale narrative and laws further
strengthens the authority of the Torah, which contains everything a reader needs
to know about the covenant; no other source is necessary.
How much did ordinary people actually know about what the Torah con-
tained? In the first century C.E. both Philo and Josephus claim that all Jews were
well versed in the Torah. Though this claim is surely propaganda, Baumgarten
notes that Juvenal and perhaps Seneca invoke the same stereotype in the course
of anti-Jewish comments.24 Deuteronomys requirement of a public reading
every seven years could hardly insure intimate knowledge. Once the practice
of annual or triennial reading of the entire Torah was established, attendance in
synagogue on the Sabbath would have guaranteed some familiarity with the en-
tire Torah. But this practice appears to have developed considerably later; in the
Second Temple period, the Torah was read publicly only in limited doses.25 Our
best evidence for knowledge of the contents of the Torah in the Second Temple
period comes from the many texts that draw on it: narratives that develop biblical
themes, commentaries, legal works that make use of the Torah either explicitly
or implicitly. Obviously this literature is the work of a very small segment of
Jewish society, for literacy was extremely restricted. Still, reverence for the
Torah was surely not so restricted.
As we have seen, Bickerman understands the centrality of the Torah and the
associated rise to prominence of scribes as phenomena of the Hellenistic era,
the result, to a considerable extent, of Greek rule.26 When Bickerman wrote the
essays in From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees, the Dead Sea Scrolls had just
been discovered, and the non-biblical literary production of the Second Temple
period was thought to date almost entirely from the second century B.C.E. and
later. Thus there appeared to be a gap of centuries between Ezra and the Jewish
literature of the Hellenistic era. I suspect that this distribution of evidence is
largely responsible for Bickermans views. With the publication in 1976 of the
fragments of 1Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, two important texts,
the Astronomical Book (1Enoch 7282) and the Book of the Watchers (1Enoch
136), were recognized as dating from the third century B.C.E., thus strengthen-
ing the case for continuity. The Book of the Watchers is particularly important for
our purposes. It integrates its account of the descent of the sons of God, which
clearly draws on traditions independent of those in Genesis, with Gen 6:14s
cryptic allusion to the descent (1Enoch 68). It presents a view of the way evil
24Torah,
1922.
25Ismar
Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society, and New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993), 12938.
26Baumgarten suggests that one cause of the growth of literacy he discerns in the Hasmo-
nean period was the needs of administering the new Hasmonean state (Flourishing, 122).
entered the world quite at variance from the Torahs, yet feels compelled to take
account of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, attempting to neutralize them with a visit
to the Garden of Eden that ignores the trespass committed there (1Enoch 32).
Further, the Book of the Watchers represents its hero Enoch as a scribe (1Enoch
1216), though he is never shown engaged in interpreting the Torah. Of course
there was no Torah in Enochs day. The third-century date for the Book of the
Watchers provides an important link between Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth
century and the profusion of works concerned with the Torah in one way or
another in the last centuries B.C.E.
I hope that I have succeeded in establishing that the Torah was a central in-
stitution for Jews in the Hellenistic period. But it is important to understand the
Torahs authority in terms appropriate to the era; the fully-developed rabbinic
understanding of the Torah, in which not only each letter, but even the crowns
on the letters, are viewed as divinely mandated and full of meaning, is nowhere
in evidence in the Second Temple period. Texts such as the Book of Jubilees and
the Temple Scroll are not afraid to improve on the version of the Torah that had
come down to them. Yet the very act of improving is a kind of recognition of the
Torahs special status.
Now, finally, I would like to suggest how the status of the Torah helps to ac-
count for the nature of the Jewish encounter with Hellenism. The Greeks, like the
Jews but unlike the other subject peoples of their empire, had a book, or rather
two books, at the center of their culture. Those books were, of course, the poems
of Homer, which served as the basis of Greek education. Homer was not, as is
sometimes said, the Greeks Bible; the Greeks had no Bible. A better analogy is
to the place Classics once held in British education.27 Yet despite the differences,
what is important for my purposes is that among both Jews and Greeks a text
(or among the Greeks, two texts) occupied a position of unchallenged cultural
authority. Thus one could acquire Jewish or Greek culture without having been
born into it.
The place of the Torah in Jewish culture made it structurally similar to Greek
culture. Philosophically minded readers of the Homeric poems were often ap-
palled by the gods behavior; some found allegorical exegesis a useful tool for
resolving this problem.28 Their philosophically minded Jewish neighbors could
apply the same tool to the Torah to resolve somewhat different problems. Thus
Philo of Alexandria could engage in the same type of intellectual activity as his
gentile peers and feel himself as philosophical as they while directing his atten-
tion to the Torah.
27I
read this comparison a number of years ago, but I cannot locate the source.
28See
David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1992), 2372, for a discussion of ancient pagan al-
legorical exegesis. Dawson emphasizes that allegorical exegesis was only one possible way of
dealing with problematic texts (5272).
In Philos reading, we find the Torah transformed by Platonism. But Philo re-
jects the logical conclusion some members of the Alexandrian Jewish elite drew
from Plato, that the spirit of the laws is superior to their body and that physical
observance is therefore unnecessary for those who understand their meaning.
Though the logic of his position seems to be leading in the same direction as
that of these allegorists, Philo insists on the body of the laws, their physical
observance:
There are some who, regarding laws in their literal sense in the light of symbols of
matters belonging to the intellect, are overpunctilious about the latter, while treating
the former with easy-going neglect. It is quite true that the Seventh Day is meant
to teach the power of the Unoriginate and the non-action of created beings. But let us
not for this reason abrogate the laws laid down for its observance, and light fires or till
the ground or carry loads. It is true that receiving circumcision does indeed portray
the excision of pleasure and all passions, and the putting away of the impious conceit,
under which the mind supposed that it was capable of begetting by its own power: but
let us not on this account repeal the law laid down for circumcising. Why, we shall
by ignoring the sanctity of the Temple and a thousand other things, if we are going to
pay heed to nothing except what is shewn us by the inner meaning of things. (On the
Migration of Abraham 8992)29
Philos attachment to actual practice, the physical enactment of the law shows
us Platonism transformed by the Torah.
The Greco-Egyptian Stoic philosopher Chaeremon was a contemporary of
Philo who spent a portion of his career in Alexandria in the mid-first century
C.E.30 According to one of the ancient notices he was also a hierogrammateus,
a type of Egyptian priest expert in hieroglyphs.31 Among the writings attributed
to him is a work on hieroglyphs, together with a history of Egypt and a work on
comets; only fragments survive. Several fragments preserve a Stoic interpreta-
tion of Egyptian religion,32 and an allegorical interpretation of the figures of
Isis and Osiris and other Egyptian gods transmitted by Porphyry may originate
with him.33
Among the fragments of Chaeremons work is an account of the priests of
Egypt, which emphasizes their philosophical disposition and their ascetic way
of life:
They chose the temples as the place to philosophize. They renounced every employ-
ment and human revenues and devoted their whole life to contemplation and vision
29Philo, vol. 4 (trans. F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, and London: William Heinemann, 1932), 18385.

30For the testimonia and fragments of his work, Pieter Willem van der Horst, Chaeremon:
Egyptian Priest and Stoic Philosopher (Leiden: Brill, 1984).

31Thus Tzetzes in a scholion on the Iliad (van der Horst, Chaeremon, 23 [Test. 6]).
32Van der Horst, Chaeremon, 1417 (Frags. 5, 6, 7).
33Van der Horst, Chaeremon, 2833 (Frag. 17D); van der Horst thinks it likely that Chaer-
emon is the source (Chaeremon, 6465 n.1).

of the divine. They were always seen near the gods, or rather their statues, either
carrying or preceding them in a procession or setting them up with order and dignity.
And each of these acts was no empty gesture, but an indication of some allegorical
truth. Their diet was frugal and simple, for as to wine, some did not drink it at all and
others drank only very little of it. They were not allowed to touch foods or drinks
that were produced outside Egypt. They abstained from all kinds of fish, and from
such quadrupeds as had uncloven hoofs or had toes or had no horns, and also from such
birds as were carnivorous. Many of them, however, even entirely abstained from all
animals. During this time [of preparation for sacred rites] they abstained from all
animal food, from all vegetables and pulse, but above all from sexual intercourse with
women, for (needless to say) they never at any time had intercourse with males.34
This description of the priests of Egypt clearly belongs to the genre of idealizing
descriptions of exotic barbarian sages known from other writers;35 I think it is
safe to assume that it has only a rather tenuous connection to reality. Scholars
have long noted similarities of vocabulary and other detail between this passage
and Philos description of the Therapeutae in On the Contemplative Life.36 These
men and women according to Philo devote themselves to study and prayer while
living a life of celibacy and dietary restraint on the shores of the Mareotic Lake.
It is no accident in my view that Philo did not attempt to turn the priests of Jeru-
salem into philosophers; priests tasks were clearly spelled out by the Torah, and
contemplating the vision of the divine was not one of them. Nor did they become
priests on the basis of philosophical inclinations, but rather by mere heredity.
Chaeremon could choose those aspects of priestly asceticism that seemed most
suitable for his picture, ignoring what he chose and exaggerating as he saw fit.
Philo might wish to ignore and exaggerate at many points in his treatises, but
there were limits on what was possible for him. There was, after all, a publicly
available written text to check him against. It is significant that the way of life
of the Therapeutae is one of the few topics not drawn from the Torah that Philo
treats. Chaeremon had no Torah to restrain him or to define his topic for him.
The passage that interprets Egyptian gods in philosophical terms treats not a text
but well-known myths or sculptural depictions of gods, while the account of the
priests never invokes a specific rule associated with a particular temple. This is
not surprising. After all Chaeremons goal was not to illuminate the practices
of a specific group of Egyptian priests devoted to a particular god at a certain
temple, but rather to represent the piety and learning of Egypt and there was
no single text that could do so.
We know even less about Philo of Byblos, the author of the Phoenician His
tory and other works, than about Chaeremon. This Philo probably lived at the
34Van der Horst, Chaeremon, 1621 (Frag. 10.67); cf. van der Horst, Chaeremon, 2233
(Frag. 11).
35Van der Horst, Chaeremon, 56 n.1 to Frag. 10.
36Van der Horst, Chaeremon, 56 n.1 to Frag. 10, and references there. I accept van der
Horsts view that the parallels reflect shared vocabulary rather than direct knowledge.
end of the first and beginning of the second centuries C.E.37 The Phoenician His
tory, of which fragments are preserved by Eusebius, retells Phoenician myths,
turning the gods into human beings who made great discoveries or inventions:
Hypsouranios settled Tyre and he invented huts made from reeds, and rushes and
papyrus. And he quarreled with his brother Ousoos, who first contrived a covering for
the body from skins of the animals he was able to capture. When Hypsouranios and
Ousoos died, he says, their survivors consecrated staves to them, worshipped the stelai
[of Ousoos], and celebrated yearly festivals in their honor.38
Philos approach to myth is that of the early Hellenistic writer Euhemerus.

Yet not only are Philos gods human beings; they are Phoenicians. Thus Philo
manages to turn the myths into a Phoenician entry in the competitive history
so common in the Hellenistic period: anything important was done first by the
Phoenicians.39 This feature of his work is noteworthy because there is rather little
evidence elsewhere for Phoenician ethnic consciousness.40
Philo claimed that the Phoenician History was a translation of the work of
Sanchuniathon, which, according to Philo, served Hesiod as a source.41 (Note the
swipe at the Greeks here!) For a variety of reasons, including the euhemerism
Philo attributes to Sanchuniathon, it is impossible to accept Philos claim about
his relationship to an ancient source. Though his account shows many points of
contact with the Ugaritic myths, it is clear that Philo did not draw on them di-
rectly, but rather on sources from much closer to his own time.42 Like the Greeks
before Alexander, the Phoenicians were organized politically into distinct city-
states. Part of Philos project in Baumgartens view was to transform the local
traditions of Tyre and Byblos, to which references can still be discerned in the
fragments, including the one quoted above, into a systematic account of Phoeni-
cian myth.43 One reason for Philos appeal to Sanchuniathon must have been the
desire to find a Phoenician equivalent to Homer, a writer of such antiquity that
he was understood as the common patrimony of all Greeks.
If Baumgartens date for Philo of Byblos is correct, Josephus was an older
contemporary. Just as Philo of Byblos Phoenician History offered an account
37Albert I. Baumgarten, The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos: A Commentary (Leiden:
Brill, 1981), 3235.

38Baumgarten, Philo, 14243; the words in brackets are Baumgartens. For the Greek text,
Felix Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Part 3 (Leiden: Brill, 19692), 808:10,17,
reprinted in Baumgarten, Philo, 14.
39Baumgarten makes these points at various places in his commentary; for a summary, see
his conclusions, Philo, 26568.

40See the discussion of Fergus Millar, The Phoenician Cities: A Case-Study of Helleni-
sation, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 209 (1983): 5571, on Philo of
Byblos, 6465; Roman Near East, 26495, on Philo of Byblos, 27779.
41Baumgarten, Philo, 4193 (translation of Sanchuniathon); 21617 (813:1120), 23542
(Hesiod).
42Baumgarten, Philo, 26168.
43Baumgarten, Philo, esp. 26668.
of Phoenician mythology for an audience that read Greek, Josephus Jewish

Antiquities recounts the history of the Jews from the creation of the world to
Josephus own time for that audience. But Josephus task was rather different
from Philos, for the main outlines of his story were well established. Like
Philo, Josephus drew on a wide range of sources, including documents of the
Hellenistic era. But for the earliest part of his history, Josephus primary source
was of course the Torah.
The narrative of the life of Abraham in the Antiquities offers a good example
of Josephus mode of retelling of the Torah. This is Josephus version of Abra-
hams sojourn in Egypt:
For, seeing that the Egyptians were addicted to a variety of different customs and
disparaged one anothers practices and were consequently at enmity with one another,
Abraham conferred with each party, and, exposing the arguments which they adduced
in favour of their particular views, demonstrated that they were idle and contained
nothing. Thus gaining their admiration at these meetings as a man of extreme sagacity,
gifted not only with high intelligence but with power to convince his hearers on any
subject which he undertook to teach, he introduced them to arithmetic and transmitted
to them the laws of astronomy. For before the coming of Abraham the Egyptians were
ignorant of these sciences, which thus travelled from the Chaldeans into Egypt, whence
they passed to the Greeks. (Ant. 1.16668)44
Josephus emphasis on his heros characteristically Greek virtues contributes to

his effort to attribute all great discoveries to Jews.
Even Josephus retelling of the story of the binding of Isaac, of little use for
competitive purposes, incorporates Greek ideas. As Abraham prepares to fulfill
Gods command by offering his son as a sacrifice, he exhorts him in these words:
Quit thou now this life not by the common road, but sped by thine own father on thy
way to God, the Father of all, through the rites of sacrifice. He, I ween, accounts it not
meet for thee to depart life by sickness or war or by any of the calamities that commonly
befall mankind, but amid prayers and sacrificial ceremonies would receive
thy soul and keep it near to Himself. (Ant. 1.23031)
The glory of an early death after great achievement is a Greek idea that appears,
for example, in Herodotus report that Solon considered Kleobis and Biton the
happiest of men (History 1.31); they died young after the heroic deed of pulling
their mothers chariot to the festival of Hera.45
44All quotations from Josephus are taken from H.St. J. Thackeray, trans., Josephus, vol. 4
(LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Heinemann, 1930).
45Louis H. Feldman, Josephus Interpretation of the Bible (Hellenistic Culture and Society;
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 278, notes that Abraham emphasizes the paral-
lel between the extraordinary circumstances of Isaacs birth and the extraordinary death he is
about to undergo and mentions several Greek and Roman heroes with both an exceptional birth
and an exceptional death. Much of the scholarship on the idea of a glorious death in antiquity is
ultimately concerned with martyrdom. Thus suicide tends to receive more attention than deaths
sent by the gods or inflicted by others. See, e.g., Jan Willem van Henten and Friedrich Avema-
But Josephus takes a different approach in his treatment of Gods command to

Abraham to circumcise himself and his offspring. The presentation of the laws
of the Torah in the course of Books 3 and 4 of the Antiquities is straightforward
with only limited attention to apologetic themes. Thus it is not surprising that
when Josephus comes to the command of circumcision, he does not invoke the
sorts of philosophical interpretations of the practice Philo of Alexandria alludes
to in the passage from On the Migration of Abraham quoted above. The explana-
tion he does provide, however, is quite unexpected. Abraham was to circumcise
himself and his offspring to the intent that his posterity should be kept from
mixing with others (Ant. 1.192). This motive, which cultivated Greeks and
Romans were likely to find repugnant, does not appear in the Torahs version of
the command in Genesis 17.46
I cannot explain Josephus introduction of a particularly unhellenic explana-
tion for circumcision. But it is clear that the authority of the Torah works on him
in two rather different ways. While it encourages Josephus to retell its stories in
terms appealing to his contemporaries, Jews and gentiles alike, it also requires
him to include features that were distasteful by the standards of Greek culture.
The importance of practice for both Philo of Alexandria and Josephus in their
integration of Greek and Jewish culture stands in contrast to its near absence in
Philo of Byblos Phoenician History. The one surviving discussion of a Phoeni-
cian cultic practice, child sacrifice, is concerned only with its origins perhaps
the characteristic concern of a euhemerist not with its relevance in the present.47
I hope that I have shown that possession of the Torah permits Philo of Al-
exandria and Josephus to adapt Greek ideas and values in the service of a new
understanding of Jewish tradition, which is, nonetheless, distinctively Jewish.
Chaeremon and Philo of Byblos, on the other hand, lack a text that serves to
embody their ancestral traditions. Their accounts of Egyptian religion and Phoe-
nician myth are essentially Greek interpretations of those traditions. The only
thing distinctively Phoenician about Philo of Byblos work is his Phoenician
patriotism; Chaeremons admiring account of the priests of Egypt could have
rie, Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian
Antiquity (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
46Feldman, Josephuss Interpretation, also finds the motive for circumcision difficult to
explain in light of Josephus concern elsewhere in the story of Abraham to suggest that dislike
of strangers is reprehensible and not characteristic of the Jews (24546, 257). He does discern
one possible apologetic theme: By ignoring the fact that circumcision is a sign of the covenant
between God and Israel, Josephus eliminates the political implications of the act, turning it into
merely a way of guarding against assimilation (254).
After his mention of this motive for circumcision, Josephus goes on to promise that he will
elsewhere offer the reason for the practice (Ant. 1.192), a promise never fulfilled. Thackerays
note to Ant. 1.192 suggests that Josephus is here referring to the projected work on Customs
and Causes that he mentions in Ant. 4.198 (Josephus vol. 4). Perhaps he would there have
offered an explanation similar to those Philo mentions.
47Baumgarten, Philo, 24445; Greek text, 20 (Jacoby, Fragmente, Part 3, 814.615).
come from a Greek author without Egyptian connections since many Greeks
viewed Egypt as a repository of ancient wisdom.
This study, then, is the beginning of an argument that the status of the Torah
in ancient Judaism accounts in considerable part for the distinctive character
of Jewish interaction with Greek culture. To be really persuasive, the argument
requires attention to a much wider range of writings. All of the figures I discuss
here wrote in the first and early second centuries C.E., at the very end of the
Second Temple period and just beyond. A fuller treatment would be attentive to
the changes that surely took place, among Jews and gentiles, in the four centuries
from the coming of Alexander to the destruction of the Second Temple. Further,
all of the authors I consider here wrote in Greek. Clearly, it is somewhat easier
to show the impact of Greek culture on works written in Greek, though I have
no doubt that I could make the case for the impact on Jewish works written in
Hebrew or Aramaic such as the Book of the Watchers, the Wisdom of ben Sira,
and Jubilees. On the non-Jewish side, little has been preserved in any language
but Greek, a fact of some significance. Yet while I must admit to having only
scratched the surface of my topic, I feel confident that my results are not un-
characteristic.
14. He Was Renowned to the Ends of the Earth
(1Macc 3:9): Judaism and Hellenism in 1Maccabees
The depiction of Judaism and Hellenism as opposing entities goes back to 2Mac-
cabees, an account of the Maccabean Revolt (167163 BCE) written not long
after. According to 2Maccabees, the revolt, which marked the end of roughly
four centuries of foreign rule and the beginning of Jewish sovereignty, was not
only a military conflict but also a battle between Jewish values and Greek values.
Yet despite the influence of this idea on Western thought, the actual relationship
between Judaism and Hellenism during and after the revolt proves to be far more
complicated. To begin with, the triumphant Maccabee brothers and their descen-
dants can hardly be said to have rejected Hellenism. Even after they won inde-
pendence from their Seleucid overlords, no area of the life of their kingdom, from
coinage to literature to religion, was untouched by Greek culture. Indeed, Elias
Bickerman argues that Judaism as we know it today was shaped to a considerable
extent by Greek ideas, and that it was precisely the success of the revolt that made
it possible for ancient Jews to transform Greek culture for their own purposes.1
Further, though the understanding of the revolt as a confrontation between Ju-
daism and Hellenism comes to us from 2Maccabees,2 this text itself is deeply in-
debted to Hellenism. While it represents the situation that leads to young priests
abandoning the temple precincts for the gymnasium as the height of Hellenism
1See especially the second portion of Elias Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Mac
cabees: Foundations of Post-Biblical Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1962). In From Ezra,
Bickerman draws on his groundbreaking work, Der Gott der Makkaber: Untersuchungen
ber Sinn und Ursprung der makkabischen Erhebung (Berlin: Schocken, 1937); ET: Elias
Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean
Revolt (trans. Horst R. Moehring; Leiden: Brill, 1979). On Bickermans contribution to the
discussion of Judaism and Hellenism, see Martha Himmelfarb, Elias Bickerman on Judaism
and Hellenism, in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (ed.
David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman; Studies in Jewish Culture and Society; New Haven/
London: Yale University Press, 1998), 199211 (in this volume, 21120).
2While previously Hellenism was used to mean Greek language, 2Maccabees provides
the first attestation of the term with the meaning, Greek culture; it may have coined the term
Judaism to serve as Hellenisms opposite. See Christian Habicht, Hellenismus und Judentum
in der Zeit des Judas Makkabus, Jahrbuch der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften fr
das Jahr 1974 (1975): 98; Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter
in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (trans. John Bowden; 2 vols.; Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1974), 1.12.
(2Macc 4:13 [my translation]),3 and describes its heroes as those who strove
zealously on behalf of Judaism (2Macc 2:21), it is written in an elevated Greek
style reflecting familiarity with Greek literature and the conventions of contem-
porary Greek historiography. Bickerman referred to 2Maccabees synthesis
of narrowly orthodox theology with the most powerful Hellenistic rhetoric.4
More recently Christian Habicht judged 2Maccabees purely Jewish in its
theology, though primarily Greek in its literary form.5 But the relationship of
Jewish elements and Greek in 2Maccabees is more complex than the division
into Greek form and Jewish content suggests. In my view, 2Maccabees depicts
its heroes in terms drawn from Greek ideals of heroism and gentlemanliness,
transformed in light of Jewish values.6 I shall return to 2Maccabees conception
of heroism below.
The subject of my discussion here is the relationship between Judaism and
Hellenism in 1Maccabees, another ancient history of the revolt that, despite its
title, is unrelated to 2Maccabees. At some point in antiquity, Jews stopped copy-
ing the two histories, and both have reached us as part of the Christian Bible.
But in contrast to the language of 2Maccabees, the Greek of 1Maccabees is
similar to that of other books of the Greek Bible translated from Hebrew, and it
is thus widely accepted that Hebrew was the original language of the work.7 The
two works also differ in scope. While 2Maccabees treats the events leading up
to the revolt and the revolt itself, focusing on Judah alone of all his family and
concluding with his triumph against Nicanor, 1Maccabees follows the fortunes
of Judahs entire family, from his father Mattathias through Jonathan and Simon,
the brothers who succeeded him as leaders, into the reign of John Hyrcanus,
who succeeded his father in 134 BCE. Since it alludes to a chronicle of the reign
of John Hyrcanus (1Macc 16:2324), it was probably written some time after
Johns death in 104 BCE; its picture of the Romans as friends (1Maccabees 8)
requires a date before the Roman takeover in 63 BCE.
Unlike 2Maccabees and despite the behavior of the Hasmoneans themselves,
1Maccabees continues to be read as more or less untouched by Greek cul-
3Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of 1Maccabees and other texts from the Bible
and Apocrypha are taken from the Revised Standard Version. In my quotations from 1Mac-
cabees, however, I consistently change the RSVs Judas, which reflects the spelling of the
Greek, to Judah, in keeping with the Hebrew original.
4Elias Bickerman, Makkaberbucher (I. und II.), PW 14.792, quoted approvingly by
Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:98.

5Christian Habicht, 2. Makkaberbuch (Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1976), 185.
6See Martha Himmelfarb, Judaism and Hellenism in 2Maccabees, Poetics Today 19
(1998): 1940 (in this volume, 191210).

7Jonathan A. Goldstein, 1Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commen
tary (AB 41; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 1421, for Hebrew as the original language,
including a discussion of the evidence from Origen and Jerome.
ture.8 In part this is because it was composed in Hebrew and draws extensively
on biblical models.9 Further, unlike 2Maccabees, which depicts the dire affects
of the attraction of Hellenism on the Jewish elite before the revolt, 1Macca-
bees says nothing specific about Greek culture. Rather, for 1Maccabees it is
the embrace of the ways of the gentiles by renegade Jews that leads to the
persecution and revolt. While the primary gentile institution of which 1Mac-
cabees takes note is the gymnasium (1:14), it does not draw the conclusion
of 2Maccabees, that there is something uniquely problematic about Greek
culture.10 Indeed, much of its hostility is directed not at the Greeks, that is, the
ruling Seleucids, but rather at neighboring peoples, often named in terms that
recall more ancient times: sons of Esau for the Idumeans (5:13), nobles
of Canaan for local Arab tribes (9:37).11 Still, I shall argue here that the usual
reading of 1Maccabees is mistaken, that it too is deeply indebted to Greek
culture, though in a rather different way from 2Maccabees.
Let me begin by noting that 1Maccabees is hardly a straightforward account
of the revolt. Rather, it is propaganda for the Hasmonean dynasty. For 1Mac-
cabees, Mattathias and his sons were chosen by God for the task of liberating
Israel from its oppressors. Thus when two of Judahs officers attempt to lead
their troops into battle without Judahs authorization, it suggests that the out-
come should have been foreseen:
The people suffered a great rout because, thinking to do a brave deed, [the officers] did
not listen to Judah and his brothers. But they did not belong to the family of those men
through whom deliverance was given to Israel. (1Macc 5:6162)
First Maccabees concludes with the death of Simon, the last of Judahs brothers,
and a notice of the ascent to power of his son, John Hyrcanus (16:2324). With
the transfer of power to the third generation, a dynasty has been established.
8See, e.g., Flix-Marie Abel, Les livres des Maccabes (tudes bibliques; Paris: Lecoffre,
1949); Diego Arenhoevel, Die Theokratie nach dem 1. und 2. Makkaberbuch (Mainz: Matthias
Grnewald, 1967); Goldstein, 1Maccabees.
9I use the terms Bible and biblical for convenience. In the last centuries before the turn
of the era, most of the texts of what would become the Hebrew Bible were already viewed as
having some kind of authoritative status, but a single well-defined corpus is still some distance
in the future at the time 1Maccabees was written. See Goldstein, 1Maccabees, 611, for bibli-
cal models for many episodes in 1Maccabees; some are more persuasive than others.
10On 1Maccabees, see Seth Schwartz, Israel and the Nations Roundabout: 1Maccabees
and the Hasmonean Expansion, JJS 42 (1991): 2223. On 2Maccabees, see Himmelfarb,
Judaism and Hellenism, 2429 (in this volume, 196200).
11Schwartz argues that 1Maccabees strikingly hostile attitude toward non-Jewish neighbors
must be earlier than the assimilation of some of those neighbors into the Jewish people as a
result of John Hyrcanuss conquests. He suggests a date around 130 B.C.E.; see Schwartz,
Israel and the Nations, 1638. But perhaps 1Maccabees expressions of hostility are actu-
ally a defense of the expansion, insisting on the Hasmoneans record of opposition to gentile
neighbors, thus providing cover for the absorption of these gentiles.
As I have already noted, 1Maccabees takes biblical works as its literary

models, particularly the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings with their warrior
heroes. The first hero in its narrative of resistance to Seleucid persecution is Mat-
tathias, Judahs father, who is depicted as a second Phinehas, zealously fighting
idolatry in Israel (Num 25:611; 1Macc 2:26). On his death bed, Mattathias
entrusts leadership to the two sons who ultimately had the most glorious careers,
Judah and Simon (1Macc 2:6566).
Much of 1Maccabees is an account of Judahs military successes. Judah is
1Maccabees David, and the account of his days as a guerilla leader clearly
recalls Davids days as an outlaw on the run from Saul (1Maccabees 35;
1Samuel 2131). The people of Israel mourn Judahs death with words drawn
from Davids lament over the deaths of Saul and Jonathan: How is the mighty
fallen! (1Macc 9:21).12 But 1Maccabees continues with words the books of
Samuel would hardly have applied to Saul and Jonathan: How is the mighty
fallen, the savior of Israel.
First Maccabees also invokes the Book of Kings to take the measure of Ju-
dahs significance at his death. The standard notice on the death of a king in the
Book of Kings runs, Now the rest of the acts of X and all that he did, are they
not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah [or Israel]?13
Sometimes, as with King Jehoshaphat, the notice is more enthusiastic: Now
the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, and his might that he showed, and how he
warred, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Ju-
dah? (1Kgs 22:45). But the notice after Judahs death in 1Maccabees trumps
even that one: Now the rest of the acts of Judah, and his wars and the brave
deeds that he did, and his greatness, have not been recorded, for they were very
many (1Macc 9:22).
With the death of Judah, another brother, Jonathan, became the leader of the
rebels. After his first successful military campaign, 1Maccabees describes his
assumption of leadership in terms drawn from the book of Judges: Thus the
sword ceased from Israel. And Jonathan dwelt in Michmash. And Jonathan
began to judge the people, and he destroyed the ungodly out of Israel (1Macc
9:73).14 Michmash is a particularly appropriate seat for Jonathan; it recalls the
defeat of the Philistines there at the hands of the earlier Jonathan, Sauls son, as
reported in 1Samuel 14.
After Jonathan is treacherously murdered by a pretender to the Seleucid
throne (1Macc 12:4248), Mattathiass deathbed admonition is fulfilled, and
the people acclaim Simon their leader (13:19). Like Judah and Jonathan, Si-
mon won military victories and thus expanded the land under Jewish control
12In2Sam 1:19, the lament is plural: How are the mighty fallen.
13E.g.,
Rehoboam in 1Kgs 14:29.
14On 1Maccabees view of the Hasmoneans as judges, see Arenhoevel, Theokratie, 4750.
(13:1011, 4353), but his most important achievement was the realization of
independence: In the one hundred and seventieth year the yoke of the Gentiles
was removed from Israel, and the people began to write in their documents and
contracts, In the first year of Simon the great high priest and commander and
leader of the Jews (13:4142). The new state of affairs is marked also by the
decree of the Jewish people appointing Simon high priest (14:2748).
First Maccabees praises Simons achievements with a poem (14:415), one of
several at important points in its narrative. So too in the Book of Samuel, poems
attributed to David mark the death of Saul (2Samuel 1) and the end of Davids
own life (2Samuel 22, 23). The twelve verses of the poem in praise of Simon
make it by far the longest poem in 1Maccabees, an indication of the importance
of Simons achievement. The poem begins with an allusion to the formula by
which the Book of Judges describes the peaceful periods after the Israelites have
been liberated from their oppressors (e.g., Judg 3:30; 5:31): The land had rest
all the days of Simon (1Macc 14:4). After recounting Simons military and
political achievements, it goes on to depict the era of peace and prosperity over
which he presided:
They tilled their land in peace;
the ground gave its increase,
and the trees of the plains their fruit.
Old men sat in the streets;
they all talked together of good things;
and the youths donned the glories and garments of war.
He established peace in the land,
and Israel rejoiced with great joy.
Each man sat under his vine and fig tree,
and there was none to make them afraid. (1Macc 14:812)
The picture of these verses resembles the picture of the end of days of Micah 4
and Zechariah 8, though at most points without close verbal similarities.15 The
language of the last verse quoted here, however, suggests that the original He-
brew was a quotation of Micah 4:4. But for Micah, each man under his vine
and fig tree is a prediction of the future, while 1Maccabees implies that Simon
has achieved the conditions the prophet promised.16 The glorious garments of
war (1Macc 14:9) appear to be an inappropriate intrusion into this idyllic scene
of peace and prosperity.17 I shall suggest below that they reflect the heroic ideal
of the Greeks. The poem concludes by noting Simons zeal for the Torah and
15Goldstein suggests several specific parallels to the poem from these chapters and other
places in prophetic literature and the Hebrew Bible more generally; see 1Maccabees, 491. I
find many of them too vague to be convincing.
16Goldstein suggests that such echoes are intended to claim fulfillment of earlier prophecies
in the Hasmoneans without the risk of saying so outright; see 1Maccabees, 1213.
17Goldsteins translation glorious garments, is surely to be preferred to RSVs hyperliteral
glories and garments.

his contributions to the temple, which are perhaps intended to recall the reign of
Solomon, builder of the first temple and king over the land at its greatest extent
(1Macc 14:1415).
First Maccabees concludes with the transfer of power to the third generation
of the family, Simons son John Hyrcanus. Like his brother Jonathan, Simon
was the victim of murder, in this case, a conspiracy led by his own son-in-law,
who did not, however, succeed in his plan to kill John as well (16:1122). After
noting Johns escape, 1Maccabees does not go on to recount his career. Rather,
it concludes with a summary modeled on the notices of the deaths of kings in
the Book of Kings:
The rest of the acts of John and his wars and the brave deeds which he did, and the
building of the walls he built, and his achievements, behold, they are written in the
chronicles of his high priesthood, from the time that he became high priest after his
father. (1Macc 16:2324)
There can be no doubt, then, that 1Maccabees consciously takes as its mod-
els the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and that it is deeply informed by
prophetic literature. Yet there can also be no doubt that 1Maccabees is a dis-
tinctively Hellenisitic creation. To begin with, many of the acts of the Jewish
protagonists of 1Maccabees cannot be understood apart from international Hel-
lenistic culture: the crowns and shields with which the victorious rebels decorate
the rededicated temple (4:57), the establishment of annual celebrations of the
rededication of the temple (4:59)18 and the victory over Nicanor (7:49),19 the
monument Simon builds for the family tomb at Modein (13:2730),20 the proc-
lamation of the people naming Simon leader and high priest (14:41),21 or the
exchange of letters with the Spartans and the Romans (1Maccabees 8; 12:123;
14:1624; 15:1524). One might argue that even the recourse to biblical models
is characteristically Hellenistic, similar to the interest in ancient stories evident
in the Greek literature of the period. Any of these aspects of 1Maccabees would
merit further discussion.22

19Bickerman,
From Ezra, 131.
20Steven Fine, Art and Identity in Latter Second Temple Period Judaea: The Hasmonean
Royal Tombs at Modi in (The Twenty-Fourth Annual Rabbi Louis Feinberg Memorial Lec-
ture in Judaic Studies, May 10, 2001), 38; Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6165.
21Bickerman, From Ezra, 15758. Goldstein suggests that the decree is also influenced
by Hebrew and Aramaic patterns; see 1Maccabees, 501. Tessa Rajak also sees biblical
patterns in the decree (Hasmonean Kingship and the Invention of Tradition, in The Jewish
Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction [AGJU 48; Leiden:
Brill, 2001], 54).
22For a recent discussion of Hasmonean Hellenism, see Rajak, Hamonean Kingship,
3960; and Rajak, The Hasmoneans and the Uses of Hellenism, in Jewish Dialogue, 6180.
But I want to focus on a different aspect. I have stressed 1Maccabees debt

to Judges, Samuel, and Kings, but 1Maccabees departs from these books in its
treatment of its heroes. Judges, Samuel, and Kings all form part of the Deutero-
nomic history; they were composed by editors who drew on earlier texts and
traditions but shaped them in conformity with the characteristic concerns of
the Deuteronomic school, a theory of history that reads any instance of defeat
or subordination to other peoples as the result of disobedience to the covenant,
and insistence on Jerusalem as the only legitimate cult site. Even kings were not
exempt from the requirements of the covenant, as we learn from the speeches of
prophets condemning royal misdeeds such as Davids adultery with Bathsheba
(2Sam 12:115) or Ahabs seizure of Naboths vineyard (1Kgs 21:1724), and
the notices in the Book of Kings at the beginning of reigns evaluating the piety
of the monarch in question.23
The Deuteronomic history, then, does not shy away from condemning the
behavior even of David, except for Josiah, the greatest of its heroes. First Mac-
cabees, on the other hand, never judges its heroes negatively. Perhaps it could not
afford to, given the close chronological proximity of the author of 1Maccabees
to the controversial rule of the Maccabean heroes, in contrast to the Deuterono-
mists more distant (and safe) account of the Davidic dynasty. But whatever the
reasons, it is important to note that the author of 1Maccabees drew on aspects
of the Deuteronomic history that enabled him to glorify his heroes and present
them as a suitable replacement for the Davidic dynasty while ignoring the Deu-
teronomists willingness to criticize members of the chosen line.
First Maccabees does not neglect to evaluate its heroes, but they are never
found wanting. The most important criteria for its judgments, heroism in battle
and the glory it brings, are quite different from those of the Deuteronomic his-
tory just noted. The Greek doxa (glory) and the verb doxaz (glorify) play
a central role in 1Maccabees. It seems likely that they most often translate the
Hebrew kavod and verbs from the root kbd, as is typically the case in the Greek
Bible.24 But doxa and doxaz translate other Hebrew expressions as well, as
will be seen below in the Wisdom of Ben Sira.25 Since the Hebrew of 1Mac-
cabees has not survived, we have no way of knowing how consistent the Greek
translators were in their choices of equivalents and we can never be certain of
the Hebrew behind the Greek. Nor are modern English translations consistent.
In the RSV of 1Maccabees, glory is the most common equivalent for doxa,
although honor is an important alternative, especially in contexts where doxa
23E.g.,
1Kgs 15:3 (Abijam); 15:1115 (Asa); 15:26 (Nadab).
24As
is clear from a glance at Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the
Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament (Including the Apocryphal
Books) (3 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1983),
1.34144.
25And as indicated in Hatch and Redpath, Concordance, 1.341.
is conferred on someone. Thus, in what follows, I take doxa and doxaz in

1Maccabees as one element pointing to the themes of heroism, honor, and glory,
but I do not restrict my discussion to passages in which they appear.
Warfare plays no small role in the biblical histories so important to 1Macca-
bees, and success on the battlefield does sometimes bring fame. The women of
Israel fill Saul with fury by singing, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his
ten thousands (1Sam 18:78), and Deborah warns Barak that he will forfeit his
chance to win glory (tiferet) by the defeat of the Canaanites if she leads the way
(Judg 4:9). The term kavod is sometimes used to refer to military power The
Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the
king of Assyria and all his glory (Isa 8:7) or to political power thus, Joseph
sends his brothers to get their father with the words, You must tell my father
of all my glory (RSV: splendor) in Egypt (Gen 45:13). But these examples are
exceptions. As a glance at a concordance demonstrates, when kavod appears in
the construct in the Bible, its possessor is almost always the Lord. Indeed, the
glory of the Lord is often used of the Lords presence among the people (e.g.,
Exod 16:7,10; 24:16,17; Lev 9:6,23). Only the wisdom tradition does not hesi-
tate to grant glory to human beings: The wise will inherit glory (RSV: honor)
(Prov 3:35).
For the priestly narrative, a central purpose of the exodus is to provide the
Lord with the opportunity to acquire glory and to display his majesty to the
Egyptians. Thus the prolongation of the process of punishing the Egyptians,
which gives God the opportunity to demonstrate his power to them:
I will harden Pharaohs heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land
of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you; then I will lay my hand upon Egypt and bring
forth my hosts, my people the children26 of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts
of judgment. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. (Exod 7:35)
Further, in the priestly strand of the account of the climactic defeat of the Egyp-
tians at the Red Sea, the Lord gets glory over Pharaoh and the Egyptians (Exod
14:4,17,18).
So too when we look beyond the term kavod to the depiction of victory on
the battlefield and the renown it brings, we find that the Bible regularly attri-
butes them to the Lord. Thus, as David confronts Goliath, he announces to the
assembled Israelite and Philistine armies, War belongs to the Lord, and he has
given you into our hands (2Sam 17:47). To be sure, a share of the glory often
comes to rest on the Lords human agents, as is evident in the refrain, Saul has
slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands. Yet the Bibles emphasis
is undoubtedly on the Lord.
In the Book of Joshua, for example, the Israelites victories are never merely
human: the walls of Jericho fall down (ch. 7); the sun stands still at Gibeon
26RSV
translates sons rather than children.
(10:114). Even at Ai, where a clever ambush secures victory, Joshua guarantees
its success by stretching out his arm toward Ai while holding a javelin at Gods
command (8:18). The laws governing warfare in the Torah also make it quite
clear that victory belongs to the Lord, whether by demanding that a set share of
the booty be offered to him (Num 31:2531) or by insisting that only the whole-
hearted are permitted to serve in the Lords army (Deut 20:19).
Despite its debt to the Deuteronomic history, 1Maccabees offers a very differ-
ent understanding of its heroes success in battle. Let me begin with its account
of the career of Judah. Mattathiass last words single out Judah for leadership
because of his military prowess (1Macc 2:66), and 1Maccabees wastes no time
in declaring the glory and lasting fame of its new hero in one of its poems:
He extended the glory (doxa) of his people.
He embittered many kings,
but he made Jacob glad by his deeds,
and his memory is blessed for ever .
He was renowned to the ends of the earth. (1Macc 3:3,7,9)
Indeed, Judah is so successful that his fame reached the king, and the Gentiles
talked of the battles of Judah (1Macc 3:26). After further victories, The man
Judah and his brothers were greatly honored (doxaz) in all Israel and among all
the Gentiles, wherever their name was heard (1Macc 5:63).
It is worth contrasting this account with the story of the harlot Rahab in the
Book of Joshua. In explaining her protection of the Israelite spies who lodge
with her in Jericho, Rahab refers to the report she has heard of the Lords mighty
deeds on behalf of the Israelites (Josh 2:813). First Maccabees certainly does
not discount Gods role in Judahs victories; indeed, it is important for its claims
that God is on Judahs side, that he is the ultimate source of Judahs success.
Yet while it takes pains to show Judah exhorting his troops that the few can
triumph over the many because all battles are in Gods hands (1Macc 3:1722;
4:811) and depicts him engaged in prayer and other pious practices before and
during battle together with his men,27 it is of Judahs deeds, not of Gods, that
the gentiles hear.
Judahs death in battle was a problem for the view that God always supported
the Maccabee brothers, but 1Maccabees could not avoid it (9:18). It makes the
best of the problem by using Judahs death to demonstrate yet again his great-
ness. Despite the desertion of much of his army in the face of a force far superior
271Macc 3:4656; 4:3033, 3841; 5:28, 33. Most of the practices reported in 1Mac-
cabees, such as prayer and fasting, are not enjoined by the Torahs laws of warfare. There are
two instances in which Judahs preparation for war reflects the military legislation in the Torah:
Judah sent home the categories of men excluded from participation in battle (Deut 20:58), an
act that 1Maccabees explicitly calls according to the law (1Macc 3:56); and Judah and his
army killed all males in the city of Bozrah, located east of the Jordan (1Macc 5:28, following
the legislation for warfare against a distant city in Deut 20:1015).
in size, Judah is unwilling to flee: Far be it from us to do such a thing as to flee

from them. If our time has come, let us die bravely for our brethren and leave no
cause to question our honor (doxa) (9:10). It is striking that 1Maccabees does
not represent Judah as concerned about obedience to Gods will or the salvation
of his people. Rather, it suggests, honor (or glory) is the ultimate concern, and its
account secures Judahs honor. So too when Eleazar, the first Maccabee brother
to die, falls in battle after attacking the elephant on which he believed Antiochus
rode: he gave his life to save his people and to win for himself an everlasting
name (1Macc 6:44).
Jonathan succeeds Judah as leader of the revolt (1Macc 9:2831). His glory
is the glory of the statesman, not the military hero. With the death of Antiochus,
he is soon negotiating terms of peace and playing off the two claimants to An-
tiochuss throne against each other (ch. 10). First Maccabees emphasizes the
honor shown Jonathan by the would-be king Alexander. When a group brings
accusations against Jonathan to Alexander in Ptolemais where Jonathan was
attending him, Alexander has Jonathan clothed in purple and brought into the
middle of the city while Alexanders officers proclaim that no one is to make
accusations against him or otherwise trouble him (10:5963). The description of
Jonathans treatment by Alexander recalls the Book of Esthers description of the
way Ahasuerus honored Mordecai to reward him for saving his life (Esther 6).
First Maccabees passes over Jonathans death at the hands of Trypho, a newly
emerged claimant to the Seleucid throne, as quickly as possible (13:23). There
is little opportunity for honor or glory for the victim of treachery. But, as noted
above, the monument Simon builds at the family tomb serves to memorialize the
familys military exploits (13:2530), and the occasion for building the monu-
ment is the deposit of Jonathans bones in the tomb.
Though Judah is the greatest of the military heroes, it is Simon, as we have
seen, who presides over the restoration of the fortunes of his people. I noted
above that the poem in praise of his reign, which offers a picture of peace and
prosperity in language drawn from the prophets, also contains a rather jarring
mention of youths putting on the glorious garments of war (1Macc 14:9). In-
deed, honor and glory are central concerns of the poem:
The land had rest all the days of Simon.
He sought the good of his nation;
his rule was pleasing to them,
as was the honor (doxa) shown him, all his days.
To crown all his honors (doxa, sg.) he took Joppa for a harbor.
He extended the borders of his nation
and there was none to oppose him
He supplied the cities with food,
and furnished them with means of defense,
till his renown (lit., the name of his doxa) spread to the ends of the earth.
He established peace in the land,

and Israel rejoiced with great joy.
Each man sat under his vine and fig tree,
and there was none to make them afraid.
No one was left in the land to fight them,
and the kings were crushed in those days.
He strengthened all the humble of his people;
He sought out the law,
and did away with every lawless and wicked man.
He made the sanctuary glorious (doxaz),
and added to the vessels of the sanctuary. (1Macc 14:415)
The glory of Simons political achievements cannot be separated from the

glory of his military might, for it is the military might that makes the political
achievements possible. Thus, the glorious garments of war, so out of place in
the ideal state envisioned by the biblical prophets, are crucial to the polity over
which Simon rules and to the ideal of 1Maccabees. But the poem insists that
Simons achievements extend to his loyalty to the Torah and the temple, and the
term glory, as just noted, is also applied to Simons contribution to the temple.
Simons own glory and the glory he bestows on the land and his people are af-
firmed by a letter from Sparta that follows the poem. It refers to its ambassadors
report of your (pl.) glory (doxa) and honor (tim) (14:21). The plural your
must refer to Simon and his people.
Glory and honor are also themes of the proclamation of the people declaring
Simon leader and high priest forever until a prophet arises. The proclamation
is modeled on Greek honorific decrees.28 The proclamation notes the peoples
awareness of Simons faithfulness and the glory (doxa) which he had resolved
to win for his nation (1Macc 14:35). It notes also the honor (doxa) conferred
on Simon by Demetrius and by the Romans (14:3940), and it reserves for
Simon alone of all the Jews the right to be clothed in purple and wear gold
(14:4344).
The passages from 1Maccabees I have just examined offer a very different
understanding of glory from the biblical view that glory belongs to the Lord. In
Greek culture from archaic times forward, however, the glory earned by great
men is a central theme. The standard is set by the heroes of the Homeric poems,
who gain glory and fame from their prowess in battle.29 This heroic ideal with
its aristocratic individualism was problematic for the social and political values
28For different opinions on the cultural background of the decree, see Fine, Art and Iden-
tity, 38, and Art and Judaism, 6165. On honorific decrees and inscriptions in Hellenistic
cities, see Bradley H. McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Ro
man Periods from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine (323 B.C.A.D. 337)
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 22845.
29See, e.g., Walter Donlan, The Aristocratic Ideal in Ancient Greece: Attitudes of Superiority
from Homer to the End of the Fifth Century (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado, 1980).
of the polis. By the Hellenistic era it was virtually obsolete, and many have com-
mented on the inversion of heroic values in the works of writers such as Apol-
lonius of Rhodes.30 Nonetheless, the ideal continued to be invoked throughout
later Greek literature, including poetry and orations in praise of heroes in battle,
political leaders, athletic victors, and other notable figures.31
Isocrates (436338 B.C.E.), the great Athenian orator who was a contem-
porary of Plato and Xenophon, was a particularly influential practitioner of the
rhetoric of praise.32 I quote below two passages from his orations that show
clearly the importance of glory for this Greek tradition:
Men of ambition and greatness of soulprefer a glorious (eukles) death to life,
zealously seeking glory (doxa) rather than existence, and doing all that lies in their
power to leave behind a memory of themselves that shall never die. (Evag. 3)33
Bear in mind that, although the body that we all possess is mortal, by means of
commendation, praise, fame, and the memory that attends us with the course of time
we partake of immortality, which we ought to strive after as far as we are able, and to
endure anything to attain it. You may see even the most respectable private individu-
als, who would risk their lives for nothing else, ready to die in battle in order to win
honourable renown (doxa), and, generally, those who show themselves desirous of still
greater honour (tim) than they enjoy, are commended by all, while those who exhibit
an insatiable longing for anything else whatever are considered to be proportionately
inferior and lacking in self-control. (Phil. 13435)34
The reference to the desire for glory of even private individuals is worth dwell-
ing on for a moment. The need to include them explicitly highlights the fact that
Isocrates and his audience take for granted the link between political leadership
and the glory conferred by heroic deeds. This link is very much in evidence in
1Maccabees.
I do not wish to suggest that the author of 1Maccabees was familiar with
the writings of Isocrates. There is nothing in the structure or style of the work,
which, as we have seen, imitates the biblical histories, to suggest such knowl-
edge. Furthermore, similar sentiments can be found in a variety of other texts
spanning many centuries, from Homer to Xenophon to historians and orators
closer to his own time. And it is also quite possible that Greek heroic ideals
reached the author of 1Maccabees and his audience through channels other than
literary works. Greek cities, including those of the Hellenistic empires, regularly
30See, e.g., Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic
Age (Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 20115.

31For a convenient discussion of this literature, see Thomas R. Lee, Studies in the Form of
Sirach 4450 (SBLDS 75; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 103206.

32Lee, Studies, 14348.
33Isocrates, vol. 3 (trans. LaRue van Hook; LCL; London: William Heinemann, and Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945), 5.

34Isocrates vol. 1 (trans. George Norlin; LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
and London: William Heinemann, 1928), 327. This passage is quoted by Lee, Studies, 197.
inscribed decrees honoring kings, benefactors, and eminent citizens on stone so

that they would be visible to any resident of the city or visitor to it.35 Judeans
would not have had to travel very far to encounter such inscriptions, and by the
time of Simon they were engaging in the practice themselves, inscribing the
decree that named Simon leader and high priest forever on bronze tablets for
all to see.36 The language of diplomacy is another channel through which the
language of glory and honor reached Judeans. In a letter preserved in 1Mac-
cabees, Antiochus VII Sidetes writes to Simon, offering many concessions in a
bid for his support against Trypho. The letter concludes, When we gain control
of our kingdom, we will bestow great honor (doxaz, doxa) upon you and your
nation and the temple, so that your glory (doxa) will become manifest in all the
earth (15:9).
Since the achievements of heroes and rulers were thus marked and acknowl-
edged throughout the world in which 1Maccabees was written, it is perhaps not
surprising that the passages from 1Maccabees considered above show no aware-
ness that the conceptions of glory and honor they embrace are characteristically
Greek. Indeed, there is nothing in these passages to suggest that 1Maccabees
recognizes these conceptions as in any way foreign to Jewish tradition, despite
their profound difference from biblical ideas.
First Maccabees was not the first Jewish text to go beyond biblical precedent
in attributing glory to individual human beings. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, a col-
lection of proverbs and reflections modeled on the biblical Book of Proverbs,
concludes with a history of Israel centered on the glory achieved by great men
of the past:37
These were men of mercy,
whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten.
Their posterity will continue for ever,
and their glory will not be blotted out.
Their bodies were buried in peace,
And their name lives to all generations. (Sir 44:1114)38
Joshua ben Sira lived in Palestine and wrote his book in the first decades of the
second century B.C.E., shortly before the Hellenistic reform and the Maccabean
Revolt. Proverbs and the other works that form part of the biblical wisdom tradi-
35McLean, Introduction, 23644.

361Macc 14:4148; quotation,
v.41. On this decree, see Gregg Gardner, Jewish Leadership
and Hellenistic Civic Benefaction in the Second Century B.C.E., JBL 126 (2007): 33237.
37On glory in the Praise of the Fathers, see Burton L. Mack, Wisdom and the Hebrew
Epic: Ben Siras Hymn in Praise of the Fathers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986),
12837, 1689.
38In quotations of the Wisdom of Ben Sira I indicate the Greek for glory, glories, and glori-
ous only when it is something other than a form of doxa or doxaz and the Hebrew only when
it is something other than a form of kavod or kbd.
tion bear little resemblance to the dominant themes of the rest of the Bible, such
as the covenant between God and Israel and the story of Gods deeds on behalf
of Israels ancestors. Ben Siras Praise of the Fathers, as the section of his book
came to be known, is part of his effort to integrate these covenantal themes into
the wisdom tradition. The original Hebrew of the book survives in part,39 but the
complete work survives in the Greek translation made by Ben Siras grandson
in Egypt some (after 132 B.C.E.). Sometimes the surviving Hebrew appears to
reflect later revision; thus even when the Hebrew is preserved, the Greek must
be taken into account.
Glory plays a central role in the hymn in praise of creation (Sir 42:1543:33)
that immediately precedes the Praise of the Fathers, which announces as its cen-
tral theme: The work of the Lord is full of his glory (42:16). Throughout the
Greek version of the hymn doxa figures prominently; it translates not only kavod
(42:16,17; 43:12), but also hod (42:25; 43:1) and hadar (43:9).40 The placement
of the Praise of the Fathers immediately after this hymn shows the daring of Ben
Siras claim that the fathers had a share of glory glory belongs to the Lord but
also softens it: the Lord can confer it on his creations.41
The catalyst for the Praise of the Fathers attribution of glory to human beings
was probably Ben Siras knowledge of the tradition of praise for heroes in Greek
culture.42 But Ben Sira follows biblical precedent in associating glory with wis-
dom and the temple. In the first part of the book, glory serves as the reward of
the wise, as in traditional wisdom literature: Whoever holds [Wisdom] fast will
obtain glory (Sir 4:13). In the Praise of the Fathers, Ben Sira pays special atten-
tion to the glory of priests, an association that reflects the priestly and prophetic
descriptions of Gods presence in the temple as kavod. But, as in the hymn to cre-
ation, where the Greek repeatedly uses doxa and doxaz, the Hebrew has not only
kavod and the root kbd, but other Hebrew terms as well. Nonetheless it is clear
that Ben Sira is deeply influenced by the biblical associations of glory and temple.
Not all of the figures to whom the Praise of the Fathers attributes glory are
priests.43 It is perhaps not surprising that Ben Sira grants glory to both Abraham
39For the Hebrew, see Sefer Ben Sira: HaMaqor, qonqordantsiah, ve-nituah otsar ha-millim
(Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language and Shrine of the Book, 1973).
40The Hebrew of 43:11 appears to contain the word kavod, though it is fragmentary; the
Greek does not contain doxa.

41On the relationship between the hymn to creation and the Praise of the Fathers, see Mack,
Wisdom, 18993.
42Mack, Wisdom, 12837, 16869, following Lees dissertation, now published as Studies.
43I omit from consideration the judges, whose names are called glorious in the Greek (Sir
46:12) but not in the Hebrew because it appears that the Greek has imported the opening of
the following passage about Samuel (Sir 46:1320) into the passage about the judges. While
the Hebrew of Sir 46:13 praises Samuel, it lacks the language of glory; see Patrick W. Skehan
and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: A New Translation with Notes (AB 39;
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 517. I also omit Ezekiels vision (Sir 49:8), a vision of
and Moses;44 indeed Moses is said to equal the angels in glory. Joshua, like the
Maccabees, is glorious (nehedar) in war (46:2). The prophet Elijah is glorious
(nora) for his wonders (48:4). With no specifics at all, Ben Sira recalls toward
the end of the poem that Shem and Seth were glorious among men (49:16).45
But the two figures who receive the most attention in the Praise of the Fathers
are Aaron, the first Israelite priest, and Simon, the high priest of Ben Siras
youth.46 It is clearly Aarons role as founder of the priestly line that interests Ben
Sira. Thus, he devotes a great deal of attention to the priestly garments that can
be seen as defining the office: Before his time there never were such beautiful
things. / No outsider ever put them on, / but only his sons / and his descendants
perpetually (45:13).47 Despite some differences between Hebrew and Greek,
the picture of Aarons almost royal glory is clear.48 Ben Sira also emphasizes
Gods covenant with Aaron (45:7,13,15,2022); God add[s] glory to Aaron by
giving him and his descendants the right to firstfruits and sacrifices (45:2021).
Ben Sira also insists that priesthood is reserved for Aarons descendants alone
(45:13,1819).
Ben Siras account of Simons career marks him as even greater than his
ancestor, for, unlike Aaron, he is ruler as well as priest. The passage introduces
Simon as the greatest of his brethren and the glory (tiferet) of his people
(50:1).49 It goes on to describe his achievements as ruler: repairing the temple,
fortifying temple and city, constructing a reservoir (50:14). But most of the
passage is devoted to a description of Simon performing his duties in the temple
that begins, How glorious (nehedar) he was when the people gathered round
him / as he came out of the inner sanctuary (50:5). There follows a series of
similes comparing Simons to instances of natures beauty. Then Ben Sira turns
to Simons garments, even more glorious than Aarons, and the glory he brings
to the sanctuary:
glory in Greek, of the kinds of the chariot in Hebrew; even in the Greek, it is the vision, not
the prophet, that is glorious.
44Abraham: 44:19; Moses: 45:23 according to the Greek; the Hebrew is fragmentary and
corrupt.
45Thus the Greek; the Hebrew reproduces the verb of the previous verse, are cared for.
Skehan and Di Lella suggest that the text be emended in conformity with the Greek (Ben Sira,
542), and this certainly yields better sense.
46On priests in the Praise of the Fathers, see Martha Himmelfarb, The Wisdom of the
Scribe, the Wisdom of the Priest, and the Wisdom of the King according to Ben Sira, in For a
Later Generation: The Transformation of Tradition in Israel, Early Judaism and Early Chris
tianity (ed. Randal A. Argall, Beverly A. Bow, and Rodney A. Werline; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity
Press International, 2000), 9497.
47Thus the Greek; the Hebrew is fragmentary here, but appears to support the Greek.
48See esp. 45:12; Himmelfarb, Wisdom, 95; Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Counties
Marvelled at You: King Solomon in Ben Sira 47:1222, Bijdragen, Tijdschrift voor filosofie
en theologie 45 (1984): 12.
49My translation. Although these phrases are missing from the Greek, the RSV includes
them: The leader of his brethren and the pride of his people.
Wearing his splendid [Greek: doxa; Hebrew: kavod] robes,

and vested in sublime magnificence [Greek: kauchma; Hebrew: tiferet]
As he ascended the glorious [Greek: hagios; Hebrew: hod] altar
and lent majesty [Greek: doxaz; Hebrew: hadar] to the court of the sanctuary.
(50:11)50
The praise of Simon as he officiates in the temple is clearly meant to recall not
only his ancestor Aaron, but also the figure of Wisdom herself, whom Ben Sira
earlier represented as serving in the temple (24:812). Just as Simons splendor
is compared to a series of natural phenomena, Wisdom compares herself to a
series of trees and plants (24:1317). Thus, Simon emerges as a sort of human
counterpart of Wisdom,51 and Simons glory turns out to derive not only from
his priestly association with the glory of Gods presence but also from the glory
wisdom offers to the wise.
Ben Sira also places considerable emphasis on the glory of the priestly line as
a whole. Following Aaron in the priesthood is his grandson Phinehas, whose zeal
earns the eternal covenant of priesthood for his descendants (Num 25:1013;
Sir 45:24). Phinehas is the third in glory (Sir 45:23),52 presumably following
Moses and Aaron, and Ben Sira underlines the glory of his descendants (45:25
[Heb.], 26 [Greek]).53 At the other end of priestly history come the sons of
Aaron, who stand about Simon as he stands before the altar; they too are glori-
ous (50:13).
But if priesthood is intimately connected to glory, kingship is not. Toward
the end of the Praise of the Fathers, Ben Sira chastises all the kings of Judah for
giving their glory to foreigners, with three exceptions: David, Hezekiah, and
Josiah (49:45). Yet it is far from clear that Ben Sira views David as glorious.
David is said to have proclaimed the Lords glory (47:8), but this pious activity
does not necessarily make David himself glorious. The Greek calls both Davids
crown and his throne glorious (47:6, 11); the Hebrew, which reads rather differ-
ently at both points, lacks any mention of glory, and even in the Greek the glory
belongs not to David but to the royal office. The only point at which Ben Siras
poem attributes glory to David himself is in an allusion in the Greek version to
the biblical account of the praise of Davids prowess as a warrior by the women
who ranked his exploits above Sauls (47:6; cf. 1Sam 18:7); the Hebrew alludes
to the womens song in somewhat different language without the verb glorify.
If Ben Sira betrays a certain lack of enthusiasm for David, he views Solomon
in clearly negative terms, as his absence from the list of kings who did not give
their glory to foreigners indicates. Solomon was once called by that glorious
50Translation of Skehan and Di Lella, Ben Sira, 546, which reflects a critical text that follows
the Hebrew but at one point corrects it in accordance with the Greek (p. 549).
51Himmelfarb, Wisdom, 97.
52Thus the Greek; the Hebrew is fragmentary here.
53The Greek and Hebrew differ substantially.
name which was conferred upon Israel, that is, the name of God (Sir 47:18).54
But despite his wisdom, which Ben Sira does not neglect to praise (47:1417),
Solomon sullied his glory through the idolatry inspired by his wives (47:20).55
Finally, while Ben Sira praises Hezekiah and Josiah, they are awarded their glory
only negatively, in the passage noted above, in which they appear with David as
exceptions.56 The description of their reigns does not mention glory.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that for Ben Sira the truly glorious insti-
tution, the institution whose occupants were worthy of it, was priesthood, not
kingship.57 If Solomon, the wisest of kings, could not resist temptation, perhaps
the institution itself was fatally flawed. Simon, on the other hand, performed
all his duties, as ruler and as priest, piously and well. The selective conferral
of glory on great figures of Israels past, then, serves Ben Siras effort to make
the case that rule by high priest is to be preferred to rule by king. Yet while Ben
Siras attribution of glory to human beings goes beyond biblical precedent, his
association of glory with wisdom and the priesthood is in tune with biblical
tradition. There is much greater tension with biblical precedent in 1Maccabees
attribution of glory to warrior heroes; for the biblical texts, as we have seen,
victory belongs to the Lord.
First Maccabees embrace of Greek ideas of glory and honor also stands in
striking contrast to 2Maccabees transformation of Greek ideas in its depiction
of the martyrs as exemplars of heroism, a topic I have discussed elsewhere at
some length.58 For 2Maccabees, the martyrs are almost as important to the
victory of Judaism as Judah is. Judahs military successes begin only after the
terrible sufferings and martyrs deaths of the aged scribe Eleazar (2Maccabees
6) and the mother and her seven sons (2Maccabees 7), stories that 2Maccabees
recounts in great detail. The last of Judahs victories reported in 2Maccabees,
the defeat of Nicanor, follows the gruesome suicide of the pious elder Razis, who
throws himself on his own sword to avoid capture by Nicanors men (14:3746);
2Maccabees clearly understands Razis death as martyrdom despite the fact that
it is self-inflicted.
Second Maccabees descriptions of the deaths of the martyrs draw liberally on
the language of heroism on the battlefield. Because 2Maccabees, unlike 1Mac-
cabees, was composed in Greek, it is easier to identify the sources of its language
of heroism. Second Maccabees favorite adverb for describing the actions of the
martyrs is gennais, literally, nobly, and it uses the adjectival form as well.59
54Translation of Skehan and Di Lella, Ben Sira, 523. The mention of glory is missing from
the Greek, but the Hebrew is probably original; see 527.

55For a somewhat different reading of Ben Siras criticism of Solomon, see Beentjes,
Countries, 910.
56Hezekiah: Sir 48:1722; Josiah: Sir 49:13.
57For more detail, see Himmelfarb, Wisdom; and Beentjes, Countries.
58Himmelfarb, Judaism and Hellenism, 3138 (in this volume, 20210).
59Himmelfarb, Judaism and Hellenism, 3335 (in this volume, 20406).
While the adjectival form of this root is in wide use in Greek literature, the ad-
verbial form is less common. It is, however, a favorite adverb of the historian
Polybius, a contemporary of the events 2Maccabees describes. He uses it for
military and death scenes, where it clearly means bravely, and 2Maccabees
also uses it in this sense (8:16, 13:14, 15:17). But elsewhere 2Maccabees ef-
fects a transformation of the meaning of bravery by using gennais also of those
whose courage consists of enduring suffering without fighting back (6:28,31;
7:5,11).60 The extent of the transformation can be seen by considering who
the martyrs are: two old men, a woman, and seven boys who have not reached
adulthood. Second Maccabees claims that people unqualified for heroism on
the battlefield are capable of a different type of heroism. Indeed 2Maccabees
explicitly attributes masculine courage to both the mother and the aged Razis
(7:21; 14:43). With Polybius in mind, we can see that the usage of 2Maccabees
represents a transformation of the bravery the Greeks admire. The new kind of
bravery is displayed not only by Judah but also by those who are very distant
from the heroism of the battlefield. This concept, then, so central for 2Mac-
cabees, is a reinterpretation of a Greek ideal in light of loyalty to Judaism.
Only in one passage in 1Maccabees do we find some indications of a similar
transformation. In Mattathiass address to his sons before his death, he exhorts
them, Remember the deeds of the fathers, which they did in their generations;
and receive great honor (doxa) and an everlasting name (1Macc 2:51). The
language in which 1Maccabees introduces Mattathiass examples recalls the in-
troduction to Ben Siras Praise of the Fathers; and, as in the Praise of the Fathers,
1Maccabees choice of fathers to single out for praise reflects political concerns.
It is quite possible that the author of 1Maccabees knew the Wisdom of Ben Sira,
though outside of this passage, 1Maccabees treatment of glory shows no trace
of a reading of Ben Sira.61
Mattathias goes on to invoke the examples of Abraham, Joseph, Phinehas,
Joshua, Caleb, David, Elijah, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, and, finally,
Daniel (1Macc 2:5260). The invocation of Phinehas and David serves the pro-
paganda goals of the Hasmonean dynasty: Phinehass zeal against idolatry won
him and his descendants an eternal covenant to serve as priests, while David,
the great military hero, was party to a covenant of eternal kingship (2:54,57).
Elijahs zeal for the law echoes Phinehass (2:58). Joshua was a great military
hero, the leader of the conquest of the land of Canaan (2:55); his deeds are pro-
totypes of those of Mattathiass sons. But the heroism of Hananiah, Azariah, and
Mishael in the fiery furnace and Daniel in the lions den is the same type of hero-
ism the martyrs of 2Maccabees display (1Macc 2:5960). The achievements
60The
adjectival form appears in 1Macc 7:21 with the same meaning.
61Rajak suggests that before they claimed kingship for themselves, the Hasmoneans un-
derstanding of their role as high priests was influenced by the kind of picture of the high priest
that we find in Ben Sira (Hasmonean Kingship, 44).
attributed to Abraham and Joseph are particularly telling. Abraham could have
been depicted as a great warrior on the basis of his role in the war of the five
kings against the four kings, and Joseph could certainly have been credited with
many achievements of statecraft. But the speech praises them in quite different
terms: Abraham was found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness, while Joseph in the time of distress kept the commandment, and
became lord of Egypt (2:5253). The speech concludes with Mattathias urg-
ing his sons, Be courageous and grow strong in the law, for by it you will gain
honor (doxaz) (2:64). The courage of allegiance to the Torah could perhaps be
exhibited on the battlefield, but it is also the courage of the martyrs. First Mac-
cabees makes only brief mention of the martyrs of Antiochuss persecution, but
Mattathiass speech suggests that a transformation of notions of heroism was
underway in 1Maccabees as well.
Thus 1Maccabees attitude toward glory and heroism is not entirely uniform.
Most of the book, I have argued, adopts Greek ideals of heroism and glory
more or less unaltered, although it sets them in a narrative written according to
biblical models. In Mattathiass speech, on the other hand, these ideals undergo
a process of adaptation to reflect specifically Jewish concerns very much as
they were transformed in 2Maccabees. It is remarkable that these ideals could
be admitted, even briefly, into a work of propaganda for a family that won its
right to rule precisely through its military exploits. Their presence suggests that
martyrdom and suffering out of allegiance to the Torah was widely recognized
as conferring prestige.
For Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages, the boundaries between Jewish
culture and the larger culture were relatively clear. Jews were, if not the only
minority, then the most obvious one, and the intimate and complex relationship
between Judaism and Christianity meant that a certain tension between Jews
and Christians was almost inevitable. For Jews in antiquity, on the other hand,
the boundaries were far less clear. Jews were only one minority among many,
and while they stood out for their eccentric religious beliefs, their relationship to
the dominant culture was not nearly as fraught. Still, even in pre-Constantinian
antiquity, relations were hardly symmetrical. Jews could not escape the fact that
theirs was a minority culture and that the culture of the majority, or rather of the
dominant group, exerted a pull on them and other minorities that their tradi-
tions did not exercise on others.
The author of 2Maccabees worries a great deal about Hellenism and its effect
on Jews. To be sure, his transformation of Greek ideas of heroism can be seen
as blurring the boundaries between Judaism and Hellenism, but at the same time
his use of old men, a woman, and boys to exemplify the new heroism reflects
both an awareness of what was characteristically Greek and an effort to avoid it.
First Maccabees was composed in Hebrew, and thus it must have been intended
for a Jewish audience. While conceptions drawn from Greek culture play a
crucial role in its narrative, it appears to make use of these conceptions quite
unselfconsciously. It gives no hint of anxiety that its embrace of the categories
of glory and honor represents a departure from the traditions of Israels past or
even that it recognizes these categories as a foreign import. Only in Mattathiass
speech does it appear to have made a conscious effort to transform it in light
of Jewish values. In its simultaneous pride in Jewish power and embrace of the
values of the world around it, 1Maccabees reflects well the cultural synthesis
of the Hamoneans, whose rule it was written to praise.62
62I have tried in this formulation to avoid the pitfalls in describing the influence of one
culture on another, to which Peter Schfer has recently pointed; see Peter Schfer, Mirror of
His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, NJ /
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 22935. See also Michael Satlow, Beyond Influ-
ence: Toward a New Historiographic Paradigm, in the volume in which this essay originally
appeared, Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext (ed. Anita Norich and Yaron
Z. Eliav; BJS 349; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008), 3753.
Heavenly Ascent
15. Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the
Apocalypses and the Hekhalot Literature
A first attempt at reading through the hekhalot literature can be an unsettling

experience, and not only because of the difficulties inherent in the texts. Any-
one whose picture of this literature was shaped primarily by Scholems account
comes to it expecting to find the continuation of the tradition of heavenly ascent
from the early Jewish apocalypses. For while Scholem by no means ignored
other aspects of the hekhalot literature, he consistently placed heavenly ascent at
its center.1 Thus it comes as a surprise to discover how small a place descriptions
of heavenly ascent occupy in these texts.2
The past several years have seen the beginning of major revision of Scho-
lems groundbreaking work. Peter Schfers 1981 publication of the major
manuscripts of the hekhalot texts makes possible work that could not have been
done before.3 Until Schfer, most of the hekhalot texts were available only in
1E.g., G.G. Scholem Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3d ed.; New York, 1954), 4350.
Why Scholem read the hekhalot literature this way is an interesting question. I suspect that his
emphasis on ascent is related to his view of a continuous history for Jewish mysticism and his
desire to see the mysticism of the hekhalot literature as standing at the heart of rabbinic Juda-
ism, a view that has recently been challenged by: P.S. Alexander, The Historical Setting of
the Hebrew Book of Enoch, JJS 28 (1977): 17380; D.J. Halperin, Ascension or Invasion:
Implications of the Heavenly Journey in Ancient Judaism, Religion 18 (1988): 5659; and P.
Schfer, Gershom Scholem Reconsidered: The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism
The Twelfth Sacks Lecture delivered on 29th May 1985 (Oxford Centre for Postgraduate
Hebrew Studies, 1986), 1618.
2Schfer has recently made a similar point. Anyone who reads the texts edited in the
Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur [see n.3 below] in an unbiased way, and without having the
history of research inaugurated by Scholem in mind, will hardly conclude that it is precisely
the ascent to the Merkavah which forms the centre of interest of the authors of this literature.
It seems to me that an entirely different impression will force itself upon the reader. That is,
we are concerned here with eminently magical texts which deal with forceful adjurations
(Scholem Reconsidered, 6). See also Halperin, A New Edition of the Hekhalot Literature,
JAOS 104 (1984): 549. Scholem does not fail to mention the presence in the hekhalot literature
of types of material other than the ascents, like the Sar Torah passages, the invocation of angels
for various purposes, or the lists of magical names, but the proportions are not what Scholem
leads one to expect.
3P. Schfer, in collaboration with M. Schlter and H.G. von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-
Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981).

258 15. Heavenly Ascent
pioneering publications of single manuscripts, often from the nineteenth century.

Some of the works had never been published.4
Schfer does not provide a critical edition of the hekhalot texts. Instead he
presents the manuscripts synoptically, to allow the reader to see the major and
minor variations from manuscript to manuscript and to draw his own conclu-
sions. Behind this mode of presentation stands a broad challenge to Scholems
understanding of the process of composition, the limits, and the dates of the
hekhalot texts. Any edition of texts of Hekhalot literature has to take into con-
sideration that the one text is an illusion.5
Closely related to the question of the place of ascent in the hekhalot literature
is the question of the relationship between the hekhalot literature and early Jew-
ish apocalypses. The object of ascent to heaven in the hekhalot texts, the vision
of the merkavah the chariot-throne of God described so vividly by the prophet
Ezekiel appears also in ascents to heaven in early Jewish and Christian apoca-
lypses, although less prominently than in the hekhalot literature. For Scholem,
there was an essential continuity of thought concerning the Merkabah in
three stages: the anonymous conventicles of the old apocalyptics; the Merkabah
speculation of the Mishnaic teachers who are known to us by name; and the
Merkabah mysticism of late and post-Talmudic times .6
Yet Scholem never considered the relationship between the apocalypses and
the hekhalot texts in a systematic way. Although he claims the apocalypses as
the first stage of merkavah mysticism, in his overview of merkavah mysticism in
ch.2 of Major Trends, he calls upon them only occasionally to provide parallels
to passages in rabbinic literature or in the hekhalot texts. Nor is there any sys-
tematic discussion in his Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic
Tradition,7 which consists of a series of separate studies of particular passages
in rabbinic and hekhalot literature in relation to the apocalypses, gnostic texts,
and the magical papyri. Scholem clearly believed that the hekhalot literature
could be illumined by reference to a range of contemporary literature from the
edges of Judaism and from outside, as well as to the early Jewish apocalypses.
The apocalypses occupy a special place in Scholems view because they repre-
4For
the situation as of 1977, see the introductions to the various texts in I. Gruenwald,
Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980).
5Schfer has articulated his views in a series of articles: Prolegomena zu einer kritischen
Edition und Analyse der Merkava Rabba, FJB 5 (1977): 6599; Die Beschworung des sar
ha-panim: Kritische Edition und bersetzung, FJB 6 (1978): 10745; Aufbau und redak-
tionelle Identitt der Hekhalot Zutrati, JJS 33 (1982): 56982; and especially Tradition and
Redaction in Hekhalot Literature, JSJ 14 (1983): 17281. The quotation comes from Tradi-
tion and Redaction, 181.
6Scholem, Major Trends, 43.
7G.G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (2nd ed.;
New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965).

15. Heavenly Ascent 259
sent the earliest stage of merkavah mysticism and are thus the ancestors of the
hekhalot literature.
Most recent discussions of the question of the relationship between the
apocalypses and hekhalot literature have been deeply influenced by Scholem.
Ithamar Gruenwalds chapter, The Mystical Elements in Apocalyptic, in his
book, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, presupposes Scholems position,
although Gruenwald is somewhat more cautious about the historical connec-
tion in his discussion of the issue.8 Philip Alexander offers a carefully nuanced
discussion of the differences of emphasis in apocalyptic and hekhalot literature,
but accepts the broad outlines of Scholems view of continuity.9
While E.E. Urbach had objected to Scholems claim that many of the rabbis
of the Mishnah engaged in the practice of ascent to achieve the vision of the
heavenly throne,10 David J. Halperin was the first to address the question sys-
tematically by means of a thorough examination of the references to ma aseh
merkavah in rabbinic literature.11 Against nineteenth century scholarship Scho-
lem had insisted that Hai Gaon was correct to identify ma aseh merkavah with
the practices described in the hekhalot texts.12 Halperin shows that Hai Gaon
and Scholem read the tannaitic material in the light of later developments and
that there is no evidence for the practice of ascent or even for the understanding
of ma aseh merkavah as involving ascent in tannaitic literature itself. Halperin
argues that in tannaitic times ma aseh merkavah meant public exegesis of Eze-
kiel 1, perhaps on the festival of Shavuot, when it was read as a haftarah. While
the amoraim continued to engage in such exoteric merkabah exegesis, it was
among some Babylonian amoraim that the understanding of ma aseh merkavah
as involving ascent seems to have emerged.13
Thus it now appears that Scholems whole schema is in need of drastic over-
haul. Halperins work has removed the middle stage the Merkabah specula-
tion of the Mishnaic teachers from Scholems three-stage model. The tannaim
should have provided the channel of transmission from the apocalypses to hek-
halot literature. Halperin is careful to point out that the absence of evidence for
merkavah mysticism in early rabbinic literature does not mean that there were no
Jews who practiced mystical ascent. It is even possible that some rabbis engaged
in such practices without rabbinic literature indicating it. In other words, some
channel of transmission may have existed, and Scholems claim of historical
8Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 4546; see also 127128.
9P. Alexander,
3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch, OTP 1.23536.
10E.E. Urbach, The Traditions about Merkabah Mysticism in the Tannaitic Period (He-
brew), in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (ed. E.E. Ur-
bach, R.J.Z. Werblowsky, Ch. Wirszubski; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), Hebrew section, 128.
11D.J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (AOS 62; New Haven: American
Oriental Society, 1980).

12Halperin, Merkabah, 14, for the history of scholarship on this topic.
13These conclusions are summarized in Halperin, Merkabah, 18283.
continuity need not be thrown overboard. Indeed, Halperin appears to regard

the parallels between apocalyptic literature and the hekhalot texts as requiring
an explanation involving dependence, although he suggests that the ties were
more complex and less direct than Scholem believed.14
Just as there have been advances in the study of the hekhalot texts, our un-
derstanding of the history of apocalyptic literature has been profoundly affected
by J.T. Miliks publication in 1976 of the Aramaic fragments of 1Enoch from
Qumran.15 The early dates that the fragments demonstrate for 1Enoch 136, the
Book of the Watchers, has directed greater attention to those aspects of apoca-
lyptic literature represented in the Book of the Watchers, including ascent to the
heavens.16 In light of these new developments in the study of the apocalypses
and the hekhalot literature, I would like to reconsider the heavenly ascents of the
hekhalot texts and their relationship to apocalyptic literature.
Narratives of Ascent in the Apocalypses
The early Jewish and Christian apocalypses that contain ascents to heaven de-
scribe the journey of a pseudonymous hero in the context of a larger narrative.
The apocalypses with such journeys include 1Enoch 136 (the Book of the
Watchers), 1Enoch 3771 (the Parables of Enoch), 2Enoch, the Testament of
Levi 25, 3Baruch, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the
Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Testament of Abraham, and the Apocalypse of
Paul.17
14Halperin, Merkabah, 185. Despite his claims about unbroken continuity in the merkavah
tradition, Scholem considered the possibility that some elements of the hekhalot texts indebted
to the apocalypses did not reach the hekhalot texts by way of the orthodox rabbinic teachers
of the Mishnaic period. Instead he suggested subterranean but effective connections
between the hekhalot mystics and the groups responsible for the apocalypses (Major Trends,
42). He does not tell us how to translate these connections into actual groups or documents, but
he can hardly be faulted for this.
15
J.T. Milik, in collaboration with M. Black, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of
Qumrn Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). It now appears that the Book of the Heavenly
Luminaries (1Enoch 7282) and the Book of the Watchers (1Enoch 136), rather than Daniel,
are the earliest extant apocalypses.
16See e.g., M.E. Stone, The Book of Enoch and Judaism in the Third Century, B.C.E.,
CBQ 40 (1978): 47992; and G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of
Revelation in Upper Galilee JBL 100 (1981): 575600. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 172, is also
interested in these aspects of the apocalypses, but apparently he wrote too early to take account
of the new dates of Enoch. Stones Lists of Revealed Things in the Apocalyptic Literature,
in Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God (Essays on the Bible and Archeology in Memory of
G. Ernest Wright) (ed. F.M. Cross, P.D. Miller, W.E. Lemke; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1976), 41452, written before Miliks publication of the Qumran fragments, becomes even
more important in light of the new dates.
17Other texts that are not strictly ascents to heaven, like 1Enoch 7282 (the Astronomical
Book), Revelation, and the Apocalypse of Peter, also bear on the subject.
In these works we learn about the contents of the heavens through the narra-
tion of the heavenly travels of the hero. This example is drawn from 2Enoch.18
And it came about, when I had spoken to my sons, the men called me. And they took me
up onto their wings, and carried me up to the first heaven. And they put me down there.
They led before my face the elders, the rulers of the stellar orders. And they showed
me their movements and their aberrations from year to year. And they showed me in
the light the angels who govern the stars, the heavenly combinations. And they showed
me there a vast ocean, much bigger than the earthly ocean. And the angels were flying
with their wings.
And they showed me there the treasuries of the snow and the cold, terrible angels are
guarding the treasuries. And they showed me there those guarding the treasuries of the
clouds19 from which they go in and come out.
And they showed me the treasuries of the dew, like olive oil. Angels were guarding
their treasuries; and their appearance was like every earthly flower.
And those men took me up to the second heaven. And they set me down. (3:17:1,
MS A)
In apocalypses like 2Enoch that visualize seven heavens, the travels of the vi-
sionary involve a process of ascent from heaven to heaven. Those apocalypses
like the Book of the Watchers and the Parables of Enoch that contain only one
heaven describe the seers travels on a single plane.
Ascent in the Hekhalot Texts
The hekhalot texts to be considered here are Hekhalot Rabbati, Hekhalot Zuarti,
Ma aseh Merkavah, Merkavah Rabbah, 3Enoch, and a fragment from the Cairo
Geniza in which the angel Ozhayah plays a central role.20 While the apocalypses
18I quote the translation of F.I. Andersen, 2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, OTP
1.91221.
19I omit the dittography included by Andersen; see ch. 5, note d (2Enoch, 1.112).
20All references to the hekhalot texts introduced by the sign # are to the units of Schfers
Synopse. For Hekhalot Rabbati, I provide references also to chapter and verse according to
the text printed as Pirqei Hekhalot Rabbati, by S.A. Wertheimer, Batei Midrashot (2nd
ed.; Jerusalem: Ktab Wasepher, 1954), 1.67136. I have not been able to make use of Rachel
Eliors critical edition, Hekhalot Zuarti, Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, Supplement 1,
1982 (Hebrew). For Ma aseh Merkavah, I provide references also to the paragraphs of Scho-
lems critical edition based on two manuscripts, Jewish Gnosticism, Appendix C, 10117. For
3Enoch, I refer also to Alexanders translation, 3Enoch. For the Ozhayah fragment (T.-S.
K 21.95.C), I follow Schfer, Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 6; Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], 1984), 97105. This fragment was also published by Gruenwald, New Pas-
sages from Hekhalot Literature, Tarbiz 38 (196869): 35472, and I have made use of his
edition as well.
There is no single widely accepted definition of the corpus of hekhalot texts. The texts that
appear in the manuscripts printed by Schfer, Synopse, do not overlap completely with those
discussed by Gruenwald, Apocalyptic. Since I treat here all the texts that contain ascents, I shall
avoid any attempt at defining the corpus.
speak of heavens, the hekhalot texts speak of hekhalot, palaces, and only oc-
casionally of heavens.21 Several of the hekhalot texts speak not of ascent to the
chariot, but of descent. Nonetheless, as Scholem points out, what they describe
is in fact ascent.22 The origin of the peculiar terminology is not clear. Scholem
thought that it reflected the influence of the phrase to go down before the ark in
the practice of the synagogue;23 Yosef Dan suggests the influence of Song 6:11,
I went down to the nut orchard, although the evidence for the equation of the
nut orchard with the chariot is later.24
The hekhalot texts frequently refer to ascent (or descent). R. Ishmael said,
All these songs R. Aqiba heard when he descended to the chariot (Hekhalot
Rabbati, #106, 5:3); R. Aqiba said, When I ascended to the chariot (Hekha
lot Zuarti, #348); R. Aqiba said, When I ascended to look upon the Power
(Ma aseh Merkavah, #545, Scholem 2); Elisha b. Abuyah said, When I
ascended into paradise (a passage Schfer calls an Akatriel-Stck, #597);
R. Ishmael said, For this reason R. Aqiba descended to inquire of the chariot
(Merkavah Rabbah, #685).25 These references to ascent remind us that the
descriptions of the heavenly liturgy and the divine throne and the lists of angelic
names presuppose ascent, even when it is not described. Instructions for invoking
angels to descend to reveal the secrets of the Torah play an important part in the
hekhalot texts,26 but all explicit attributions of descriptions of the contents of the
heavens and especially the heavenly liturgy are to human beings who ascend.27
All translations of the hekhalot texts are mine unless otherwise noted. Much of the hekhalot
literature remains untranslated, and my translations are offered as working translations with no
claims for finality.
21Heavens and hekhalot can appear side by side, without integration, as in the section of
qedushah hymns in Hekhalot Rabbati (hekhalot: ##153, 157 [9:2, 9:4 n.23]; heavens: #161
[10:3]). In 3Enoch the two systems are explicitly integrated: the seven hekhalot are located in
the seventh heaven. For discussion of the two traditions, see Alexander, 3Enoch, 1.23940.
22Scholem, Major Trends, 4647. But Scholems theory about the chronology of the de-
velopment of the terminology will have to be revised as his relative chronology of the texts is
called into question by Schfer and others.
23
Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 20 n.1. See also Halperin, Merkabah, 88 n.80, for a sug-
gestion about another example of the influence of synagogue practice on hekhalot literature,
and below, n.71.
24Y. Dan, Three Types of Ancient Jewish Mysticism, The Seventh Annual Rabbi Louis
Feinberg Memorial Lecture in Judaic Studies (University of Cincinnati, April 26, 1984), 34
n.29.
25The only references to descent in the Ozhayah fragment appear in the course of the instruc-
tions for descent, which are discussed below. Because it differs so significantly from the other
hekhalot texts, I discuss 3Enoch separately.
26See Schfer, Engel und Menschen in der Hekhalot-Literatur, Kairos 22 (1980): 21215,
for a discussion of the invocation of angels in the hekhalot literature and of its relationship to
the ascent material.
27In his discussion of the redaction of Hekhalot Rabbati, A. Goldberg, Einige Bemerkun-
gen zu den Quellen und den redaktionellen Einheiten der Grossen Hekhalot, FJB 1 (1973):
10, makes a similar comment in relation to the long section of qedushah hymns in Hekhalot
Yet none of the passages quoted above introduces a full-scale narrative that
describes the process of ascent. The descriptions of ascent in these passages do
not go beyond the words quoted above. The passage from Hekhalot Zuarti,
for example, runs as follows: R. Aqiba said, When I ascended to the chariot,
a divine voice came forth from under the throne of glory, speaking in Aramaic.
What did it say in this language? (#348). The text goes on to report the voices
message. We shall see that in the hekhalot literature outside of 3Enoch, descrip
tions of ascent as opposed to mentions are more or less limited to instructions.
Instructions for Ascent in Hekhalot Zuarti and Hekhalot Rabbati
Hekhalot Zuarti contains a single set of instructions for ascent, placed in the
mouth of the R. Aqiba (#413), who reveals the names of the angels guarding the
gates of the seven palaces (#414), the seals the mystic is to show them (#415),28
and instructions for how to proceed. Regazel29 YHWH the prince has been
placed in command of the first palace. You show him the seal and ring on which
is engraved Aba YHWH God of Israel (#416, MS Munich 22).30 The in-
structions culminate in the formula the mystic should use to request unlimited
power as he sits in Gods lap (##41719).31
A related set of instructions appears in Hekhalot Rabbati in the course of the
story of the descent to the chariot of R. Neuniah b. haQanah.32 From his place
Rabbati (##15297, chs. 914), but then considers the possibility that the information could
also have been revealed through an angel. Now it is true that the claim that the hymns were all
heard by R. Aqiba (#106, 5:3) follows on the shorter group of qedushah hymns earlier in the
work (##94105, 2:55:2), and that there is no explicit reference to descent in relation to the
second group. Still, given the consistent pattern elsewhere, it seems likely that those qedushah
hymns were understood to have been heard by R. Aqiba (or some other hero). See also Schfer,
Engel, 209.
28There is some variation among MSS in the lists of seals. MS N8128 offers a longer version
that includes instructions.

29
I have chosen to transliterate angelic and secret names with vocalization, despite the
guesswork this involves.
30The MS I translate here, Munich 22, is more complete than the other MSS at this point.
The others jump from the first to the sixth palace. Only Munich 22 gives the name Regazel
for the angel in command of the first palace. In the other MSS he is the erosay (or some
variation), who appears at the gate of the first palace in Hekhalot Rabbati (#219, 19:1). The
ellipsis after the prince represents the two words following the prince, which I take to be
a copyists error.
31On this episode, see Halperin, New Edition, 54951. The names used to address God
include phrases drawn from the Song of Songs. Y. Dan, The Chambers of the Chariot (He-
brew), Tarbiz 47 (1978): 4955, considers this text important for understanding the integration
of shi ur qomah and merkavah traditions.
32On this story, see Goldberg, Einige Bemerkungen, 1925, and M. Smith, Observations
on Hekhalot Rabbati, in Biblical and Other Studies (ed. A. Altmann; Studies and Texts 1;
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 14447.
before the throne of glory, R. Neuniah provides his assembled colleagues

with instructions for descent. The only part of R. Neuniahs own descent that
is described is his recall to supply information about the keepers of the gate of
the seventh palace that he had omitted when he stood before the throne. The
instructions form the skeleton of a section of considerable length (##20451,
16:425:1).
As in Hekhalot Zuarti, the instructions describe a series of hostile gatekeepers
to whom seals must be shown:
When you come and stand at the gate of the first palace, take two seals in your two
hands, one of erosay33 YHWH, the God of Israel, and one of Surya the prince of the
presence. Show the one of erosay YHWH to those who stand on the right, and the
one of Surya the prince of the presence to those who stand on the left. (#219, 19:1)
For each of the palaces through the sixth, R. Neuniah offers the same directions
with the appropriate names for each palace (##22024, 19:26).
In his study of the sources and redaction of Hekhalot Rabbati, Arnold Gold-
berg takes the variation between second-person and third-person in the instruc-
tions to indicate separate sources.34 The instructions for gaining entrance from
the gatekeepers quoted above are an example of the second-person type. An ex-
ample of instructions in the third-person appears at the beginning of the section:
When a man wishes to descend to the chariot, he should call on Surya the prince
of the presence and invoke him one hundred twelve times (#204, 16:4).
In Goldbergs view the second-person instructions represent genuine practi-
cal instructions. The third-person instructions provide little practical informa-
tion and can be considered part of a narrative of ascent.35 I am not convinced that
it is more practical to show seals to the keepers of the gates of the seven palaces
than to invoke Surya, the prince of the presence, one hundred and twelve times.
Goldbergs distinction breaks down altogether in the instructions for dealing
with the angel Domiel at the gate of the sixth palace, where the text switches
from second person (##22931, 20:521:1) to third (##23236, 21:222:2),
despite the clear continuity in the description of what will befall the mystic.36
Still Goldberg is correct to point to the fact that third-person instructions
represent a movement toward narrative. The instructions of Hekhalot Zuarti
and the Ozhayah fragment are in the second person, as are those of the magical
papyri. Further, it may be that two sets of instructions have been combined in
Hekhalot Rabbati. When the mystic has been judged worthy by Domiel and Ga-
33This
is the spelling of MS N8128; there are variations in spelling in the other MSS.
34Einige
Bemerkungen, 2528.
35Goldberg, Einige Bemerkungen, 2528; quotation on p. 28. In Goldbergs view these
third-person instructions are intended for interested lay-people (27). I wish that Goldberg had
said more about his picture of the setting of the hekhalot texts.
36Goldberg treats these as separate sources, Einige Bemerkungen, 2528.
briel at the gate of the sixth palace, the keepers of the gate of the seventh palace
put down their weapons and admit him immediately (#236, 22:2). Then after
R. Neuniah has provided the names of the keepers of the gate of the seventh
palace, there appears another description of the passage into the seventh palace
in which the angel Anafiel plays a leading role (##247251, 24:225:1).
Goldberg defines the limits of the material to be classed as instructions quite
narrowly: for him, the lists of guardians of the gates (##207212, 17:27)
represent still another source.37 While the lists are not explicitly called instruc-
tions, their context in Hekhalot Rabbati and comparison with Hekhalot Zuarti
suggest that they should be so understood. Some of the material that appears in
the course of the instructions in Hekhalot Rabbati such as the dramatic descrip-
tions of the terrible guardians of the gate of the seventh palace and their horses
(##21315, 17:818:2) is probably best understood as literary expansion of terse
instructions of the kind found in Hekhalot Zuarti. So the redactor of the sec-
tion of Hekhalot Rabbati drew on practical instructions, but embellished them
as part of the literary effort that resulted in the narrative, however choppy, of R.
Neuniahs descent.
Parallels to Gnostic Literature and the Magical Papyri
Scholem calls the picture of keepers at the gate of each palace,

a Jewish variation on one of the chief preoccupations of the second and third century
gnostics and hermetics: the ascent of the soul from the earth, through the spheres of
the hostile planet-angels and rulers of the cosmos, and its return to its divine home in
the fullness of Gods light.38
To Scholems gnostics and hermetics should be added the authors and users of
the magical papyri.
Often the picture of the gnostic and magical texts corresponds to the picture
of Hekhalot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zuarti in some detail, as the following exam-
ples from a report about a gnostic sect and a magical papyrus indicate. Although
the testimony of the Ophites themselves has not survived, we learn about their
beliefs on this subject from Origens response to Celsus. When Celsus attacks
Christians who have wretchedly learnt by heart the names of the doorkeepers,
Origen claims that it is the Ophites rather than true Christians who are the proper
object of Celsus scorn (Contra Celsum 7.40).39
37Goldberg,
Einige Bemerkungen, 2930.
38Scholem,
Major Trends, 49. On the gnostics and hermetics, see H. Jonas, The Gnostic
Religion (2nd ed.; Boston: Beacon, 1963), 16669, and K. Rudolph, Gnosis (trans. and ed. R.
McL. Wilson; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 17180.
39Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1953), 427.
In response to another of Celsus charges, Origen provides an account of

what the Ophite was to say as he ascended through the heavens (Contra Celsum
6.31). At each gate the initiate tells the archon who rules there that he holds the
appropriate symbol (symbolon).40
In his notes to Contra Celsum, Henry Chadwick takes the symbol as an
amulet, distinct from the password the initiate is to speak,41 parallel perhaps to
the seal and ring of Hekhalot Zuarti. Yet in a similar context in the magical
papyrus that Dieterich published as the Mithras Liturgy, symbolon clearly refers
to words. When the hostile gods rush at him, the initiate is instructed to cry out,
Silence, silence, silence, the sign (symbolon) of the living, incorruptible god.42
Alone among the apocalypses, the Ascension of Isaiah contains a parallel to
the gatekeepers and seals. In Isaiahs vision of Christs descent to earth, Christ
disguises himself so that he will not be recognized in the five lower heavens. In
the three lowest heavens and at the firmament, the gatekeepers demand from him
a character, which he provides in order to preserve secrecy (10:2331).43 The
angels are not depicted as hostile, but of course they take Christ to be one of their
number. Charles translates character as password,44 but in his note to 10:24
suggests passport as an alternative translation. The picture of the heavens in
this passage stands alone in apocalyptic literature. It has more in common with
the picture of the heavens in gnostic and magical texts than with the picture in
Isaiahs ascent in the same work.45
Whatever the best translation of these related terms, it is clear that the in-
structions for ascent in Hekhalot Zuarti and Hekhalot Rabbati share not only
the broad outlines of their picture, but even specific terminology with gnostic
traditions and magical papyri. In the apocalypses, on the other hand, instances
40The fourth gate has fallen out of the text altogether, and the term symbolon, for no reason
apparent to me, does not appear in the speech for the third gate. Symbol is Chadwicks trans-
lation, Contra Celsum, 34748.
41Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 347 n.1.
42
The text can be found in A. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie (3rd ed.; Leipzig and Berlin:
Teubner, 1923), 6, lines 2122.
43I use the edition of R.H. Charles, The Ascension of Isaiah (London: Adam & Charles
Black, 1900). The term character appears in the Latin version (Charles, Ascension, 132). While
the complete text of the Ascension of Isaiah is preserved only in Ethiopic, the ascent chs.
611 is preserved in Latin and Slavonic as well.
44While Charles usually translates the Ethiopic, his note to 10:24 suggests that he was here
influenced by the Latin (Ascension, 73). J. Fleming and H. Duensing, The Ascension of Isa-
iah, in New Testament Apocrypha (ed. E. Hennecke, W. Schneemelcher, and R. McL. Wilson;
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965), 2.64263, and M.A. Knibb, The Martyrdom and Ascension
of Isaiah, OTP 2.14376, also translate password.
45This seems to me an important piece of evidence for separate sources. It seems likely that
Isaiahs ascent draws on a Jewish apocalypse (M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic
Form in Jewish and Christian Literature [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1983], 13637, 156 n.56).
of angelic hostility toward human beings are rare.46 In the Book of the Watchers
and 2Enoch, Enochs fear and trembling (1En. 14:24, 2 En. 21:24) are the
result not of angelic hostility toward human beings who ascend to heaven but
of awe before the divine throne. Usually angels serve the visionary as guide and
comforter in the face of the terrible holiness of the heavens.
Even in the Ascension of Isaiah when Isaiah is challenged as he enters the
seventh heaven by a voice that cries, How far will he ascend that dwelleth in
the flesh? (9:1),47 it is hostility of a different kind from that of the gatekeepers.
The challenge to Isaiahs right to ascend is close to the angelic opposition to
the ascent of human beings in rabbinic literature, where the angels are jealous
because of Gods preference for human beings.48
Just as God sides with the human beings in rabbinic literature, the angel who
challenges Isaiah in the Ascension of Isaiah is rebuked by Christ. On the other
hand, the gatekeepers of hekhalot literature, who function with Gods approval,
represent genuine obstacles to the mystic, although they receive him graciously
if he proves himself worthy.49
This difference in the attitude of the angels toward ascent by human beings
in the apocalypses and the hekhalot literature can be related to Johann Maiers
observations about the significance of who initiates the ascent for the way the
experience of ascent is understood. Like the prophets, the heroes of the apoca-
lypses are taken to heaven at Gods command. They do nothing to set in motion
the process of ascent. Their response to the heavenly realm is awe and perhaps
even fear, but they are not in danger.50 The hekhalot literature, on the other hand,
provides instructions for human beings who choose to embark on the journey to
the divine chariot. For them the way is full of dangers.51
Maier argues that in some circles during the period of the Second Temple
heaven comes to be understood as a temple, indeed as the true temple of which
the temple on earth is only a copy.52 In the Bible, the cult is the only arena in
which human beings initiate their encounter with God. The priestly source in the
Torah makes it clear that the cult is fraught with danger for those who are not fit
or who err in its performance.53 The danger of the descent to the chariot, located
in the heavenly temple, should be understood against the background of this
46The accuser who confronts Zephaniah in the Apocalypse of Zephaniah 6 is one such angel.
47Charles, Ascension of Isaiah.
48P. Schfer, Rivalitt zwischen Engeln und Menschen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975), 12735.
49See Schfer, Engel, 20205.
50J. Maier, Das Gefhrdungsmotiv bei der Himmelsreise in der jdischen Apokalyptik und
Gnosis, Kairos 5 (1963): 2224.

51Maier, Gefhrdungsmotiv, 2830.
52J. Maier, Vom Kultus zur Gnosis (Kairos: Religionswissenschaftliche Studien 1; Salzburg:
Otto Mueller, 1964), 10648; see also Maier, Gefhrdungsmotiv.

53Maier, Gefhrdungsmotiv, 1922.
danger. Maiers argument provides an explanation for the differences between

the apocalypses and the hekhalot literature observed here.
There is a striking difference between the goals of ascent in Hekhalot Zuarti
and Hekhalot Rabbati. In Hekhalot Zuarti, the instructions for ascent culminate
in the proper words to use in asking for what Halperin calls a blank check
signed with all of Gods names.54 In Hekhalot Rabbati there are two conclu-
sions to the descent, probably as the result of a combination of sources.55 In
the first, the keepers of the gate of the seventh palace lead the mystic to a place
among the cherubim, ofanim, and holy creatures before the throne of glory
(#236, 22:2). The second conclusion comes after the return to the story of R.
Neuniah b. haQanah in which R. Neuniah supplies more information about the
keepers of the gate of the seventh palace. The mystic is again brought before the
throne of glory, and here he begins to sing the song of the throne (#251, 25:1). I
shall argue below in the section on ascent by song that by singing the song of
the heavenly beings the visionary shows that he has become one of their number.
The problem of the relationship between magic that attempts to achieve
practical ends and mysticism that aims only at the contemplation of the king in
his beauty has been considered in one way or another by many students of the
hekhalot literature.56 To a certain extent the issues reflect a theologically condi-
tioned distinction between magic and true religion. Literature like the hekhalot
texts or the magical papyri, where what we usually call religious experience
is inextricably intertwined with the pursuit of practical ends, shows just how
problematic such a distinction is. Together with the pursuit of worldly gain, the
companionship of the gods and deification, for example, figure prominently as
goals in some of the magical papyri.57
Yet it is true that some sections of the hekhalot texts are concerned with spe-
cific practical goals while others are more interested in the heavenly liturgy, the
ceremonial of the heavenly court, and the divine throne and its occupant. And
it is clear that discomfort with magic is by no means an exclusively modern de-
velopment. Thus the editor of 3Enoch chose to exclude theurgy from his work.
While none of the other hekhalot texts show a coherence comparable to that of
3Enoch, some individual sections, like the account of R. Neuniahs descent in
54Halperin,
New Edition, 549.
55See Smith, Observations, 146.
56See e.g., Scholem, Major Trends, 5051; Smith, Observations, 14960; Gruenwald,
Apocalyptic, 10211; Schfer, Engel, 21415; Halperin, New Edition, 54951.

57On the nature of the distinction, see A.F. Segal, Hellenistic Magic: Some Questions of
Definition, in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on

the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (ed. R. van den Broek and M.J. Vermaseren; Leiden: Brill,
1981), 34951. On the experience desired and described in the magical papyri, see Segal, Hel-
lenistic Magic, 35355, 36770, and M. Smith, Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1978), 96107, 12426, 13137. This is my reading of the implications of the material,
not Smiths.
Hekhalot Rabbati, have received such conscious editing. So it is probably not

accidental that both of the endings to the instructions for descent in this section,
in contrast to the conclusion of the instructions in Hekhalot Zuarti, find the
mystic in the company of the heavenly host without any suggestion of material
gain. But the editor of this section was not as sensitive to magic as the editor of
3Enoch, for he did not find the procedure for descent with its secret passwords
and hostile gatekeepers offensive.
Instructions in the Ozhayah Fragment
In a fragment from the Geniza the angel Ozhayah offers a remarkable set of in-
structions for descent to the sixth and seventh palaces (2a/232b/24).58 It appears
that the complete text included the other palaces as well.59
The instructions in the Geniza fragment share certain basic motifs with Hek
halot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zuarti. They refer to a great seal, from which
all the hostile angels recoil, thus preserving the mystic from harm (2a/3738).
It is possible that the missing portions of the text described a regular process
of providing the proper seal to the keepers of each of the gates. As in Hekhalot
Rabbati and Hekhalot Zuarti, there is an ordeal at the gate of the sixth palace,
although it is not an encounter with hostile guards but rather with the fires that
rage and issue forth from the seventh palace into the sixth palace (2a/3941).
While the gatekeepers of the other palaces are not mentioned, the keepers of the
gate of the seventh palace are described as terrifying, wielding their weapons
(2b/810). The culmination of this descent is the sight of great exaltedness and
clear beauty (2a/48).
Perhaps the most striking thing about the instructions for descent in this frag-
ment is the emphasis on the terror experienced by the visionary and the vividness
with which it is described. After instructing the mystic to stand to the side to
avoid the fire at the gate of the sixth palace (2a/4041), Ozhayah tells him how
to endure the noise of the fire.60
58Schfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 1025. Schfers 2a is Gruenwald, New Passages, A/1;
Schfers 2b is Gruenwalds A/2. The line numbers are the same in both editions.
59Ozhayah says that he has taught his student about the first palace (2a/2324), and at
the conclusion of the instructions for descent, R. Ishmael says, Thus I did in the first palace
through the seventh palace (2b/18). See Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 188. The last line quoted
must mean that R. Ishmael is the recipient of Ozhayahs revelation.
60It is not entirely clear from the immediate context that it is the noise of the fire that is
meant, but the mention of the noise of the fire at the end of this section (2a/49) suggests that
this is the intended reference.
If you are standing, sit,61 and if you are sitting, lie down, and if you are lying on your
back, lie face down, and if you are lying face down, stick your fingernails and your
toenails into the ground of the firmament. And stick cotton in your ears and cotton in
your nose and cotton in your anus so that your breath will stay in and not go out until
I reach you. And I will come and stand by you and fan you, and your spirit will return
and your soul will live. (2a/4346)62
Here in the only instructions in the hekhalot texts revealed by an angel rather
than by a human being, we find the angel acting in the role of guide so important
in the apocalypses.63 This role is given considerable emphasis in the fragment,
for the description of the terrors that await the mystic serves to increase the
importance of the guide.
I make the paths to the chariot like light, and the highways of heaven like the sun, not as
[for] some64 who came before you, who found them65 the occasion for terrible failure.
For they were like a man who goes astray in the great wilderness, and a path took him
and went until it threw him into a forest full [of beasts]. And he went and found there66
many lairs of lions and lion cubs, and many dens of tigers, and many dwelling places
of wolves. And he went and stood among them and did not know what to do. And one
attacked him and tore at him, and another attacked him and dragged him. So [it was for]
your companions, who descended before you. I swear to you this boast,67 my friend,
one hundred times did they drag b. Zoma at the first palace, and I am your witness that
I counted the times they dragged him and his companions . (2a/2732)
Thus Ozhayah claims to provide the mystic with better advice than the four who
entered paradise (b. ag. 14b) had received. Ozhayah then gives the figures for
the number of times ben Zoma and his companions were dragged in the course
of their passage through all of the heavenly palaces (2a/3234).
The Geniza fragment knew Hekhalot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zuarti,68 and
the instructions for descent show important similarities to those in both these
texts, but they also differ significantly. They are the only instructions for ascent
or descent revealed by an angel. The angel Ozhayah appears nowhere else in so
prominent a role.69 In Ozhayahs instructions the test is located at the gate of the
61
Gruenwald (New Passages, p. 360, note to A/1:43) supplies sit, which is missing in
the text; Schfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 110, accepts Gruenwalds emendation.
62I have consulted Gruenwalds translation, Apocalyptic, 190, which covers only part of the
passage I translate.
63For a brief treatment of other instances of angels serving as guides in the hekhalot litera-
ture, see Schfer, Engel, 20406.

64The text uses the singular here, but switches to plural at For they (2a/2728).
65With Schfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 110, I follow Gruenwalds emendation (New Passage,
358, note to A/1:27).

66I follow Gruenwalds emendation (New Passage, 358, note to A/1:28).
67I am not sure how to translate ga avah zo (2a/31).
68Gruenwald, New Passages, 355.
69For another appearance see Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 5354. The passage he cites ap-
pears in Schfer, Synopse, #501, but the name Ozhayah appears only in MS N8128 (Scholems
MS J.Th. Sem. 828), not in MS O1531 (Scholems MS Oxford 1531).
sixth palace, like the one in Hekhalot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zuarti, but the tests
themselves are quite different. The names of the angels associated with each of
the palaces have not been standardized from text to text. This diversity suggests
small circles of mystics operating independently of other such circles, shaping
common traditions in different ways. Unfortunately we know too little to be able
to chart the development through time or the influence of geographical distance
on differences among the texts. At this stage it is not even possible to say whether
it is mere accident that Hekhalot Rabbati and Hekhalot Zuarti were transmitted,
while the Ozhayah fragment was not.70
Tests without Contexts
Finally, an investigation of instructions for ascent must take into account the
descriptions of two tests the mystic faces. These appear without any larger
context in slightly different forms in Hekhalot Rabbati (##25859, 26:12) and
Hekhalot Zuarti (##4079). In the first of the tests, angels invite the mystic to
enter the palace. The worthy mystic does not enter until he has been invited a
second time.71 The unworthy mystic enters at the first invitation72 and is met
with violence.73
The second test is the famous water test at the gate of the sixth palace.74 This
is a test of the mystics ability to perceive correctly the splendor of the marble of
70We will be better able to discuss this question when there has been time to absorb the
implications of Schfers Geniza-Fragmente. As Schfer points out, however, there may be

important material from the Geniza not included in this collection (7).
71Halperin, Merkabah, 88 n.80, suggests a parallel in synagogue practice.
72This according to Hekhalot Zuarti (#407), which must be correct. Hekhalot Rabbati
(#258, 26:1) says that the angels tell the mystic not to enter, and he enters anyway. But this
destroys the point of the test, which surely is intended to require of the mystic more than obedi-
ence to explicit angelic commands.
73
The nature of the violence differs in the two accounts. In Hekhalot Zuarti (#407) the
mystic is thrown into a burning river, while in Hekhalot Rabbati (#258, 26:1), he is attacked
with axes of iron. (See A. Goldberg, Der verkannte Gott: Prfung und Scheitern der Adepten
in der Merkawamystik, ZRGG 26 [1974]: 21, for the translation axes rather than bars as in
Scholem, Major Trends, 53. Both Goldberg and Scholem discuss the punishment for failing the
second test. Axes fit the picture of armed guards better.) In this punishment as elsewhere in these
tests, Hekhalot Zuarti has what is probably the original reading. The punishment in Hekhalot
Rabbati can be explained as duplication of the punishment in the second test.
74There is a considerable literature about this test. See, for example, Scholem, Major Trends,
5253; Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 1416; Urbach, Traditions, 1517; Goldberg, Der ver-
kannte Gott, 1729; and Schfer, The New Testament and Hekhalot Literature: The Journey
into Heaven in Paul and in Merkavah Mysticism, JJS 35 (1984): 2832.
I shall not consider the larger body of passages in the hekhalot literature explicitly related to
the story of the four who entered paradise. On the passages in Hekhalot Zuarti, see Halperin,
New Edition, 54649.
the sixth palace,75 which appears like countless drops of water, or at least to re-
strain the inappropriate question, What kind of waters are these? If the mystic
cannot hold back the question, the angels condemn him as one whose ancestors
kissed the golden calf and attack him with iron axes.76
In the version of the story of the four who entered paradise in b. ag. 14b, R.
Aqiba offers the cryptic warning, When you come to the place of the shining
marble stones, do not say, Water, water. On the basis of the description of
the second test in Hekhalot Zuarti, Scholem argued that the later Merkabah
mystics showed a perfectly correct understanding of the meaning of this pas-
sage.77 Scholems point is that R. Aqiba is referring to a real danger the
mystic faces during ascent. He is not claiming that the baraita in the Babylonian
Talmud refers to the passage in Hekhalot Zuarti, but rather that the baraita
stands in the same tradition as the passage in Hekhalot Zuarti.78
The account in Hekhalot Zuarti continues by insisting that as long as the
mystic manages to avoid asking the question about the waters, he will not be
harmed even if he is not really worthy. For the angels will judge him on the side
of merit, saying, If he were unworthy to see the king in his beauty, how could he
have entered the six palaces? (#409).79
Against Scholem, who claimed that R. Aqibas warning in b. ag. 14b was to
be understood as an allusion to a test in the course of ascent of the kind described
in the passages discussed above, Urbach and Halperin argue that the description
of the test in the hekhalot literature represents exegesis of the talmudic passage.80
But the existence of several different traditions that place tests at the gate of the
sixth palace suggests that such a test was a common feature in the description of
75No marble is mentioned in Hekhalot Rabbati (#259, 26:2), but the marble is necessary
to the test.
76Goldberg, Der verkannte Gott, 2426, treats the meaning of the comparison to those
who worshipped the golden calf.

77Scholem, Major Trends, 52. As Halperin points out (New Edition, 547), Scholem refers
to the parallel in Hekhalot Rabbati only in a note (Major Trends, 361 n.47).
78Scholem, Major Trends, 5253. Compare Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 8788. As Schfer
notes (New Testament, 31 n.71), Gruenwald here reads Scholem too literally and thus thinks
that his own position differs from Scholems.
79The apparently causative form of the verb to ask in all but one of the MSS is peculiar.
The scribe of MS Munich 22 seems to have shared my understanding of the passage, for he
eliminates the m of the causative, leaving the qal ask.
80Urbach, Traditions, 16; Halperin, Merkabah, 88 n.80. Halperin offers his opinion cau-
tiously, and later (92), he again entertains the other possibility. Part of Halperins argument is
that the water test is the only test in the hekhalot literature that creates a vivid impression (88
n.80). Vividness is obviously a matter of opinion. While the test in the R. Neuniah section of
Hekhalot Rabbati may be too long and involved to qualify as vivid, the test in the Ozhayah frag-
ment seems to me extremely vivid because of the description of the mystics terror. Of course,
the Ozhayah fragment presupposes the story of the four who entered paradise in the allusion to
ben Zoma and his companions, but the test at the gate of the sixth palace is quite distinct from
the water test. Thus while the Ozhayah fragment must be later than the baraita, its own test at
the gate of the sixth palace can hardly be read as a development of the baraita.
the process of ascent, not restricted to a single text or circle. Thus the parallels
strengthen Scholems view.81
In both Hekhalot Zuarti and Hekhalot Rabbati, the account of the first test
is presented as a midrash on Ezek 1:27, I saw something like electrum. But
there is no obvious relationship between the verse from Ezekiel and the first
test. The verse probably belongs with the second test with its glittering marble.82
The midrashic presentation is unusual for the hekhalot literature and deserves
further discussion.83
In Hekhalot Zuarti the two tests are described one after the other without any
attempt to place them in relation to each other.84 In Hekhalot Rabbati (#259,
26:2), the second test is introduced by the conjunction mipnei, because. This
effort to develop a connection between the two tests treats the second test as a
continuation of the first.
The original context for each of these tests must have been instructions for
ascent. It seems likely that the test of being invited to enter was originally lo-
cated at the gate of the sixth palace like the other tests we have seen. When the
accounts of the tests were detached from their contexts and brought together, the
fact that both were supposed to take place at the same gate would have become
problematic, and the mention of location may have been edited out of the first
test in order to make the transition to the water test less awkward.85
Ascent by Song
Instructions for ascent quite different from those examined until now appear
in Hekhalot Rabbati and Ma aseh Merkavah. Hekhalot Rabbati begins with R.
Ishmaels question, What are the songs that one who wishes to look upon the
sight of the chariot, to descend in peace and to ascend in peace, should recite?
(#81, 1:1). After a list of the benefits attached to such a journey, R. Ishmael asks
again, What is the special quality86 of the songs that a man sings to descend to
the chariot? (#94, 2:5). This question is followed by a long series of hymns,
most of which conclude with the trishagion (##94106, 2:55:3).
81This is also Schfers opinion, New Testament, 31.

82So
too Goldberg, Einige Bemerkungen, 2627 n.32.
83Gruenwald notes this feature in passing and suggests that it may constitute an indepen-
dent Merkavah-midrash (Apocalyptic, 77 n.13). He does not develop this idea further.
84Compare Goldberg, who does not, however, refer at all to Hekhalot Zuarti (Einige
Bemerkungen, 26).
85Goldberg, (Der verkannte Gott, 23) thinks that the water test may have come to be as-
sociated with the sixth gate only because of traditions of placing tests at sixth gate.
86Hefresh, literally, difference.
Morton Smith takes these songs as spells and points to similar use of the terms
carmina in Latin and epoidai in Greek.87 We have already seen that parallels to
the instructions for ascent through the carefully guarded gates of the palaces ap-
pear in the magical papyri. We have also seen that many of the magical papyri
manifest interests that cannot be called merely practical. So it would not be
surprising to find that another practice of the hekhalot literature can be illumined
by the magical papyri.
Yet I think that there is reason to argue for a somewhat different background
for ascent by song in the hekhalot literature. At the end of the series of hymns
to be used to descend to the chariot, R. Ishmael says, All these songs R. Aqiba
heard when he descended to the chariot, and he took hold of88 them and learned
them [as he stood] before the throne of glory, [the songs] that His ministers were
singing before Him (#106, 5:3). So too in the Apocalypse of Abraham the song
Abraham recites during his ascent turns out to be the hymn sung by the creatures
of Gods throne (17:518:3).
The background to this picture of the visionary joining the heavenly host
in song is the prophetic claim to participation in the divine council.89 For the
prophets the council is conceived as a royal court, and the angels who attend
God are his courtiers. By the time of the Book of the Watchers in the third cen-
tury B.C.E., another picture of heaven has emerged heaven as temple. This
picture has roots in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 and 811. In this picture the angels
are heavenly priests and Levites.90
In the centuries after the Book of the Watchers, the songs that had become part
of the temple service in the period of the Second Temple appear prominently
in the heavenly service of the apocalypses.91 The picture of heaven as temple
blends easily with the picture of heaven as royal court, and motifs from both
pictures stand side by side in many of the apocalypses.
The picture of heaven as temple is by no means restricted to the apocalypses as
a genre. A particularly striking description of the service in the heavenly temple
87Smith, Observations, 142.

88The
verbal root tfs, grasp, appears rather frequently in this literature. See, for example,
Hekhalot Zuarti (#413) and the Ozhayah fragment (2a/38).
89On the divine council, see F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 18688, and E.T. Mullen, Jr., The Assembly of the
Gods (HSM 24; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980), 20926.
90On this transformation, see Maier, Kultus, 10648; Nickelsburg, Enoch, 57682; Him-
melfarb, From Prophecy to Apocalypse: The Book of the Watchers and Tours of the Heavens,
in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible to the Middle Ages (ed. A. Green; New York: Crossroad,
1986).
91See, e.g., 2Enoch 79, Testament of Levi 3, Parables of Enoch (1Enoch) 40, Apocalypse
of Abraham 18, Ascension of Isaiah 79, Apocalypse of Zephaniah 8, 3Baruch 1115. These
references are by no means complete.
appears in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice from Qumran.92 This remarkable
text consists of thirteen songs for the first thirteen sabbaths of the year that
describe in dizzying detail the furnishings of the heavenly temple, the angelic
priests and their vestments, and the heavenly liturgy, the words of praise spoken
by the angels in heaven.
The significance of singing the song of the angels in the apocalypses is made
clear in the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, where the
visionarys ability to join the angels in their song shows that he has achieved
a status equal to theirs.93 In the Ascension of Isaiah, each of the seven heavens
contains angels offering hymns of praise to God. As Isaiah ascends, the glory
of [his] appearance was undergoing transformation (7:25),94 and in the seventh
heaven, he becomes like an angel (9:30). In the sixth and seventh heavens, Isaiah
is able to join the angels in their praise (8:17, 9:33).
A passage from the Apocalypse of Zephaniah makes the relationship between
angelic song and angelic status explicit. After he has endured his confrontation
with the accuser and been found worthy, Zephaniah reports, Thousands and
thousands and myriads of myriads of angels gave praise before me. I, myself,
put on an angelic garment. I saw all of those angels praying. I, myself, prayed
together with them, I knew their language, which they spoke with me (8:24).95
For the apocalypses (and also for 3Enoch) the words of the hymns are not
important because their heroes are the great heroes of the tradition. They do
not require particular techniques to achieve ascent, for they are summoned to
heaven. The Apocalypse of Abraham is a partial exception; while Abraham is
taken to heaven at Gods command (12:10), he recites a heavenly hymn in the
course of ascent. In other apocalypses the genesis of the ascent may be described
in terms that suggest known practices like dream incubation (1Enoch 14) or
trance (Ascension of Isaiah 6). Still there is no assumption that readers will at-
tempt to replicate the experience. But the hekhalot literature is intended for an
audience of potential ascenders who need to know the right words to say to be
like the angels: thus the great volume of hymns quoted in works like Hekhalot
Rabbati and Ma aseh Merkavah.
92C. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (HSS 27; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1985).
93My colleague John Gager suggests that this imagery may reflect the power of music which
plays a role in ecstatic experience in other settings. This suggestion merits further consideration
in relation to what is known of liturgical practice in early Judaism (and early Christianity).
94Charles, Ascension of Isaiah.
95O.S. Wintermute, The Apocalypse of Zephaniah, OTP 1.497515.
Ascent in Ma aseh Merkavah
Ma aseh Merkavah begins, R. Ishmael said, I asked R. Aqiba the prayer that a
man should pray when he ascends to the chariot The prayer follows (#544,
Scholem 1). After a description of the fiery angels, rivers, and bridges that he
saw in the course of his ascent (##54546, Scholem 23), R. Aqiba provides the
words of the prayer that allowed him to look upon the knot of Gods phylactery
(##54750, Scholem 45). This is followed by more hymns (#551, Scholem5)
and further description of the fiery chariots of each heaven and their liturgy
(##55455, Scholem 6).96
While most descriptions of the angelic liturgy in the hekhalot texts limit them-
selves to the seventh palace, Ma aseh Merkavah describes the praise offered by
the fiery chariots in each palace.
In the first palace chariots of fire say, Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Hosts, the whole world
is full of his glory. And the flames of their fires disperse and gather in the second pal-
ace and say, Holy, holy holy, Lord of hosts, the whole world is full of his glory. In the
second palace chariots of fire say, Blessed is the glory of the Lord from its place. And
the flames of their fires too disperse and gather in the third palace and say, Blessed is
the glory of the Lord from its place. (#555, Scholem 6)
These heavenly hymns use the same set phrases as the prayers of ascent in
the first part of Ma aseh Merkavah, phrases that come from the liturgy of the
synagogue.97 Thus there is no theurgic power inherent in the hymns. Rather,
by reciting them, the initiate becomes like the angels, and it is this that makes
ascent possible. If Altmanns reading is correct, this attitude even finds explicit
expression: The holy ones and I shall sanctify your name (#551, Scholem 5).98
96##552553 appear only in MS Munich 22; they consist of hymns spoken by Rabbi Ish-
mael.
97A. Altmann, Kedushah Hymns in the earliest Hechaloth Literature (From an Oxford MS)
(Hebrew), Melilah 2 (1946): 2. A list of recurrent phrases appears on 4. Altmann also discusses
the relationship of the hymns in Ma aseh Merkavah to the history of the different forms of the
qedushah in the synagogue liturgy (48).
98This sentence appears in the course of a version of the Aleinu, We must [praise the Lord of
all]. In Ma aseh Merkavah, the prayer begins in the first person singular, alai, I must. The
prayer then moves back and forth between singular and plural. Three of the five manuscripts
that Schfer prints in the Synopse (Oxford, Munich 40, and Dropsie) avoid at least some of the
problems by an ellipsis that omits roughly the first half of the prayer as it appears in the liturgy
of the synagogue. Altmann, who wrote before Scholems edition of Ma aseh Merkavah, took
qedoshim as a substantive, holy ones, that is, angels (Kedushah Hymns, 5). It is clear from
the line division of his edition that Scholem understood qedoshim as an adjective modifying
ages in the preceding verse. But the use of holy with ages in the idiom le olmei olamim
is odd.
Altmanns understanding is also not without problems. In MS Oxford, the only manuscript
Altmann used, the verb in our sentence is a first-person singular imperfect. In biblical Hebrew
it is not uncommon for the predicate of a compound subject to agree with the noun that stands
closest to it when the predicate precedes the subject. From the point of view of biblical Hebrew,
At the end of Ma aseh Merkavah we find songs that have turned into spells.
R. Neuniah b. haQanah hears R. Ishmael reciting the names of the angels at
the gate of each palace, not for [his] own praise, but for the glory of the king
of the universe (#586, Scholem 26). R. Neuniah then reveals to R. Ishmael
five prayers that contain the twelve letters of Gods name (##58691, Scholem
2631). Here the mode of ascent hinges not on the correspondence between the
prayer and the heavenly liturgy, but on the magical powers of the prayers. This
section is associated with R. Ishmael and R. Neuniah b. haQanah rather than R.
Ishmael and R. Aqiba, and unlike the rest of Ma aseh Merkavah it makes refer-
ence to the angels at the gates. It is tempting to see some kind of chronological
development, a movement from the apocalypses idea of fellowship with the
angels expressed in singing the angelic liturgy with them to the magical use of
secret names of God and the seals for each gate. But this is perhaps to oversim-
plify the complex relations among the different elements of the hekhalot texts.
3Enoch
With its use of Enoch traditions known from 1Enoch and 2Enoch, 3Enoch has
a particularly close relationship to the apocalypses. It is also the best candidate
of all the hekhalot texts considered here to be understood as a coherently con-
the agreement here is unusual because the predicate follows the subject. But of course the He-
brew of the hekhalot texts is not biblical Hebrew.
MS New York 8128 does not contain the words le olmei olamim qedoshim, so there the
sentence in question reads, And I shall sanctify your great, glorious, and wonderful name.
The evidence of the other MSS printed by Schfer supports MS Oxford. MS Munich 40 and
MS Dropsie agree with MS Oxford, while MS Munich 22 contains a masculine singular parti-
ciple rather than an imperfect verb. The meaning is the same. It is perhaps significant that MS
Munich 22 omits le olmei olamim. Immediately before ani veqedoshim it reads, vetimlokh
le olam va ed, followed by two dots.
I like Altmanns understanding because it fits so well the message of the text. On linguistic
grounds I think it is no more problematic than Scholems. Altmann (5) offers another example
of what he takes to be a similarly explicit statement of this idea, drawn from a prayer that R.
Neuniah teaches R. Ishmael as a means to protect himself from hostile angels as he stands
before the throne. At the end of the prayer in the course of a series of first person singular verbs
of praise, MS Oxford reads, As it is written, I called, Holy, holy, holy (#569, Scholem 16).
Of course the biblical verse introduced by the formula, as it is written, reads not I called
(first-person singular), but each [angel] called (third-person singular). MS New York quotes
the verse properly in the third-person singular, while MSS Munich 40 and Munich 22 eliminate
the first part of the verse, quoting only Holy, holy, holy. The entire citation is absent from MS
Dropsie. While the reading of MS Oxford is perhaps the lectio difficilior, it can also be explained
as a scribal error caused by the series of first-person singular verbs that precede the verse. To
make such a change purposely, not in a later prayer, but in a biblical verse introduced by the
formula for quoting from the Bible, is quite a radical step. Thus I am not inclined to accept
Altmanns view of this passage.
ceived whole.99 It comes closest to the apocalypses in its narrative form, and so
its differences from the apocalypses are particularly revealing.
The ascents of both R. Ishmael and Enoch are described in 3Enoch, although
the accounts are quite brief compared to those in works like 2Enoch.
Rabbi Ishmael said:
When I ascended to the height to behold the vision of the chariot, I entered six palaces,
one inside the other, and when I reached the door of the seventh palace I paused in
prayer before the Holy One, blessed be he; I looked up and said: Lord of the Universe,
grant, I beseech you, that the merit of Aaron, son of Amram, lover of peace and pursuer
of peace, who received on Mount Sinai the crown of priesthood in the presence of your
glory, may avail for me now so that Prince Qapi el, and the angels with him, may
not prevail over me and cast me from heaven. At once the Holy One, blessed be he,
summoned to my aid his servant, the angel Mearon, Prince of the Divine Presence.
He flew out to meet me with great alacrity, to save me from their power. He grasped
me with his hand before their eyes and said to me, Come in peace into the presence
of the high and exalted King to behold the likeness of the chariot. Then I entered the
seventh palace (##12, 1:16).100
Enochs translation is described even more briefly.

When the Holy One, blessed be he, desired to bring me up to the height, he sent me
Prince Anapi el YHWH and he took me from their midst, before their very eyes,
and he conveyed me in great glory on a fiery chariot, with fiery horses and glorious
attendants, and he brought me up with the ekinah to the heavenly heights (#9, 6:1).101
Even more important than the relative length of the descriptions of the ascents
is the fact that there is little in 3Enoch beyond these brief notices to carry on
the fiction of travel through the heavens. The descriptions of the angelic hosts
and of the heavenly liturgy that make up chs. 1740 (##2158) are related to
the ascent narratives only by the formula at the beginning of each chapter, R.
Ishmael said, The angel Mearon, Prince of the Divine Presence, said to me.
In the apocalypses, the sights of heaven are revealed as the visionary travels
about the heavens. Clearly R. Ishmaels ascent validates or gives added prestige
to the revelation, but the mechanics of the revelation, an angel speaking to a
human being, by no means requires a heavenly setting. Nor is the potential for
the visionary to see for himself inherent in ascent exploited in most of 3Enoch.
Comparison of 3Enoch with the Apocalypse of Abraham is instructive. In
the Apocalypse of Abraham, unlike 2Enoch, the visionary ascends directly to
the seventh heaven without stops in each of the lower heavens. This suits the
interests of the Apocalypse of Abraham, which has little to say about the lower
heavens but contains the most elaborate vision of the chariot throne in all of
99Masekhet Hekhalot, not discussed here because it does not include an ascent, also shows
a more unified conception. See Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 20912.

100All quotations from 3Enoch are from Alexanders translation, 3Enoch.
101Another brief version of Enochs ascent appears in ch. 7 (#10).
apocalyptic literature. In 3Enoch also the primary interest is in the seventh pal-
ace, located in the seventh heaven according to 3Enochs harmonizing schema.
Still 3Enoch includes lists of the angels and descriptions of angelic activity in
the lower heavens, and these could have been described as stops on a tour of all
of the heavens.
Only in 3Enoch 4148 (##5870) is there some hint of a narrative context for
Metatrons revelations. These chapters open with the same formula as the earlier
chapters, but after the revelation, another formula appears, I went with him and
he took me by the hand, bore me up on his wings, and showed me .102 This
last section of 3Enoch consists of revelations about cosmology and the fate of
souls after death, subjects that are important to the apocalyptic tradition about
Enoch but that receive little attention in the hekhalot literature. If these chapters
reflect the influence of the Enoch traditions of the apocalypses, especially the
tour to the ends of the earth in the Book of the Watchers (1Enoch 1736), the
more developed narrative is perhaps also to be explained by the influence of
these traditions.103
Thus 3Enoch, while clearly drawing on the apocalypses and even consciously
attempting to imitate them, represents a stage in which narrative has become
less important. Concentration on the seventh heaven is one factor in this de-
velopment. If 3Enoch stands at the end of the hekhalot tradition, as has often
been suggested,104 the authors acquaintance with other hekhalot texts in which
narrative has all but disappeared may have played a role in the deemphasis of
narrative.
Conclusions
I hope that it is now clear why those who turn to the hekhalot literature inspired
by Scholem are likely to experience a certain amount of confusion. While the
descriptions of the heavenly liturgy and the ceremonial before the divine throne
in the hekhalot literature presuppose ascent, narratives of ascent are usually
confined to two or three-line notices. The only extended descriptions of ascent
take the form of instructions.
One central factor in the diminishing importance of narrative is the concentra-
tion of interest in the seventh palace. Because there is less interest in the contents
of lower palaces, no one bothers to report on the visionarys passage through
them. There is no doubt a close relationship between the movement away from
extended narrative and the fact that so much of hekhalot literature was transmit-
ted in small units joined to other units at a later stage. But this only pushes the
102The formula varies slightly from chapter to chapter; I quote from 41:3 (#59).
103See
Schfer, Engel, 206.
104Schfer, Engel, 22124; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 19192.
question back. If extended narrative had been important to the tradents of these
traditions, they would have transmitted longer units.
The concentration on the seventh palace points to an important difference
between hekhalot literature and the apocalypses. There is a certain diversity to
the contents of the palaces in the hekhalot literature. The texts do not agree on
the names of angels or on the details of what transpires before Gods throne. In
comparison with the apocalypses, however, they present a unified picture. For
the Ascension of Isaiah, the heavens are filled with angels reciting Gods praise,
much as in the hekhalot literature. In 2Enoch, on the other hand, the contents of
the heavens include, in addition to angels singing, cosmological and astronomi-
cal phenomena, paradise and hell, and fallen angels. Such diverse interests ap-
pear only in 3Enoch of the hekhalot texts. In the period of hekhalot literature, in-
dividual eschatology and cosmology are each the subject of a separate literature.105
Perhaps even more significant as parallels to the hekhalot texts than the apoca-
lypses, which Scholem took as their ancestors, are the gnostic texts and magical
papyri. Scholem himself explored the relations between the hekhalot texts and
these bodies of literature, especially in Jewish Gnosticism. There are close links
between instructions for ascent through seven palaces guarded by hostile angelic
gatekeepers in the hekhalot texts and in some gnostic and magical texts; and
there are parallels in outlook between many sections of hekhalot literature with
their blend of practical and mystical concerns and the magical papyri.
The aspects of hekhalot literature that should be understood against the back-
ground of the apocalpses are ascents by means of angelic hymns and the related
descriptions of participation in the divine liturgy. Ultimately both the hekhalot
texts and the apocalypses are indebted to the prophetic understanding of the
divine council and the prophets ability to participate in it. But the hekhalot
texts do not derive their picture directly from prophecy; rather they include de-
velopments from the apocalypses. This sort of continuity is not hard to explain
even in the absence of the tannaitic link. Such broad similarities do not require
literary carriers.
The relationship of 3Enoch to the apocalypses suggests a kind of transmission
different from the relationship of the other hekhalot texts to the apocalypses.
There are individual motifs in apocalyptic literature that reappear in the hekhalot
texts,106 and there are passages in the hekhalot texts that show some important
similarities to the picture of the process of ascent and also to the description of
105On individual eschatology, see, e.g., the Hebrew tours of hell discussed in Himmelfarb,
Tours of Hell, 2934. These are only one specific type of description of life after death. There is
a considerable number of texts among those collected by A. Jellinek in Bet ha-Midrasch (repr.,
Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1967) devoted to the subject. On cosmology, see e.g., Seder Rabba
deBereshit and Midrash Konen, and the discussion of N. Sed, La mystique cosmologique juive
(Paris: Editions de lEcole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 1981). The trend toward
treating these subjects separately deserves further consideration.
106Gruenwalds discussion, Apocalyptic, 2972, treats many such details.
the chariot throne in the Apocalypse of Abraham. But only in 3Enoch is there a
clear debt to specific apocalyptic traditions, the traditions about Enoch. There is
even the possibility of direct literary dependence on the Book of the Watchers in
the chapters at the end of 3Enoch. It is interesting to note that the hekhalot work
with the closest relationship to the apocalypses apparently comes toward the end
of the hekhalot tradition. This phenomenon of the reemergence of motifs from
the literature of the Second Temple period at the end of the talmudic period can
be seen elsewhere as well, but it has yet to be explained.107
Philip Alexander has recently suggested several models for the relationship
between gnosticism and merkavah mysticism and argued that no single model
applies to all aspects of the relationship. Different aspects are best explained by
different models.108 The issues are somewhat different for the apocalypses and
their relationship to hekhalot literature, because the apocalypses are predeces-
sors of the hekhalot texts rather than their contemporaries. But it is equally true
that no single model applies to all the similarities between the apocalypses and
the hekhalot texts.
The hekhalot texts are not simply accounts of what the great rabbis who are
their heroes experienced, but rather, as Gruenwald puts it, technical guides,
or manuals.109 (Third Enoch, as so often, constitutes an exception, both in its
non-rabbinic hero and its non-technical contents.) It is not only that R. Aqibas
experience is of profound interest in itself, but also that it can be used as a model
by those eager to undertake the journey to the divine throne. The choice of great
rabbis for the heroes of the hekhalot texts rather than figures from the Bible as
in the apocalypses has the effect of diminishing the distance between the pro-
tagonist of the text and the reader who wishes to emulate him. Enoch and Isaiah
are surely out of the reach of even the most pious and adept, but R. Aqiba and
R. Ishmael are less so.
The ascent apocalypses are narratives that describe the wonderful adventures
of a biblical hero. Although their authors surely would not have described them
that way, they can be considered works of fiction. There are no clear indications
that they are fictionalized autobiography. It is at least possible that the accounts
of the heros experience are an imaginative development of the prophets de-
scriptions of their experiences. The apocalypses never offer advice about how
to imitate the protagonist in his ascent. Even if the experience of the author or of
someone known to the author stands behind the accounts, there is no attempt to
explain how to achieve the experience. An underlying cause of the differences
107See, e.g., Himmelfarb, R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patri-
archs, AJSR 9 (1984) 5558 (in this volume, 32933).

108P.S. Alexander, Comparing Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism: An Essay in Meth-
od, JJS 35 (1984): 118, esp. 17.

109Apocalyptic, 99.
between ascent in the apocalypses and ascent in the hekhalot texts, then, is that
the apocalypses offer narrative, while the hekhalot texts offer instructions.110
110This paper was written during 1984. I have revised it to note the most important publica-
tions through May 1988, but I have not been able to take account of all the developments in
these works.
I would like to thank John Gager for his helpful comments on this paper and Richard Lim,
my research assistant during the final revisions, for his usual care and accuracy.
16. Revelation and Rapture: The Transformation
ofthe Visionary in the Ascent Apocalypses1
As far as I know, the first person to comment on some of the questions about the
nature of apocalypticism that concerned the Uppsala Colloquium was Baraies
the Teacher, a third-century disciple of Mani. His words are preserved for us in
the Cologne Mani Codex, that remarkable compilation of information about the
life of Mani from the great apostle himself and from his immediate followers.2
Although antiquity is not necessarily an indicator of reliability, I think we have
something to learn from Baraies, who calls our attention to an aspect of many
apocalypses that seems to me quite important but that has been given relatively
little attention.
One of the sections of the Codex attributed to Baraies contains brief citations
from and summaries of five otherwise unknown apocalypses ascribed to some
of the earliest biblical patriarchs: Adam, Seth (here, Sethel), Enosh, Shem, and
Enoch, in that idiosyncratic order, followed by several passages from the letters
of Paul describing his ascent to the third heaven and other revelations to him.3
These excerpts are introduced to make the point that Mani stands in a long line
of spiritual leaders, each at the head of a community like Manis.
1The paper on which this article is based was delivered at a session at the 1989 Annual
Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature to mark the tenth anniversary of the Uppsala Col-
loquium on Apocalypticism. The proceedings of the Uppsala Colloquium were published as
D. Hellholm, ed., Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings
of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 1217, 1979 (2nd ed.;
Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1989).
2The Codex is now available with German translation and notes in L. Koenen and C. Rmer,
Der Klner Mani-Kodex: ber das Werden seines Leibes (Abhandlungen der rheinisch-west-
flischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; Papyrologica Coloniensia 14; Opladen: Westdeutscher
Verlag, 1988). It was originally published and translated by L. Koenen and A. Henrichs, Der
Klner Mani-Codex (P. Colon. inv. nr. 4780). PERI TES GENNES TOU SOMATOS AUTOU,
ZPE 19 (1975): 185; 32 (1978): 87199; 44 (1981): 201318; 48 (1982): 159. The first half of
the Codex has been translated into English in R. Cameron and A.J. Dewey, The Cologne Mani
Codex (P. Colon. inv. nr. 4780): Concerning the Origin of His Body (Texts and Translations
15, Early Christian Literature Series 3; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979).
3At the head of this section, where the attribution should appear, there is a lacuna. For the
attribution to Baraies, whose words appear elsewhere in the Codex as well, see Henrichs and
Koenen, Mani-Kodex, ZPE 19 (1975): 8081 n.80*. As the notes below suggest, the apoca-
lypses attributed to Enosh and Shem seem remarkably similar. I wonder if they are really two
separate texts.
284 16. Revelation and Rapture
Let him who is willing listen and note how each of the forefathers showed his own
revelation (apokalypsis) to his chosen, whom he chose and gathered together in the
generation in which he appeared, and wrote it down to leave to posterity. He made
known to them things having to do with his rapture, and they preached about it to
those outsideSo then during the period and course of his apostleship each one
spoke concerning what he had seen and wrote it down as a memoir and also about his
rapture. (47)4
The apocalypses Baraies cites are not otherwise known to us from canon lists
or quotations.5 They show many points of continuity with the preserved Jew-
ish apocalypses and some of the early Christian ones, but they also exhibit a
number of parallels to gnostic works.6 We tend to assume that the extant Jewish
apocalypses were written in Palestine and Egypt, although there has been some
recent interest in a Babylonian provenance for the earliest Enochic works.7
Could these apocalypses also be Babylonian? This might account both for Bara-
iess knowledge of them and our lack of knowledge, as well as for some of their
peculiar traits. The content of the revelations in the apocalypses Baraies cites is
quite varied, including individual eschatology,8 cosmology,9 angelology,10 and
4Parenthetical references are to pages of the Mani Codex. All translations from the Co-
dex are mine; I have consulted the translations of Koenen-Rmer, Klner Mani-Kodex, and
Cameron-Dewey, Cologne Mani Codex.
5
The Catalogue of Sixty Canonical Books (in New Testament Apocrypha [ed. E. Hennecke
and W. Schneemelcher; trans. R.McL. Wilson; Philadelphia: Westminster press, 1963], 1.51)
mentions an apocryphal book of Adam without any indication of whether it is an apocalypse;
none of the other names found in the Mani Codex appear in the other canon lists published in
Hennecke-Schneemelcher (1.4252). Nor are there any references under these names in M.R.
James, The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament (London: SPCK, and New York: Macmillan,
1920).
Works attributed to Adam, Seth, and Shem appear among the Nag Hammadi tractates, but
it is clear that they are not the apocalypses Baraies quotes. There is a point of contact with the
Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Adam, which describes Adam as an exalted figure like the Adam
of Baraiess apocalypse. But the Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Adam does not contain an as-
cent. The works attributed to Seth and Shem do not show any real parallels to the apocalypses
Baraies quotes.
6
For example, Seth is of course a particularly important figure for some gnostics; both
Enosh and Shem are pondering the nature of creation when their revelations take place (52,
55); the posterity of the Spirit of Truth (55) to whom Enosh hands down his writing has a
gnostic ring to it.
7J.C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS 16; Wash-
ington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Society, 1984).

8Individual eschatology is the primary concern of the passage from the apocalypse of
Enoch, in which Enoch is taken to see the places where the righteous are rewarded and the
wicked punished (5860).
9As noted above, the setting of the revelations of both Enosh and Shem is their consider-
ation of questions having to do with the nature of creation. It therefore seems likely that the
apocalypses include cosmological revelations, although none appears in the material quoted
by Baraies.
10Baraiess summary mentions various types of angels as the subject of the revelation to
Adam (p. 49).

16. Revelation and Rapture 285
a vision of the heavenly throne room,11 but at least as far as I can tell from the
excerpts and summaries, collective eschatology does not appear.
For Baraies, the patriarchs were apostles, like Paul and like Mani, and his
picture of the setting of the apocalypses imposes the pattern of Manicheism on
them. He made known to them things having to do with his rapture, and they
preached about it to those outside None of the passages he cites gives any
indication of a group of followers; indeed the very existence of a group for the
earliest of the patriarchs would be problematic.
In his comments, Baraies gives the fact of rapture equal weight with the
content of revelation.12 This emphasis on rapture is especially striking, because
Manis revelations came to him not through ascent but from his heavenly twin.
The emphasis on rapture, then, does not represent a reading back of Manichean
practice onto the apocalypses, but Baraiess understanding of the apocalypses
he knew.
While Baraies singles out only two elements, revelation and rapture, in his
discussion of apocalypses, the portions of the apocalypses he chose to quote
suggest another. The excerpts and attendant summaries are quite brief, with little
detail about the content of revelation, but three of the five passages describe an
experience in which the visionary becomes like the angels.
Adam, we are told in Baraiess summary, became more exalted than all
the powers and angels of creation (50). Seths claim is slightly more mod-
est: When I heard these things, my heart rejoiced, and my understanding was
changed, and I became like one of the greatest angels (51). Shem does not claim
full angelic status, at least in the excerpt quoted by Baraies. Rather, following
great physical agitation, a voice lifts him by his right hand and breathes into him,
bringing him an increase of power and glory (57).
No such transformation appears in the portion of the apocalypse of Enosh
quoted, but the description of Enoshs fear when the spirit seized him to transport
him is very close to the one associated with Shems transformation (53),13 and
I would not be surprised if the complete apocalypse included a transformation.
The excerpt from the Enoch apocalypse contains a less elaborate description of
11A heavenly throne room descends to Shem as he stands on the high mountain to which he
has been carried (56).

12In the excerpts, all of the patriarchs except Adam are explicitly described as experiencing a
supernatural journey, although not necessarily to heaven. Both Enosh and Shem are taken not to
heaven but to high mountains (53, 55), like Ezekiel at the start of his vision of the eschatological
temple (Ezek 40:2). In both apocalypses the verb harpaz is used for the mode of transporta-
tion. Adam is reported in the summary to have seen various types of angels in the course of his
revelation, strongly suggesting ascent, and there is a lacuna in the text at the point in the excerpt
where the rapture might have been mentioned (bottom of 48).
13Shem: Then the appearance of my face was changed so that I fell to the ground. And
my vertebrae shook, while my feet could not support my ankles. Enosh: My heart became
heavy, and all my limbs shook. My vertebrae were violently shaken, and my feet did not sup-
port my ankles.
fear in reaction to the arrival of seven angelic revealers, but without a transfor-
mation (59). Again it is possible that the complete apocalypse contained one,
since the preserved Enochic apocalypses are so rich in transformations.
The Book of the Watchers, almost the earliest of the apocalypses and a work
of great influence, contains the first ascent to heaven in Jewish literature. Heaven
is here understood as a temple, and although Enoch is not actually transformed
when he ascends to the heavenly temple, he is able to stand before God like a
heavenly priest, that is, an angel.14 After his ascent, his journey to the ends of
the earth shows that he is indeed a fit companion for angels (1Enoch 1736).
This claim appears to have its roots in the prophetic claim to participation in the
divine council.15
In 2Enoch the ascent is clearly a reworking of the ascent in the Book of the
Watchers in combination with the tour to the ends of the earth,16 and the trans-
formation that Enoch undergoes is in large part of a development of themes from
the Book of the Watchers. Here, as Enoch prostrates himself before Gods throne
in the seventh heaven, God orders the angel Michael to extract Enoch from his
body, anoint him with fragrant oil, and dress him in a special garment, a process
that suggests priestly investiture. When Michael has done so, Enoch discovers
that he has become like one of the glorious ones: there was no observable dif-
ference (22:10).17 After the transformation God reveals to him secrets never
revealed before, not even to the angels (ch. 24).
The process of transformation is taken about as far as it can go in 3Enoch or
Sefer Hekhalot, as this hekhalot work is more properly known. Sefer Hekhalot,
which is formally an apocalypse, reports the revelations of the angel Metatron
to R. Ishmael, the hero of the many other hekhalot works. Metatron begins the
revelations with his own story: He was Enoch son of Jared until God took him
to heaven and exalted him over all his creations, making him his second in com-
mand (ch. 4; ##56, 88687).18 This is surely the greatest success story ever told,
although there are attempts in other works and even within 3Enoch itself (ch.
16; #20) to reduce Metatrons status, suggesting that not everyone was entirely
comfortable with Enochs success.19
14For heaven as a temple in 1Enoch 1416, see G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, and
Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee, JBL 100 (1981): 57590.

15M. Himmelfarb, From Prophecy to Apocalypse: The Book of the Watchers and Tours of
Heaven, in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible through the Middle Ages (ed. A. Green; New
York: Crossroad, 1986), 14951.
16G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1981), 185.

17F.I. Andersen, trans., 2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, OTP 1.13839.
18For 3Enoch, chapter references refer to P. Alexander, trans., 3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of)
Enoch, OTP 1.223315. For 3Enoch and other hekhalot texts discussed here, references in-
troduced by # are to units of P. Schfer in collaboration with M. Schlter and H.G. von Mutius,
Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981).
19The classic passage is b. ag. 15a. See Alexander, 3Enoch, 268 n. a.
According to Sefer Hekhalot, Enoch becomes Metatron by growing into a

being of enormous size with seventy-two wings (ch. 9; ##12, 893). After this
transformation God provides his new servant with a glorious throne (ch. 10;
##13, 894) and a splendid robe (ch. 12; ##15, 896). If the robe is intended to sug-
gest priestly investiture this is never made explicit. But in his edition of 3Enoch,
Hugo Odeberg quoted a reference to eight garments of Metatron from a work
entitled Alphabet of Metatron found in a manuscript in the British Museum.20
As P. Alexander notes in his translation of Sefer Hekhalot, eight is the number
of the high priests garments.21 A passage found in only a single manuscript of
Sefer Hekhalot (ch. 15B) refers to Metatrons activity in the heavenly temple.22
The Similitudes of Enoch in its final form includes the transformation of
Enoch into the heavenly son of man, a type of angelic figure (1En. 71:14).23 But
the Similitudes use of material from the Book of the Watchers goes in a rather
different direction from that of 2Enoch and Sefer Hekhalot. The transforma-
tion is simply announced rather than described, though it is preceded by an
experience not unlike the overwhelming physical experience described in the
apocalypses of Shem and Enosh (1En. 71:11). As far as I can tell, there are no
priestly overtones to this transformation.
Now the transformations of 2Enoch and Sefer Hekhalot are quite extraordi-
nary. Enoch does not become merely an angel, but an exalted angel. If it were not
for the apocalypses of Adam and Seth quoted by Baraies, one might be inclined
to treat this sort of transformation as the peculiarity of a couple of ill-understood
texts about Enoch. But Baraies shows us that this type of transformation is more
widespread. While Baraiess quotations indicate neither priestly elements nor
the influence of the Book of the Watchers, they are so brief that it is impossible
to draw any certain conclusions.
A somewhat different and more democratic notion of transformation ap-
pears in a larger number of apocalypses. Here transformation into an angel or a
star that is, a member of the heavenly host is promised to the righteous as a
reward after death. Daniel describes the fate of the righteous thus: Those who
are wise will shine like the brightness of heaven, and those who turn many to
righteousness, like stars for ever and ever (12:3). The Epistle of Enoch promises
the righteous that they will shine like the lights of heaven (1En. 104:2) and
20H. Odeberg, 3Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1928), 32.

21Alexander, 3Enoch, 265 n. a. to ch. 12.
22Alexander, 3Enoch, 303. The manuscript is Bodleian 2257/4 (Neubauer), which is not
included in Schfers Synopse. The passage appears also in a manuscript of the writings of the
German Hasidic rabbi, Eleazer of Worms. The idea that Metatron served as heavenly high priest
is explicit elsewhere in rabbinic literature (Num. Rab. 12.12).
23See the discussion of the relationship of ch. 71 to the rest of the Similitudes in J.J. Collins,
The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York:
Crossroad, 1984), 15153.
have great joy like the angels of heaven (104:4).24 Later the Similitudes of
Enoch describes the righteous dead dwelling with angels (1En. 39:5), shining
like fire (39:7), while in 2Baruch the righteous dead are promised first equality
with the angels and the stars (51:10), and then splendor even greater than that
of the angels (51:12).25
In the Ascension of Isaiah, Isaiah reports that as he ascends through the seven
heavens his glory increases until in the seventh heaven he finds himself fully
the equal of the angels. But he remains inferior to the righteous dead (9:3739).26
The visionary of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah is a dead soul, who, after he is
found righteous, dons an angelic robe and joins the angels in their song (ch. 8).27
The Apocalypse of Abraham similarly suggests that Abraham achieves a kind
of fellowship with the heavenly host; the song Abraham sings to protect himself
during the ordeal of ascent turns out to be the song sung by the creatures of the
divine throne (18:13). No relationship between Abrahams experience and the
fate of the righteous after death is made explicit, but there is a hint of such an
understanding in the mention of Azazels garment, now set aside for Abraham
(13:14). Abraham is never shown putting on the garment, and the garment is
probably to be understood as reserved for after death, like the garments men-
tioned in the Ascension of Isaiah (8:26, 9:2).
Experience much like the transformations described in the apocalypses appear
in other types of literature from late antiquity as the goal of heavenly ascent. In
the hekhalot texts, the culmination of ascent is often the visionarys participation
in the heavenly liturgy as a manifestation of his equality with the angels, just as
in the apocalypses.28 At the end of a series of hymns to be used to ascend (or in
the terminology of some of the hekhalot texts, to descend) to the divine chariot,
R. Ishmael says in Hekhalot Rabbati, All these songs R. Aqiba heard when he
descended to the chariot, and he took hold of them and learned them as he stood
before the throne of glory, the songs that his ministers were singing before him
(#106). In another section of Hekhalot Rabbati, we learn that when the visionary
finally gains admission to the last gate and arrives before the throne of glory,
he begins to recite the song that the throne of glory sings every day (#251).
24M.A.
Knibb, trans., 1Enoch, AOT, 312.
25J.J.
Collins, Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Transcendence of Death, CBQ 36 (1974):
2143, discusses the fate of the righteous after death in texts from the last two centuries B.C.E.
2Baruch does not fit within this time span.
26For a more extended discussion of Isaiahs transformation in the Ascension of Isaiah, see
M. Himmelfarb, The Experience of the Visionary and Genre in the Ascension of Isaiah 611
and the Apocalypse of Paul, in Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and Social Setting (ed.
A. Yarbro Collins; Semeia 36 [1986]), 97111.
27I refer to the chapter divisions in O.S. Wintermute, trans., Apocalypse of Zephaniah,
OTP 1.497515.
28M. Himmelfarb, Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hek-
halot Literature, HUCA 59 (1988): 9193 (in this volume, 27375).

Remember that the song Abraham recites in the course of his ascent turns out to
be the song of the throne of glory.
One goal of the rituals prescribed in the magical papyri is immortality or dei-
fication. In the so-called Mithras Liturgy the initiate is to say of himself at the
culmination of his ascent,
I, NN, whose mother is NN, who was born from the mortal womb of NN and from the
fluid of semen, and who, since he has been born again from you today, has become
immortal out of so many myriads in this hour according to the wish of god the exceed-
ingly good resolves to worship you. (PGM IV.64551)29
In another text contained in the same papyrus as the Mithras Liturgy, the initiate
says, I have been attached to your holy form. I have been given power by your
holy name. I have acquired your emanation of the goods, Lord, god of gods,
master, daimon (PGM IV.21619). After a string of magical words, the instruc-
tions conclude, Having done this, return as lord of a godlike nature which is
accomplished through the divine encounter (PGM IV.22022).30 In a system in
which there are many deities, a godlike nature probably means something not
very different from taking ones place among the angels.
If the experiences described in the apocalypses are similar to those in the hek-
halot texts, can the hekhalot texts give us a clue to the settings in which ascent
apocalypses were written? The suggestion of continuity between the apocalyp-
tists and the merkavah mystics goes back to Gershom Scholem, who based his
argument on the similarity between the visions of the heavenly chariot, reported
in rabbinic literature and the hekhalot texts, and those of the apocalypses.31 The
hekhalot texts contain instructions for those who wish to achieve visions of the
chariot. Scholem seems to have believed that the visions of the apocalypses
represent the actual experiences of their authors, achieved the same way as the
later merkavah mystics achieved their visions, although their authors did not
choose to record the practices. Following Scholem, Ithamar Gruenwald points
to ascetic practices as a point of continuity between the apocalypses and the
hekhalot literature.32
Most apocalypses do not refer to such practices, but there are several in which
fasting and other types of asceticism do appear. Among the ascent apocalypses,
in the Apocalypse of Abraham, God commands Abraham to undertake a limited
fast for forty days before sacrificing and receiving a revelation (9:78), but Abra-
29M.W. Meyer, trans., PGM IV.475829, in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation,
Including the Demotic Spells (ed. H.D. Betz; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985),
5051.
30E.N. ONeil, trans., PGM IV.154285, in Greek Magical Papyri, 4142.
31G.G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3d ed.; New York: Schocken, 1961),
43.
32I. Gruenwald, Manicheism and Judaism in Light of the Cologne Mani Codex, in From
Apocalypticism to Gnosticism (BEATAJ 14; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988), 271.

ham exceeds Gods command by spending forty days in the wilderness in the
company of the angel Iaoel, neither eating nor drinking (12:12). The Ascension
of Isaiah depicts Isaiah as the head of a group of prophets living in the wilder-
ness, dressed in sackcloth, and eating wild herbs (2:811). The setting in which
Isaiahs vision in the Ascension of Isaish takes place (ch. 6) is very close to that
of the vision of R. Neuniah b. haQanah in the famous passage in Hekhalot Rab
bati (##198250): In both the visionary sits in the midst of his circle, reporting
on what he sees. Since this scene is often presumed to represent the actual setting
of the practice of merkavah mysticism, this parallel is particularly impressive.
But aside from this last parallel the similarities between the practices of the
apocalypses and the hekhalot literature are general rather than specific. As to the
relationship between the picture in the Ascension of Isaiah and Hekhalot Rab
bati, the passage in Hekhalot Rabbati is the only such description in hekhalot
literature, although there are many places in which the instructions for ascent
suggest that the would-be visionary is alone as he attempts his ascent.33
At this point we need to confront head-on a crucial fact that Scholem and
others have ignored: The apocalypses are literature, indeed one might even say
fiction. Scholems position assumes that when the author describes the ascent, he
is describing his own experience under someone elses name. But the relation-
ship between the author and his hero is not nearly so direct; indeed the visionary
takes his identity from traditions about a great figure of the past.
The question of whether the apocalypses represent a reflection of actual ex-
perience, whether of transformation or of other visionary phenomena, is an ex-
tremely difficult one, and I will only attempt to indicate a few guiding principles
for approaching it. The answer is surely different for different apocalypses, and
each needs to be considered in its own right.34 Pseudonymity and literary con-
nections at first seem to militate against actual experience, but we must also
remember the conservative character of mystical experience, in the title of
Steven T. Katzs essay,35 the way in which undoubtedly genuine mystical experi-
ences are shaped and informed, at least in the telling (and that is of course all we
have), by the assumptions of the mystics tradition.
On the other hand, it is clear that if visionary experience is reflected in the
apocalypses, there are many mirrors between the experience and the text. Pseud-
onymity is perhaps the darkest mirror, the one we least understand. My own
33See e.g. Hekhalot Zuarti (##41319), and the Ozhayah fragment from the Geniza; see
P. Schfer, Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 6; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck],

1984), 2a/232b/24.
34M. Stones discussion of 4Ezra in On Reading an Apocalypse, in the volume in which
this article was originally published, Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the
Uppsala Colloquium (ed. J.J. Collins and J.H. Charlesworth; JSPSup 9; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1991), 6578, represents just such a consideration.
35S.T. Katz, The Conservative Character of Mystical Experience, in Mysticism and
Religious Traditions (ed. S.T. Katz; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 360.
guess is that texts that describe a human being becoming not just an angel, but
the most exalted angel of all, are more literary, and the relationship to experi-
ence is less direct, than texts that describe a somewhat more modest form of
transformation.
Now I turn to a somewhat more tractable question, the function of the theme of
transformation in the apocalypses. David J. Halperin has recently argued that the
ascent of human beings to heaven to take their place among angels is actually an
invasion of heaven, a displacement of the rightful inhabitants by young upstarts.36
He is concerned primarily with rabbinic literature and the hekhalot texts, but he
considers the apocalypses too. For him Enochs transformation into Metatron in
Sefer Hekhalot is the most striking example of such displacement, which he reads
in Freudian terms as an adolescent fantasy of surpassing and displacing adult
figures of authority. It is a brilliant reading, but I do not think it does justice to the
range of uses of transformation in the apocalypses.37 I suggest instead that these
descriptions of transformation be understood in the context of some of the major
developments of the history of Judaism in the Second Temple period.
One result of the traumatic break with the traditions of the past caused by the
destruction of the First Temple and the exile, it is often argued, is a new feeling
of distance between God and humanity, a feeling unknown in the religion of
Israel before the exile. Ezekiels vision of God on a chariot-throne is a response
to the fact that the temple, once the center of religious experience, is no longer
available. The appeal to creation in the work of the other great prophet of the
exile, Second Isaiah, a new departure in prophetic literature, also reflects a sense
of distance between Israel and the God of History. Such distance makes proph-
ecy problematic. In the post-exilic period, there is a gradual movement away
from prophecy toward interpretation as a primary mode of religious authority.
In Zechariah, a post-exilic prophet, prophecy has become interpretation, visions
to be deciphered. This form then becomes one of the central modes of revela-
tion in the apocalypses. Angels are usually the interpreters of these visions. The
heroes of the Bible talked with God, but the heroes of the apocalypses, on the
whole, talk with angels. The Hellenistic period sees the emergence of angels
with names and to a certain extent distinctive identities. God is understood to
dwell in the midst of myriads of angels, to whom he delegates the performance
of various tasks.
Most attempts to describe the emergence of the angelologies of early Judaism
are unable to shake off the feeling that the new developments represent a falling
away from the heights of classical biblical religion.
36D.J. Halperin, Ascension or Invasion: Implications of the Heavenly Journey in Ancient
Judaism, Religion 18 (1988): 4767; Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Re
sponses to Ezekiels Vision (TSAJ 16; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988), 359446.
37For a more detailed discussion of this point, see my review of Halperin, Faces of the
Chariot, in Critical Review of Books in Religion 3 (1990): 34042.

Fundamentally the whole of angelology was an indication that the figure of

God had receded into the distance and that the angels were needed as intermedi-
aries between him, creation and man This strictly-ordered, pyramid-like hi-
erarchical system probably corresponded to a general religious need of the time,
as it exercised a profound influence, not only on the Greek-speaking Judaism of
the Diaspora and early Christianity, but through them on gnosticism and indeed
on the whole of popular religion in late antiquity, as is shown by its significance
for magic. Even neo-Platonism could not escape its influence.38
Although he does not quite say so in this passage from Judaism and Hel
lenism, Martin Hengels language (God has receded into the distance, neo-
Platonism could not escape) strongly suggests that this new development is
undesirable. Other scholars make this judgment quite openly.
Drawing on our discussion of the visionarys transformation in the apocalyps-
es, I would suggest a somewhat different way of looking at the phenomenon.39 In
By Light, Light, E.R. Goodenough speaks of Philos system as intended to solve
the problem of the relation of the Unrelated, of how God could be brought
into relationship with the world, in spite of the fact that He was essentially
beyond relation. Philos solution to the problem is a variation on the standard
ancient answer, to understand God through the image of the sun sending forth
its rays, its brightness in no way diminished by the rays.40
Whatever the faults in Goodenoughs reading of Philo, I suspect that he is
correct to see the problem of distance as central to Philo, and, as Hengel too
suggests, to many others in late antiquity. Once we have recognized how widely
this problem was perceived, we realize that angels are not its cause but an at-
tempt at its solution. The development of a picture of the world in which a large
number of angels play so prominent a role should be understood not simply as a
reflection of a sense of distance but as an attempt to overcome that distance. The
idea that the heavens are full of angels assures human beings of contact with the
sphere of the divine, if only its periphery.
What is more, it turns out that the boundaries between human beings and an-
gels are not very clear. Despite its seven heavens and myriads of angels, a text
like the Ascension of Isaiah does not really reflect a gulf between man and God.
The righteous, according to this work, can expect to spend eternity as angelic be-
ings contemplating God himself. To be sure, for most this experience is reserved
until after death. But certain exceptional men can have a foretaste of it while still
38M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the
Early Hellenistic Period (trans. J. Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974) 1.233.

39For similar conclusions about the role of angelology in early Judaism, see L.W. Hurtado,
One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1988), 2235. Hurtado traces the negative view back to Bousset.
40E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (New Ha-
ven: Yale University Press, 1935), 11.

alive, thus serving as examples of the future intimacy with God to which all the
righteous can look forward.
Thus Baraies the Teacher teaches us something important in his insistence on
the intimate link between revelation and rapture or, one might say, between con-
tent and form. It is not only what God reveals to the visionary that is important,
but the very fact that God is willing to bring a human being near to him. Under
certain circumstances, according to the apocalypses, human beings can cross the
boundary and join the angels. Clearly we need to rethink the pessimism so often
attributed to the apocalypses.
17. The Practice of Ascent in the
Ancient Mediterranean World
In the ancient Mediterranean world the boundary between humanity and the di-
vine was widely understood as permeable. A variety of types of literature, from
the apocalypses and the hekhalot texts to the lives of holy men like Jesus and
Apollonios of Tyana, shows us human beings crossing that boundary. In many
of these works the transition from mortality to immortality is achieved through
ascent to heaven.
The question I would like to address here is whether we can move from the
realm of literature to the realm of practice. Phenomena such as the use of ascent
in claims on behalf of various holy men and the institutionalization of ascent
in the ritual for the apotheosis of the Roman emperors make it clear that many
people in antiquity believed ascent to be possible. Do we have evidence to sug-
gest that Jews, Christians, or others developed practices designed to achieve
such ascents?
In his article Ascent to the Heavens and the Beginning of Christianity,
Morton Smith gathers accounts of and references to heavenly ascent in ancient
Judaism and its environment from biblical times.1
The unusual frequency and importance in Palestinian literature of these stories of
ascent led several scholars to conjecture that there must have been some sort of pious
practice meditation, or prayer, or whatever that centered on the theme and perhaps
led the imaginative to believe that they, too, experienced the sort of heavenly ascents
they read and wrote of.2
For Smith these conjectures have been confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls
references to the presence of angels in the midst of the sect, although he admits
that the Scrolls contain no explicit references to techniques for ascent. For the
nature of those techniques, he appeals to the somewhat later Mithras Liturgy
and hekhalot texts. The Scrolls are seen as offering evidence for the use of such
techniques in the first century; further evidence appears in the letters of Paul.3
The scantiness of the evidence should not surprise us:
1Morton Smith, Ascent to the Heavens and the Beginning of Christianity, Eranos-Jahr
buch 50 (1981): 40329.

2Smith, Ascent, 411.
296 17. The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World
We have to recognize that all these bits of evidence concern what was presumably
secret teaching about which no explicit reports were likely to be preserved. So what is
preserved must be only the tip of the mountain of revelation. Hence we can fairly con-
clude that one or more techniques for ascent into heaven were being used in Palestine
in Jesus day, and that Jesus himself may well have used one.4
As the concluding sentence of this passage makes clear, the availability of tech-
niques for ascent in the first century is crucial to Smiths program of understand-
ing Jesus as a magician.5 As usual, Smith offers many persuasive insights along
the way to a provocative conclusion. But I must confess to being troubled by the
form of his argument: we cannot expect accounts of techniques for ascent, since
such techniques are esoteric; thus even when we do not find any hints of them,
we are entitled to assume that they exist.
Here I propose to look again at some of the evidence Smith treats. It seems to
me that some rather different conclusions are required. My interest in the ques-
tion of practices for ascent grows out of my work on the apocalypses, where
ascents and visions are sometimes associated with ascetic practices, but not
with elaborate rituals like those the magical papyri direct for various purposes.
The only ascent from the magical papyri I knew before writing this as a con-
ference paper was the famous Mithras Liturgy, PGM 4.475829. Of course the
Mithras Liturgy is hardly a typical magical text; its most recent editor, Marvin
W. Meyer, sees it as a product of Mithraism on the fringe, a Mithraism preoc-
cupied with individualism, syncretism, and magic.6 Morton Smith has pointed
to its parallels to the hekhalot literature,7 and I have been impressed by many
points of contact with the ascent of the Apocalypse of Abraham.8 The goal to be
achieved by ascent, immortalization, is very much like the goal of ascent in the
hekhalot texts and the apocalypses. In some significant ways the liturgy appears
to have more in common with those bodies of literature than with the corpus of
magical papyri, which are concerned primarily with more practical ends. Still it
offers a very impressive ritual for ascent.
The ritual is provided only after the description of the ascent. One stage
involves an elaborate recipe for obtaining the ointment of immortalization.
5This
program is carried forward in Morton Smiths books, Clement of Alexandria and a
Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), and Jesus the
Magician (New York: Harper and Row, 1978).
6The Mithras Liturgy (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), viii. For the discussion
of the Mithras Liturgy below, I follow Meyers more recent translation in H.D. Betz, ed., The
Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic Spells (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986), 4854.
7Morton Smith, Observations on Hekhalot Rabbati, in Biblical and Other Studies (ed.
Alexander Altmann; Studies and Texts 1; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963),
15860.
8Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 63.

17. The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World 297
It centers on a sun-scarab, which is fed a special cake that causes it to die. The
scarab is then preserved in rose oil while the celebrant recites a spell over it
for seven days. On the seventh day the scarab is buried, together with myrrh,
Mendesian wine, and fine linen, in a bean field (75072). Later, however, the
text reports that the god rejects the ointment in favor of a different use of the
scarab (79198).
The ascent is achieved apparently without benefit of the oil. After three days
of purity, at the right astrological moment, the celebrant licks off the eight-letter
name he had written on a persea leaf with the juice of the kentritis herb, honey,
and myrrh (77791).
Until I sat down to write this paper I assumed that the Mithras Liturgy was the
tip of the iceberg, or in Smiths phrase, of the mountain of revelation, only one
of many techniques for ascent to be found among the magical papyri.9 Perhaps
my suspicions should have been aroused by the fact that the Mithras Liturgy is
cited over and over again in discussions of ascent in the ancient world without
reference to other magical ascents and that it is the only magical papyrus Smith
refers to in support of his clam for techniques of ascent.10 In fact, the process of
reading through the magical papyri reveals that the Mithras Liturgy is the only
instance of ascent in the magical papyri.11
I do not wish to deny that there is further evidence for techniques for ascent
in contexts related to the magical papyri. Smith points out that the Chaldean
Oracles suggest a practice for ascent. As Hans Lewy reconstructs it, the practice
involves preparatory purification, interment to represent death, and the use of a
magical formula to enable the initiate to breathe in the rays of the sun.12 The role
of the rays of the sun is reminiscent of the Mithras Liturgy, where the initiate
is also instructed to breathe in the rays of the sun as he begins his ascent (PGM
4.538). Further, the magical papyri contain instructions for achieving immortal-
ity or divinity, which is frequently the goal of ascent, by means other than ascent,
9This
assumption is widely shared. See, e.g., Rachel Elior in her interesting review of David
J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiels Vision (Numen 37
[1990]: 23349): Heavenly ascents are ubiquitous in the literature of late antiquity and magical
texts expressing cognate ideas and practices may be found throughout the Greek magical and
theurgical literature (242).
11This generalization derives from the texts contained in Betz, Magical Papyri, which in-
cludes papyri and demotic material not found in PGM and from Robert W. Daniel and Franco
Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum vol. 1 (Abhandlungen der rheinisch-westflischen Akad-
emie der Wissenschaften; Papyrologia Coloniensia 16; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990).
12Smith, Ascent, 409; Hans Lewy, Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic, and
Platonism in the Later Roman Empire (Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale, 1956),
177226. Smiths claim for Appollonios of Tyana (Ascent, 409) is also a bit overblown;
Apollonios does not claim that the Indians used a technique of ascent, but only that they were
able to ascend (Philostratos, Life of Apollonios 6.11), and Apollonios accomplishes his ascent
at death, when no technique is necessary (8.30).
although even these are not very common. (The only one I can point to is PGM
4.154221.) Altogether, then, the magical papyri offer little to support a view
that techniques for heavenly ascent were widely practiced. The best explanation
I can offer for this fact is that the eminently practical practitioners of magic did
not view heavenly ascent as a very practical undertaking.
Disappointed by the magical papyri, let us turn to the hekhalot texts. From
Scholem13 to Idel,14 these texts have been represented as containing instructions
for ascent to heaven,15 and, as I have noted, they serve Smith as models for the
kind of techniques he claims were in use in the first century. Yet the evidence of
the hekhalot texts is far from unequivocal.
To begin with, recent scholarship has pushed ascent away from the center
of the hekhalot texts quite rightly in my view. The work of Peter Schfer and
David Halperin in particular has challenged Scholems view of the hekhalot lit-
erature with a more complete picture of the variety of the contents of these texts.16
It has emphasized especially the volume and significance of the adjurations of
angels for a range of purposes, of which the most important is the mastery of
the Torah.
Still the fact that the ascents of the hekhalot texts no longer look as central
as they once did should not eliminate the instructions for ascent from our con-
sideration. These instructions fall into two large categories: songs to be sung to
achieve ascent (Hekhalot Rabbati, Ma aseh Merkavah) and seals to be shown to
the angels guarding the gates of the palaces (Hekhalot Zuarti, Hekhalot Rabbati,
the Ozhayah fragment from the Geniza).17
The songs for ascent are of two kinds. One group consists mainly of hymns
that conclude with the trishagion. These appear in both Hekhalot Rabbati and
13Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941),
4954.
14Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988),
8891. Idel cites part of the passage from Smith, Ascent, quoted above on the availability of
techniques for ascent in Jesus Palestine (89).
15
In the interests of full disclosure I must confess that my article Heavenly Ascent and the
Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot Literature (Hebrew Union College Annual
59[1988] 73100; in this volume, 25782) also treats the hekhalot texts as containing instruc-
tions for ascent, contrasting this aspect of their genre to the narrative of the apocalypses.
16Schfers groundbreaking publication of manuscripts of the hekhalot texts has made
this progress possible: Schfer in collaboration with Margarete Schlter and Hans Georg von
Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981). Schfer
has also published the Geniza materials in Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 6;
Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1984). Schfers essays on the hekhalot literature through 1986 are
collected in Hekhalot-Studien (TSAJ 19; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988). Halperins recent
book, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiels Vision (Tbingen: Mohr,
1988), consists in large part of his reading of the hekhalot literature; he has also published a
number of articles on the subject.
17With the exception of the Ozhayah fragment, these hekhalot texts are printed in Synopse.
The Ozhayah fragment appears in Geniza-Fragmente.

Ma aseh Merkavah, and their efficacy lies in the fact that they form part of the
heavenly liturgy. By reciting them with the angels, the visionary takes his place
among the angels.18 Carol Newsom suggests a similar understanding of the
function of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice from Qumran.19 Such a view also
underlies parts of the synagogue liturgy.20 The hekhalot hymns under discussion
would be at home in the synagogue liturgy, and some of them are actually found
there. If recitation of such songs constitutes a technique for ascent, then it is no
exaggeration to say that all Jews who recited the prayers of the synagogue used
such techniques but surely that would rob the idea of a technique for ascent
of any content.
The other group of hymns, which appears at the end of Ma aseh Merka
vah, consists of hymns containing Gods twelve-letter name. These are not the
ordinary hymns of the synagogue and might more properly be considered to
represent a magical technique, although they are not accompanied by any ritual
actions.21 The hekhalot texts do prescribe ascetic practices like fasting and im-
mersion as preparation, not for ascent, but for other activities like the adjura-
tion of angels.22 These preparations are far less elaborate than the rituals of the
magical papyri.23
The other type of instructions, the seals or passwords to be given to the angelic
doorkeepers to allow the visionary to proceed on his ascent, do not cause the
ascent; they are called upon when the journey is already underway. The instruc-
tions for confronting terrifying ordeals at the gate of the sixth palace, which
appear in the works with seals, also assume that the ascent is in progress.24
Of the three hekhalot works with seals, only Hekhalot Rabbati preserves in-
structions for undertaking the ascent. Relative to the rituals of the Mithras Litur-
gy, they are extremely simple: When a man wishes to descend to the chariot, he
should call on Suryah the Prince of Presence and invoke him one hundred twelve
times by orosy ay YVY, who is called orosy ay uraq, and so on a
18
Himmelfarb, Heavenly Ascent, 9196 (in this volume, 27377).
19Carol A. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (Atlanta, 1985)
1718, 6172.
20The correspondence between heavenly liturgy and earthly is made explicit in the qedu
shah, the sanctification that forms part of the public recitation of the amidah. The qedushah
takes its name from the trishagion of Isa. 6:3. The introductory words of the qedushah for most
services run, Let us sanctify your name in the world as they sanctify it in the exalted heavens.
21Himmelfarb, Heavenly Ascent, 9596 (in this volume, 27677).
22This is Schfers observation in Gershom Scholem Reconsidered: The Aim and Purpose
of Early Jewish Mysticism, 12th Sacks Lecture, Oxford, 1986, reprinted in Hekhalot-Studien,
27795. Schfers formulation is more cautious. He writes, As far as I can see, the great major-
ity of these preparatory rites, if not all of them, are connected to the adjuration ritual and not,
as Scholem maintained, to the heavenly journey (284).
23See the example cited by Schfer in Scholem Reconsidered.
24On these instruction, Himmelfarb, Heavenly Ascent, 8091 (in this volume, 26373).
list of ten or fifteen names, varying from manuscript to manuscript (#204).25 It is

worth noting that, like the songs, this ritual consists entirely of words.
The opening of the Ozhayah fragment is lost, and thus the absence of instruc-
tions for starting on the ascent does not necessarily indicate that there never were
such instructions. Hekhalot Zuarti, however, is extremely interesting in this
regard. It culminates in the words the lucky mystic is to use in requesting power
over the angels for any purpose he desires, a goal more magical than Scholem
attributed to the ascents. Although it lacks instructions for how to undertake the
ascent, the instructions for using the seals conclude: Repeat this mishnah every
day after prayer (#419).26
In case we miss the point, a similar procedure is laid out in more detail a
few paragraphs later by R. Aqiba: A heavenly voice from beneath the throne
of glory told me, I have instituted this blessing three times a day in the court
above and the court below for my beloved, who troubles himself with descent
and ascent to the chariot. I will love and redeem the household in which it is
repeated (#423).
It appears, then, that Hekhalot Zuarti does not provide instructions for ascent
because none are necessary. The user of this text does not need to follow Aqiba
on his difficult and dangerous journey. He can experience the journey vicari-
ously and achieve its benefits by reciting the deeds of the great worthies of a
bygone era.
These instructions for recitation are, I believe, the only such instructions as-
sociated with ascent, but similar instructions appear in relation to other aspects
of the hekhalot literature.27 One set of instructions for adjuring the Prince of the
Torah, for example, includes the direction to recite this midrash of the Prince
of the Torah three times daily after prayer in conjunction with fasting and other
ascetic practices (#300). It should be noted that in a passage following the insti-
tution of the practice of recitation of the mishnah in Hekhalot Zuarti, R. Aqiba
tells us that the recitation is to take place after the mystic has fasted for forty
days and is in a state of sexual purity; this recitation is accompanied by rituals
of purification. Further, the mystic is to place his head between his knees as he
recites (#424).28
25All parenthetical references to units of the hekhalot literature refer to Schfer, Synopse.
The spelling of the names differs from manuscript to manuscript; I follow MS Oxford 1531.
26I am deeply indebted to Halperins discussion of the repetition of the mishnah in Hekhalot
Zuarti in his review of Schfers Synopse, A New Edition of the Hekhalot Literature, JAOS
104 (1984): 54951.
27Schfer, Scholem Reconsidered, 29394.
28Halperin, New Edition, 55051, suggests that this passage is the source of Hai Gaons
famous description of the practice required for the journey to the merkavah. If so, Halperin
points out, Hai Gaon did not get the passage quite right, for it describes a procedure not for
inducing ecstatic ascent, but for reciting an account of ascent and thus obtaining its benefits.
This understanding of the way in which the hekhalot texts were to be used
has the advantage of taking seriously their pseudepigraphic attributions to great
rabbis of the past. Rather than attempting ascent on his own, the mystic recites
the deeds of these pious heroes and thus shares in the benefits ascent confers.
The recitation undoubtedly constitutes a ritual, but not for ascent.29
The hekhalot texts, then, are hardly more fertile a source of techniques for as-
cent than the magical papyri. Such techniques exist in these bodies of literature,
but they are by no means widespread. Thus Smiths claim that such techniques,
though unmentioned, stand behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and other literature of
the turn of the era loses its plausibility.
Let me now suggest a different model for understanding ascent in the ancient
Mediterranean world: rapture, that is, being taken up to heaven at Gods initia-
tive. This is the understanding of ascent of two of the earliest writers to discuss
ascent in their own names,30 the apostle Paul and the Manichean teacher Baraies,
whose words are preserved in the Cologne Mani Codex.31 Baraies quotes from
five otherwise unknown ascent apocalypses, attributed to antediluvian patri-
archs, and from Pauls second letter to the Corinthians, with its famous account
of an ascent to the third heaven.32
For Baraies, the ascents are raptures, that is, the visionary is taken up at
Gods initiative. Two of the passages Baraies cites from the apocalypses use the
verb harpaz,33 as does Pauls text, twice (2Cor 12:2, 4). Thus I must disagree
with Smith and Alan Segal, who see the passage in 2Corinthians as evidence
29The Merkavah mystic to whom the Hekhalot literature is addressed does not expect to
ascend to heaven in ecstasy and makes no claim to have done so. Rather, by means of magical
and theurgic practices he repeats the heavenly journey of his heroes, Moses, Ishmael and Aqiva.
This is the point where the heavenly journey and adjuration meet. Like adjuration, the heavenly
journey is a ritual, so to speak a liturgical act. The texts are instructions, formulas which can be
passed on and repeated as often as desired. In the truest sense of the word, they are the Mish-
nah of the Merkavah mystics (Schfer, Scholem Reconsidered, 294).
30I have not included John of Patmos as a third such writer, since Revelation consists of
visions rather than a journey though heaven. Still, though his account of the inauguration of
his vision does not use the verb harpaz, it fits our category, for John is invited into heaven:
After this, I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice, which I had heard
speaking to me like a trumpet, said, Come up here, and I will show you what must come to
pass. At once I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven (Rev 4:12). The
verb harpaz does appear in Rev 12:5 when the child of the woman clothed with the sun is taken
up to heaven. I would like to thank Professor Adela Yarbro Collins for pointing this out to me.
31The Codex is now available with German translation and notes in Ludwig Koenen and
Claudia Rmer, Der Klner Mani-Kodex: ber das Werden seines Leibes (Abhandlungen der
rheinish-westflischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; Papyrologica Coloniensia 14; Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988). Parenthetical references are to pages of the Mani Codex.
32Most scholars assume that Paul is here speaking of himself. In Ascent, however, Smith
maintains that Paul is referring to Jesus (42529). I find Smiths position convincing, but my
argument does not rely on the identification of the one who ascends in this passage.
33Apocalypse of Enosh (53); Apocalypse of Shem (54).
for the use of techniques of ascent in the first century.34 Not only is there no al-
lusion to a technique of any kind, but Paul actually calls the experience rapture.
Rapture, as a model of understanding, also fits rather well the ascents of the
apocalypses that have come down to us, despite the infrequency of harpaz or
equivalents in these texts. The only examples I could find of such verbs appear
in the Similitudes of Enoch and the Ascension of Isaiah. In the Similitudes, which
is preserved only in Ethiopic, one of Enochs tours of heaven is introduced thus:
And at that time clouds and a storm-wind carried me off from the face of the
earth (1En. 39:3).35 There is no suggestion here of any preparation for the
ascent nor even a hint about the setting in which the ascent takes place. This
absence is related to the form of the Similitudes, which in my view constitutes
a reworking of the Book of the Watchers and is difficult to understand without
reference to the Book of the Watchers. The concluding chapters of the Similitudes
describe ascents in a somewhat similar fashion. First Enochs name is lifted
to Gods presence (70:1); then in the final chapter, usually understood as a later
addition, Enochs spirit is carried off (71:5). The Ethiopic of the Ascension of
Isaiah says that Isaiahs spirit was caught up into heaven (6:10); the clause is
missing in Latin and Slavonic.
I suspect that the reason for the infrequency of such expressions in the apoca-
lypses is that they are unsuitable for the process of describing layers of heavens,
which is so important to many ascent apocalypses. As we see in 2Corinthians,
rapture takes the hero directly to his destination, in that case, the third heaven;
there is no opportunity to describe the contents of other heavens. The Similitudes
of Enoch contains only a single heaven, and there are no indications of a plu-
rality of heavens in the apocalypses Baraies cities, although the quotations are
far too brief to permit any conclusions. The Ascension of Isaiah with its seven
heavens is the exception. Here we get a description of each heaven in turn as
Isaiah ascends.
Now I turn to the material in the apocalypses that might be considered to hint
at techniques for ascent. The most common activity in which the seer is en-
gaged immediately before the ascent is mourning, sometimes expressed through
weeping. Second Enoch describes Enoch in bed weeping as the angels come to
lead him through the heavens (1:2); the cause of the tears is never explained.
34Smith, Ascent, 41415; Segal, Paul the Convert: the Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul
the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 36. While Segal makes a compelling
case for the importance of traditions associated with Ezekiels chariot vision for understanding
Pauls thought (3471), he does not confront the absence of such traditions in the ascent of
2Corinthians 12. On the lack of relationship between 2Corinthians 12 and merkavah tradi-
tion, see Schfer, New Testament and Hekhalot Literature. The Journey into Heaven in Paul
and in Merkavah Mysticism, in Hekhalot-Studien. A particularly powerful point in my view
is that the revelation in the ascent in 2Corinthians involves hearing rather than seeing (New
Testament, 238, 247).
35Trans. M.A. Knibb, AOT.
In the Testament of Levi, Levi grieves over the sins of humanity before his as-
cent (2:34), while in 3Baruch, Baruch weeps and mourns the destruction of
Jerusalem (1:13). It should also be noted that several of the visions in Daniel,
4Ezra, and 2Baruch are preceded by mourning and weeping, sometimes at the
command of God or an angel.36
The Book of the Watchers, from the third century B.C.E., is the oldest of the
ascents, dated earlier than the period discussed here. But it is of interest for us
because it was so influential. The Book of the Watchers places Enoch at a holy
site for his ascent; the ascent takes place in a dream after Enoch falls asleep recit-
ing the petition of the fallen Watchers (1En. 13:78), whose fate is the subject of
the words God will address to him in heaven. While this is not exactly mourning,
it presents a certain parallel to Levis contemplation of the sins of humanity in
the Testament of Levi, which elsewhere shows the influence of the Book of the
Watchers.37
Moshe Idel has recently argued that weeping constitutes a technique for
inducing mystical experience in Jewish tradition, citing 2Enoch, 4Ezra, and
2Baruch as our earliest evidence for the practice.38 As these examples show,
if weeping is in fact a technique in the apocalypses, it is an all-purpose tech-
nique, good for producing ascent or visions. Furthermore, in Daniel, 4Ezra,
and 2Baruch, mourning is associated with fasting. This combination of ascetic
practices seems to me to suggest preparatory rites of purification, intended to
make the practitioner worthy of revelation, rather than techniques for producing
revelation.
Nor did Baraies think such preparation incompatible with his understanding
of rapture. From an otherwise unknown Apocalypse of Enoch, Baraies quotes
a passage in which Enoch describes himself mourning and weeping before
his ascent: I am Enoch the righteous. My grief is great and tears pour from
my eyes for I have heard the blame coming from the mouth of the impious.
[Seven angels] put me in a chariot of wind and carried me off to the ends of the
heavens (5859).39
Other ascents offer further instances of ascetic preparations, though without
mourning and weeping. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, God commands Abra-
ham to undertake a limited fast before his ascent; Abraham goes beyond Gods
36Dan 9:3, 10:23; 4Ezra 3:13, 5:20 (angelic command in 5:13), 6:35 (angelic command
does not mention weeping, 6:31), 9:27 (angelic command does not mention weeping), 9:2425;
and 2Bar. 6:2, 9:2, 35:15. On the subject of ascetic preparations for visions, Michael E. Stone,
Apocalyptic Vision or Hallucination? Milla wa-Milla 14 (1974): 4756, esp. 5556.
37George W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper
Galilee, JBL 100 (1981): 575600.

38Idel, Kabbalah, 7677. See also Daniel Merkur, The Visionary Practices of Jewish
Apocalyptists, in The Psychoanalytic Study of Society 14 (ed. L. Bryce Boyer and Simon A.
Grolnick; Hillsdale, N.J., 1989), 12534.
39Carried off is anapher.
command and neither eats nor drinks for forty days and nights (9:7, 12:1). The
influence of the biblical depiction of Moses at Sinai is obvious here, and this
behavior too suggests preparation for a vision rather than a technique for pro-
ducing one.
At first glance the Ascension of Isaiah appears to be the most promising
apocalypse in the search for a practice designed to produce ascent. This work
consists of two parts, a Martyrdom of Isaiah, generally understood as a Jewish
work of perhaps the first century B.C.E., and a Christian ascent, which also
circulated separately. Thus the Martyrdoms picture of Isaiah as the head of a
group of prophets who lead an ascetic life in the wilderness (2:711) is not an
integral part of the ascent. Still the author of the ascent chose to represent Isaiah
seated in the midst of a group of followers as he undertakes the ascent (6:15),
thus appropriating aspects of the setting of the Martyrdom for the ascent.
Yet the description of the way the ascent begins excludes the possibility of a
practice designed to produce it. As Isaiah exhorts Hezekiah about the truth, the
assembled company hears a door open and the voice of the Holy Spirit speak-
ing (6:6).40 Isaiah begins to prophesy, but he suddenly falls silent as his spirit
ascends to heaven (6:1011). Thus the trance overtakes the prophet as he is in
the midst of preaching; beyond the ascetic regimen attributed to Isaiah in the
Martyrdom, there are no preparations preceding the ascent, and there is certainly
no ritual that could be construed as a technique.
This passage provides the clearest example of the relationship of ascetic
practice to ascent in the apocalypses. Most of the ascents imply some sort of
ascetic regimen on the part of the visionary. But if the regimen is necessary for
the ascent, it is certainly not sufficient. Either the visionary needs to be in a state
of readiness produced by ascetic practice to receive the revelation, or ascetic
practice marks the visionary as worthy of ascent. But ascent is understood in
the apocalypses as coming at Gods initiative, as prophecy comes to the biblical
prophets; indeed, ascent in the apocalypses can be seen as growing out of the
prophetic claim to stand in the divine council.41 Rapture is not a bad description
for this understanding of ascent.
Finally let me consider the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, which is of particular
interest for this discussion. The opening of this work has been lost, but the hero
of the ascent appears to be a dead soul. Thus his ascent is automatic, and no prac-
tice is required to achieve it. The ascent of the righteous dead is presupposed by
many of the apocalypses, most notably by the Ascension of Isaiah, where Isaiah
sees the exalted status of the righteous dead (ch. 9) and is informed that his great
distinction is that he was able to ascend while still alive (8:11). This suggests
40Cf.
Rev 4:12.
41See Martha Himmelfarb, From Prophecy to Apocalypse: The Book of the Watchers and
Tours of Heaven in Jewish Spirituality vol. 1, From the Bible through the Middle Ages (ed.
Arthur Green; New York: Crossroad, 1986), 14951.
the coexistence of two different understandings of ascent in the world of the

apocalypses, the automatic ascent of the righteous after death and the rapture of
the visionary privileged to ascend during life.
I must confess that I had hoped that investigating the availability of techniques
for ascent in the ancient world would provide some hints about the possibility
that the experiences of the pseudepigraphic heroes of the apocalypses were in
fact experienced by their authors. Some recent studies take this possibility very
seriously. I think here especially of Michael Stones claim that 4Ezra, an apoca-
lypse without ascent, represents the authors own highly emotional experience
of conversion from one understanding of the meaning of the fate of Israel to
another, a conversion difficult to justify in logical terms.42 What is more, Stone
suggests that the author of the work may have served his small community as a
prophet in much the way Ezra serves the people of Israel in 4Ezra.43
Despite the appeal of such an approach, I am not inclined to read the ascent
apocalypses as reflecting the authors experience in any but the most indirect
way, as any authors experience is reflected in his writing. My reasons have to
do primarily with the highly literary nature of these works and the way in which
the ascents are integrally related to the narratives of which they form a part.44 I
had thought that the absence of techniques for ascent in the apocalypses might
be taken as further encouragement to read the apocalypses as literature rather
than as mystical diaries.
But as we have seen, the absence of techniques of ascent leaves the apoca-
lypses in the mainstream of ancient accounts of ascent. Thus the style of ascent
attributed to the pseudepigraphic heroes of the apocalypses reflects the style
of ascent the author took as standard based on the expectations of his contem-
poraries. In other words, I need to make my case for the literary nature of the
apocalypses on other grounds.
In conclusion, I would suggest that while techniques for ascent were not
unknown, the dominant understanding of ascent in ancient Jewish the Christian
literature is of a process initiated not by the visionary but by God. Further, the
idea of ascent was so powerful that in some times and places reciting accounts of
ascent was believed to offer tangible benefits. Finally, although I have not made
the case in any detail here, I believe that the apocalypses show us that simply
reading about ascent had a kind of power as well.
42Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Forth Ezra, (Hermeneia; Minneapolis,
1990), 3033. For other examples of recent works that take seriously the possibility that the
apocalypses reflect the experiences of their authors, Merkur, Visionary Practice; Christopher
Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New
York: Crossroad, 1982), 21447.
43Stone, Fourth Ezra, 42, 42831.
44Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, 95114.
18. Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem:
Rachel Eliors The Three Temples
More than sixty years ago in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scho-
lem delineated three stages of merkavah mysticism: the literature of the anony-
mous conventicles of the old apocalyptics; the speculation of the tannaim, the
rabbis of the period from the destruction of the temple in 70 to the completion
of the Mishnah around 200; and finally the hekhalot texts.1 Of the three stages,
it was the last stage to which Scholem gave most of his attention. He saw ascent
to heaven as its central concern, and, in conformity with his view that mysticism
was at the heart of Judaism in every age, he argued that its practitioners were
deeply imbued with the values of rabbinic Judaism. But despite his claim that
merkavah mysticism was the earliest phase of the ongoing tradition of Jewish
mysticism, it is clear that Scholem saw it as of minor significance for understand-
ing the culmination of that tradition, the kabbalistic systems of the Zohar and
Isaac Luria. Indeed, Scholem concluded the chapter on merkavah mysticism in
Major Trends by noting the distance between ancient merkavah speculation and
the symbolic interpretation of the merkavah of later Jewish mystics.2
The decades since Scholems pioneering work have seen important advances
in the study of merkavah mysticism, including the publication of a synoptic
edition of the major manuscripts of the hekhalot texts by Peter Schfer.3 The
new scholarship develops Scholems ideas further, but it also calls into question
important aspects of his understanding of merkavah mysticism.4 Some scholars
1
Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3d ed.; New York: Schocken,
1961; first ed., 1941), 43.
2Scholem, Major Trends, 79. Merkavah mysticism receives little attention in Moshe Idel,
Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), though he reads many
rabbinic texts as reflecting a theurgic understanding of the meaning of the commandments
similar to that of later kabbalistic texts (15672, esp. 157). It plays a more important role in
Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Mysti
cism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Wolfson understands merkavah mysticism
as standing in continuity with later Jewish mysticism both because the hekhalot texts were
redacted in the Middle Ages and because the medieval transformations of the vision of the
merkavah are central to his project (910).
3Peter Schfer in collaboration with Margarete Schlter and Hans Georg von Mutius, Syn
opse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981).

4To the best of my knowledge, there is no article or book chapter devoted to a critical discus-
sion of scholarship on the hekhalot literature since Scholem. For recent listings of publications
308 18. Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem
have argued that the adjuration of angels is as important to the hekhalot texts as
ascent to heaven5 and that the relationship between the hekahlot texts and rab-
binic Judaism is less direct and more complex than Scholem suggested.6
The view of the hekhalot texts as standing at the margins of rabbinic Judaism
fits well with another important development in the study of merkavah mysti-
cism, the virtual elimination of Scholems second stage, the thought of the rabbis
of the period of the Mishnah. The pseudepigraphic heroes of the hekhalot texts
are drawn from among these rabbis, and Scholem assumed that some of what
these texts report did in fact reflect the views of the tannaim, though he recog-
nized the difficulties in this position.7 But Scholem never undertook a systematic
investigation of rabbinic discussions of the merkavah. When David J. Halperin
did so in The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature, he concluded, The rabbinic
sourcestaken by themselves, provide little reason to believe in the existence
of the merkabah mysticism envisioned by Scholem.8
Scholem spent less time on his first stage of merkavah mysticism than on
either of the other stages. Even the apocalypses he considered most important to
the tradition of merkavah mysticism, the Apocalypse of Abraham and 1Enoch,
are treated only briefly.9 It is worth noting that in his only book devoted to
merkavah mysticism, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic
that supplement each other, see Rebecca Macy Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels,
Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Harvard Theological Studies 44; Har-
risburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 3 n.8; and James R. Davila, Descenders to the
Chariot: The People behind the Hekhalot Literature (Supplements to the Journal for the Study
of Judaism 70; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 31617.
5Schfer, The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism, in Hekhalot-Studien (TSAJ
19; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988), 27795; Schfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some
Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (trans. Aubrey Pomerance; Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1992), esp. 14246, 15157; David J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot:
Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiels Vision (TSAJ 16; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988), esp.
37687.
6For a range of views on the nature of relationship, all at some distance from Scholems,
P.S. Alexander, The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch, JJS 28 (1977): 15680;
Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, esp. 42746; Schfer, Aim and Purpose, 28995; Schfer,
Hidden and Manifest God, 15761; Michael D. Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revela
tion in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 20929.
7Scholem, Major Trends, 4142.
8David J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (American Oriental Series 62;
New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980), 184.

9For the judgment about relative importance, Scholem, Major Trends, 43. References to the
Apocalypse of Abraham: Major Trends, 6869; and Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah
Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960; rev. ed.
1965), 2324, 30, 4142, 129. Scholem does not differentiate among the five works included
in 1Enoch. The Book of the Watchers includes an account of Enochs ascent and vision of the
merkavah within the heavenly temple (1Enoch 14); the Similitudes of Enoch includes several
visions of God enthroned in heaven and an account of the heavenly liturgy (1Enoch 3940, 46,
71). References to 1Enoch: Major Trends, 40, 67; Jewish Gnosticism, 16, 30, 68, 129. Scholem
mentions several other apocalypses as well, including 2Enoch (Jewish Gnosticism, 17, 130),
18. Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem 309
Tradition,10 Scholem turns to gnostic works and magical texts more than to the
apocalypses to explicate particular aspects of merkavah mysticism. (It should be
noted that Scholem drew only on gnostic literature known before the discovery
of the Nag Hammadi library, which he was reluctant to use because the texts had
not yet been thoroughly discussed.11) These other bodies of literature illumine
aspects of the hekhalot texts that the apocalypses cannot, such as the magical
names that are so prominent in the hekhalot literature. But Scholem also points
out that even the process of ascent that he takes as the defining characteristic of
merkavah mysticism belongs to a larger Greco-Roman context.12
While Scholem paid rather little attention to the relationship between the
apocalypses and the hekhalot literature, other scholars have done a great deal to
illumine it.13 Without the tannaim to serve as a conduit, however, the explana-
tion for the parallels is far from obvious. The comparison of the apocalypses and
the hekhalot literature has also contributed to the discussion about whether the
apocalypses reflect visionary experience,14 a discussion that has become more
complicated as some students of hekhalot literature have called into question the
once standard assumption that the hekhalot texts reflect actual practice.15
But Scholem can hardly be faulted for one of the most important gaps in his
discussion of merkavah mysticism. I have already mentioned the Nag Hammadi
find, which became known in 1946. The late 40s also saw the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, a manuscript find of even greater relevance to ancient Jewish
mysticism. The discovery came too late for Major Trends, and the painfully slow
publication of the Scrolls was only in its beginning phases when Jewish Gnosti
4Ezra (Major Trends, 40, 54, 63), and the Book of Revelation from the New Testament (Jewish
Gnosticism, 23, 131).
10See n.9 above for bibliographical information. The book is a brief collection of essays on
the hekhalot literature and related rabbinic texts.

11Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 2.
12Ascent to the merkavah is a Jewish variation on one of the chief preoccupations of the
second and third century gnostics and hermetics (Scholem, Major Trends, 49).
13See, e.g., Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (AGJU 14; Leiden:
Brill, 1980); Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 63114; Martha Himmelfarb, Heavenly Ascent
and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot Literature, HUCA 59 (1988): 73100
(in this volume, 25782); Himmelfarb, The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean
World, in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fish-
bane; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 12137 (in this volume, 295305).
14For arguments in favor of seeing the apocalypses as records of visionary experience, e.g.,
Daniel Merkur, The Visionary Practices of Jewish Apocalyptists, in The Psychoanalytic

Study of Society 14 (ed. L. Bryce Boyer and Simon A. Grolnick; Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press,
1989); Michael E. Stone, Apocalyptic Vision or Hallucination?, Milla wa-Milla 14 (1974):
4756; Fourth Ezra (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), esp. 121, 32627, 42931; On
Reading an Apocalypse, in Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies Since the Uppsa
la Colloquium (JSPSup 9; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 7378. For arguments against this
view, Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 95114.
15Schfer, Aim and Purpose, 29394; Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 441.
cism appeared in 1960. The Scrolls, it turned out, did not contain any previously
unknown accounts of ascent to heaven, but they did include several poetic texts
that showed a connection in both content and style to the heavenly liturgy of the
hekhalot texts and to their accounts of the heavenly halls. Scholem noted the po-
tential significance for the study of Jewish mysticism of such poetic texts, men-
tioning both the Hodayot, the Thanksgiving Psalms, and the Angelic Liturgy,
as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice was then known, in Jewish Gnosticism; in
his additions to the second edition of Jewish Gnosticism, he comments that the
publication of fragments of the Angelic Liturgy had borne out their significance
for the hekhalot literature.16 But Scholem never developed this observation fur-
ther. This is not surprising. Scholem died in 1982; the first edition of all of the
fragments of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice was not published until 1985.
Scholems intuition of the importance of the poetry of the Scrolls and of the
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice in particular for the study of merkavah mysticism
was certainly correct, and by now a great deal has been written on this subject.17
There have also been some preliminary attempts to assess the relationship be-
tween the entire corpus of the Scrolls and the hekhalot literature.18 But the most
ambitious effort to date at taking account of the implications of the Scrolls for
merkavah mysticism is the new book by Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On
the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism,19 which involves a thorough rethinking of
the nature of early Jewish mysticism. With a few exceptions, the scholars who
claim the Scrolls for early Jewish mysticism have not ventured beyond the Songs
16Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 34, for the potential significance of Scrolls, though with
some skepticism about the mystical character of the Hodayot, which he takes to be more the
result of T.H. Gasters translation than of the original. He alludes to the Scrolls also in ch. 3,
The Four Who Entered Paradise and Pauls Ascension to Paradise (18; he knew Aramaic Levi
from the Geniza material, not from the Scrolls), and in ch. 4, The Merkabah Hymns and the
Song of the Kine in a Talmudic Passage (29), where he recognizes potential importance of a
connection between the Scrolls and later Jewish mystical literature; the second edition adds a
comment here about the content of the fragments (128).
17See the review article of Elisabeth Hamacher, Die Sabbatopferlieder im Streit um Ur-
sprung und Anfnge der jdischen Mystik, JJS 27 (1996): 11954. Ra anan Abusch, Sev-
enfold Hymns in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Hekhalot Literature: Formalism,
Hierarchy and the Limits of Human Participation, in The Dead Sea Scrolls As Background to
Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers from an International Conference at St.
Andrews in 2001 (ed. James R. Davila; STDJ 46; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 22047, appeared too
late to be included in Hamachers article.
18See, e.g., Yehudah (Lawrence) Schiffman, Sifrut ha-hekhalot v kitvei qumran, Meqere
Yerushalayim Be-Mashevet Yisra el 6 (1987): 12138; James R. Davila, The Dead Sea Scrolls
and Merkavah Mysticism, in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. Timothy
H. Lim; Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 2000), 24964; Michael D. Swartz, The Dead Sea Scrolls
and Later Jewish Magic and Mysticism, DSD 8 (2001): 18293.
19Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (trans. David
Louvish; Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). The Hebrew original is en-
titled, Temple and Chariot, Priests and Angels, Sanctuary and Heavenly Sanctuaries in Early
Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2002).
of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Hodayot. While the Songs in particular plays a
central role in her work, Eliors vision of the mystical system of the community
at Qumran and its intellectual ancestors and descendants draws also on aspects
of the Scrolls and related literature that are not usually discussed in this context,
most importantly the calendar, but also the halakhah of the Scrolls. Eliors book
is the culmination of a series of publications about the hekhalot literature going
back into the 1980s,20 and her claims are both original and provocative. I should
admit at the outset that I am skeptical of many of them, but their boldness and
their comprehensive scope demand careful consideration.
Before going further, let me say a word about the use of the term mysticism
in this paper. As some critics have pointed out, the discussion of the Scrolls and
early Jewish mysticism has proceeded by and large without much attention to
definition.21 Eliors book is no exception, though I believe that a definition is im-
plicit in her work and could be extracted with proper care. But I am not going to
undertake this task here because there are so many other aspects of Eliors work
that I would like to consider. In what follows I use mysticism and mystical
only when Elior has used them.
The title of the English version of Eliors book expresses her view that the
literature under discussion took shape in three stages in relation to three absent
temples.22 The first stage is the vision of the merkavah of Ezekiel, a priest in
exile, on the eve of the destruction of the First Temple. The second stage is the
literature of the priests who seceded from the Second Temple because they
believed that the temple had been defiled by the practices of the establishment
they opposed. The last stage is hekhalot literature, written in priestly circles after
the destruction of the Second Temple.23
The fact that Elior describes three stages of early Jewish mysticism suggests
a debt to the three stages Scholem outlined in Major Trends. But the stages
Elior delineates are different from Scholems, as is the center of her interests.
Eliors first stage, the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, does not appear in Scholems
schema. For Elior, it serves to establish the conditions of authorship she claims
for all of the literature under discussion: The authors are priests deprived of their
20The most recent develop themes treated in the book. See, e.g., From Earthly Temple to
Heavenly Shrines: Prayer and Sacred Song in the Hekhalot Literature and Its Relation to Temple
Traditions, JSQ 4 (1997): 21767, and The Merkavah Tradition and the Emergence of Jewish
Mysticism: From Temple to Merkavah, from Hekhal to Hekhalot, from Priestly Opposition to
Gazing upon the Merkavah, in Sino-Judaica: Jews and Chinese in Historical Dialogue (ed.
Aharon Oppenheimer; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1999), 10158. The latter offers a con-
densed version of much of the book.
21Elliot R. Wolfson, Mysticism and the Poetic-Liturgical Compositions from Qumran: A
Response to Bilhah Nitzan, JQR 85 (1994): 185202; Swartz, Dead Sea Scrolls, 18290.
22The explanation of the three temples appears in Elior, Merkavah Tradition, 10304; the
introduction to Three Temples (124) offers a similar historical overview, but as far as I can see,
the book never offers an explicit explanation for its title.
23Elior, Three Temples, 1214, 23244.
temples, or at least people influenced by such priests. Eliors second stage cor-
responds roughly to Scholems first, apocalyptic literature. But while Scholem
passes quickly over this stage, it is the focus of Eliors project. For Elior the
Scrolls play a crucial role, as they could not for Scholem. Scholems second
stage is the thought of the tannaim. Elior omits this stage altogether. I noted
above that scholarship after Scholem has put this stage into question. For Elior,
as we shall see, the thought of the rabbis stands in opposition to the mystical
system created by priests. Scholems third stage, hekhalot literature, is the focus
of his work. This literature constitutes Eliors third stage as well, and she also
devotes considerable attention to it.
The texts Elior associates with the central second stage are quite diverse. They
include clearly sectarian works from the Scrolls, such as the Damascus Docu
ment, the Rule of the Community, and 4QMMT; texts from among the Scrolls
that stand in a more indirect relationship to the sect, such as the Songs of the
Sabbath Sacrifice and the Temple Scroll; and texts such as Aramaic Levi, the
Book of the Watchers, the Astronomical Book, and the Book of Jubilees, which
pre-date the sect, but appear among the Scrolls. Elior is certainly justified in
claiming that all of the texts just mentioned were of interest to the sectarians,
even if many were not composed by them. But she is even more inclusive in
my view, unjustifiably so in defining the corpus relevant to her protagonists.
Second Enoch, for example, clearly draws on earlier Enochic literature, but was
composed not in Hebrew or Aramaic in Palestine, but in Greek, perhaps in Alex-
andria, at an uncertain date. Her use of the Wisdom of ben Sira as evidence for
the point of view of the secessionist priests is even more surprising.24 Ben Sira is
usually understood as writing on behalf of the very priestly establishment from
which Eliors protagonists seceded, and some recent scholarship has suggested
that he was engaged in a polemic against the school represented by the Book of
the Watchers.25 Furthermore, because Elior takes the works that she associates
with the secessionist priesthood to attest a common, well-defined worldview,
she more or less ignores the ways they differ among themselves, though in my
view these differences are sometimes as important as the similarities. This is a
criticism to which I shall return several times in the course of my discussion.
The mystical system Elior discerns in the texts she treats is intimately related
to the temple, its rituals, and its calendar. I begin with Eliors own summary:
24Elior,
Three Temples, 97, 185, 199.
25Benjamin
Wright III, Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest: Ben Sira as Defender of the
Jerusalem Priesthood, in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research: Proceedings of the First
International Ben Sira Conference 2831 July1996, Sosterberg, Netherlands (ed. Pancratius
C. Beentjes; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 189222; Randall A. Argall, 1Enoch and Sirach: A
Comparative and Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation, and Judgment
(Early Judaism and Its Literature 8; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).
Basic to the sacred service [of the temple] was the perception of heaven and earth as
a unity, so that one could postulate the existence of a mutual relationship between the
cosmic cyclicity of the eternal, incorporeal, divine realm and the ritual cyclicity estab-
lished in the material, terrestrial realm by the sacred service.
The precise ceremonial, symbolic language of the cyclic ritual represented the cos-
mic cycle in terms of number and time, through the cycle of sabbaths and festivals and
in the set times for the offering of sacrifices.
The synchronization thus established between the set times of God, grouped in sev-
ens; the set times of nature, grouped in fours; and the set times of the sacred service,
which wove them together, created the tradition of the Merkavah, the holy Chariot
Throne, as a bridge between the supernal and its sanctified manifestations in the hu-
man world, as deciphered in ritual, cycle, number, and song. All these set times were
dependent on a sacred calendar, which regulated the course of time the creator of
life; on the divine structure of sacred space the source of life; and on the sanctity and
purity of the priests as they performed the sacred service the guarantee that life would
continue. The synchronization of the sacred service was established and maintained by
virtue of a sacred authority of supernatural origin, with a variety of manifestations: the
word and commandments of God, wondrous secrets or divine revelation and angelic
testimony, heavenly tablets, books dictated from on high, laws observed by angels and
priests, divine election, purity and sanctification, and sacred scriptures.26
The calendar to which the passage refers is the 364-day solar calendar. Elior
accepts the broad outlines of Annie Jauberts theory that this calendar was the
temples original calendar.27 Thus she understands the acceptance of the lunar
calendar by the Hasmonean high priests after the success of the Maccabean
revolt as an important cause of the secession of the Zadokite priests who are
her subject. Here I must sound a note of caution. The position Elior embraces
is shared by many other scholars; I am inclined to accept it myself. But the
evidence is hardly as clear as she suggests, and many scholars understand the
situation quite differently. Indeed, if one thing about the calendar at Qumran can
be said to be clear, it is that more than one type of calendar had some authority
there.28
Even if Elior is correct that the 364-day calendar is the ancient calendar of the
temple, she does not do justice to the complexity of the evidence for that calen-
dar, which includes a variety of quite technical texts from among the Scrolls, as
well as the Astronomical Book (1Enoch 7282) and the Aramaic fragments of
the longer work on which it is based, the Temple Scroll, and the Book of Jubilees.
26Elior,Three Temples, 3.
27Annie
Jaubert, Le calendrier des Jubils et de la secte de Qumrn: Ses origines bibliques,
VT 3 (1953): 25064; Jaubert, Le calendrier des Jubils et les jours liturgiques de la semaine,
VT 7 (1957): 3561.
28For evidence for use of a lunar calendar at Qumran alongside the 364-day calendar, J.M.
Baumgarten, 4Q503 (Daily Prayers) and the Lunar Calendar, RevQ 12 (1986): 399407. For
a more general perspective on the multiplicity of calendars at Qumran, Sasha Stern, Qumran
Calendars: Theory and Practice, in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed.
Timothy H. Lim; Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 2000), 17986.
Rather, she assumes that all of these texts embrace all of the festivals mentioned
in any of them and also reflect a common ideology. Thus Eliors account of the
agricultural festivals of the calendar draws primarily on the Temple Scroll, while
her understanding of the ideology of the calendars relies largely on Jubilees.29
The choice of Jubilees is certainly understandable since it is the only one of the
texts to provide much indication of the meaning of the calendrical arrangements.
Yet Eliors assumption that Jubilees speaks for all proponents of the 364-day
calendar is problematic, as we shall see.
The 364-day calendar is based on the number seven, so crucial to the biblical
ordering of time. A year according to this calendar contains exactly fifty-two
weeks, divided into twelve months. The months are divided into four seasons
of three months or thirteen weeks each. Most months consist of thirty days, but
there is an additional day at the beginning of each of the first months of a season,
that is, the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth months. The mathematical regularity
and harmony of the 364-day calendar avoids the problems posed by the lunar
calendar, which, at least according to the rabbis view, required observation of
the new moon to determine the start of the new month. In this highly symmetri-
cal calendar, no festival conflicts with the sabbath, and each festival falls on the
same day of the week year after year.30 Elior also notes the texts from Qum-
ran concerned with the relationship between this calendar and the twenty-four
priestly courses described in the biblical Book of Chronicles: The twenty-four
priestly courses followed in turn through the years so that at the end of six years,
each course would have served thirteen times. She does not seem concerned that
the ad hoc quality of this particular mathematical relationship detracts from the
symmetry of the correspondence, though she does note that the War Scroll of-
fered a more elegant solution, a system of twenty-six priestly courses.31
The calendar also attempts to bring its symmetrical ordering of time by the
artificial unit of the week into harmony with nature, though its treatment of the
agricultural year is also symmetrical and stylized. The agricultural year extends
from the middle of the first month to the middle of the seventh month and is
marked by seven-day festivals at each end, Passover and the Feast of Booths.
Further, starting with the waving of the barley sheaves on the Sunday of Pass-
over, that is, the day after the Sabbath (Lev 23:11, 15), every seventh Sunday is
the occasion for a first-fruits festival: the first fruits of the barley, as dictated in
the Torah (Lev 23:1521), in the eleventh week; the first wine in the eighteenth
week; and the festival of the first oil in the twenty-fifth week. The day after the
oil festival was the festival of the wood offering; together they formed a seven-
day festival.32
29Elior,
Three Temples, 5253.
30Elior, Three Temples, 4558.
32Elior, Three Temples, 5253, based on the Temple Scroll.
The 364-day calendar is no human invention. It is engraved on the heavenly

tablets, and it was revealed to humanity by Enoch, the seventh patriarch, who
ascended to heaven to learn the divine secrets. Before it was known on earth, its
festivals were already observed in heaven by God and the angels.33 Just as the
solar calendar is associated with Enochs ascent, the lunar calendar is associ-
ated with its negative counterpart, the myth of the descent of the Watchers, the
angels who came down to earth, took women as sexual partners, and led human-
ity astray, revealing dangerous and false knowledge, including the course of
the moon.34 Elior points out that the Book of the Watchers account of the sins
committed by the Watchers underlines the role of the senses. While the lunar
calendar requires human observation, the beauty of the 364-day calendar is that
it is mathematically determined, leaving no role for the senses.35
Elior contrasts the calendar of the secessionist priests to that of the rabbis and
claims that the differences reflect profound differences in worldview:
On the one hand was a deterministic perception of time, of heavenly origin, bound
up with the cyclic laws of nature as reflected in a fixed solar calendar whose festivals
fell not only on fixed days of the month but also on fixed days of the week, a calendar
maintained unchanged by angels and priests who attested to its divine origin. On
the other was a perception of time dependent on variable, human decisions, governed
by observations made by ordinary mortals, as reflected in a changeable, lunar calendar,
maintained by leaders who derived their authority from the people as a whole, by a
court which heard testimony from any witness, took terrestrial interests and the good
of the Community into consideration, and invoked, as a crucial principle, It is not in
the heavens.36
The juxtaposition of disaffected priests of the Second Temple period with the
rabbis of the period after the destruction opens Elior to charges of anachronism.
Though she does not pause to justify the juxtaposition, I believe that Elior is in
fact following the considerable body of scholarship that understands the halakhic
texts from Qumran as evidence for a priestly halakhah that stood in opposition
to the antecedents of rabbinic halakhah.37 I have reservations about this picture,

34Elior,
Three Temples, 115.
37See, e.g., J.M. Baumgarten, The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the
Qumran Texts, JJS 31 (1980): 15770; Ya aqov Sussman, eqer toldot ha-halakhah umegil-
lot midbar-yehudah: hirhurim talmudiim rishonim lor megillat miqat ma asei ha-torah, Tar
biz 59 (198990): 1176 (English translation without extensive annotation: Appendix 1: The
History of Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Talmudic Observations on MIQAT
MA AE HA-TORAH [4QMMT], in Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqat Ma ae ha-Torah [ed. Elisha
Qimron and John Strugnell; DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994], 179200); Lawrence H.
Schiffman, Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of
Tevul Yom, DSD 1 (1994): 28599.
but in recent years it has been widely held, and Elior should not be faulted for
adopting it, though she should certainly have explained what she was doing.
The discussion of the calendar illustrates both the strengths and the weak-
nesses of Eliors work. The difference in attitudes toward time reflected in the
364-day calendar on the one hand, and the luni-solar calendar of the rabbis on
the other is indeed profound, but Elior fails to recognize how much her under-
standing of the significance of the 364-day calendar is indebted to Jubilees.
Consider, for example, the Astronomical Book, another work found at Quman
that adheres to a 364-day calendar. The Astronomical Book is much less ill-
disposed toward the moon than it should be according to Elior. While it calls
the moon the smaller luminary (1Enoch 73:1), it also makes it one of the
two great luminaries (1Enoch 78:3). The Ethiopic version of the Astronomical
Book contains considerable detail about the phases of the moon and the relation-
ship between the travels of the moon and of the sun (1Enoch 7374, 7879),
and the Aramaic fragments offer an even more extensive treatment of the moon
without any negative comment. Thus, though the moon is clearly subordinate
to the sun, the considerable attention to the moon, its course, and its phases, in
the Astronomical Book would be intolerable to Jubilees, which truly detests the
moon. It is hard to reconcile the elaborate attempt at harmonizing the courses of
the sun and moon in the Astronomical Book38 with the powerful polemic against
any use of the moon for purposes of dating in Jubilees. The only polemic in the
Astronomical Book, far milder than that of Jubilees, is directed not against the lu-
nar calendar, but against a year of 360 days. The heightened rhetoric of Jubilees,
which was written after the Maccabean Revolt,39 presumably reflects anger over
the abandonment of the traditional calendar by the temple establishment. If Elior
is correct in her understanding of the history of the temple calendar, the Astro
nomical Book, which may be as early as the fourth century BCE and undoubtedly
predates the Hasmonean assumption of high priesthood,40 has no such cause
for anger; its calendar was in force in the temple when it was written. In other
words, the contrast Elior draws between secessionist priests and rabbis is really
a contrast between the author of Jubilees and the rabbis. Further, if the 364-day
38Otto Neugebauer, Appendix A: The Astronomical Chapters of the Ethiopic Book of
Enoch (7282), in Matthew Black in consultation with James C. VanderKam, The Book of
Enoch or I Enoch: A New English Translation (SVTP 7; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 40001, thinks
that the most explicit effort to coordinate solar and lunar years in 74:1017 are a later addition
by a scribe.
39This is the current consensus on the date of Jubilees; for arguments for a post-Maccabean
date, James C. VanderKam, The Origins and Purposes of the Book of Jubilees, in Studies in
the Book of Jubilees (ed. Matthias Albani, Jrg Frey, and Armin Lange; TSAJ 65; Tbingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 1216, 1921.
40On the date of the Astronomical Book, see, e.g., George W.E. Nickelsburg, 1Enoch 1:
A Commentary on the Book of 1Enoch, Chapters 136; 81108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis:

Fortress, 2001), 78.
calendar was the calendar of the temple in pre-Hasmonean times, it was not the
sole property of the secessionist priests, and certainly not their creation. Thus
to link it to the worldview of those priests in contrast to the temple establish-
ment the object of the polemic of Jubilees and of the Scrolls is problematic.
Nor does Eliors linking of the lunar calendar to the teaching of the Watchers
stand up to scrutiny. The primary evidence Elior cites for this link comes from
the Book of the Watchers, which twice mentions an angel named Sahariel, who
taught the signs, or in Eliors translation, the course of the moon (1Enoch 6:7,
8:3; his teaching is noted only in the second passage).41 Yet Elior neglects to note
that the angel preceding Sahariel in both lists is Shamsiel, who taught the signs
of the sun (1Enoch 6:7, 8:3; his teaching is noted only in the second passage). In
other words, according to the Book of the Watchers there is no more connection
between the teachings of the fallen Watchers and the lunar calendar than there is
between their teachings and the solar calendar. It is also worth remembering that
the calendar does not appear to be high on the list of concerns of the Book of the
Watchers; while it alludes to the Astronomical Book at the conclusion of its jour-
ney to the ends of the earth (1Enoch 3336), it never makes explicit reference
to the calendar. Elior also cites Jubilees worry about the corrupting effect of
observing the moon in her discussion of the myth of origins of the lunar calendar
(Jub. 6:3637).42 But Jubilees telling of the story of the Watchers emphasizes
their sexual sin (Jub. 4:22); though it claims that God sent them to earth to teach
(Jub. 4:15), it never accuses them of the false or dangerous teachings of the Book
of the Watchers and certainly does not connect them to the lunar calendar. Thus,
I do not believe that the attribution of the lunar calendar to the Watchers can be
found in the ancient texts; rather, it is Elior who provides this satisfyingly sym-
metrical counterpart to Enochs association with the 364-day calendar.
Another crucial aspect of the worldview of her protagonists according to Elior
is the association of priests with angels. She rightly claims that this association
is central to many of the works she considers, such as the Book of the Watchers
and Aramaic Levi. The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is of particular interest
to Elior in this context. She sees in it an implicit correspondence between the
angelic priests of the heavenly sanctuary that are its subject and earthly priests;43
indeed, human recitation of this account of the heavenly liturgy enacts the cor-
relation of heaven and earth.44 Elior also suggests that the Qumran communitys
self-designation, yaad, means more than community in a neutral sense, as it
is usually translated, for example, in the title of 1QS, the Rule of the Community.
41Elior,
Three Temples, 11920; for the translation signs for both moon and sun, Nick-
elsburg, 1Enoch 1.
44The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice figures prominently in the chapter of Three Temples
entitled, Priests and Angels (165200).

Rather, it refers to the communitys status as earthly counterpart to the angelic

host, the togetherness of sectarians and angels.45 Unfortunately, she never pro-
vides the arguments, philological or contextual, for this intriguing claim.46 She
also notes the relationship between the stringent purity rules of the community
and its sense of the presence of the angels, explicit in some texts, implicit in
others,47 and, as we have seen, she suggests that the community understood its
364-day calendar as the calendar of the angels as well. But her claims for the
connection between priests and angels are even stronger:
Angels are not only the major subject of belief in the priestly literature, but also, as
it were, an invention or formation of the priestly literature; they are the allies of
the sons of Aaronwho minister in the holy precincts. This fact is the basis for their
presence or absence in various bodies of literature, whether those that aim to confirm
the priestly myth or those that wish to reject or weaken it.48
Elior is undoubtedly correct that many texts of the Second Temple period as-
sume a correspondence between the temple on earth and heaven understood as
a temple and thus a correspondence between priests and angels. Yet as with her
discussion of calendar, Elior shows little concern for the details of individual
texts and differences among them, and her harmonization of her sources ob-
scures important differences. Thus, for example, while all of the halakhic lit-
erature found among the Scrolls intensifies the purity laws relative to Leviticus,
two of the most important legal texts, the Temple Scroll and the legal portions
of 4QD, do so without reference to angels. Or, to offer another example, at least
one text central to Eliors picture of the secessionist priesthood, the Book of
Jubilees, claims not priests alone, but all Israel, as the earthly counterpart of the
angels. I believe that this claim should be understood as a response to sectarian
definitions of Israel that excluded most Jews from membership.49 In any case,
the texts Elior considers were hardly of one mind on this topic.
Finally, Eliors claim that angels are uniquely the interest of adherents of
the priestly myth is simply wrong. Angels also play a central role in works that
surely do not belong to the corpus of the secessionist priesthood: the Book of
Daniel, for example, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Book of Revelation in
the New Testament, 4Ezra, or 2Baruch. Elior might reasonably respond that
although 4Ezra and 2Baruch provide their heroes with angelic interlocutors,
they do not suggest a heavenly sanctuary full of angelic priests. But this objec-
45Elior,
Three Temples, 171 and elsewhere.
46Perhaps
Elior was influenced by the musaf qedushah of nusa sefard: A crown, Lord
our God, do the angels give you, the multitude on high, with your people Israel, the assemblies
below. Together they all triply proclaim your holiness.
49I argue for this reading in the chapter on Jubilees in my forthcoming book, A Kingdom of
Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Second Temple Judaism.

tion does not apply to the other works just noted. Scholem called the Apocalypse
of Abraham with its elaborate picture of the merkavah and its angelic song, a
text that more closely resembles a Merkabah text than any other in Jewish apoca-
lyptic literature;50 Daniel combines imagery of the royal court with that of the
temple for its picture of the heavenly throne room; and the Book of Revelation,
which also stands very close to the merkavah tradition, gives the heavenly cult
and its angelic priests an important place.51 Indeed, the notion of heaven as a
temple with angels as its priests is so widespread in apocalypses that its presence
can hardly be taken as indicating a particular point of view and I suspect that
the same is true of its absence in works such as the Book of Dreams (1Enoch
8390) or the Epistle of Enoch (1Enoch 92105), which lack a description of
heaven as temple but explicitly claim connection to the traditions about Enoch.
While I have criticized aspects of Eliors claims about calendar and the cor-
relation of priests and angels, there can be no doubt that Elior is correct to see
these themes as important to the literature she is discussing. I do not believe the
same can be said for the myth of sacred marriage that Elior finds in early Jewish
mysticism.
Early in the book, Elior attempts to link the calendar of the secessionist priest-
hood to human fertility:
The concepts of season, cycle, sanctity, four/quarter, seven/week/oath (all three derive
from the same root in Hebrew sh-v-a ), purity and benediction, community and com-
munion, all have double meanings, referring to sacred time and place alike and through
them to the divine Covenant, to the cycle of seven festivals, to holiness and benediction.
On the human plane, the same concepts are also associated with betrothal and union
for purposes of fertility and reproduction, which involve cycles of ovulation counted in
four-week periods, the seven-day term of the period of purification, self-sanctification,
covenant and oath, the seven benedictions of betrothal, the husbands conjugal duties
and the laws governing conjugal union.52
The length of the cycle of ovulation, of course, is not necessarily four weeks, but
it is not implausible that proponents of a calendar that set the length of a month
without regard to the variability of the moons course might have preferred
an idealized timetable for ovulation. Yet, to the readers astonishment, Elior
explicitly invokes the variability of the moon in relation to human fertility with
positive implications:
The rhythm of feminine fertility is associated with the cycle of the moon with its
phases; indeed, the Hebrew word for the waxing of the moon, ibur, also means con-
ception; while the Hebrew word for the appearance of the new moon, molad, is of the
same root (w-l-d) as the word ledah, birth, and its cognates; similarly the words that
50Scholem,
Jewish Gnosticism, 23.
51On Revelation and the merkavah tradition, see, e.g., Gruenwald, Apocalyptic, 6269, and
Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, 8796.
refer to a womans monthly cycle may also be applied to the lunar phases. Both cycles
are associated with the passage of four weeks. A menstruating woman is forbidden to
her husband until seven clean days (i.e. days on which no blood whatsoever has been
seen) have elapsed, and only then when the probability of conception is highest may
cohabitation occur. The ritual calendar was concerned with the Temple and the Holy
of Holies; with sabbaths, festivals, and sacrifices; with purity and impurity; with sab-
batical years and jubilees. The personal calendar was associated with sanctification,
betrothal, isolation (when a woman is menstruating or otherwise unclean), purifica-
tion and cohabitation. Both calendarswere marked off in sevens; both guaranteed
continued fertility, the eternal continuity of life as dependent on a sevenfold rhythm;
and both involved counting and number, oath and covenant, testimony and set times,
holiness and sanctification, unification and separation, the eternity of Creation.53
Elior does nothing to explain how those who, in her view, understood the lunar
calendar as the teaching of the fallen Watchers could possibly have held this set
of positive associations for the moon; indeed she shows no awareness at all that
explanation is required. There are other problems too in the passages just quoted.
The seven-day period of purification reflects not the halakhah of the secessionist
priests, but of the rabbis, who mandate seven clean days following menstrua-
tion before the resumption of sexual relations. The Temple Scroll and 4QD inten-
sify the purity laws in a number of ways, but do not go beyond the Torahs rule
of a seven-day period of impurity starting with the beginning of menstruation.
Nor, as far as I know, is there any evidence that the seven benedictions of the
wedding ceremony date back to the Second Temple period.54
But the sexual relations that figure in Eliors understanding of her mystical
system are not only relations between human beings, but also the relations be-
tween God and the people of Israel. Elior begins by noting the association of
Ezekiels vision of the merkavah with Shavuot, the festival whose very name
(from the root seven / week / oath) is significant. Shavuot, which falls seven
weeks after Passover, comes to be understood as the moment of the marriage of
the people of Israel and the Lord. Elior refers to traditions, both early and late
on this point, but she does not mention any that predate rabbinic times, and as
far as I know there are none.55
The central text for Eliors discussion of the merkavah as connected to a myth
of sacred marriage is a passage from the Babylonian Talmud about the cherubim
in the Holy of Holies, that is, the earthly counterpart to the merkavah:
Whenever Israel came on pilgrimage on the festivals [to the Temple in Jerusalem], the
curtain would be removed for them and the cherubim were shown to them, whose bod-
53Elior,
Three Temples, 55.
54The
discussion in Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001), assumes that the blessings derive from the rabbinic period (6367,
17879).
55Elior, Three Temples, 15758; quotation, 157.
ies were intertwined with one another, and they would be thus addressed: Look! You
are beloved before God as the love between man and woman. (b. Yoma 54a)56
The description in the Talmudsuggests a cultic mystical representation

of myths of hieros gamos, the sacred union or heavenly matrimony, probably
in the context of the pilgrimage on Shavuot, Elior writes.57 The passage,
however, associates the exhibition of the cherubim with the pilgrimage festivals
in general rather than Shavuot in particular. Further, the erotic interpretation of
the temple in the Babylonian Talmud is not restricted to the cherubim with their
connection to the merkavah, for the passage Elior quotes is part of a discussion
of the equipment of the temple that includes an erotic interpretation of the poles
of the sanctuary as well. Elior finds support for her claim that a myth of sacred
marriage is part of early Jewish mysticism in material from Sefer Yeirah, vari-
ous rabbinic texts, especially those related to the Song of Songs, and, finally, the
Zohar,58 but she does not note the recent scholarship that has suggested that the
enthronement of the divine glory in Hekhalot Rabbati is a sort of sacred mar-
riage, with the throne as the female party.59
Elior goes on to suggest that the story of the Watchers represents a negative
counterpart to the myth of sacred marriage:
The cherubim, sacred beings associated with creation and life, sanctity and holy mat-
rimony, with appropriate covering and uncovering of what is properly hidden, with
sacred union and connubiality, with fertility and procreation, with holiness, purity, and
sevenfold enumeration, are the antithesis of the Watchers, who embody forbidden, un-
restrained, monstrous sex, impurity devoid of enumeration, profanation of everything
that is sacred, violation of boundaries and prohibition, incest, idolatry and bloodshed,
death and destruction.60
If the story of the Watchers is the negative counterpart to the myth, the myth
itself must be as early as the story of the Watchers, that is, it must go back to the
Second Temple period. Elior appears to recognize the difficulties in claiming
that the myth of sacred marriage, found only in later texts, dates so far back, and
she begins her conclusion cautiously: These diverse observations may point to
ancient priestly-mystical traditions.61 Of course, she has already suggested
that the Babylonian Talmuds report about the unveiling of the cherubim may
be an echo of an ancient tradition of the First Temple, since there was no
56I take the translation from Elior, Three Temples, 158; the words in brackets are part of that
translation. The original language of the passage is Hebrew.

59Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 98105. Eliors lack of attention is surprising, especially
since she discusses one of the passages Wolfson points to as evidence of Throne-Glory relations
(Three Temples, 25152). For Elior the passage is evidence of ongoing interest in the temples
equipment in the hekhalot literature.
61Elior, Three Temples, 163; italics mine.
cherubim-throne in the Second Temple.62 Nor is dating the only difficulty with
Eliors reading of the myth of the Watchers. While she is surely correct that the
Watchers behavior is a negative model of sexual relations, many students of
the story have understood it to reflect disapproval not of sexual immorality in
general, but rather of marriages between priests and women inappropriate for
them that were current at the time the Book of the Watchers was composed.63
It is surely not irrelevant to Eliors claims that she is an expert in later Jewish
mysticism where the symbolism of sacred marriage plays a central role.64 I have
already noted Scholems acknowledgment of the differences between merkavah
mysticism and later Jewish mysticism. The presence of a myth of sacred mar-
riage in merkavah mysticism would strengthen the connection with later Jewish
mysticism. Yet as far as I know the evidence for such a myth in the hekhalot
literature is restricted to the enthronement passage in Hekhalot Rabbati. For the
literature of the Second Temple period, as far as I can see, there is no evidence
at all. Here, I believe, Eliors knowledge of later Jewish mysticism has led her
to see sacred marriage where there is none.
Finally, I would like to consider Eliors treatment of the relationship between
the hekhalot literature and earlier merkavah traditions on the one hand and the
hekhalot literature and the thought of the rabbis on the other. For Scholem, as
we have seen, the tannaim provided a conduit for merkavah mysticism from
the apocalypses of the Second Temple period to the hekhalot literature. Without
the tannaim, Elior has to offer a different kind of explanation for what she sees
as significant continuity between the apocalypses and the hekhalot texts. Elior
makes this task particularly difficult because she claims that there is a profound
opposition between the worldview of the secessionist priests and the worldview
of the rabbis, views she characterizes as standing in a sharply polar relation-
shipan antithetical correlation, or as diametrically opposed;65 she even
notes fourteen areas in which this opposition can be seen.66
62Elior,
Three Temples, 158.
63George
W.E. Nickelsburg, Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper
Galilee, JBL 100 (1981): 575600; and David Suter, Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Prob-
lem of Family Purity in 1Enoch 116, HUCA 50 (1979): 11535 argue that the marriages
being criticized are marriages between priests and foreign women. Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, The
Prophets of Old and the Day of the End: Zechariah, the Book of the Watchers and Apocalyptic
(Leiden: Brill, 1996), 198203, suggests the Book of the Watchers had in mind the priests Jo-
sephus tells us followed their Samaritan wives to the temple on Gerizim (Ant. 11.312). I have
recently argued that the marriages in question are not with foreign women, but rather women
from non-priestly families, Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time of
the Maccabean Revolt, JSQ 6 (1999): 612 (in this volume, 3137).
64See, e.g., Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad
Hasidism (trans. Jeffrey M. Green; SUNY Series in Judaica; Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1993); and Elior, Hasidic Thought: Mystical Origins and Kabbalistic Foundations
(Hebr.) (Sifriyat Universitah meshuderet; Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1999).
The gulf Elior sees is so wide that it is more than a little surprising that after
the rabbis had achieved religious dominance the traditions of the secessionist
priesthood reemerge in hekhalot literature.67 Eliors explanation is that with the
loss of the temple, many of the issues that once divided the secessionist priests
and the ancestors of the rabbis were no longer relevant. Others issues, such as
calendar, have been resolved in the rabbis favor. In this new environment, she
implies, it was possible for aspects of the worldview of the secessionist priests
that did not threaten the rabbis to gain acceptance. Thus the polemical literature
of the secessionist priests was no longer relevant to their post-destruction heirs,
while the ancient texts and traditions about the heavenly temple and its cult con-
tinued to be meaningful.68 This explanation is quite plausible, though it seems
to me to conflict with the view that the differences between worldviews were
absolute. Nor does Elior consider the implications of the hekhalot texts use of
rabbis as their pseudepigraphic heroes.69 She discusses these heroes briefly, em-
phasizing Rabbi Ishmaels identity as high priest and suggesting that the pairing
of Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva is meant to recall the figures of Aaron and
Moses.70 But she makes no effort to address the significance of rabbinic heroes
for her view of the extreme opposition between worldviews.
Elior admits that we know little about the historical circumstances that ac-
count for the transmission of traditions of the Second Temple period to the
authors of the hekhalot texts:
We cannot pinpoint any historical contact between the various priestly circles who
committed chapters of Merkavah tradition to writing, both because we have no idea
what happened to the Qumran priests and because of the mists that shroud the circum-
stances and locations in which the authors of Heikhalot literature wrote. In addition
we have no independent documentation of the historical identities and real existence
of those authors. Nevertheless, there is no denying their common spiritual horizon and
their distinct spiritual identity, the continuity of their conceptual tradition, their shared
linguistic propensities and recurrent patterns of reference.71
Despite her observation that the contemplation of the merkavah is unknown

in the earlier literature,72 Elior insists on a remarkable continuity between the
literature of the secessionist priesthood and the hekhalot texts. As indications of
67Elior
does not discuss the dating of the hekhalot texts. While Scholem placed them in the
rabbinic period, scholars writing more recently, such as Schfer, Hidden and Manifest God, and
Swartz, Scholastic Magic, suggest a date in the period after the completion of the Babylonian
Talmud.
68Elior, Three Temples, 233, 26364.
69On the significance of rabbinic heroes for the context of the hekhalot texts, Schfer, Hid
den and Manifest God, 15960, with criticism of the theory of Halperin, Faces of the Chariot;
and Schfer, Aim and Purpose, 293.
the continuity she invokes both the figure of Enoch and the prominence of the
number 365 in the hekhalot literature:
The creators of the myth of angelic priests and their successors in Heikhalot and Merka-
vah literature, whether defiantly, longingly, or hopefully, preserved the memory of the
seventh priestly, angelic patriarch, Enoch-Metatron, the super-temporal witness to the
solar calendar (who lived 365 years!). They also preserved the memory of the number
of days in the solar year in relation to the cosmic pattern of the Merkavah world with its
seven heikhalot: The Holy One, blessed be he, placed his hand upon me and blessed
me with three hundred and sixty-five blessings.73
But do the elements of hekhalot literature to which Elior points in this passage
show what she claims? It is simply not true that Enoch plays a central role in the
hekhalot literature. Elior implies that Metatron, the heavenly vice-regent who
figures prominently in many passages in hekhalot literature, is always to be iden-
tified with Enoch. Yet of all the hekhalot works, only Sefer Hekhalot (3Enoch)
makes this identification.74 Further, Sefer Hekhalot stands apart from the rest of
hekhalot literature in a number of ways.75 It is probably the most highly redacted
of the hekhalot texts, and it appears to be engaged in bringing hekhalot traditions
closer to rabbinic thought, as in its incorporation of traditions from the Talmud
about Aers misunderstanding of Metatron. Most important for the question at
hand, it stands alone among the hekhalot texts in devoting attention to a hero of
apocalyptic literature; as Annette Reed has recently shown, it is dependent not
just on traditions about Enoch, but, at one point, on an excerpt from the Book
of the Watchers.76
As for the traces of the solar calendar Elior detects in the hekhalot literature, it
is truly astonishing that she takes the number 365 as a reference to the calendar
of the secessionist priests. Indeed one could argue that the passage Elior quotes
above from Sefer Hekhalot represents a rejection of the 364-day calendar, a
rejection that must be made explicit in a work that embraces Enoch, the ancient
hero of that calendar. The number 365, the number of days in an actual solar year,
is in fact of some importance for the rabbinic calendar, which is not a fully lunar
calendar like that of Islam, but rather a lunar calendar brought into harmony with
the solar year over a nineteen-year cycle. It is also the number of years of life
attributed to Enoch in Gen 5:23. In other words, the number 365 functions in
Sefer Hekhalot much as the incorporation of traditions from the Talmud critical
of Metatron functions, to bring the text into greater harmony with the thought
of the rabbis.
73Elior,
Three Temples, 263.
74I
must confess that I have not been able to locate the text Elior refers to as Shivhei metatron
(21, 35n. 23) or Shivhei hanokh-metatron (237).
75See, e.g., Schfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 12338, 14748.
76Annette Yoshiko Reed, From Asael and emihazah to Uzzah, Azzah, and Azael: 3Enoch
5 (78) and Jewish Reception-History of 1Enoch, JSQ 8 (2001): 10536.

Eliors overstated claims for continuity between the literature of the Second
Temple period and the hekhalot texts are another instance of the central problem
of The Three Temples, the harmonization of sources she views as reflecting a
common ideology. I have already suggested that Eliors work on later Jewish
mysticism led her to see a myth of sacred marriage where there was none. It
seems to me that her affinity for harmonization may also reflect a way of look-
ing at texts more appropriate to later Jewish mysticism, where, for example,
interpreters of the Zohar, despite the differences among them, were consciously
attempting to explicate and develop the teachings of a common text. Certainly
it would be wrong to attempt to harmonize the distinctive approaches of differ-
ent kabbalists to the Zohar, but it is nonetheless meaningful to speak of Zoharic
kabbalah because all interpreters share an allegiance to a particular text. As we
have seen, the situation is quite different for the ancient texts Elior considers
in The Three Temples. Thus, despite its powerful rhetoric and some interesting
observations about central texts, the picture The Three Temples proposes of early
Jewish mysticism is simply untenable.
The Pseudepigrapha and Medieval Jewish Literature
19. R. Moses the Preacher and the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
R. Moses the Preacher in eleventh-century Narbonne was the compiler of an

early example of the genre of biblical commentary to which the later Yalqut
Shimoni belongs, the anthology drawn from a wide range of rabbinic sources.
Bereshit Rabbati (henceforth, BR), Midrash Aggadah, and Bemidbar Rabbah to
Bemidbar and Naso are the surviving remnants of this work.1
R. Moses use of nonrabbinic traditions as well, including some from the
pseudepigrapha, has often been noted.2 The appearance of these traditions in his
work is part of a little-studied process of reclamation of literature of the Second
Temple period by Jews in post-talmudic times, beginning with Pirqei Rabbi
Eliezer in perhaps the eighth century.3 With the emergence of rabbinic Judaism,
most of that literature was abandoned by Jews. The works of Philo, the Apocry-
pha, and the pseudepigrapha all owe their preservation to Christians.4
1On R. Moses, see Abraham Epstein, R. Mosheh ha-darshan mi-Narbonah (1891); repr. in
Kitvei R.A. Epstein (ed. A.M. Habermann; Jerusalem: Mosad haRav Kook, 1950), 21344; Ch.
Albeck, ed., Midra Bereit Rabbati (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1940), introduction; and
S.W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (17 vols. to date; New York: Columbia
University Press, 1958), 6.171172, 410411.
On the relationship of the preserved works to each other, see Albeck, BR, introduction, 521.
2
In addition to the studies mentioned in note 1, see Epstein, Le livre des Jubils, Philon, et
le Midrasch Tadsche, REJ 21 (1890): 8097, 22 (1891): 125; and Samuel Belkin, Midrash
Tadshe; or, The Midrash of R. Phineas b. Ya ir: An Early Hellenistic Midrash (Hebrew),
orev 11 (1951): 152, who goes much further than Epstein in discerning Philos influence on
Midrash Tadshe. The attribution of Midrash Tadshe to R. Moses is speculative. Albeck rejects
it (BR, introduction, 16).
3Yosef Dan, Ha-Sippur ha- ivri bi-ymei ha-baynayyim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), 134135,
calls the reappropriation of texts and traditions from the Second Temple period a characteristic
of medieval reworkings of biblical stories.
4The Apocrypha are those books that were included in the canon of the Greek Bible used
by Jews but not in the Hebrew Bible. They are all of Jewish origin. The corpus of the pseud-
epigrapha, on the other hand, has been defined by modern scholars. The term has the value of
convenience, but there are no clear-cut criteria for membership in the corpus. The various texts
contained in the collections have in common their attribution to heroes of the Hebrew Bible,
but they are extremely diverse in content and in provenance. The standard English-language
collection has been R.H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
(2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913). The new collection edited by J.H. Charlesworth, The
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), is much larger
in scope. Both collections include works undoubtedly written by Christians. Distinguishing a
330 19. R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
The nature of the reclamation varies. Complete Hebrew and Aramaic versions
of many books of the Apocrypha circulated in the Middle Ages, but the influ-
ence of pseudepigrapha is more often in motifs, themes, or citations embedded
in larger works.5
It is much more difficult to explain how medieval Jews came to know the
pseudepigrapha than the Apocrypha, which had become part of the Christian
Bible and thus was widely available in Europe in the Middle Ages. The possi-
bility that Jews borrowed pseudepigrapha from Christians cannot be ruled out,
but many of the pseudepigrapha were not known to the Christians of Europe.
For example, the Book of Jubilees, which leaves traces in several post-talmudic
works, including R. Moses, was preserved not by European Christians but by
the Ethiopic church. Thus it appears that there are grounds for supposing internal
Jewish transmission of Jubilees, although the process of transmission cannot yet
be described.6 In some instances medieval Jewish works seem to reflect knowl-
edge not of the pseudepigraphic texts that have come down to us, but of works
Jewish work retouched by Christian transmitters from a Christian work that draws on Jewish
traditions raises a variety of methodological problems.
5
For the Apocrypha, see the introductions to individual books in Avraham Kahana, Ha-
Sefarim ha-ioniyyim (2 vols.; Tel Aviv: Masadah, 1956). For examples of the influence of the
pseudepigrapha, see Dan, Ha-Sippur ha- ivri, 13341; and M.E. Stone, Scriptures, Sects and
Visions: A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish Revolts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980),
10911. On specific topics, see, for example, Martha Himmelfarb, A Report on Enoch in
Rabbinic Literature, in SBLSP 17 (1978), 1.259269 (on motifs from 1Enoch and Jubilees);
and W.L. Lipscomb, A Tradition from the Book of Jubilees in Armenian, JJS 29 (1978):
14963 (on lists of wives of the patriarchs dependent on Jubilees, including some in medieval
Hebrew works).
It should also be noted that entire medieval works drawn largely from traditions of the pseud-
epigrapha exist in the Hebrew Testament of Naphtali (S.A. Wertheimer, ed., A.Y. Wertheimer,
rev., Batei midrashot [2 vols.; Jerusalem: Ktab Wasepher, 1968], 1.187203) and Midrash Va-
yissa u (critical editions by J.B. Lauterbach, Midrash Va-yissa u; or, The Book of the Wars of
the Sons of Jacob [Hebrew], in Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Perez Chajes [Vien-
na: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1933], Hebrew section, 20522; and Yosef Dan and
Tamar Alexander, The Complete Midrash Va-yissa u [Hebrew], Folklore Research Center
Studies 3 [1972]: Hebrew section, 6776; each edition contains MSS unknown to the other).
6For Jubilees in the work of R. Moses, see Albeck, BR, introduction, 17; Epstein, Le livre
des Jubils; and Himmelfarb, Enoch, 26263.

In addition to the Ethiopic and a few Greek fragments, the Book of Jubilees is preserved in
Latin fragments which cover about a fourth of the book. This does not suggest wide circula-
tion in the West. The question of whether a Syriac version ever existed has not been answered
conclusively. See Eugene Tisserant, Fragments syriaques du livre des Jubils, RB 30 (1921):
5586, 20632, who argues in favor of the existence of a Syriac version on the basis of pas-
sages in a Syriac chronicle; S.P. Brock, Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources, JJS 30 (1979):
224, who rejects Tisserants view of the passages in the chronicle; and Lipscomb, Jubilees in
Armenian, who shows that the Syriac list of wives of the patriarchs is translated from Greek.
Lipscomb also concludes that there must have been internal Hebrew transmission of the list of
wives of the patriarchs.
19. R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs 331
on which those texts drew. That is, the authors of the medieval works seem to
have had access to the sources of the surviving texts.7
Further, the designation pseudepigrapha should not mislead us into as-
suming a common history of transmission for texts thus labeled. Unlike the
Apocrypha, the pseudepigrapha were collected by modern scholars. Thus it is
certain that there is no single explanation for the transmission and reemergence
of traditions from pseudepigraphic texts. Even different instances of knowledge
of a single text require separate explanations.
In his edition of BR, anokh Albeck identifies almost twenty passages in BR
and Midrash Aggadah that he takes as evidence of use of the pseudepigrapha.
Many of the parallels are too vague to indicate dependence. Others involve
traditions found in rabbinic literature as well as in the pseudepigrapha. But the
six parallels to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs fall into neither of these
categories.8
7T. Korteweg, The Meaning of Naphtalis Vision, in Studies on the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs (ed. Marinus de Jonge; SVTP 3; Leiden: Brill, 1975), argues at length that the
Hebrew Testament of Naphtali preserves the content of the visions used in the Greek Testament
of Naphtali better than the Greek text. Thus the author of the medieval Hebrew Testament of
Naphtali must have had access to one of the sources of the Greek testament. Korteweg does not
concern himself with the process of transmission by which this source reached a medieval Jew.
It has long been noted that Midrash Va-yissa u appears to preserve a source common to Ju
bilees and the Testament of Judah. See, for example, R.H. Charles, The Greek Versions of the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), li, or Marinus de Jonge,
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of Their Text, Composition and Origin (As-
sen: Van Gorcum, 1953), 7071.
8All references to BR are to page and line of Albecks edition (see n.1 above).
For Albecks list of instances of R. Moses use of the pseudepigrapha, see BR, introduction,
17. An example of the first category, parallels too vague to indicate dependence, is Albecks
comparison of BR, 51, line 4, which says that the earth is divided into three parts, a third in-
habited, a third water, a third wilderness, to 4Ezra 6:42, 47, where the world is described as
six-sevenths land and one-seventh water. (This example could equally be considered in the sec-
ond category, passages paralleled in rabbinic works as well as in the pseudepigrapha, because
BRs tripartite division appears also in Midrash Konen [Adolf Jellinek, ed., Bet ha-Midrasch
(6 vols.; 185377; repr. Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1967), 2.27] and in R. Bayas commentary to
Num 10:35, as Albeck notes.)
An example of the second category is BR, 51, lines 1516, which says that mans dominion
over animals was lost after the fall. Albecks own note and Louis Ginzbergs note in Legends of
the Jews (7 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 190938), 5.11920 n.13, indicate
so many parallels in rabbinic literature that the Life of Adam and Eve 3738 (or Apocalypse of
Moses 1011) seems an unlikely source.
For a listing of the instances of use of rabbinic works in BR, see Albeck, BR, introduction,
2436. It seems to me that Albeck lists so many doubtful cases of use of the pseudepigrapha
because once he had become convinced that R. Moses used some pseudepigrapha, he assumed
that he had had access to all of them as easily as to rabbinic texts. Thus if a tradition appears
both in a rabbinic text and in a pseudepigraphon, there was no reason to prefer the rabbinic text
as R. Moses source.
Unlike the other parallels, which are elements of larger units, most of the parallels to the
Testaments constitute independent units. The traditions discussed in sections 2 and 3 below are
The Testaments, however, can no longer be taken as a Jewish text. Although it

undoubtedly draws on Jewish traditions, recent scholarship regards it as an early
Christian work.9 If the Testaments never existed as a Jewish document, Albecks
belief that R. Moses drew on the original Hebrew of the Testaments has to be
discarded. In any case Albecks argument for a Hebrew original is weak.10
But R. Moses knowledge of the Testaments could not have come from his
Christian neighbors in eleventh-century Narbonne. The Testaments seems to
have been known widely among Greek-speaking Christians throughout the
Middle Ages, but it was not known to Christians in Western Europe until about
1235, when Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, imported to England from the
library of Michael Choniates (Acominatus) in Byzantium the single manuscript
from which the Latin and all descendant vernacular versions derive.11
I shall argue that the conclusion that R. Moses knew the Testaments as trans-
mitted by Christians cannot be avoided despite the difficulties that it involves,
and I shall try to suggest a way in which R. Moses might have come to know a
Christian work that was not available in Latin Europe. The differences between
the passages in BR and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs seem to me to
represent revision of the Testaments for R. Moses exegetical purposes.
Our discussion of the transmission of the pseudepigrapha and similar works
into the Middle Ages raises another possibility that must be considered. It is clear
that the Testaments drew on Jewish traditions and indeed on actual Jewish texts.
There exists a number of Aramaic and Hebrew fragments from Qumran related
to the Testaments. An Aramaic work closely related to the Testament of Levi was
found in the Cairo Geniza. The medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali, which
contains material that seems to stand behind the Testament of Naphtali, gives us
reason to believe that some such texts did circulate among Jews in the Middle
Ages. So does Midrash Va-yissa u, which seems to reflect a source of Jubilees
and the Testament of Judah.12 It is possible, then, that R. Moses knew not the
parts of larger units, but 1, 4, 5, and 6 are independent. So too is the extract from Bel and the
Dragon, also discussed below.
The three parallels to Jubilees in Midrash Aggadah that Albeck identifies also merit further
investigation. I had originally planned to discuss them together with the parallels to the Testa
ments in BR, but the nature of the relationship between the two midrashim and their pseudepi-
graphic sources turns out to be very different.
9The most important work for setting the tone of recent scholarship is de Jonge, Testaments
of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study.

10While his view is probably based on more general considerations, the only evidence that
Albeck presents is a single passage in which he believes BR to preserve the original Hebrew
where the Greek of the Testament of Judah is corrupt (BR, introduction, 17, and text, 180, note
to line 8). The passage is discussed below in section 6.
11H.J. de Jonge, La bibliothque de Michel Choniates et la tradition occidentale des Testa-
ments des XII Patriarches, in Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.
12Aramaic Levi fragments from Qumran and the Cairo Geniza as well as the related passage
in Greek MS e of the Testaments make it clear that a Jewish document that contained much
Christian Testaments but its Jewish sources. The differences between BR and the
Testaments in that case would reflect his use of these earlier texts. (If the Testa
ments took over its sources without significant change, it would of course be
futile to attempt to make such a distinction. But where the early Jewish sources
are extant, as for the Testament of Levi, it is clear that a considerable amount of
adaptation has taken place.)
With these possibilities in mind, let us turn to the passages from BR, treated
in the order of their appearance.13
BR, 119, lines 1218 T. Naph. 1:912

1 And someone says:
2 The father of Bilhah and Zilpah My mother is Bilhah,
3 the daughter of Rotheos,
4 was the brother of Deborah. the brother of Deborah,
5 Rebeccas nurse Rebeccas nurse,
6 and Aotay was his name.
7 who was born on the very same day as
Rachel.
8 Rotheos was Abrahams kin, Chaldean,
pious, free, and noble.
9 Before he married,
10 he was taken captive, Having been taken captive,
11 and Laban sent and ransomed him he was bought by Laban,
of the material of the Testament of Levi existed in Second Temple times. This text probably
took the form of one of a series of visions of Levi, Qahat, and Amram, the progenitors of the
priestly line, rather than of a testament. See J.T. Milik, 4Q Visions de Amram et une citation
dOrigne, RB 79 (1972): 7779; and Marinus de Jonge, The Main Issues in the Study of the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, NTS 26 (1980): 51314.
In 1956 Milik announced the discovery of a Hebrew fragment from Qumran of a genealogy
of Bilhah more extensive than the one in the Testament of Naphtali (Prire de Nabonide et
autres rcits dun cycle de Daniel, RB 63 [1956]: 407 n.1). The fragment is still unpublished,
but de Jonge has expressed doubts about Miliks assumption that the original context of the
genealogy was a testament of Naphtali (Main Issues, 513).
Milik has recently published some fragments that he identifies as parts of a testament of
Judah and a testament of Joseph (Ecrits pressniens de Qumrn: dHnoch Amram, in
Qumrn: Sa pit, sa thologie et son milieu (ed. Mathias Delcor; BETL 46; Paris-Gembloux:
Duculot, and Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 1978), 99103.
For the medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali and the similarities between Jubilees and
the Testaments suggesting a common written source, see n.7 above.
13The translations of the passages below are my own. For the text of the Testaments I used
Marinus de Jonge, ed., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek
Text (PVTG 1:2; Leiden: Brill, 1978), and I consulted the translation of R.H. Charles, The
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (London: A. & C. Black, 1908). References to Charless
notes to the Testaments in the body of this article are to the commentary found in this work.
BR, 119, lines 1218 T. Naph. 1:912

12 and gave him his maid for a wife. who gave him Aina his maid for a wife.
13 She bore him a daughter, She bore him a daughter,
14 and he called her Zilpah and she called her Zilpah
15 after the name of the city after the name of the city
16 to which he had been taken as a captive. in which he had been a captive.
17 She bore another daughter, Next she bore Bilhah,
18 and he called her Bilhah, saying,
19 My daughter is eager for what is new
[kainospoudos].
20 for when she was born, For as soon as she was born,
21 she was eager [mitbahelet] to suck. she was eager [espeude] to suck.
22 He said,
23 How eager [behulah] my daughter is.
24 And when Jacob went to Labans,
25 Aotay their father was dead.
26 Laban took avah his maid and her two
daughters
27 and gave Zilpah, the older, to his older
daughter Leah as a maid,
28 and Bilhah, the younger, to his younger
daughter Rachel.
The difference in the way the two passages begin is a result of their different
contexts. Someone says (1) is a rabbinic formula for introducing a saying. The
genealogy in the Testament of Naphtali is part of a first-person narrative.
Some details of the account in the Testament of Naphtali (7, 8) are lacking
in BR. As Charles notes (to T. Naph. 1:911), the purpose of the genealogy is
to show that the sons of the concubines are descended from Abraham on their
mothers side as well as on their fathers. BR fails to make this point.
Some of the details of BR appear at first glance to be independent of the Tes
tament of Naphtali, but turn out not to be. BR (9), which places the captivity of
the father of Bilhah and Zilpah before his marriage, only makes explicit what
is implicit in the Testament of Naphtali. The Testament of Naphtali gives the
name of the mother of Bilhah and Zilpah as Aina (12). BR does not mention a
name at this point in the narrative, but later calls the mother avah, Eve (26).
Albeck suggests reading annah, which is a reasonable Hebrew equivalent for
Aina. Graphically n and v are very close in Hebrew; since avah too is a com-
mon Hebrew name, such an interchange could easily take place in the course of
transmission in Hebrew.
The rest of BR (2428), while independent of the Testament of Naphtali, is
drawn from Gen 29:24, 29. The addition of this material seems to be the result
of the desire to link the passage more firmly to the biblical verse on which it
is offered as a comment. The only detail not found in Genesis, the death of the
father before Jacobs sojourn with Laban (2425), can be understood as an
exegetical response to his absence from Genesis. If he was already dead when
Jacob arrived at Labans, the silence of the biblical text about this ancestor of
Israel is easier to understand.
Another minor difference between BR and the Testament of Naphtali suggests
revision in BR to conform to contemporary Jewish practice. According to the
Testament of Naphtali (11), Laban bought the captive Rotheos; according to
BR, Laban ransomed him. Knowledge of the duty of ransoming fellow Jews,
codified in the Talmud and widely practiced by the Jewish communities of the
premodern period, might have led a medieval Jew to understand Labans action
as performance of this religious duty.
The two elements of the etymological explanation of Bilhahs name (1923),
the description of the babys behavior and the parents exclamation, are not given
in the same order in the two passages. The etymology obviously has a Hebrew
background. The phonetic similarity between the root to be eager and the name
Bilhah is lost in Greek. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the Greek is based
on a Hebrew text. Philo provides etymologies for Hebrew names, as do Christian
onomastica.14 Nor does the passage in BR require a Hebrew source; realizing that
a play on words is involved, someone translating the Testament of Naphtali into
Hebrew might guess that spoudein represents the Hebrew root b-h-l.15
Albeck suggests in his notes that the name Aotay is a corruption of Arotay,
the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Rotheos.16 Given his view that BR preserves
the original Hebrew of the Testaments, this suggestion is a little surprising. One
might have expected him to argue that Rotheos is the Greek version of a Hebrew
name, especially since Rotheos is a rare Greek name. As far as I can tell it ap-
pears nowhere else.17 The name Aotay is also rare. The only other occurrence
I know is in b. Keritot 13b, where it is spelled Aot ay.
The passage in BR is so similar to the passage from the Testament of Naphtali
that some literary relationship must exist, but it is difficult to offer conclusive
evidence about the direction of dependence. Is BR a Hebrew translation and
revision of Testament of Naphtali, or does BR preserve an early Hebrew text on
14See Franz Wutz, Onomastica Sacra: Untersuchungen zum Liber Interpretationis Nomi
num Hebraicorum des hl. Hieronymus (TU 41; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 191415).
15It is worth noting that Charless attempt at retroversion (note to T. Naph. 1:12) yields
nivhalah for espeude. BR reads mitbahelet.

16Graphically, for ro is easily explained in Hebrew. Hebrew y for the Greek ending os
is common. Samuel Krauss, Griechische und lateinische Lehnwrter im Talmud, Midrasch

und Targum (2 vols.; Berlin: S. Calvary, 1898), explains the Hebrew ending as derived from
the Greek vocative (1:74). Although Albeck seems to view the Hebrews addition of the as
standard practice (BR, notes to 119, 1ines 1216), Krauss gives no examples of before r in
his discussion of prothetic vowels in Hebrew transliterations (1.13640). M.E. Stone has sug-
gested to me that the takes the place of the rough breathing that accompanies initial Greek r,
a phenomenon with parallels in Armenian.
17Charles suggests no parallels, and the name does not appear in the Liddell-Scott Greek-
English Lexicon or in Friederich Preisigke, Namenbuch (Heidelberg: printed by author, 1922).

which the author of the Testaments drew? We have seen that the Testament of
Naphtalis etymology of the name Bilhah requires a Hebrew background but not
necessarily a Hebrew Vorlage; the corresponding passage in BR could represent
a Hebrew translation, with some revision, of the Testament of Naphtali. In this
passage from BR and in the others considered here, personal and place names
from the Bible appear in their original forms, not in Hebraized versions of the
Greek. Yet this need not be taken as evidence for use of Hebrew documents that
stand behind the Testaments rather than of the Testaments itself; familiarity with
the Masoretic Text is enough to account for it.
The two names in the passage that are not taken from Genesis 29 demonstrate
the complexity of questions of Vorlage. BRs annah is a common Hebrew name
found in the Bible. It is the equivalent of the Testament of Naphtalis Aina, a
name not found in Greek, which looks like an effort to provide a Greek form
of annah. BRs annah may preserve the Hebrew of the tradition behind the
Testament of Naphtali, but it could also represent an attempt at retroversion of
the Testament of Naphtalis Aina, an attempt that perhaps succeeds in recovering
the name in the tradition behind the Greek.
In the case of the other names, Aotay / Rotheos, neither the Greek name
nor the Hebrew is common. The form of the Hebrew name suggests Hebraiza-
tion of a Greek name, but that does not mean that the name is only a Hebrew
equivalent for a name in a Greek text. Dostay, for example, a name of the same
form as Aotay, derived from the Greek Dositheos, becomes a Jewish name.
It would certainly be helpful to know the names of the parents of Bilhah in the
unpublished Qumran genealogy.18
I have noted elements of BR that seem to mark it as a revision. While the
Testament of Naphtali contains details found neither in BR nor in Genesis, every-
thing in BR can be explained on the basis of Testament of Naphtali and Genesis.
BR (2428) serves to make the relation of the passage to Genesis more explicit
in accordance with the exegetical needs of BR. A different kind of revision,
this time toward medieval Jewish practice, is in evidence in the use of the verb
ransom for the Testament of Naphtalis buy. Both types of revision could
reasonably be attributed to the hand of R. Moses.
But in light of the difficulties involved in assuming that R. Moses knew the
Testaments, it is worth considering the other possibility. It is clear that an early
Hebrew work related to the Testament of Naphtali once existed. The medieval
Hebrew Testament of Naphtali lacks much of the material found in the Greek
Testament of Naphtali but contains a longer and more coherent version of the vi-
sions that cannot be explained as depending on the Greek. Rather, both versions
go back to a common source, which is preserved better in the Hebrew.19
18See
n.12 above.
19See
n.7 above.
The medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali does not contain any mention of
Bilhah, but it is possible that the source document contained material that does
not appear in the medieval Hebrew testament. If the unpublished genealogical
fragment from Qumran resembles T. Naph. 1:912, a case could be made for
viewing a form of this passage as part of that source document.
It appears that the redactor of the medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali
somehow had access to a text of the Second Temple period. Perhaps R. Moses
too was able to draw on it. In that case BR would represent a revision of the
source of the Testament of Naphtali rather than a revision of the Testament of
Naphtali. Although an explanation built on a hypothetical source is rarely to be
preferred to one based on an actual text, there are great historical difficulties
involved in attributing knowledge of the Testaments to R. Moses. If the passage
just discussed were the only example of such knowledge, the theory of depen-
dence on a Hebrew document of Second Temple times would be appealing. But
that passage must be considered together with those that follow.
II
BR, 156, line 23157, line 1, comments on Gen 35:21, Israel journeyed on and
pitched his tent.
It is written, her tent. [The consonants hlh, vocalized his tent in the Masoretic
Text, as the context requires, would ordinarily be vocalized her tent.] This is Bilhahs
tent. When Rachel died, he brought Bilhah into Rachels tent, and she took her place
and nursed Benjamin. Even though she had ceased giving birth several years before,
her milk came in, and she nursed him.
The view that Bilhah took Rachels place in Jacobs tent is found in several
rabbinic sources.20 The only other place where Bilhah is said to have nursed
Benjamin, however, is T. Benj. 1:3.
III
According to the version of the story of the ten martyrs in BR, Zebulun pitied
Joseph and did not want to sell him (178, line 10). But because he and Reuben,
who was not present when the sale was made, also pitied their other brothers21
and did not tell Jacob the truth about Josephs fate, they were punished by hav-
ing one of their descendants included among the ten martyrs, one for each of the
brothers who participated in the crime against Joseph. There is no mention of
20See Albeck,
BR, note ad loc., and Ginzburg, Legends, 5.31920 n.312.
21I
follow Albeck, BR, note ad loc., in reading asu for anu.
Zebuluns feelings toward Joseph in any rabbinic source, but the Testament of
Zebulun 4 describes Zebulun as so sorrowful that he could not eat while Joseph
was imprisoned in the pit.
IV
In relation to Gen 38:6, And her name was Tamar, BR, 178, line 27179,
line 1, reports first the standard rabbinic view that Tamar was the daughter of
Shem.22 As in the genealogy of Bilhah and Zilpah, the motive seems to be the
desire to provide honorable ancestry, Semitic rather than Canaanite-Hamitic, on
the female side.
After offering this view BR goes on to say, Our rabbis of blessed memory
said: Judah took her from among the women of Aram-naharaim, and he brought
her father and her mother and her three brothers with her. And further Judah did
not allow them to return to Aram-naharaim, but gave them a city named Shiqron,
and they lived there. Aramnaharaim is Labans hometown (or country) accord-
ing to Gen 24:10. Albeck compares this to T. Jud. 10:1, Er took Tamar as his
wife, from Mesopotamia, a daughter of Aram, and to Jub. 41:1, Judah took for
his first-born Er, a wife from the daughters of Aram, named Tamar.23
These three passages are closer than the translations suggest. Benot, which I
have translated idiomatically as women in the BR passage, is literally daugh-
ters. Ginzberg understands the Testament of Judah and Jubilees to be speaking
of Aram, the son of Shem (Gen 10:22). But the Testament of Judahs mention
of Mesopotamia (naharaim means two rivers) and Jubilees plural daughters
of Aram (like the women of BR) suggest the possibility that Aram is a place
rather than a person. The hostility of Bat-Shua24 and her sons to the non-Ca-
naanite Tamar, an important theme in both the Testament of Judah and Jubilees,
requires Semitic lineage for Tamar, but either descent from Aram or Shem or
birth in the Mesopotamian town of Aram would provide it.
Thus BR seems to share with the Testament of Judah and Jubilees a version
of Tamars Semitic lineage based on geography. But neither the Testament of
Judah nor Jubilees can account for the further information of BR: that with
Tamar Judah brought her parents and three brothers, whom he then settled in a
city called Shiqron and did not allow to return home. The proximity of Tamars
parents may be exegetical revision, an attempt to explain how this Mesopo-
22See Albeck,
BR, note ad loc., and Ginzburg, Legends, 5:333 n.79.
23This
and all subsequent references to Jubilees are to the translation of R.H. Charles, The
Book of Jubilees; or, The Little Genesis (London: A. & C. Black, 1902), and to his notes there.
24Genesis never gives Judahs wife a name, but refers to her as bat-shua, the daughter of
Shua (Gen 38:12). Both Jubilees and the Testament of Judah take this designation as a name,
on the order of Bat-sheva, Bathsheba.
tamian woman could return to her fathers house (Gen 38:11) and still be in
a position to hear about her father-in-laws sheep-shearing expedition (Gen
38:13). The name of the town, Shiqron, and the number, or even the existence,
of the brothers, are more difficult to explain. It seems reasonable to suppose
that they are drawn from a tradition in which they have some function, but I do
not know such a tradition. I cannot locate the name Shiqron (falsity, from the
root sh-q-r?) anywhere else. Perhaps it is suggested by Chezib (deception,
from the root k-z-b?), the town associated with the story of Judah and Tamar
in Genesis 38.
BR, 179, lines 710, agrees with the Testament of Judah in attributing the death
of Judahs wife to Judahs curse.
And the daughter of Shua died (Gen 38:12). Why did she die? Our rabbis of blessed
memory said: When Shelah grew up, his mother went and married him to another
woman, for she feared that he too might die on account of her [Tamar], and Judah did
not know of this. When Judah found out, he cursed her for disobeying his words and
transgressing the commandment of levirate marriage. She died immediately.
T. Jud. 11:35 reads,

While I was away, she [Bat-Shua] went and took for Shelah a wife from the land of
Canaan. When I found out, I cursed her out of my souls grief, and she died through
the evil of her sons.25
In the Testament of Judah, Bat-Shuas motive for preventing the marriage of

Shelah to Tamar is apparently her Canaanite hostility toward Tamar the Meso-
potamian. The narrative of the Testament of Judah has already developed the
theme of the hostility of Bat-Shua and her sons toward Tamar. In the exegetical
framework of BR the incident of the curse has no such narrative context. Ac-
cording to BR, Judahs wife prevents the marriage of Shelah to Tamar because
she is afraid that Tamar will cause the death of her last son. This is the same
motive that the biblical text attributes to Judah when he sends Tamar back to her
fathers house (Gen 38:11).
Again BR can be viewed as a revision. It exchanges the motive of the Testa
ment of Judah, which requires a larger context, for one drawn from Genesis. But
while the biblical motive is adopted, the reluctance to marry Shelah to Tamar is
attributed to Bat-Shua rather than to Judah. Thus the blame for violating the law
25In the parallel passage in Jub. 41:7, Bat-Shua prevents Shelah from marrying altogether.
Bds l, the wife of Judah, did not permit her son Shelah to marry. And Bds l, the wife
of Judah, died in the fifth year of this week. While Bat-Shuas death is reported immediately
after the notice that she did not permit Shelah to marry, no causal relationship is spelled out.
of levirate marriage is shifted from Jacobs son to his Canaanite wife. The revi-
sion succeeds in accomplishing two purposes: It brings BR closer to the biblical
text, and it absolves Judah.
VI
BR,180, lines 813 T. Jud. 12:13

1 Our rabbis of blessed memory said:
2 When Judah left Chezib to go to Timnah After these things, while Tamar was a
widow, after two years,
3 while he was on the road, he ate and
drank and became drunk.
4 Tamar, when she found out about this when she heard that I was going up to
shear my sheep,
5 went and dressed in bridal garments she adorned herself in bridal attire
6 and stood at the gate of Enaim. and sat in the city of Enan at the gate.
7 When he saw the hill and saw Tamar,
8 the wine confused him, and he thought
in his heart
9 that she was a cult prostitute [ ishah
qedeshah] sitting for prostitution [zenut].
10 For such was the custom in the land of For it is the custom of the Amorites
the Amorites:
11 When a woman dedicated [meqaddeshet] for the bride to sit in fornication
herself to prostitution [zenut],
12 she would sit at the crossroads for seven for seven days at the gate.
days
13 for everyone to know her.
14 And therefore he thought her to be a
prostitute [zonah].
15 Since I had gotten drunk at the waters of
Kozeba,
16 I did not recognize her because of the
wine,
17 and her beauty deceived me through the
arrangement of her adornment.
Genesis does not mention drunkenness in the story of Judah and Tamar, but it is
an important theme in the Testament of Judah. Drink is the cause not only of the
incident with Tamar but also of Judahs marriage to a Canaanite woman (T. Jud.
8:2, 11:2, 13:6). With fornication, drunkenness is perhaps the most prominent of
the sins against which Judah warns in the paraenetic passages of the testament.
Chezib, Kozeba in the Testament of Judah, is the name of the town in which
Gen 38:5 left Judah and his family. The Testament of Judah (15), I had gotten
drunk at the waters of Kozeba, suggests a play on the Hebrew root k-z-b, de-
ceive, that is lost in Greek.26 As I argued in relation to the etymology of Bilhah,

such a play on words does not necessarily mean that the Greek is drawing on a
Hebrew text. The play on Chezib does not appear at all in BR.
The passage from BR includes details of the biblical text absent from the Tes
tament of Judah. BR (2) names Judahs destination as Timnah (Gen 38:12). The
hill (ma aleh) of BR (7) seems to reflect the verb -l-h in Gen 38:12, 13, as does
the verb go up of the Testament of Judah (4).
According to both the Testament of Judah and BR, Tamar dresses herself as a
bride in order to deceive Judah. But Gen 38:14 in the Masoretic Text says only,
She took off her widows garments, covered herself with a veil, and wrapped
herself. The Septuagint reads slightly differently: She took off her widows
garments, wrapped herself in a veil, and beautified herself.27
While the Septuagints beautified herself, kallpizein, may have suggested
the Testament of Judahs adorned herself, kosmein, neither the Septuagint nor
the Masoretic Text mentions bridal attire. Perhaps the idea was suggested by the
veil of both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint, which is not found in the
Testament of Judah or BR.28 Tamars method of disguise is most appropriate,
since her trick is intended to right the wrong done her in preventing her from
becoming a bride again. Labans use of the veil in his deception of Jacob may
have suggested this stratagem to the author of the Testament of Judah.
According to the Testament of Judah there is a good reason why Tamar
dressed as a bride in order to accomplish her plan: It was the Amorite custom
for a bride to act as a prostitute for seven days. While the Amorites probably
practiced this custom nowhere but in the authors imagination, Charles (note to
T. Jud. 12:2) compares it to an Assyrian practice described by Herodotus.
In the situation described in BR, however, Tamars bridal attire, rather than
signaling that she was available for prostitution, would have appeared most ec-
centric. According to BR (1013), the custom of the Amorites was that a woman
who dedicated herself to prostitution announced her choice of career by sitting
at the crossroads for seven days.
To make sense of BR we need to return to Genesis 38. According to the Maso-
retic Text, Judah takes Tamar for a zonah (Gen 38:15), an ordinary prostitute.
But when his friend Hirah the Adullamite is sent to retrieve Judahs pledges, he
asks for the qedeshah, or cult prostitute (Gen 38:21). Later Judah is told that his
daughter-in-law has engaged in prostitution, zantah, and that she is pregnant by
prostitution, liznunim (Gen 38:24). E.A. Speiser suggests that we are to under-
26For examples of this play on Chezib in rabbinic sources, see Ginzberg, Legends, 5.334 n.81.
27Similarly
the Peshitta, Onqelos, and Jub. 41:9. See Charless note to Jub. 41:9.
28The
association of veils with brides is very ancient. In Gen 24:65 Rebecca veils herself
upon approaching her bridegroom. Labans deception of Jacob presupposes the custom. On
veils and brides in ancient Israel, see L.M. Epstein, Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism (New
York: Bloch, 1948; repr. New York: Ktav, 1967), 3639.
stand Hirahs use of the term qedeshah as reflecting what Judah had told him;
Judahs choice of terms would have been motivated by a desire to place the
affair on a higher social level.29
In the Septuagint the distinction between ordinary prostitution and cult pros-
titution is lost. The two different Hebrew roots are translated by the same Greek
root, porn-.
In Gen 38:5 Judah mistakes Tamar for an ordinary prostitute; in BR (9) he
mistakes her for a qedeshah. But in its explanation of the Amorite custom that
led Judah to believe that Tamar was a prostitute, BR (11) speaks of a woman who
dedicates (meqaddeshet) herself to prostitution (zenut). BR is playing here on the
derivation of the word for cult prostitute from the root that means to dedicate,
set apart, and thus, to marry.
BRs version of the Amorite custom may have been motivated to some extent
by disbelief: Even the Amorites could not have been as licentious as the Testa
ment of Judah claims. But it is also an attempt to resolve the problem of the two
different terms for prostitute in the Masoretic Text. BR seems to be suggesting
the qedeshah in Genesis 38 means a woman dedicated to prostitution, not a cult
prostitute. If the author of the Testament of Judah used the Septuagint, he did
not face the problem, since the Septuagint does not indicate the existence of two
kinds of prostitute.
It is these lines that Albeck cites as proof that R. Moses had before him the
original Hebrew of the Testaments. According to Albeck, the Testament of Ju
dah represents a mistranslation of a Hebrew original that spoke of the Amorite
custom in relation to a woman who decides to devote herself to prostitution, as
in BR (11). The word to prostitution was somehow omitted, and the translator
translated meqaddeshet amah, dedicated herself, as gets married.30
Albecks claim of a Hebrew original for the Testaments as a whole on the
basis of this one instance is extravagant. Even if the claim is restricted to this
passage from the Testament of Judah, the presence of the bridal attire in both BR
and the Testament of Judah is a compelling argument against it. If BRs version
of the custom is original, there is no reasonable explanation for the bridal attire.
If, on the other hand, BR represents a revision of the Testament of Judah out of
the exegetical needs of an interpreter of the Masoretic Text, the presence of the
bridal attire, now without a function, can be satisfactorily explained.
***
29E.A.
Speiser, Genesis (AB 1; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), 300.
30Albeck, BR, introduction, 17, and note to 180, lines 811; he cites b. Ketubot 22a as an
instance of this usage. Normally the subject of the verb q-d-sh in the sense of to marry is the
bridegroom.
What conclusions can be drawn from the parallels between BR and the Testa
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs? The parallels in sections 2, 3, and 4 consist of
isolated elements of traditions. Any of these parallels by itself could be explained
as coincidence, and even the three sections together without the evidence of the
other sections would not be strong grounds on which to base an argument for the
dependence of BR on the Testaments. But the longer passages from BR in 1, 5,
and 6 share so many details with the Testaments that some kind of dependence
is indicated, and for 1 and 6 the conclusion that the dependence is literary seems
unavoidable.
At the outset I suggested two possible explanations for BRs parallels to the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: knowledge of the Testaments itself or
knowledge of the sources that stand behind the Testaments. The most important
argument for viewing the passages in BR as drawing on the Testaments rather
than on its sources is that, with a single exception, all of the differences between
BR and the Testaments can be explained as revisions of the Testaments to serve
the needs and interests of a medieval Jew whose Bible was the Masoretic Text.
The only point at which BR seemed likely to reflect independent traditions
rather than revision of the Testaments is in some of the details about Tamars
family in section 4. Tamars parents and brothers and the city that Judah gave
them do not appear in the Testament of Judah, nor are they known from any other
source. It was suggested above that the parents and their city were introduced for
exegetical purposes, but no exegetical explanation seems possible for the three
brothers, who have no function in the story as it stands in BR.
In addition to the three brothers, one other factor might seem to recommend
the view that BR draws not on the Testaments but on its sources. Parallels to the
Testament of Naphtali and the Testament of Judah make up four of the six pas-
sages in BR. For both of these testaments, although not for most of the others
that make up the Testaments, there is evidence of the existence of written Jewish
sources. But when the relationships of these testaments to the Hebrew Testament
of Naphtali and Midrash Va-yissa u are compared to their relationships to BR,
the case for viewing BR as drawing on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
in its final form is strengthened.
The medieval Hebrew Testament of Naphtali, as we have seen, preserves a
fuller form of some of the material found in the Testament of Naphtali, while
Midrash Va-yissa u offers an account of the wars of Jacob and his sons that
clarifies the narrative of the Testament of Judah and Jubilees.31 Thus it is not pos-
sible to understand the Hebrew Testament of Naphtali and Midrash Va-yissa u
as medieval reworkings of the pseudepigraphic works to which they are related.
31See n.7 above, Charless commentaries in Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and
Jubilees to the relevant passages of the Testament of Judah and Jubilees, and Samuel Klein,
Palstinisches im Jubilenbuch, Zeitschrift des deutschen Palstina-Vereins 57 (1934): 812.
The conclusion seems unavoidable that both medieval works had access to
texts used by the pseudepigraphic works, despite the difficulty of explaining the
transmission of such texts.32 The passages in BR offer no such clarification of
the testaments they parallel. Further, BR contains passages parallel to the Testa
ment of Benjamin and the Testament of Zebulun, testaments for which there is no
evidence of the use of early Jewish texts. The cumulative weight of the evidence
for BRs knowledge of the Testaments as it has reached us probably makes it best
to regard the troublesome brothers of section 4 as invented, in W.S. Gilberts
words, to lend artistic verisimilitude.33
***
It is now clear that R. Moses knew parts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patri
archs. How did he come by that knowledge? R. Moses lived in Provence. The
place closest to Provence where the Testaments is likely to have been known is
southeastern Italy, which then formed part of the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine
Italy contained several flourishing Jewish communities. By the mid-ninth century
the town of Oria was a center of talmudic study, and after its decline, it was re-
placed by Bari and Otranto. The glory of Baris reputation is indicated by the fact
that the rabbis of Ibn Dauds story of the four captives came from there. Bari was
32As indicated in n.7, Korteweg, Naphtalis Visions, does not discuss the issue of trans-
mission. Klein, in his investigation of the place-names mentioned in the parallel accounts of
the war against the Amorites in Midrash Va-yissa u, the Testament of Judah, and Jubilees
(Palstinisches im Jubilenbuch, 1112, 1516), invariably prefers the readings of Midrash
Va-yissa u, although they too stand in need of some correction. But he cautions that the Hebrew
text cannot be viewed as the Hebrew original but rather as a translation or reworking from
Greek or Latin. He never makes explicit the grounds for this claim, but it seems likely that
it is based on his opinion that some of the place-names preserved in Midrash Va-yissa u are
transliterations into Hebrew of a Greek (or Latin) version of a biblical place-name. Another
approach to Midrash Va-yissa u, from an entirely different angle, deserves mention here. Dans
treatment cuts through the problem of transmission by eliminating it altogether (Ha-Sippur
ha ivri, 138140; and Dan and Alexander, Midrash Va-yissa u). For Dan and Alexander,
Midrash Va-yissa u is a Jewish version of the Christian literature of the exploits of knights and
crusaders. Since knights were not a feature of contemporary Jewish life, Jewish authors who
wished to provide a Jewish equivalent to this Christian literature drew on the great heroes of
the biblical past and invented wars for them.
Dan and Alexanders dismissal of the parallels to Midrash Va-yissa u in Jubilees and the
Testament of Judah as isolated hints on which the author of Midrash Va-yissa u built (Mi
drash Vayissa u, 67), is simply wrong, as even a quick comparison of the texts will show.
Nevertheless, their remarks about the influences that produced Midrash Va-yissa u can perhaps
be applied to the preservation and reworking of the source of chs. 23.
33This is, of course, a disturbing thought with important methodological implications for a
source critic. I feel justified in considering it only in relation to Tamars brothers because I have
been able to account for all of the other details in BR without recourse to hypothetical sources.
also the seat of an archbishop, which suggests a certain amount of Christian learn-
ing as well, and thus possibly the availability of a manuscript of the Testaments.34
There is evidence for contact between the Jews of Provence and the Jews of
Lucca and Rome in the tenth and eleventh centuries,35 and these northern Ital-
ian communities may have served to link Byzantine Italy to Provence. Nathan
b. Yeiel of Rome, the compiler of the Arukh, was a student of R. Moses the
Preacher, and he seems also to have studied with Moses Kalfo of Bari.36 Through
such channels a Hebrew translation of the Testaments or of excerpts from the
Testaments might have reached Narbonne, for it seems reasonable to suppose
that the translation was made by a Byzantine Jew, who would have known Greek
better than a Jew from Provence.
I have operated on the assumption that the reviser of the passages was R.
Moses. Albeck notes that it is characteristic of R. Moses to revise his sources.37
Still it is certainly possible that the revisions had already been made when the
text reached R. Moses.
Why was R. Moses willing to include passages and traditions from a Christian
work (or at least a work in Christian hands) in his compilation? Our only clues
to R. Moses attitude beyond the fact that he did include the passages are the
formulas he used for introducing them. There are no such formulas for passages
2 and 3, which are elements of larger units. Passage I begins, And someone
says, a common rabbinic formula for introducing an opinion. The passages
from the Testament of Judah (4, 5, and 6) are all introduced with Our rabbis of
blessed memory said, another stereotyped rabbinic expression.
It might be possible to view the introductory someone says as casting doubt
on the authority of the opinion, although this is not how the formula functions
in rabbinic literature. But the attribution of a tradition to our rabbis of blessed
memory can be nothing but an endorsement of the value of the tradition, al-
though not necessarily a vote for it against other views presented. In the realm
of aggadah, no conclusion need be reached, and contradictory opinions may
happily coexist.
But there may be another nuance to R. Moses attribution of these passages to
our rabbis of blessed memory. Albeck points out that it is R. Moses practice
to cite a passage by the name of the supposed author of the work from which it
is drawn. A passage from Midrash Tadshe is quoted in the name of R. Phineas b.
Ya ir; from Pirqei Rabbi Eliezer, in the name of R. Eliezer; from Seder Eliyahu,
34Andrew
Sharf, Byzantine Jewry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 12223,
16372.
35B.Z. Benedict, On the History of the Torah Center in Provence (Hebrew), Tarbiz 22
(1951): 91, 9495.

36Baron, History, 7.2931.
37Albeck, BR, introduction, 2224.
in the name of Elijah.38 Thus the attribution of the passages from the Testaments
to someone or even our rabbis may be an admission of ignorance about au-
thorship. It is worth noting that when R. Moses quotes from Midrash Va-yissa u
(BR, 153, lines 47; 16263), it too is attributed to our rabbis.
R. Moses manner of citing these passages seems to me to suggest that he
knew the Testaments only through Hebrew excerpts. Even if he were master
enough of Greek to translate the Testaments himself, it is hard to imagine that
he would have viewed a Greek work as rabbinic. If he knew the Testaments as a
whole, it seems unlikely that he could have avoided noticing its Christian con-
tent, although it is possible that the complete Testament of Judah alone would
not have struck him as Christian. Altogether it seems more reasonable to suppose
that R. Moses knowledge of the Testaments was restricted to Hebrew excerpts
that he could comfortably view as rabbinic.
R. Moses citation of a passage from the episode of Daniel and the Dragon
in relation to Gen 37:24 (BR, 175, lines 1016) provides a point of comparison.
The story of the Dragon appears together with the story of Daniel and Bel, the
idol of the Chaldeans, as part of the Book of Daniel in the Greek Bible. Thus,
although the two stories are of Jewish origin, they circulated as part of the Bible
used by Christians. While most of BR is in Hebrew, the passage from the story
of the Dragon is in Aramaic. It is introduced by the formula, Our rabbis said:
We have a tradition
A complete Aramaic version of Bel and the Dragon, introduced by the same
verses and formula found in BR, appears in a fifteenth-century Bodleian manu-
script that also contains an Aramaic version of the Book of Tobit. According to
the manuscript, Tobit and Bel and the Dragon were copied from Midrash Rabbah
de-Rabbah, which Albeck believes to be a name for the larger work of Moses
the Preacher from which BR was drawn.39
Adolf Neubauer has identified the Aramaic Bel and the Dragon in the Bodle-
ian manuscript as a transliteration into Hebrew characters of the Peshitta of
Daniel 13.40 The passage in BR, which quotes only vv.4042, abbreviates them,
but preserves the wording of the Peshitta.
Unlike R. Moses, the scribe of the Bodleian manuscript noted the Christian
provenance of the work he was copying. He appended the following remarks to
his transcription:41
The Christians include these two stories, that is, the story of Bel, the idol of the Chal-
deans, and the story of the Dragon, in the total of twenty-four books of the prophets
38Albeck,
BR, introduction, 1819.
39Albeck,
BR, introduction 6.
40Adolf Neubauer, The Book of Tobit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878), xiiixiv; text, 3943.
There are a few small differences between the MS and the Peshitta.
41My translation. The Hebrew is found in Neubauer, Tobit, 43, with a translation on xcii.
with three other books.42 And their translator43 says that he has not found them in the
sacred tongue.
The scribe apparently thought it noteworthy that the work he was copying was
found only among Christians, but this circumstance did not deter him from
copying it.
In Christian Spain in the thirteenth century, Namanides, who used Judith
and the Wisdom of Solomon in Syriac,44 developed a theory to account for
the problems raised by the fact that the Wisdom of Solomon was preserved by
Christians.45
We have found another book, which is called the Great Wisdom of Solomon.46 It is in
very difficult Aramaic, and the nations copied47 it from that language. It seems to me
that the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did not copy it down,48 but that it went with
them to Babylonia orally. And there they recited it in their language [Aramaic], for it
consists of wise sayings, but it was not spoken in inspiration. Scripture hints at this.49
42I do not know what our scribe has in mind here. The total of twenty-four books is common
in Jewish tradition for the Bible as a whole, and the three extra books could refer to apocrypha
known to the scribe. But the scribe refers to twenty-four books of the prophets. Daniel is indeed
included among the prophets in the Greek Bible, and there are three additions to Daniel in the
Greek and its daughter versions that do not appear in the Masoretic text: Susanna, the Prayer of
Azariah, and Bel and the Dragon. But the scribe does not seem to include Bel and the Dragon
among the three. The total of twenty-four books of the prophets remains mysterious.
43The causative of the root -t-q can mean either copy or translate in medieval Hebrew
(see Eliezer ben Yehudah, Thesaurus). Perhaps in this context the best translation of ma atiq
would be transliterator.
44See Alexander Marx, An Aramaic Fragment of the Wisdom of Solomon, JBL 40 (1921):
5769. Namanides quotes Jdt 1:7, 8, 11, in abbreviated form in a discussion of the root -m-r
in the commentary to Deut 21:14. He quotes Wis 7:58, 1721 again in a sermon entitled, The
Torah of the Lord Is Perfect (Ps 19:8).
In explaining why he chose not to use Namanides quotations from the Wisdom of Solomon
as witnesses to the Peshitta text, J.A. Emerton writes that the passages represent the Peshitta
with slight modifications, which are partly dialectal (The Peshitta of the Wisdom of Solomon
[StPB 2; Leiden: Brill,1959], xxxiii). For example, the gar of Syriac, borrowed from Greek and
not found in Jewish Aramaic, does not appear in Namanides quotations. The list of 7:1720
is not identical in Namanides and the Peshitta.
45My translation. The passage comes from Namanides Sermon on the Works of Qohelet.
A critical edition is found in Charles Chavel, ed., Kitvei Rabbenu Mosheh b. Naman (2 vols.;
Jerusalem: Mosad haRav Kook, 1963). Our passage is found on 1.182. Chavel translates the
sermon in Ramban: Writings and Discourses (2 vols.; New York: Shilo, 1978). Our passage
appears on 1.15455. Marx, Aramaic Fragment, translates the passage on 60.
46This is the title of the book in Syriac.
47Again, the root -t-q. Does Namanides mean that the nations copied it in their form of
Aramaic (Syriac), or that the nations translated it into the various languages in which the work
was found in the Middle Ages? I suspect that the first suggestion is correct, since the Syriac
version is of special importance for Namanides.
48Again the root -t-q. See Prov 25:1.
49Chavel (in notes to both Kitvei Rabbenu Mosheh b. Naman and Ramban) suggests that
Namanides understands Prov 25:1, These also are the proverbs of Solomon which the men
of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied, to imply that the proverbs of Proverbs 25, like those of
Although he accepts it as Solomons words, Namanides accounts for the fact

that Wisdom was transmitted by the nations by placing the work on a lower level
than other Solomonic works: It is not inspired. Yet he has sufficient regard for
the work to quote it several times, and never for linguistic reasons alone, as for
his quotation of Judith.50
The scribe of the Bodleian manuscript and Namanides, then, did not hesitate
to call attention to the fact that the works they quoted had been transmitted by
Christians. This does not make it certain that R. Moses treated the Testaments
of the Twelve Patriarchs and the story of the Dragon as rabbinic because he
was ignorant of their Christian provenance, but it weighs in favor of that view.
It should be remembered that R. Moses Christian neighbors read Bel and the
Dragon in Latin rather than in Syriac. It is unlikely that a Provenal Jew would
have had access to the Peshitta. It seems more likely that R. Moses had before
him a text of Bel and the Dragon that had been transliterated into Hebrew char-
acters by Jews who lived among Syriac-speaking Christians. If he was aware
that the stories appeared in the Christian Bible, R. Moses might have assumed
that he was in possession of their Jewish originals.
***
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a Christian document, and thus its
use by medieval Jews raises some special issues. But the Testaments is based to
a considerable extent on Jewish traditions, some of which were certainly written.
Any attempt to explain the process of transmission by which a medieval Jew
came to know the Testaments must work between the same poles as an attempt
to explain the knowledge of a Jewish pseudepigraphon: internal Jewish trans-
mission, by which the text somehow survived the talmudic period, or borrowing
(back) from Christian transmitters.
The passages from BR that contain parallels to the Testaments stand at the
second pole. They are not the result of independent Jewish transmission of these
traditions, but of R. Moses use of parts of the Testaments as a completed Chris-
tian document. There is no reason to assume that R. Moses knew the Testaments
as a whole, and he was probably not aware of the Christian provenance of the
portions he did know.
The results of this investigation of R. Moses use of the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs should not be generalized to all instances of medieval Jewish
knowledge of the Testaments or to R. Moses use of other pseudepigrapha. The
Hebrew Testament of Naphtali and Midrash Va-yissa u are examples of medieval
Jewish works that stand in a relationship to the Testaments very different from
the first part of the work, were inspired, and thus they were copied by the men of Hezekiah,
but that other proverbs of Solomon, not inspired and thus not copied, were also in existence.
50See n.44 above.
that of BR, and I suspect that further study would point toward internal Jewish
transmission as the means by which elements of the Book of Jubilees, for ex-
ample, reached R. Moses.
There is no single explanation for the reappearance of Second Temple tradi-
tions in medieval Jewish works. The clarification of the relationship between
BR and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs enlarges our knowledge of the
possibilities and helps us appreciate the complexity of the situation.
20. Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature
The Book of Jubilees has come down to us in Ethiopic, preserved by Ethiopian

Christians. The original language of Jubilees was Hebrew, but like most of the
literature of the Second Temple period, it was not transmitted by Jews into the
Middle Ages. Nor was it read for long by Christians in Europe. A single manu-
script of the Latin version survives; it dates from the fifth or sixth century.1 There
is no manuscript evidence at all for the Greek version that was the basis for the
translations into Latin and Ethiopic, although numerous allusions and citations
are preserved in the chronographic tradition.2
Yet there are a number of passages in medieval Hebrew works that reflect
knowledge of the Book of Jubilees. H. Albeck noted three in Midrash Aggadah,
a work drawn from the commentary on the Torah of R. Moses the Preacher of
Narbonne, who lived in the eleventh century.3 A. Epstein pointed to three more
in Midrash Tadshe, an unusual work consisting to a large extent of lists.4 Two
of the parallels to Jubilees in Midrash Tadshe are lists. Another list connected to
Jubilees appears in three unrelated medieval Hebrew works.
R. Moses could not have borrowed Jubilees back from his Christian neighbors
in Provence because the Latin version was long out of circulation by this time. I
have argued elsewhere that R. Moses derived his knowledge of the passages of
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs that appear in his Bereshit Rabbati from
the Jews of Byzantine Italy.5 The Testaments is a Christian work, composed in
1J.C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text (CSCO, Scriptores Aethiopici 87;
Louvain: E. Peeters, 1989), xiv.

2
VanderKam, Jubilees, xixii.
3Midrash Aggadah was published by S. Buber (2 vols.; Vienna: Abraham Fanto, 1894).
On the relation of Midrash Aggadah to R. Moses work, see Midrash Bereshit Rabbati (ed. H.
Albeck; Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1940), 515. The three passages from Jubilees discussed
here are identified in Albecks list of passages that he views as reflecting knowledge of texts
of the Second Temple period in the introduction to Bereshit Rabbati (1718). Most of the sug-
gested parallels are not as persuasive as these.
4Epstein (Le livre des Jubils, Philon et le Midrasch Tadsch, REJ 21 [1890]: 8097; 22
[1891]: 125) attributed Midrash Tadshe to R. Moses (83), but Albeck rejects this claim and
suggests that the common material in Midrash Tadshe and works of R. Moses derives from R.
Moses use of Midrash Tadshe (Bereshit Rabbati 1617). Epstein developed the fanciful theory
that Midrash Tadshe drew on an expanded version of Jubilees influenced by the ideas of Philo.
Despite the problems with his theory, the parallels he points to (8387) are impressive.
5M. Himmelfarb, R. Moses the Preacher and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, AJS
Review 9 (1984) 5578 (in this volume, 32949).

352 20. Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature
Greek. But it undoubtedly drew on Jewish sources like the Aramaic Levi docu-
ment known from the Geniza and Qumran. In theory it is possible that the pas-
sages cited in Bereshit Rabbati derive from such ancient sources.6 But a close
examination of the passages persuaded me that the differences between them and
the Greek Testaments are best explained as the result of revision by a medieval
Jew, often in order to strengthen the connections between the narrative source
and the biblical verses to which he wishes to attach it in his commentary. In
other words, R. Moses appears to have borrowed passages from the Testaments
back from Christians, although unbeknownst to him, what he borrowed had
never been Jewish to begin with.
These findings ran up against a historical problem: the Testaments was not
available in western Europe until the middle of the thirteenth century.7 Thus R.
Moses could not have found the work in the hands of his neighbors in Provence.
But the Testaments was undoubtedly available in the Byzantine empire. We
know that there was contact between the Jews of Provence and the Jews of Lucca
and Rome,8 and I suggested that these northern Italian communities served as a
conduit between Provence and the Jewish communities in the Byzantine-ruled
southeastern portion of the Italian peninsula.9 We have confirmation that such
contact was possible in the person of Nathan B. Yehiel of Rome, the compiler of
the Arukh, who was a student of R. Moses and seems also to have studied with
Moses Kalfo of Bari, a town of Byzantine Italy that was both a center of Jewish
learning and the seat of an archbishop.10
The passages from the Testaments probably came to R. Moses in Hebrew. It
is highly unlikely that a Provenal rabbi would have known Greek. And even if
R. Moses had been able to read Greek, it is hard to imagine that he would have
introduced passages from a Greek text with Our rabbis of blessed memory
said , as he introduced some of the passages from the Testaments in Bereshit
Rabbati.11 But a Jew somewhere in Byzantine Italy who came upon the Testa
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs might have read it and been filled with the desire
6
One of the longer passages in Bereshit Rabbati is a reworking of a passage from the Greek
Testament of Naphtali. But the passage in question does not appear in any form in the Hebrew
Testament of Naphtali. See Himmelfarb, R. Moses the Preacher 6064, 7173 (in this volume,
33337, 34344).
7H.J. de Jonge, La bibliothque de Michel Choniats et la tradition occidentale des Testa-
ments des XII Patriarches, in Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (ed. Marinus
de Jonge; SVTP 3; Leiden: Brill, 1975), esp. 100101.
8B.Z. Benedict, On the History of the Torah Center in Provence, Tarbiz 22 (1951): 91,
9495 (Hebrew).
9Himmelfarb, R. Moses the Preacher 7374 (in this volume, 34445).
10On R. Nathan, see S.W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (18 vols.; New
York: Columbia University Press, 195283), 7.2931. On Bari, see A. Sharf, Byzantine Jewry
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 12223, 16468.
11The passages so introduced are drawn from the Testament of Judah. They appear in Al-
beck, Bereshit Rabbati 179 lines 710, and 180 lines 813.
20. Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature 353
to take back what seemed to him good Jewish traditions despite their current
suspect location.12 Such a reader might have decided to translate parts of this
very interesting document back, as he would have understood it, into Hebrew.
By the time his translations reached R. Moses, their dubious origins would have
been successfully forgotten.
Jubilees and the Byzantine Chronographers
Since there is no evidence that the Greek version of Jubilees was still in circula-
tion in R. Moses time, the solution to the problem of R. Moses knowledge of
Jubilees must be somewhat different from the one I proposed for his knowledge
of the Testaments. An inventory of the passages dependent on Jubilees in me-
dieval Hebrew texts suggests a direction for exploration: with the exception of
some of the lists, all draw on passages in Jubilees that were used by the Byzan-
tine chronographers.
It is clear that the passages in the medieval Hebrew texts are not drawn di-
rectly from the chronographers. At a number of points the medieval Hebrew ver-
sions are closer to Jubilees than the excerpts in the chronographers, which often
paraphrase Jubilees rather than quote it. But W. Adler has recently suggested
a theory about the chronographers use of Jewish pseudepigrapha and other
ancient sources that may help to explain this phenomenon. H. Gelzer saw the
Byzantine chronographers as dependent on earlier chronicles, now lost, for their
knowledge of the ancient works they cite, including Jubilees. Against Gelzer,
Adler argues that the Byzantine chronicles drew not on the earlier chronicles, but
on collections of excerpts from ancient sources on various subjects of interest to
the chronographers. There is evidence for such collections of differing opinions
in the works of both Syriac and Byzantine chronographers, who sometimes cite
a variety of opinions on a particular subject. Even the collections did not draw
directly on the ancient Jewish works, but rather on early chronicles such as
those of Julius Africanus and Panodorus.13 Nonetheless, the passages in these
12I do not think it is too much to assume the existence of Byzantine Jews literate in Greek
even if on the whole the Jews of the Byzantine empire spoke Greek but did not read or write it.
Rather like many other Jews, they wrote in Hebrew or put their vernacular into Hebrew charac-
ters (A. Sharf, The Universe of Shabbetai Donnolo [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1976], 9798).
13Gelzers work is Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie (2 vols.;
Leipzig: Teubner, 188085). Gelzer claimed that Syncellus was dependent on the works of two
early chronographers, Panodorus and Annianus, for his knowledge of ancient Jewish sources,
while chronographers of the Logothete tradition relied on the chronicle of Julius Africanus.
For Adlers critique of Gelzer and his development of his own view, see Time Immemorial:
Archaic History and Its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George
Syncellus (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 26; Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1989), 158231, with a
convenient summation in the conclusion (22931). Adler points to the evidence for collections
containing a variety of opinions on a single subject on 167.
collections are likely to have been closer to the ancient Jewish works from which
they were excerpted than their presentation in the chronographers, who stand at
several removes from them. In light of R. Moses knowledge of passages from
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, it is not too difficult to imagine a Jew-
ish reader somewhere in Byzantium, perhaps in Byzantine Italy, coming upon
such collections and translating into Hebrew materials that he found particularly
interesting. I hope that the following discussion of individual passages will make
this case seem plausible.
A. Midrash Aggadah and Jubilees on Jared and the Watchers
On Gen 5:18, And Jared lived, Midrash Aggadah comments: Why was he
called Jared ( ?)Because in his days the angels descended ( )from heaven
and taught humanity to serve the Holy One, blessed be he.14 Jub.4:15 reads
He named him Jared because during his lifetime the angels of the Lord who
were called Watchers descended to earth to teach mankind and to do what is just
and upright upon the earth.15 The same etymology is presupposed also in 1En.
6:6: And they were two hundred who descended in the days of Jared16 But
while the name Jared has the potential to suggest a play on the root to any
reader, there is nothing in the name or in its context in the biblical genealogy to
connect the descent with angels. For example, the Oxford manuscript published
by S. Buber in his edition of Aggadat Bereshit asks, Why was his named called
Jared? Because in his lifetime his generation descended ( )to the lowest
level.17 But of all the literature of the Second Temple period, only Jubilees
holds the view that the angels descended for pious purposes.18 Midrash Agga
dahs picture of the descent of the Watchers argues for knowledge of Jubilees
rather than some other work containing the etymology of Jared.
The correlation of the lifetime of Jared with the descent of the Watchers based
on etymology has an important place in Christian chronology.19 As far as I know,
none of the chronographers shared Jubilees view of the motives of the Watchers,
14Translations
from Midrash Aggadah are mine.
15Throughout
this study I use the translation of Jubilees by J.C. VanderKam, The Book of
Jubilees (CSCO, Scriptores Aethiopici 88; Louvain: E. Peeters, 1989).
16All translations of 1Enoch are taken from M. Black in consultation with J.C. VanderKam,
The Book of Enoch or 1Enoch (Leiden: Brill, 1985).

17S. Buber, Agadat Bereshit (2nd ed.; Vilna: Romm, 1925). This manuscript contains a ver-
sion of Aggadat Bereshit that, unlike the previously printed versions, includes the first parashah
of Genesis (1:16:4; xxiixxiii). The passage about Jared appears on xxx.
18On the use of the story of the Watchers in Jubilees, see J.C. VanderKam, Enoch Tradi-
tions in Jubilees and Other Second-Century Sources, SBLSP 13 (2 vols; ed. P.J. Achtemeier;
Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978), 1.24245.
19Adler, Time Immemorial, 180.
but a collection of materials of the kind Adler suggests might have contained the
relevant information from Jubilees. The positive view of the Watchers motives
would not have appealed to the chronographers because by Byzantine times the
dominant view held that the sons of God of Genesis 6 were the Sethites, while
readings of Genesis 6 that understood the sons of God as angels shared the low
opinion of the Watchers found in the Enochic Book of the Watchers.20 Thus a
chronographer might well have discarded Jubilees view of the Watchers while
using its etymology of Jared.
B. On Enochs Astronomical Knowledge
Immediately following the play on Jared, Midrash Aggadah comments on Gen

5:24: And Enoch walked with God. He walked with the angels for three
hundred years. He was with them in the Garden of Eden, and he learned interca-
lation, seasons, constellations, and much wisdom from them. The Book of the
Watchers describes the time Enoch spent with the angels on his tour to the ends
of the earth and the cosmological secrets revealed to him in the course of the tour
(1Enoch 1736). But the specifics of Midrash Aggadah recall Jubilees, although
the list of what Enoch learns while with the angels in Midrash Aggadah is by no
means identical to Jub. 4:17:
He was the first of mankind who were born on the earth who learned (the art of) writing,
instruction, and wisdom and who wrote down in a book the signs of the sky in accord
with the fixed pattern of their months so that mankind would know the seasons of the
years according to the fixed patterns of each of their months. He was, moreover,
with Gods angels for six jubilees of years. They showed him everything on earth and
in the heavens the dominion of the sun and he wrote down everything. He was
taken from human society, and we led him into the Garden of Eden for (his) greatness
and honor . (4:17, 21, 23)
Enoch is not associated with astronomical knowledge in rabbinic literature.21 But

he is closely associated with astronomical knowledge in the Christian chrono-
graphic tradition, although I do not know of any quotations of the passage from
Jubilees.22
The basis for the claim that Enoch spent three hundred years with the angels, a
number Jubilees expresses according to its ideology of jubilees, can be found in
Gen 5:22: Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah for three hundred
years . J.C. VanderKam has suggested that the routine plural form of
20Adler,
Time Immemorial, 11416 (Sethites), 21011 (Watchers).
21M.
Himmelfarb, A Report on Enoch in Rabbinic Literature, SBLSP 13 (see n.18 supra),
1.26263.
22Adler, Time Immemorial, 8697; see also R.H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees or the Little
Genesis (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1902), to Jub. 4:17.

(God) in this verse provided an opening for an understanding of the word

as divinities or angels.23 Thus walking with meant not that Enoch was
Gods intimate for three hundred years, but rather that Enoch spent those years
in the company of the angels. This interpretation was of course widespread in
the literature of the Second Temple period.
In its interpretation of the conclusion of Gen 5:24 (And he was not, for God
took him), Midrash Aggadah identifies Enoch with Metatron: Because he was
righteous, the Holy One, blessed be he, took him from men and turned him into
the angel Metatron. The transformation of Enoch into Metatron, Gods heav-
enly viceregent, in the hekhalot text 3Enoch (Sefer Hekhalot) can be traced back
through 2Enoch, where Enoch is transformed into an angel who learns secrets
never before revealed, to the Book of the Watchers, where Enoch remains human,
but enjoys the fellowship of the angels, the view reflected also in Jubilees.24 R.
Moses, of course, would not have been aware of this line of development, but
his knowledge of the identification of Enoch with Metatron may account for
his receptivity to Jubilees picture of Enochs time with the angels despite the
rather negative view of Enoch from Gen. Rab. 25.1, which he also quotes, in
abbreviated form, in Midrash Aggadah to Gen 5:24.25 According to this view,
Enoch vacillated between good and evil and his early removal from the world
was intended to preserve him in his good behavior.
C. On Canaans Transgression of the Oath
The final passage from Midrash Aggadah related to Jubilees is an account of the
division of the earth among Noahs sons. On Gen 12:6 (The Canaanite was then
in the land) Midrash Aggadah comments,
For the land of Israel had fallen to the portion of Shem, as it says Melchizedek, king of
Salem (Gen 14:8). When the Holy One, blessed be he, divided the world among them,
Noah made his three sons swear ( )that none of them would enter the territory of
another. But the seven nations passed through ( )the land of Israel and transgressed
( )the oath (). Therefore the Holy One, blessed he be, commended, You shall
utterly destroy ( ) them. At the time that Abraham passed through ()
23J.C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS 16; Wash-
ington: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984), 3132, 13031.

24The Hebrew text of 3Enoch is available in P. Schfer in Collaboration with M. Schlter
and H.G. von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck],
1981) ##180 and parallels. For an English translation, see P. Alexander, 3 (Hebrew Apoca-
lypse of) Enoch, OTP 1.223315. On Enoch in rabbinic literature, the targumim, and the
hekhalot texts, see Himmelfarb, Enoch in Rabbinic Literature.
25References to Genesis Rabbah are to chapter and section in the edition of J. Theodor and
H. Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary (3 vols.;
Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965).
they had not yet entered there except for the Canaanites. Thus the land of the seven
nations fell to the portion of Shem. Thus it says, He set up boundaries for the nations
according to the number of the children of Israel (Deut 32:8).
From ancient times Jews felt compelled to defend themselves against the accusa-
tion that they had stolen their land since the Bible makes it perfectly clear that
the Canaanites were there before Israel arrived.26 The comment in Midrash Ag
gadah contains three separate attempts at defense. The first, which relies on Gen
14:8 as a prooftext, is a good indication of the difficulty of proving Israels prior
ownership from Scripture. It assumes the identification made by some rabbinic
sources, including Midrash Aggadah to Gen 9:27, of the mysterious king of Sa-
lem with Shem, the son of Noah.27 The point of the prooftext, then, is that Shem,
Israels ancestor, was already established in the land at the time of Abraham.
In its cryptic final sentence Midrash Aggadah draws on a defense of Israels
right to the land expressed more fully in Midrash ha-Gadol to Gen 10:1.28 Ac-
cording to this view, when the world was divided up, God gave Israel twelve
lands to correspond to the twelve sons of Jacob (according to the number of
the children of Israel). The twelve lands were then occupied by the Canaanites,
who can be considered twelve nations if Canaan himself is added to his eleven
descendents listed in Gen 10:1518. The twelve Canaanite nations served as
caretakers of the land until Israel arrived on the scene. The passage from Mi
drash ha-Gadol concludes with the verse from Deuteronomy that constitutes the
entirety of Midrash Aggadahs version of this argument.
The central portion of the passage from Midrash Aggadah is very close to
Jubilees. Jubilees reports that Noah divided the world among his three sons by
lot and that each son in turn divided his portion among his sons (8:89:15). To
Noahs delight, the holy land fell to Shem and his descendants (8:1221). Then
Noah had his sons take an oath to respect these boundaries: He made (them)
swear by oath to curse each and every one who wanted to occupy the share which
did not emerge by his lot (9:14). Later, however, Canaan found the land from
Lebanon to the river of Egypt, which had fallen to Shem, so beautiful that he
occupied it despite the warning of his father and his children through the curse
26For
the rabbinic defense, see Gen. Rab. 1.2 and the parallels listed there in Theodor-
Albeck. Rashi quotes this midrash in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah.
27See L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (7 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 190938), 5.225 n.102, for an emendation of the obviously corrupt text of Midrash
Aggadah there and for other instances of this identification in rabbinic literature. His reference
to Genesis Rabbah should be to 26.3, and I am not persuaded that it actually presupposes the
identification.
28Midrash Haggadol on the Pentateuch: Genesis (ed. M. Margulies; repr., Jerusalem:
Mossad Harav Kook, 1967), 193, lines 1015. Midrash ha-Gadol is a Yemenite compilation of
the thirteenth century. The source of this passage is unknown. See Margulies note to 193, line
11, and Ginzberg, Legends, 5.19596 n.73.
by which we obligated ourselves with an oath before the holy judge and before
our father Noah (10:32).
R.H. Charles claims that the view that the Canaanites were trespassing in oc-
cupying Canaan is restricted to Jubilees and authors dependent on it, including
George Syncellus (47.1429).29 The version of the story in Midrash Aggadah is
more elaborate than that of Syncellus and has more in common with Jubilees,
suggesting again that Midrash Aggadahs debt is to the collections on which the
chronographers drew rather than to the chronographers themselves.
Finally Midrash Aggadah places Jubilees story in a different exegetical
context. Gen 12:6 does not figure in Jubilees narrative of Canaans usurpation
of the land at all. Midrash Aggadahs view that of the seven nations only the
Canaanites were there at the time of Abraham derives directly from this verse:
if the other nations had been there, surely Genesis would have mentioned them.
The punning on , absent in Jubilees, seems also to derive from this verse. The
root , on the other hand, might well reflect the oaths and curses of Jubilees,
which in the Hebrew original could have been expressed through a single root.
But the culmination of this punning ( ) you shall utterly destroy
(them) is not found in Jubilees.
Albeck shows that R. Moses often paraphrases, combines sources, and ex-
pands the passages from rabbinic texts on which he draws for his own purpos-
es.30 Unlike rabbinic texts, which are largely exegetical to begin with, Jubilees
is a narrative. In Bereshit Rabbati, R. Moses has adapted the passages from the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs to make them fit their exegetical context.31
The play on the verb in the exegesis of Gen 12:6 in Midrash Aggadah may
represent a similar kind of adaptation.
D. On Adam and Eves Entrance into Paradise and the

Laws of Leviticus on Purification After Childbirth
Midrash Tadshe (ch. 15) explains the laws of Leviticus 12 that set the length of
the two periods of impurity after childbirth according to the sex of the child by
reference to the chronology of the creation of Adam and Eve and their entrance
into paradise. The same correlation is found in Jubilees, the first instance of
its tendency to connect later laws to the patriarchs. According to Jubilees, Eve
was separated from Adam, and thus in a sense created, in the second week, a
view that seems to derive from the placement of the second creation account of
29Charles, Jubilees, commentary to 10:29. All references to Syncellus are to page and line
in Georgii Syncelli Ecloga Chronographica (ed. A.A. Mosshammer; Leipzig: Teubner, 1984).
30Bereshit Rabbati 2224.
31Himmelfarb, R. Moses the Preacher, 62, 67, 7071 (in this volume, 334, 339, 34142).
Genesis after the conclusion of the first week according to the first creation ac-
count. The timing of the creation of the first man and first woman accounts for
the differing periods of impurity for the mother after the birth of male and female
decreed in Lev 12:15 a week for a boy, two weeks for a girl (Jub. 3:8). Adam,
who was created outside Eden, entered it on the fortieth day, while Eve waited
until the eightieth day to enter. This accounts for the forty days a woman must
wait after the birth of a boy before entering the sanctuary and eighty days after
the birth of a girl, according to Lev 12:45 (Jub. 3:914).
Rabbinic sources do not make the connection between the laws of Leviticus
12 and the lives of Adam and Eve. But it does appear in Syncellus chronicle
in the discussion of the chronology of the lives of the ancestors of humanity
(5.1225).32 Since this connection is by no means obvious, it is likely that Syn-
cellus is here again dependent on Jubilees, although he does not mention Jubi
lees by name. The interest of this information about the chronology of the lives
of Adam and Eve for the chronographers is clear, and once again it is plausible
that a medieval Hebrew work owes its knowledge of Jubilees to the sort of col-
lection Adler envisions.
E. On the Twenty-Two Works of Creation
The passages remaining for discussion are all lists. Two of them require a dif-
ferent type of explanation, but Midrash Tadshes list of the twenty-two things
created during the six days of creation (end of ch. 6), like the materials discussed
to this point, could have been drawn from a collection of excerpts from ancient
works on chronological questions. The list goes back to Jub. 2:123; lists based
on this passage are also preserved in Epiphanius Weights and Measures (ch. 22),
Syncellus (3.618), other chronographic works,33 and the Hebrew commentary
on the Ten Commandments of the eleventh-century Karaite Nissi b. Noah.34
The lists differ considerably in style. Epiphanius list is the closest to Jubilees.
Syncellus version is very terse, although not as terse as Midrash Tadshes with
the addition of prooftexts and, for the first day especially, other materials. Unlike
the other lists, Nissis never mentions the number twenty-two as the total of the
works of creation.
32Other Christian sources make this connection as well. See Charles, Book of Jubilees,
commentary to 3:814.
33See the apparatus in Georgii Syncelli Ecloga Chronographica (ed. Mosshammer) to
3.618.
34The commentary was published by S. Pinsker in Lickute Kadmoniot zur Geschichte des
Karaismus (2 vols.; Vienna: Adalbert della Torre, 1860) [Hebrew]; the passage in question
appears in 2.7.
Epiphanius follows Jubilees by including an elaborate list of angels among

the creations of the first day. But this dating of the creation of the angels was
problematic for later users of the list. Midrash Tadshe omits angels and adds
wind, a change Charles attributed to rabbinic anxiety about the threat to Gods
sovereignty entailed in placing the creation of angels on the first day.35 Although
we shall see in a moment that Midrash Tadshe was willing to correct its source
to conform to rabbinic ideas, the Karaite Nissi and the Christian Syncellus make
the same change. Syncellus here reflects the view of the Greek hexaemera, which
understood the creation of angels to have been accomplished before the creation
of the world.36 It is thus likely that Midrash Tadshe reflects not rabbinic tradition
but change already introduced into the list in its source.
Jubilees list concludes by comparing the twenty-two works of creation to the
twenty-two leaders of humanity from Adam to Jacob. As I have noted, Nissis
list does not mention the number twenty-two at all. Midrash Tadshe shares with
Epiphanus and Syncellus a further comparison to the twenty-two letters of the
Hebrew alphabet. Epiphanius and Syncellus contain a third comparison to the
twenty-two books of the Hebrew Bible.37 Charles argued that the additional
comparisons were original.38 But VanderKam rejects Charles argument, since
the wording of the verse in Jubilees assumes only a single comparison: The lat-
ter is blessed and holy and the former, too, is blessed and holy. The one with the
other served (the purposes of) holiness and blessing (Jub. 2:23).39 This suggests
that the additional comparisons were added at some point in the transmission of
the passage between Jubilees and Epiphanius; Epiphanius himself might have
been responsible. The presence of the comparisons in later works fits well with
the later authors indirect knowledge of Jubilees. The absence of the comparison
to the books of the Bible in Midrash Tadshe could represent a correction of the
passage in light of the normal rabbinic reckoning of biblical books as thirty-nine
rather than twenty-two.40
F. On the Birth-Dates of the Sons of Jacob
The two lists remaining for discussion stand in a different relationship to Ju

bilees. Both of these lists draw at least part of their content from Jubilees, but
neither appears as a list in Jubilees itself.
35Charles,
Book of Jubilees, commentary to 2:23.
36Adler
(Time Immemorial, 183) notes that while he rejects it, Syncellus explicitly mentions
Jubilees view on the subject, as do several other chronographers who do not include the list.
37The three comparisons appear also in Theodosius Melitenus. See Adler, Time Immemo
rial, 204.
38Charles, Book of Jubilees, commentary to 2:23.
39VanderKam, Jubilees (CSCO 88), commentary to 2:23.
40Charles, Book of Jubilees, xxxixxl.
Midrash Tadshe (ch. 8) gives the number of years that each of the patriarchs,
matriarchs, and sons of Jacob lived, and also the day of the month on which
Jacobs sons were born. The dates of birth correspond quite closely to those
given in Jubilees 28, where they are not in list form, but appear in the course of
the narrative; Jubilees provides the year of birth as well as the day of the month.
Like Jubilees, Midrash Tadshe identifies the months of birth by number rather
than, as is usual in rabbinic literature, by name.41
The picture of Jubilees contains some internal contradictions.42 The order of
the narrative agrees with Genesis in making Judah the fourth son, and Dan the
fifth. The narrative of Jubilees follows Genesis in placing Asher before Issachar,
but the dates contradict this, and again Midrash Tadshe sides with Jubilees dates
against the Bible itself. Since Benjamins birth occurred after the departure from
Aram Naharaim, Benjamin is not mentioned in Jubilees 28. Neither Benjamin
nor Zebulun appears in the list in Midrash Tadshe.43
Like Genesis, Jubilees provides the number of years of the lives of the three
patriarchs, the four matriarchs, and Joseph, but not of the other sons of Jacob.
The lengths of the lives of the sons of Jacob in Midrash Tadshes list correspond,
with some exceptions, to the lengths given in the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs.44 It seems more reasonable to suppose that the author of Midrash
Tadshe found these elements already combined than to suppose that he knew
both Jubilees and a complete text of the Testaments. Syncellus includes a list
of the years in which the sons of Jacob were born (120.2228) and then cites a
number of early authorities on questions of the chronology of the lives of the
patriarchs (12124), a subject obviously of considerable interest to him. This
suggests a context in which such a list might have been put together. Whatever
its source, it is surprising that Midrash Tadshe did not correct the list to conform
to the text of Genesis.
41Epstein,
Livre des Jubils, 87.
42For
tables and discussion of the dates in Jubilees and their relationship to Genesis, with
some attention to the list in Midrash Tadshe, see Charles, Book of Jubilees, commentary to
28:1124.
43A. Jellinek (Midrasch Tadsche, Bet ha-Midrasch [6 vols.; repr., Jerusalem: Wahrmann,
1967], 3.171 n.2) notes that Benjamin and Zebulun do appear in the list as it is cited in Rabbenu
Bayas commentary to the first portion of Exodus; the list is identified as drawn from Midrash
Tadshe (Baya b. Asher, Be ur al ha-Torah [ed. C. Chavel; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Mossad Harav
Kook, 1967], 2.9). Chavel brackets the passage, noting that it does not appear in all editions of
the commentary (n.57).
44Charles, Book of Jubilees, commentary to 28:1124, provides the data in a convenient
form.
G. Jubilees and the Names of the Wives of the Patriarchs
The last list appears not in Midrash Tadshe, but in variant form in three other
medieval Hebrew texts: Samuel Algazis Toledot Adam (published in 1585); a
manuscript in Damascus, which is no more closely identified in the excerpts
published a century ago; and a fourteenth-century manuscript now in Munich.45
This list contains the names of the wives of biblical heroes, especially the an-
tediluvian patriarchs, based on Jubilees. Related lists appear in Greek, Syriac,
and Armenian. According to W.L. Lipscomb, the Hebrew lists show a number
of peculiarities that suggest that they go back to the Hebrew of Jubilees rather
than to any of the translations or to other versions of the list; the source of the
Christian lists is the Greek version of Jubilees.46 This list, then, constitutes an
exception to the pattern that has emerged so far. While there is no reason to
believe that knowledge of the list implies knowledge of Jubilees as a whole, in
this case there is reason to believe that the source for the Jewish works was not
Greek and Christian, but rather Hebrew. For the other passages discussed here
the collections of excerpts from ancient works used by the chronographers seem
to be an adequate explanation, but the list of wives of the patriarchs at least ap-
pears to have reached medieval Jews through different channels.
The Noah Book and the Book of Asaph
Finally I would like to turn to a rather different kind of medieval Hebrew work
that seems to know not Jubilees itself, but one of its sources. Over a century ago
R.H. Charles pointed out that the introduction to a Hebrew medical work, the
Book of Asaph, contained a passage that stood very close to Jubilees account
of the revelation to Noah of remedies to heal his offspring from the results of
demonic attacks (10:114).47 At first Charles understood the passage from the
Book of Asaph as based partly on the Book of Jubilees.48 Later, however, he
suggested that the Book of Asaph preserved the Hebrew form of a Noah book
taken over also by Jubilees.49
45W.L.
Lipscomb, A Tradition from the Book of Jubilees in Armenian, JJS 29 (1978):
14963; for the brief description of the Hebrew texts, see 161.
46Lipscomb, Tradition, 15156. Moreover, Lipscomb (The Wives of the Patriarchs in the
Ekloge Historian, JJS 30 [1979]: 91) notes the existence of another Greek list, also derived
from the Greek version of Jubilees.
47Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees (Oxford: Clarendon, 1895),
179.
48Charles, Ethiopic Version of Jubilees, 179.
49Charles, Book of Jubilees, xliv. This is also the position of more recent scholarship. See
D. Flusser, Mastema, EncJud 11.111920; M.E. Stone, Noah, Books of, EncJud 12.1198.
Both touch on the question only in passing.
Charles deduced the existence of this Noah book from passages in Jubilees
and the Enochic corpus.50 It does not survive intact in any language, and no Book
of Noah is mentioned in the canon lists, which suggests that the work was not
widely circulated among Christians. Since Charles time the Dead Sea Scrolls
have provided new evidence for the circulation of traditions about Noah.51 The
subject matter of the extant Noah material is quite diverse, and it is possible that
it reflects more than one Noachic work.52
Before going any further, I must note that the passage from Jubilees about
Noahs medical revelation was known to Syncellus, who alludes to the story as
an example of the untrustworthiness of the apocrypha (27.3328.9).53 But even
if the passage from Jubilees was available in the Byzantine world, I believe that
Charles was correct in his later view that the Book of Asaph drew not on Jubilees
but on the Noah book Jubilees used.
This somewhat surprising situation in which a medieval Jewish work shows
knowledge of a lost ancient text is not unique. Chs. 2 and 3 of Midrash Vayissa u
draw on the source that stands behind the accounts of the battles fought by Jacob
and his sons against the Amorites and Esau and his sons in the Testament of Ju
dah and Jubilees.54 The Testament of Judah gives a more elaborate account of the
war against the Amorites than Jubilees, while Jubilees describes the war against
Esau and his sons in greater detail. The accounts in Midrash Vayissa u are more
extensive than either the Testament of Judah or Jubilees, and they include details
found in both ancient works.
The Hebrew Testament of Naphtali may constitute another instance of this
phenomenon. T. Korteweg sees the longer and clearer visions of the Hebrew
as a more accurate reflection of the source on which the Testament of Naphtali
in the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs drew for its less coherent
visions. The clearly negative picture of Joseph in the Hebrew also reflects the
ancient source. Traces of the negative picture remain in the depiction of Joseph
50Charles,
Book of Jubilees, xliv, lxxilxxii; Charles, The Book of Enoch or 1Enoch (2d
ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), xlvixlvii. Charles variously referred to the work as the Book
or Apocalypse of Noah (book: Book of Jubilees xliv; apocalypse: Book of Jubilees, commentary
to 10:1.)
51See the discussion in J.T. Milik in collaboration with M. Black, The Books of Enoch:
Aramaic Fragments of Qumrn Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 5560.

52See Stone, Noah, Books of, for a listing and characterization of this material.
53Adler, Time Immemorial, 15354, 178.
54Critical editions of Midrash Vayissa u can be found in J.B. Lauterbach, Midrash Va-
yissa u; or, The Book of the Wars of the Sons of Jacob, Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an
Hirsch Perez Chajes (Vienna: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1933), 20522 (He-
brew), and Y. Dan and T. Alexander, The Complete Midrash Va-yissa u, Folklore Research
Center Studies 3 (1972): 6776 (Hebrew). Each edition contains MSS unknown to the other.
The war against the Amorites, ch. 2 of Midrash Vayissa u, is described in Jubilees 34 and the
Testament of Judah 37; the war against Esau and his sons, ch. 3 of Midrash Vayissa u, appears
in Jubilees 3738 and the Testament of Judah 9.
in the Greek Testament of Naphtali, where the less than entirely positive view is
notably different from the attitude toward Joseph of the Testaments elsewhere.55
The introduction to the Book of Asaph describes its purported author as one of
the restorers of the medical knowledge originally revealed to the patriarch Noah
after the flood. But this knowledge was lost when its heirs, Asclepius (here iden-
tified as a Greek sage) and his companions, attempted to pluck boughs from the
Tree of Life and were consumed by lightning from the fiery sword that guards
the Garden of Eden from invasion (Gen 3:24). Only 630 years later was this
knowledge restored by Hippocrates, with assistance from Asaph, Dioscorides,
and Galen, as well as other unnamed wise men.
Below I translate the relevant portion of the introduction. My translation is
quite literal; I have provided versification for ease of reference. As far as I know
this is the first time the passage has been translated into English.56
1. This is the book of remedies that the ancient sages copied from the book of Shem,
the son of Noah. It was handed down to Noah on Mt. Lubar, one of the mountains of
Ararat, after the flood. 2. For in those days the spirits of the bastards began to attack
Noahs children, to lead them astray and to cause them to err, to injure them and to
strike them with illness and pains and with all kinds of disease that kill and destroy hu-
man beings. 3. Then all Noahs children went, together with their children, and related
their afflictions to Noah their father and told him about their childrens pains. 4. Noah
was troubled, for he realized that it was because of human transgression and their sinful
ways that they were afflicted with all kinds of sickness and disease.
5. So Noah sanctified his children together with the members of his household and his
house. He approached the altar and offered sacrifices, praying to God and beseeching
him. 6. He (God) sent one of the angels of the presence, whose name was Raphael, from
among the holy ones, to imprison the spirits of the bastards from under the heavens
so they would do no more harm to mankind. 7. The angel did so, imprisoning them in
the place of judgment. 8. But he left one in ten to go about on earth before the prince
of enmity ( )to oppress evil-doers, to afflict and torture them with all kinds of
disease and illness and to afflict them with pain.
55
T. Korteweg, The Meaning of Naphtalis Visions, Studies in the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs (see n.7 supra), 26090.
56The Book of Asaph has never been published, much less translated, in its entirety. There
are eighteen known MSS of part or all of the work, and it seems to exist in editions of different
lengths. See E. Lieber, Asafs Book of Medicines: A Hebrew Encyclopedia of Greek and Jew-
ish Medicine, Possibly Compiled in Byzantium on an Indian Model, Dumbarton Oaks Papers
38: Symposium on Byzantine Medicine (ed. John Scarborough; Washington: Dumbarton Oaks,
1984), 238. For a list of publications and translations of sections of the book, see Lieber, Asafs
Book of Medicines, 237 n.33. For my translation, I rely on the text published by Jellinek, Bet-
ha-Midrasch 3.15556; he used the Munich MS (3.xxx n.2). Sssman Munter (Mavo lSepher
Asaph haRophe [Jerusalem: Geniza, 1957]) includes this passage as one of his samples of the
work (14754). He uses the Oxford and Munich MSS as the basis for his edition and compares
them to other MSS. But since he does not indicate clearly which reading he is following at any
given point, I preferred to use Jellineks text. The differences between Munters and Jellineks
texts are quite small.
9. Then the angel told him the remedies for the afflictions of mankind and all kinds of
remedies for healing with trees of the earth and plants of the soil and their roots. 10.
And he sent the princes of the remaining spirits to show Noah the medicinal trees with
all their shoots, greenery, grasses, roots, and seeds, to explain to him why they were
created, and to teach him all their medicinal properties for healing and for life. 11. Noah
wrote all these things in a book and gave it to Shem, his oldest son, and the ancient
wise men copied from this book and wrote many books, each one in his own language.
The Hebrew of Jub. 10:114 is lost to us; it has not been found among the frag-
ments from Qumran. A comparison of the Hebrew of the two passages would
surely be illuminating, although allowance would have to be made for the influ-
ence of the language of the author of the Book of Asaph on the early Hebrew of
his source. The stories are broadly similar and share a number of details. But
there are also some important differences. Often the differences can be explained
by the different goals of the two works.
The passage from the Book of Asaph emphasizes the medical aspects of the
story. It lavishes attention on the ills inflicted by the wicked spirits, which are
identified throughout as diseases, and on the herbal remedies revealed to Noah.
According to Jubilees, the impure demons mislead the children of Noahs
sons, make them act foolishly, and destroy them. The sons complain to
Noah that the demons are misleading, blinding, and killing the grandchildren
(10:12). Compare these afflictions to illness, pains, and disease as the
scourges of the evil spirits in the Book of Asaph (2), terms echoed in the descrip-
tion of Noahs reaction to the news (4) and of the continuing liberty of one-tenth
of the evil spirits (8). None of the ills of Jubilees is unambiguously a physical
ailment. Placed parallel to misleading, blinding suggests spiritual rather
than physical blindness. Until the remedies are introduced in Jub. 10:10, it is not
clear that the afflictions caused by the evil spirits involve illness at all. The rem-
edies are characterized as medicines for their diseases with their deceptions
(10:12), including the spiritual even as the physical nature of the afflictions is
acknowledged.
It is thus not surprising that the remedies revealed to Noah are described in
far greater detail in the Book of Asaph than in Jubilees. Indeed the only details
about the nature of the remedies in Jubilees is in the conclusion to the phrase
quoted above: medicines for their diseases with their deceptions, so that he
could cure (them) by means of the earths plants (10:12). In contrast the Book
of Asaph offers a long list of the various parts of trees to be employed for me-
dicinal purposes.
A related difference can be seen in the identity of the angels to whom the im-
prisonment of the evil spirits and the revelation of medical knowledge is attrib-
uted. In Jubilees these deeds are accomplished by anonymous angels, of whom
the angelic narrator speaks in the first person plural. The Book of Asaph attributes
them to a single angel, Raphael, whose name associates him with healing.
It seems likely that the compiler of the Book of Asaph elaborated the medical
aspects of the story in his source to make it a suitable introduction to his work.
It is also possible that Jubilees plays down the medical aspects with its picture
of the spiritual afflictions caused by the evil spirits. Jubilees has a tendency to
eliminate elements of the biblical narrative that could suggest magical practices
on the part of its heroes. For example, its account of Jacobs request to Laban that
the spotted and speckled kids and lambs be his wages at parting makes no men-
tion of Jacobs techniques for inducing such offspring (Jub. 28:2530; cf. Gen
30:2543). The many wonders Moses performed in Egypt to show up Pharaohs
magicians are summarized briefly: You performed the signs and miracles which
you were sent to perform in Egypt against the pharaoh, all his house, his servants
and his nation (Jub. 48:4). The next verse goes on to enumerate the plagues,
which are attributed entirely to God; there is no mention of Moses role in setting
them in motion as in the biblical narrative. Healing has strong connections with
magic in the ancient Mediterranean world, as the Gospels or the magical papyri
demonstrate. If the Noah books account of the revelation contained even part of
the medical emphasis of the Book of Asaphs version, Jubilees might have felt it
necessary to tone down its potentially magical implications.
For the compiler of the Book of Asaph, the story of the revelation to Noah
promises both honorable antiquity and angelic origin for medical knowledge.
But the angelic origin is not unclouded, as a close look at the story shows. The
angel Raphael begins the process of revelation in the Book of Asaph (9). But to
complete the revelation, he calls on the princes of the spirits who have not been
imprisoned, that is, on demons (10). Jubilees has done a better job of covering
up the tension in the picture of the origins of medical knowledge, but it can be
discerned there too. He told one of us that we should teach Noah all their medi-
cines (emphasis mine) (10:10). It is worth noting that the kinds of remedies
given to Noah to ward off the evil spirits are included in the Book of the Watchers
among the damaging secrets the fallen Watchers reveal: And they taught them
sorcery and spells and showed them the cutting of roots and herbs (1En. 7:1,
see also 8:3). Note the association of magic and medicine: the negative evalu-
ation of medicine is part of the larger rejection of the arts of civilization in the
Book of the Watchers.
The theory of the cause of disease put forward in the passage from the Book
of Asaph is rather problematic for a medical practitioner: humanity is vulnerable
to the onslaught of the evil spirits only because of sinfulness (4). If sin causes
susceptibility to disease, one might think that pious behavior would constitute
a sort of preventive medicine, more useful than anything the doctor could offer.
But perhaps the compiler of the Book of Asaph took comfort in the same kind of
pessimism about human nature that is attributed to Mastema in Jubilees: The
evil of mankind is great (10:8). Sinlessness might work better, but given human
nature, medicine would surely be necessary.
An important aspect of the Noah book that can be discerned through the
passages discussed here is its understanding of Noah as priest. Jubilees em-
phasizes Noahs priestly role throughout its account of his life.57 The idea that
Noah offered a sacrifice on emerging from the ark is of course available to any
reader of Genesis (8:2022), but Jubilees expands on the biblical account of the
sacrifice and associates it with the Feast of Weeks (ch. 6) and reports another
sacrifice in honor of the festival of the first day of the first month (7:16). When
Noah exhorts his grandchildren to do what is right, (Jub. 7:39), the duties of
avoiding the shedding of human blood and the eating of animal blood (7:2733)
figure prominently. Jubilees juxtaposition of murder and the consumption of
blood shares the priestly outlook of its source, Gen 9:45, which is particularly
apparent in Noahs warning that the earth will become polluted by improper use
of blood (Jub. 7:33).
The interest in blood in Noahs exhortation recalls the title of the one book of
Noah referred to in ancient Jewish literature outside of Jubilees.58 After giving
his grandson Levi elaborate instructions about the performance of sacrifices in
the addition to the Testament of Levi following T. Levi 18:2 in MS e of the Testa
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Isaac provides the authority of the instructions:
For thus my father Abraham commanded me for thus he found in the writing
of the book of Noah concerning blood.59
Jubilees shows considerable interest in the priestly activities of the other
major pre-Levitical patriarchs (Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) as well.60 As
with Noah, much of this material involves elaboration of brief accounts of sacri-
57See J.C. VanderKam, The Righteousness of Noah, in Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism
(ed. G.W.E. Nickelsburg and J.J. Collins; SCS 12; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980), 1923.
58Jubilees itself refers twice to writings of Noah. Before his death, at the end of the pas-
sage about the medical revelation (10:14), Noah hands on the books he has written to Shem.
Later, like Isaac in the addition to the Testament of Levi found in MS e, Abraham attributes the
instruction about sacrificial practice that he gives to Isaac to a book of his ancestors and to the
words of Enoch and Noah (21:10). But since these writings are part of Jubilees theory of the
transmission of the content of the revelation at Sinai in the period before Sinai, these mentions
cannot serve as evidence for the existence of actual works.
59The translation is that of J.C. Greenfield and M.E. Stone, The Aramaic and Greek Frag-
ments of a Levi Document, in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (ed.
H.W. Hollander and M. de Jonge; SVTP 8; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 465, v.57. The version of
the Testament of Levi in this MS contains two passages of some length and one expansion of a
single verse that do not appear in any other MS of the Testaments. The material found in these
passages in Greek is paralleled by Aramaic Levi material from both Qumran and the Geniza.
The text of the additional material of MS e appears in the apparatus of M. de Jonge in collabo-
ration with H.W. Hollander, H.J. de Jonge, and T. Korteweg, The Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (PVTG 1:2; Leiden: Brill, 1978). For a brief
discussion of the relations among the various Aramaic Levi fragments and the material from
MS e, see Hollander and de Jonge, Commentary, 1720.
60Enoch: 4:25; Abraham: 13:4, 13:9, 13:2527, 14:11, 15:2, 16:2025, 21:619 (instruc-
tions to Isaac about sacrifice and the shedding of blood); Isaac: 22:36; Jacob: 31:13, 32:29,
32:2729.
fice in Genesis, which the author of Jubilees expands in keeping with his picture
of the patriarchs observance of the laws of the Torah and of the institution of the
festivals before the giving of the Torah. But the fact that Noah offers a sacrifice
after hearing of his grandchildrens afflictions in the passage from the Book of
Asaph suggests that Noahs priestly role was not invented by the author of Ju
bilees, but rather goes back to their common source. In Jubilees Noah does not
sacrifice, but rather prays a long prayer (10:36). I do not know how to explain
Jubilees omission of this sacrifice.
J.C. VanderKam has suggested that the revelation of remedies to Noah in Ju
bilees should be seen in the context of Jubilees understanding of Noah as priest.61
It is true that elsewhere in the ancient Near East priests performed rituals of heal-
ing, but judging the purity status of skin ailments and participating in the rituals
necessary for purification from these ailments (Leviticus 1314) is as close as
the Torah allows priests to come to healing.62 Thus this aspect of Noahs priestly
behavior does not reflect the values of the priestly document of the Torah.
Without parallel material in other works to compare, any delineation of the
material in Jubilees drawn from sources is speculative. But I hope it does not
seem too speculative to suggest that the Noah work that stands behind the pas-
sage from the Book of Asaph and Jub. 10:114 included some of the material
on which other parts of Jubilees treatment of Noah is based. The priestly por-
tion of the exhortation in Jubilees 7 is a prime candidate,63 and if some further
speculation can be indulged, such a work might well have been called the book
of Noah about blood.
To this point I have referred to the Book of Asaph as a medieval work. Now I
shall try to be more specific about its date and provenance. The Book of Asaph is
a compilation. The medical historian E. Lieber calls it a Hebrew encyclopedia
of Greek and Jewish medicine.64 Earlier scholars claimed that the absence of
the terminology and developments of Arab medicine pointed to a date in the sev-
enth century or even earlier and preferred an eastern location, such as Palestine,
Persia, or Mesopotamia, but Lieber has recently argued for a date in the ninth or
early tenth century and a location in Byzantine-ruled southern Italy. The Book of
Asaph seems to have been known to Shabbetai Donnolo, the Jewish physician
who lived there in the tenth century.65
The dominant influence on the Book of Asaph, as on other medieval Jewish
medical works, is the Greek medical tradition. But Lieber considers the Book
61VanderKam,
Righteousness of Noah, 2223.
62On
the attitude toward healing in the priestly document, see J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116
(AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 25861, 88789.
63This is the second part of the passage (in addition to our passage) that Charles believed
Jubilees took from a Noah book (Book of Jubilees, xliv).

64Thus the subtitle A Hebrew Encyclopedia of Greek and Jewish Medicine, in Lieber,
Asafs Book of Medicines.

65Lieber, Asafs Book of Medicines, 23637, 24647.
of Asaph unique for its systematic employment of Jewish ideas as well.66 She
offers a number of examples of the influence of biblical ideas and Jewish prac-
tice, especially kosher slaughter, on the work. The most striking is the Book of
Asaphs understanding of the cardiovascular system, which Lieber views as the
earliest glimmer in medical writing of the circulation of the blood, although
without crucial elements of the process. This remarkable insight derives from the
Book of Asaphs understanding of blood as soul in accordance with the biblical
laws in Gen 9:45 and Lev 17:1014.67 I suggested above that the Noah book
on which the Book of Asaph drew contained material like the exhortation about
the shedding and consumption of blood in Jub. 7:2733. It seems possible that
the author of the Book of Asaph was attracted to the book by this shared interest;
for him, the exhortation may have reinforced the picture of Noah as a source of
great medical insight.
The author of the Book of Asaph was not the only Jewish doctor in medieval
Italy with an interest in exotic ancient sources. The Book of Yosippon is a Hebrew
history for which the main source, from which the work derives its name, is an
abridged Latin translation of Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian who wrote
in Greek for a Roman audience and whose work was transmitted by Christians.
D. Flusser, the works most recent editor, believes that its author was a physician
writing in the middle of the tenth century in Naples, a southern Italian location
where Byzantine influence was felt, but where Latin language and culture were
dominant.68 His training as a physician would account for the authors excellent
knowledge of this language and culture as well as for his lesser rabbinic learning
and his secular outlook.69 Like my imagined translator of the passages from
the Testaments, the author of the Yosippon was not reluctant to extract attrac-
tive, apparently Jewish traditions even when they were embedded in a work that
belonged to Christians. In addition to his version of Josephus, he draws on books
of what would later be called the Apocrypha, which were readily available to any
European Jew who read Latin or Greek since they formed part of the Christian
Bible. Like Nahmanides,70 he accepts the Wisdom of Solomon as the words of
King Solomon himself.71
66Lieber, Asafs Book of Medicines, 23738.

67Lieber suggests that William Harvey was also influenced by the biblical understanding in
his discovery of the circulatory system (Asafs Book of Medicines, 24043).
68D. Flusser, ed., Sepher Yosippon (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 197880), 2.11720.
In addition to more general considerations, Flusser adduces geographical details of the work in
favor of the identification of the location.
69Flusser, Sepher Yosippon, 2.11719.
70Sermon on the Words of Qohelet, in Kitvei Rabbenu Mosheh b. Nahman (2 vols.; ed. C.
Chavel; Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1963), 1.182.

71Flusser, Sepher Yosippon, 2.13233.
The Yosippon is important for Lieber because it shows the power of Josephus
reputation among Jews in Byzantine Italy.72 Abandoned by Jews as a traitor,
Josephus became a wise man, astrologer, and healer in Christian legend. Lieber
suggests that the otherwise unknown ancient physician to whom the Book of
Asaph is attributed is actually Josephus, who had a medical reputation among
the Christian contemporaries of the books author; the name Asaph is to be
understood as a variant of Yoseph, the Hebrew of Josephus.73 If she is right, the
attribution of the Book of Asaph would be another instance of the willingness
of Jews in Byzantine Italy to borrow from Christians in order to reclaim what
they took to be theirs.
If Flussers identification of the profession of the anonymous author of the
Yosippon is speculative, the medical career of Shabbetai Donnolo is well at-
tested. Donnolo was born in Oria in 913 and practiced medicine in Byzantine
Italy until at least 982. He wrote on astrology as well as medicine, and the
culmination of his lifes work was a commentary, known as Sepher akhmoni,
to the mystical work Sepher Yeirah. In his introduction to Sepher akhmoni,
Donnolo describes his eagerness to acquire wisdom from all possible sources, in-
cluding gentiles.74 The Noah book presented fewer problems to a Jew interested
in ancient knowledge than the sources used by the author of the Yosippon or the
translators into Hebrew of passages from the Testaments of the Twelve Patri
archs and Jubilees: it was preserved in Hebrew, and it was not found in Christian
hands. In the world of the author of the Yosippon and Shabbetai Donnolo, it is not
surprising that another physician author gave it a prominent place in his work.
72Flusser points out that the Yosippon is not a pseudepigraphon: the author refers to himself
and his use of sources several times in the work. The attribution of the work to Yoseph b. Gorion
is the work of others who were persuaded by its frequent references to Yoseph b. Gorion that
he was in fact the author. In the meantime the name of the author was lost, if it was ever affixed
to the work (Sepher Yosippon, 2.7479).
73Lieber, Asafs Book of Medicines, 24749. Liebers theory is even more complicated
than this. She understands the Yoanan who appears as the author of portions of the Book of
Asaph to be Yohanan b. Zakkai, the great first-century rabbi to whom the Talmud attributes not
only the prophecy to Vespasian that Josephus claims for himself, but also the cure of Vespasians
foot, a deed attributed to Josephus in a southern Italian Christian chronicle of ca. 1000 (248).
74On Shabbetai Donnolo, see Sharf, Universe. Sharf translates the passage from Sepher
akhmoni there (910).

Index of Ancient Texts
Hebrew Bible
Genesis 5, 2021, 50, 53, 59, 34:617 126
12526, 130, 33436, 34:30 28
33940, 35859, 361, 35:21 337
368 37:24 346
1:16:4 354 38:5 340, 342
2 24, 124 38:6 338
23 14, 18, 20 38:11 339
2:6 23 38:12 33839, 341
2:8 124 38:13 339
2:9 13 38:1415 341
2:2122 124 38:24 341
3 21 45:13 242
3:24 364 49:1 54
5:18 354 49:34 125
5:2124 15 49:57 28
5:22 355
5:23 324 Exodus 50, 59, 130
5:24 35556 7:35 242
6 355 14:4, 17, 18 242
6:14 15, 227 16:7, 10 242
8:2022 367 19 49, 118
9:45 367, 369 19:6 105
9:27 357 19:1011 11718
10:1 357 19:15 118
10:1518 357 24 49
10:22 338 24:10 18
12:6 356, 358 24:16, 17 242
14:8 35657 25:9 12
15 74 26:1, 31 80
17 233 30:78 75
18:6 69 30:1921 64
24:10 338 30:34 76
24:65 341 30:35 76
29 336 32:2629 29, 106
29:24, 29 334 34:1516 27, 127
30:2543 366 36:8, 35 80
31:47 52 37:69 80
372 Index of Ancient Texts
Leviticus 29, 62, 66, 138, 140 11:2930 155

1 29, 67 11:31 148
1:2 98 11:3335 155
1:39 66 11:39 178
1:45 99 11:3940 181
1:5 6566 11:46 100, 162
1:6, 12 66 12 52, 11314, 116,
1:7 6566 12325, 130, 146, 149,
1:89 66 161, 163, 16970, 172,
1:1013 66 358
1:1417 66 1215 8586, 114, 139, 144,
2 68 15152, 162, 164, 171
2:1, 15 67 12:1 98, 118
2:4, 5, 7 67 12:15 359
2:13 67 12:2 116, 123
3 74 12:24 147
3:2, 8 99 12:2, 5 164
3:11 74 12:3 124
4:1 98 12:3, 5 149
4:6, 17 154 12:4 85, 124, 140, 14647,
5:113 114, 136 149, 169, 182
5:11 171 12:45 124, 169
5:20 98 12:5 123, 147
5:29 162 12:6 136
6:1, 18 98 12:67 170
6:2, 7, 18 100, 162 12:68 170, 177
6:911 104 12:7 100, 139, 162
6:13, 21 162 12:8 170
6:19 104 13 115, 161, 163
7 74 1314 114, 141, 225, 368
7:1, 11, 37 100, 162 13:1 98
7:1118 74 13:2 141, 163
7:1921 146 13:3, 8, 22, 27, 30 141
7:22 98 13:68 163
9 104 13:13 103
9:6, 23 242 13:2937 163
9:15 104 13:3137 102
10 104 13:33 163
10:13 63 13:45 153, 158
10:611 104 13:5152 141, 163
10:8 98 13:59 100, 139, 162
10:11 100 14:132 177
10:1920 104 14:2 139, 162
1115 136, 16263 14:2, 32, 54, 57 100
11:1 98 14:3 103
11:48 155 14:47 103
11:1023 139 14:8 184
11:2440 114, 176, 179 14:1020 103
Index of Ancient Texts 373
14:12, 19 136 15:2829 178

14:22, 3032 171 15:29 147, 169
14:32 139, 162 15:2930 140, 182
14:33 98 15:32 100, 139, 162
14:3436 102 15:3233 143, 164
14:37 103 16 95, 107
14:44 141, 163 17 138
14:46 176, 179 1726 137
14:54, 57 139, 162 17:1014 369
14:56 163 17:15 177
15 74, 11317, 130, 140, 18 86, 114, 12122,
142, 147, 161, 16365, 12728, 130, 137, 158,
167, 170, 172 172
15:1 98 18:620 154
15:115 163 18:17 122
15:2 143, 158 18:19 146, 17172
15:215 143 18:21 38, 127, 137, 154
15:231 164 18:22 114, 122
15:46 158 18:23 122
15:412 116, 142 18:2428 122
15:5 176 18:2430 38, 115, 126
15:510 143, 166 18:2628 154
15:511 147, 170 18:26, 27, 29, 30 114, 122
15:527 179 18:2829 137
15:7, 19 170 19:19 31, 84
15:1112 166 20 86, 114, 12122, 130,
15:13 140, 145, 167, 169 137, 146, 154, 172
15:1315 166, 17778 20:15 137
15:14 169 20:3 128
15:14, 30 136 20:1021 114
15:1415 140, 144 20:11 41
15:16 142, 148, 165 20:13 114, 122
15:1617 143 20:14 122
15:1618 117, 140, 143, 147, 20:17 122
16364, 16667, 170, 20:18 118, 146, 17172
17778 20:21 114, 138
15:18 143, 165 20:22 122
15:19 142, 145, 147, 149, 20:2224 38
158, 164, 177 21 28
15:1924 102, 116, 163 21:1, 4, 1415 3031, 83
15:21 176 21:7 47, 8384
15:2122 149 21:7, 14 3335
15:2123 147, 170 21:1012 104
15:24 146, 172 21:14 8384
15:2530 163 22 181
15:2627 116, 176 22:116 146
15:27 147, 170 22:47 179, 182
15:28 169, 182 22:67 181
22:7 182 19:1819 118

23:11 314 19:19 148, 177, 18486
23:1521 314 19:20 149
23:36 52 19:21 177, 185
25:26, 47 171 25:111 127
25:28 170 25:113 27
26:43 154 25:3 43
27:8 171 25:611 238
27:10, 33 171 25:1013 250
25:12 29
Numbers 62, 98 2829 69
3:10, 38 82 28:5 69
5:14 116 31:2531 243
5:2 11516, 118, 120, 178 35:3031 154
5:3 116 35:3334 137
5:14 116
5:29 100 Deuteronomy 53, 59, 94, 96, 98,100,
6:13 100 200, 22327
6:21 171 111 224
9:914 146 1:78 53
10:35 331 1:13 53
12:4 136 1:30 224
12:67 136 3:21 224
12:10 103, 137 4:3 224
13:46 136 4:910 224
14:132 136 4:34 224
15 6769, 71 6:9 224
15:311 67, 69 6:2025 224
15:4 69 7:15 27, 127
15:410 70 7:6 36
15:7, 10, 14 68 7:19 224
15:1415, 2930 136 9:17 224
16:2 105 10:21 224
16:3 105 11:7 224
18:7 82 11:1920 224
18:19 146 12 223
19 116, 136, 145, 151, 1226 224
157 14:2, 21 36
19:4, 18, 19 154 14:79, 19 155
19:610 185 14:11 155
19:7 177 16:6 179
19:722 179 16:1820 131
19:8 177 16:20 132
19:10 177, 186 17:9 225
19:11 178 17:1420 94
19:1122 114 17:1619 225
19:14 100 19:17 225
19:1619 180 20:19 242
20:58 243 12 Samuel 192, 201, 23841

20:1015 243
21:14 347 1 Samuel
22 121 10:7 170
23 121 14 238
23:35 226 18:7 250
23:47 94 18:78 242
23:1015 117 21 118
23:19 80 2131 238
24:1 158 25:18 69
24:8 225
25:14 70 2 Samuel
26:1213 146 1 239
27 121 1:19 238
2734 224 11:4 102, 140, 153
27:3, 8 224 12:15 241
28:58 223 17:47 242
28:61 223 22, 23 239
29:2 224
29:3 224 12 Kings 201, 238, 24041
29:1415 224
29:18 139 1 Kings
29:19, 20 223 6:2328 80
29:25 199 6:29, 32, 35 80
29:26 223 6:37 80
30:10 223 7:40, 45, 48, 51 80
31 50 8:10, 11, 63, 64 80
31:9 50 14:29 238
31:1011 96, 224 15:3 241
31:1013 224 15:1115 241
31:2526 50 15:26 241
31:26 223 18:32 69
32:8 357 21:1724 241
32:17 199 22:45 238
Joshua 24243 2 Kings

2:813 243 7:1, 16, 18 69
7 242 17:27 100
8:18 243 22 224
10:114 243
Isaiah 59, 88, 200, 291
Judges 192, 23841 6 274
3:30 239 6:3 299
4:9 242 8:7 242
5:31 239 8:21 200
9:38 170 10:10, 14 170
20:28 44 40:12 71
Jeremiah 139, 200 Hosea 139

3:12, 9 137 2:9 170
3:17 139
7:24 139 Micah
9:13 139 4:4 239
11:18 139 4:11 137
13:10 139
16:12 139 Haggai
18:12 139 2:11 100
19:4 199
23:17 139 Zechariah 88, 291
44:3 199 5:610 70
8 239
Ezekiel 2023, 88, 115, 139
1 16, 259, 274 Malachi 39
1:1521 80 2:7 100
1:26 18 3:16 39, 55
1:27 273
7:1920 115 Psalms 59
811 12, 274 19:8 347
10:20 16 27 80
14:18 16 35:17 219
22:26 100 36:810 13
27 20 69:29 55
28 14 81:13 139
28:1118 1314 90 54
31 24 106:38 137
31:118 13 122 80
36:17 137 127:1 219
4046 81 132 80
4048 12, 20 134 80
40:2 12, 285 139:16 55
40:344:31 12
44:22 31 Proverbs 17, 22, 46, 215, 247
44:23 100 19 22
45:19 12 3:18 24
45:10, 11, 13 70 3:35 242
45:1046:24 12 7:5 46
45:2325 69 8 23
46:7 171 25:1 347
46:11 69 27:10 200
46:1314 69
46:14 70 Job 17
47:112 12, 25 1:3 205
47:79, 12 13 31:25 170
47:1348:29 12
47:18 12 Song of Songs 263, 321
48:3035 12 6:11 262
Lamentations 9:2 27, 33

1:17 115 9:11 115
10:1822 27
Ecclesiastes 10:44 27
7:7 205
9:10 170 Nehemiah 79, 83, 9394, 97
2:10 93
Esther 8 225
6 244 8:1 94
13 107
Daniel 2, 45, 54, 90, 260, 303, 13:13 94
31819, 34647 13:19 226
7:910 80 13:49 93
9:3 303 13:2331 27
10:23 303 13:2829 86
12:3 287
13 346 12 Chronicles 314
Ezra 79, 83, 9394, 97, 200, 2 Chronicles

228 26:1619 103
7:6 97, 223 26:1621 137
9:12 35 29:5 137
New Testament
2 Corinthians Revelation 31819

12 302 4:12 301, 304
12:2, 4 301 8:34 77
12:5 301
21:22 88
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
Apocalypse of Abraham Apocalypse of Moses

9:7 304 1011 331
9:78 289
12:1 304 Apocalypse of Weeks
12:12 290 5455, 79, 8991. See
12:10 275 also 1 Enoch 93:110,
13:14 288 91:1117
17:518:3 274
18:13 288 Apocalypse of Zephaniah
8 274, 288
8:24 275
Aramaic Levi Ascension of Isaiah

13 29, 84 2:711 304
6 29 2:811 290
8 37 6 275, 290
13 61 611 266
1361 29, 61 6:15, 6 304
1517 30 6:10 302
1617 84 6:1011 304
1618 62 79 274
17 31, 3536, 63 7:25 275
1718 106 8:11 304
1921 29, 62, 64, 73 8:17 275
22 65 8:26 288
2224 62 9 304
2225 73 9:2 288
2228 29 9:30 275
23 74 9:33 275
2325 65 9:3739 288
25 66 10:2331 266
2527 65
2529 62 Assumption of Moses
26 62, 64, 67, 73 1:2 55
2728 66 4 89
2730 73 10:12 55
29 67
30 62, 67 Astronomical Book
3136 62 2, 51, 227, 260,
3146 29 31213, 31617.
3246 69 See also 1 Enoch7282
3746 62
4145 70 2 Baruch
45 67 6:2 303
46 67, 70 9:2 303
4647 62 35:15 303
5160 62 51:10, 12 288
5258 37
53 62, 65 3 Baruch
5354 29, 73 1:13 303
5355 62, 64 1115 274
5455 65
56 62, 73 Book of Dreams 51, 79, 318. See also
57 57 1Enoch 8390
5861 39
6365 72 Book of the Watchers
82105 106 23, 5, 1112, 1523,
102106 29 25, 28, 31, 3637, 47,
103 85 61, 6364, 7983,
8586, 89, 92, 95, 97,
100, 106, 217, 22728, 32:6 21

234, 26061, 267, 274, 33 21
279, 281, 28687, 34:136:3 21
3024, 308, 312, 315, 36:4 17
317, 322, 324, 35556, 3940 308
366. See also 1 Enoch 39:3 302
136 39:5 288
39:7 288
1 Enoch 40 274
68 227 46 308
611 82 47:3 55
6:6 354 70:1, 5 302
6:7 317 71 308
7:1 85, 366 71:11 287
8:3 317, 366 71:14 287
9:8 85 7374 316
10:11 85 73:1 316
1213 16 7879 316
1216 80, 82, 85, 227 78:3 316
12:34 81 87:3 87
12:4 85 89:18 89
13:46 81 89:3235 87, 89
13:78 303 89:36 89
14 275, 308 89:37 89
1416 16 89:50 87, 89
14:824 80 89:66 87
14:18 80 89:7274 87
14:2223 80 89:73 17
14:24 16, 267 89:74 90
15:23 81 90:2829 8889
15:4 8586 90:34 88
15:47 83 91:12 91
1719 18 91:13 91
17:1 18 93:68 91
17:3 18 104:2 287
17:45 18 104:4 288
18:8 18
18:1219:2 18 2 Enoch 26061, 267, 274,
2036 18 27778, 280, 28687,
2125 18 3023, 308, 312, 356
24 20 1:2 302
24:3 18 3:17:1 261
24:1317 24 79 274
24:23 24 21:24 267
24:2527 24 22:10 286
25:3 18 24 286
32 227
32:23 20
3 Enoch 27981, 28687, 324, 2:14 123

35556. See also Sefer 2:18 77
Hekhalot (Hekhalot 2:22 76
Texts) 2:23 360
1:16 278 2:33 52
4 286 3:16 123
6:1 278 3:8 123, 359
7 278 3:914 124, 359
9 287 3:14 52
10 287 3:27 72, 76
12 287 3:31 55, 58
15B 287 4:15 317, 354
16 286 4:17, 21, 23 355
1740 278 4:1819 51, 57
4148 279 4:19 58
41:3 279 4:21 58
4:22 317
Epistle of Enoch 55, 79, 91, 287, 319. 4:23 51
See also 1 Enoch 4:25 76, 367
92105 4:26 125
4:30 52
4 Ezra 6 367
3:13 303 6:3 75
5:13, 20 303 6:17 56
6:31, 35 303 6:18 77
6:42, 47 331 6:22 77
7:5 200 6:23 52
9:2425, 27 303 6:2829 56
6:3035 56
Jubilees 2, 56, 2729, 3741, 6:3637 317
43, 47, 4959, 6162, 6:37 52
65, 68, 7277, 99, 6:38 51
101, 11113, 12333, 7 368
215, 21718, 228, 7:16 367
234, 31214, 31618, 7:45 75
33033, 338, 34344, 7:20 51, 58
35170 7:2733 367, 369
1 50, 53 7:2833 58
1:1 4950 7:3839 58
1:3 49 7:39 367
1:4 4951 8:89:15 357
1:56 49 8:11 57
1:718 53 10:114 362, 365, 368
1:8 50 10:36 368
1:26 50 10:8, 10 366
1:29 5051 10:13 57
1:292:1 49 10:14 367
2:123 359 10:17 51
10:29 358 30:1820 39

10:32 358 30:19 52
12:2527 57 30:20 128
13:4, 9, 2527 367 30:21 39, 128
14:120 74 30:22 39
14:9 74 31:13 367
14:11 367 31:525 37
15:2 75, 367 31:1317 128
16:18 113 31:14 77
16:2025 367 31:32 52
16:24 76 32:19 128
16:2829 56 32:29 367
18:19 56 32:3 39, 72
20:4 40 32:46 75
21 57, 62, 73 32:1819 52
21:25 73 32:2122 55
21:619 367 32:2126 54, 57
21:6, 1820 73 32:2729 56, 367
21:7 74 33:920 40
21:79 74 33:10 126
21:717 73 33:11 126
21:9 74 33:13 126
21:10 57, 74, 367 33:14 126
21:12 65 33:15 126
21:1215 73 33:1516 41, 125
21:1314 74 33:19 126
21:1617 73 33:20 113, 126, 128
21:17 62 34 363
21:2125 73 36:10 56
22:36 367 3738 363
22:20 40 39:2 54
23 5253 39:6 5657
23:13 54 41:1 338
23:32 52, 54 41:7 339
25:13 40 41:9 341
27:10 40 41:23 126
28 361 41:25 126
28:2530 366 4243 54
29:8 52 45:16 57
30 37, 3940, 43, 126 48:4 366
30:46 38 49:8 56
30:523 29, 127 50:5 55
30:710 38 50:10 76
30:1314 38
30:15 54, 128 Judith
30:1516 127 1:7, 8, 11 347
30:1517 38
30:18 38, 128
Letter of Aristeas 9:2122 238

3 207 9:2831 244
46 207 9:37 237
9295 63 9:73 238
10:5963 244
Life of Adam and Eve 12 217
3738 331 12:123 240
12:4248 238
1 Maccabees 3, 28, 41, 4345, 47, 13:19 238
19293, 196, 198, 13:1011, 4153 239
2012, 208, 217, 13:23 244
23554 13:2530 244
1:14 237 13:2730 240
1:15 41, 4344, 196, 198 14:415 239, 245
1:43 198 14:9 244
2:1528 44, 198 14:1424 240
2:26 238 14:21 245
2:50 44 14:2748 239
2:5160 252 14:35 245
2:5253 252 14:3940 245
2:54 44 14:41 240
2:5460 252 14:4148 247
2:64 252 14:4344 245
2:6566 238 15:9 247
2:66 243 15:1524 240
35 238 16:1122 240
3:3, 7, 9 243 16:2324 23637, 240
3:9 235
3:15 199 2 Maccabees 23, 28, 41, 43, 4547,
3:1722 243 191211, 218, 23537,
3:26 243 25153
3:4656 243 1:19 194
4:811 243 1:102:18 194
4:1415 198 2:1932 193
4:3033, 3841 243 2:21 201, 209, 236
4:57 240 2:22 197, 199
4:59 240 2:2431 194
5:13 237 3:1 197, 199
5:28, 33 243 3:4 43
5:6162 237 3:2434 201
5:63 243 4:2 199
6:44 244 4:2, 17 197
7:21 252 4:717 211
7:49 240 4:9 195
8 236, 240 4:11 197
8:1 198 4:1115 196
9:10 244 4:13 236
9:18 243 4:15 199
4:17 199 14:15 201

4:1820 45, 197, 218 14:17 200
4:35 200 14:3031 205
5:24 201 14:31, 43 204
5:8, 15 197, 199 14:3746 202, 251
5:10 199 14:4243 205
67 192, 203, 251 14:43 252
6:1 199 15:9 197, 199
6:1, 5, 28 197 15:10 197
6:4 45 15:12 2067
6:5 199 15:13 207
6:6 199 15:17 2045, 252
6:18 207 15:27 201
6:187:42 202 15:29 199, 209
6:23 207 15:37 194
6:2728 205
6:28 199, 204, 252 4 Maccabees
6:31 2045, 252 1:8, 10 207
7 204, 208 3:18 207
7:2, 9, 11, 23, 37 197, 199 4:1 207
7:5, 11 2045, 252 6:23 208
7:8, 21, 27 199, 2089 11:22 207
7:9, 11, 23 199 13:25 207
7:21 2045, 252 15:9 207
7:24 197
7:2429 209 Parables of Enoch 26061, 262. See also
7:30 197, 199 1 Enoch 3771, Simili
7:39 199 tudes of Enoch.
8:24 202
8:2, 36 197 Psalms of Solomon
8:16 2045, 252 8:12 129
8:17 199200
8:21 199 Similitudes of Enoch
8:36 199 28788, 302, 308. See
9 204 also 1 Enoch 3771,
10:13 205 Parables of Enoch.
10:26 197, 199
11 193 Sirach See Wisdom of Ben
11:810 201 Sira
11:2425 197
11:31 197, 199 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
12:37 199, 209 56, 36, 217, 32949,
12:38 197 35154, 358, 361, 363,
12:40 197, 199 367, 370
12:42 2045
13:1011, 14 202 Testament of Levi
13:10, 14 197, 199 2:34 303
13:14 2045, 252 3 274
3:6 77 24:3 23
14:1 36 24:817 250
14:6 36, 42 24:1011 23
16 89 24:13 24
17 90 24:16 24
17:10 90 24:3033 25
17:11 90 25:1326:18 46
41:1942:14 46
Testament of Judah 42:1543:33 248
37 363 4450 22
8:2 340 44:1114 247
9 363 44:19 249
10:1 338 45:15 46
11:2 340 45:23 249
11:35 339 45:622 22, 46
12:13 340 45:713 46
12:2 341 45:7, 13, 15, 2022 249
13:6 340 45:1213 249
45:23 46
Testament of Naphtali 45:2326 250
1:912 33334, 337 46:2 249
1:12 335 46:1320 248
47:211 46
Testament of Benjamin 47:6, 8, 11 250
1:3 337 47:1417 251
47:18 251
Tobit 47:20 251
5:13 207 48:4 249
7:7 207 48:1722 251
9:6 207 49:13 251
49:45 250
Wisdom of Ben Sira 49:8 248
1112, 2225, 28, 41, 49:16 249
4647, 97, 100, 106, 50:15 249
200, 213, 21517, 234, 50:121 23
241, 24652, 312 50:11 250
4:13 248 50:13 250
7:2426 46 51:121 46
9:19 46
22:35 46 Wisdom of Solomon
24 2223 7:58, 1721 347
Dead Sea Scrolls
Apocryphon of Jeremiah (4Q390) 42.1017 121

238 90 45.9 148
4551 115
Damascus Covenant 45.79 178
See also 4QD 45.710 117
2.1 138 45.712 144
2.16 139 45.910 17879
2.1718 139 45.1112 117, 179
3.5, 1112 139 45.1247.18 115
3.17 138 45.17 118
4.2 83 46.1618 116, 178
4.205.6 129 46.17 120
4.21 30 47 120
5.67 85, 129 48.17 115
5.711 122, 129 48.714 115
7.34 139 48.1417 116, 178
8.5 139 49.1116 17980
8.8, 19 139 49.1121 119
10.4 162 49.1617 179
10.14 162 49.1650.4 118
10.1411.18 161 49.1820 179
12.12 139, 151 49.20 180
12.19, 2223 162 49.21 180
13.7 162 50.4 148, 180
14.3, 12 162 50.49 180
15.7 162 50.1019 180
16 187 50.2051.5 181
16.14 53 51.35 181
16.34 51 51.5 148
16.1012 161 51.1318 132
16.12 162 66 121
16.13 162 66.1317 122
67 121
Genesis Apocryphon
10:16 6768 1QS 13536, 152, 159
2.25 153
Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice 3.45 156
(11QShirShabb 87) 3.49 153
23 77 4.1011 131
4.2022 154
Temple Scroll 5.4 135
1314 68 5.1314 156
3545 63 7.23 155
35.1015 35, 121 7.1516 155
39.7 120 7.1820 155
8.56, 9.56 35 4QOrdinancesc

8.1624 155 col 1 176
4QD 13536, 13852, 159 4QTohorot

A 1 i 8 144
4QMMT Bb 1 ii 710 145
B 1316 148
B 1317 184 4Q512
B 48 33 312 157
B 6472 148 3.17 158
B 6672 184 5.1517 158
B 75 3132, 36, 84 5.17 157
B 7576 35 7.9 158
B 7582 84, 105 12.3, 5, 6 157
B 7678 84 12.16 157
B 79 32, 84
B 80 84
B 8082 3233, 35, 84
Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish Texts
Asaph, Book of Jerusalem Talmud

2 365 y. Yoma 1:7 95
4 36566
8 365 Midrash Aggadah 329, 33132, 351
9 366 to Gen 5:18 35455
10 366 to Gen 5:24 35556
to Gen 9:27 357
Babylonian Talmud to Gen 12:6 35658
b. Hag. 14b 270, 272
b. Hag. 15a 286 Midrash Ha-Gadol
b. Ker. 13b 335 to Gen 10:1 357
b. Ketub. 22a 342
b. Yoma 19b 95 Midrash Tadshe
b. Yoma 53a 95 6 359
b. Yoma 54a 321 8 361
15 358
Bereshit Rabbati 56, 32949, 35152,
358 Midrash Vayissau
Genesis Rabbah 23 363
1.1 57
1.2 357 Mishnah
1.4 57 m. Mid. 1:4 65
25.1 356 m. Neg.14:2 184
26.3 357 m. Neg.14:23 175
m. Neg.14:3 148, 183
m. Parah 3:23 186 Sepher Yosippon

m. Parah 3:5 186 2.7479 370
m. Parah 3:7 147, 170, 185
m. eqal. 5:1 65 Sifra Aharei Mot
m. Sukk. 5:8 42 3.11 95
m. Tamid 4:3 67
m. Tamid 5:3 65 Sifre Deuteronomy
m. Tamid 7:3 67 256 179
m. Yoma 1:5 95
m. Yoma 1:6 95 Tosefta
m. Zabim 2:2 142, 165 t. Sukk. 4:28 42
t.Yoma 1:8 95
Numbers Rabbah
12.12 287
Hekhalot Texts
3 Enoch See under Apocrypha 419 300

and Pseudepigrapha; 423 300
see also Sefer Hekha 424 300
lot (Hekhalot Texts)
Maaseh Merkavah
Hekhalot Rabbati 54455 276
81 273 545 262
94105 263 569 277
94106 273 58691 277
106 26263, 274, 288 597 262
15297 263
153, 157, 161 262 Merkavah Rabbah
198250 290 685 262
204 300
20451 264 Ozhayah Fragment
20715 265 2a/232b/24 269
219 26364 2a/2732 270
236 265, 268 2a/3234 270
24751 265 2a/38 274
251 268, 288 2a/4346 270
25859 271
259 27273 Sefer Hekhalot 28687, 291, 324,
356. See also 3 Enoch
Hekhalot Zutarti (Apocrypha and
300 300 Pseudepigrapha)
348 26263 12 287
4079 27172 13 287
413 274 15 287
41319 263, 290
Other Ancient Texts
Chaeremon, Fragments Josephus, Jewish War

5, 6, 7 229 2.16061 168
10.67 230
11 230 Mani Codex
17D 229 47 284
48 285
Epiphanius, Weights and Measures 49 284
22 359 50 285
51 285
Epistle of Barnabas 52 284
8.1 186 53 285
55 28485
George Syncellus, Ecloga Chronographica 56 285
3.618 359 57 285
5.1225 359 5860 284
27.3328.9 363 59 286
47.1429 358
120.2228 361 Origen, Contra Celsum
12124 361 6.31 266
7.40 265
Herodotus, Histories
1.31 232 PGM
IV. 154221 298
Isocrates, Evagoras IV.21622 289
3 246 IV.475829 29697
IV.64551 289
Isocrates, Philippus
13435 246 Philo, Migration of Abraham
8992 229
Josephus, Against Apion
1.3035 34, 83 Philo, Special Laws
1.110 31, 34, 83
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.111 34, 47
1.16668 232
1.192 233 Philostratos, Life of Apollonios
1.23031 232 6.11 297
34 233 8.30 297
3.276 34
3.277 31, 34, 83 Polybius, Histories
4.198 233 1.17.12 206
5.119 44
11.30612 41
11.312 322
12.142 199
Index of Modern Authors
Abel, F.-M.192, 194, 207, 237 Black, M.16, 208, 260, 316, 354, 363
Abusch, R.310. See also Boustan, R. Blenkinsopp, J.98
Achtemeier, P.J.354 Bohak, G.226
Adler, W.35355, 35960, 363 Bousset, W.292
Albani, M.50, 316 Boustan, R.82, 99. See also Abusch, R.
Albeck, Ch.32932, 33435, 33738, Bow, B.A.249
342, 34546, 35152, 35658 Bowden, J.211, 213, 235
Alexander, P.S.257, 259, 26162, 278, Bowersock, G.203
281, 28687, 308, 344, 356 Boyer, B.303, 309
Alexander, T.330, 363 Bringmann, K.196, 198, 218
Alon, G.112 Brock, S.P.129, 330
Altmann, A.263, 27677, 296 Brodie, I.34
Andersen, F.I.261, 286 Brooke, G.J.30, 111, 123, 148
Anderson, G.A.12425 Buber, S.351, 354
Appelbaum, S.193, 213 Bchler, A.34
Arenhoevel, D.23738 Buell, D.K.107
Argall, R.A.249, 312 Bultmann, R.212
Aschim, A.29 Bunge, J.G.193
Avemarie, F.155, 23233 Burgmann, H.112
Baillet, M.157 Callaway, P.115

Baron, S.W.329, 345, 352 Cameron, R.28384
Baumgarten, A.4, 10, 112, 133, 22527, Chadwick, H.26566
231, 233 Charles, R.H.29, 38, 42, 55, 26667,
Baumgarten, J.M.30, 32, 49, 111, 275, 329, 331, 33335, 338, 341, 343,
12325, 135, 13839, 14142, 14445, 355, 35863, 368
14850, 15559, 16163, 16570, 172, Charlesworth, J.H.139, 290, 329
17576, 18486, 313, 315 Chavel, C.347, 361
Beard, M.K.96 Chazon, E.G.90, 99, 181
Beckwith, R.T.90, 111 Clements, R.A.99, 181, 186, 188
Beentjes, P.C.249, 251, 312 Clifford, R.J.12, 17
Belkin, S.329 Cohen, G.D.203
Benedict, B.Z.345, 352 Cohen, S.J.D.41, 107, 145
Berkun, L.E.138. See also Eichler, L. Collins, J.J.203, 28788, 290, 301, 309,
Bernstein, M.J.30, 49, 83, 9596, 112, 367
155, 188 Colson, F.H.229
Betz, H.D.29697 Cross, F.M.260, 274
Bickerman, E.45, 55, 19193, 19596,
199, 21125, 227, 23536, 240
390 Index of Modern Authors
Dan, Y.26263, 32930, 344, 363 Gager, J.275, 282

Danby, H.42 Garca Martnez, F.30, 36, 49, 53, 55,
Daniel, R.W.297 123, 155, 161, 165
Davenport, G.L.49 Gardner, G.108, 247
Davies, W.D.107 Gaster, T.H.310
Davila, J.R.308, 310 Geiger, A.34
Davis, M.203, 213 Gelzer, H.353
Dawson, D.228 Gese, H.11
De Jonge, M.36, 90, 217, 33133, 352, Gilbert, M.2325
367 Ginzberg, L.331, 33738, 341, 357
Delcor, M.333 Goldberg, A.26265, 27173
Dewey, A.J.28384 Goldstein, J.A.43, 193, 19596, 201,
Di Lella, A.A.24851 207, 23637, 23940
Dieterich, A.266 Goodblatt, D.M.9697
Dimant, D.54, 8790, 99100, 112, 144, Goodenough, E.R.292
167 Goodman, M.192
Donlan, W.2067, 245 Gottstein, M.H.156
Doran, R.19394, 2001, 203 Grabbe, L.L.3233
Dover, K.J.206 Green, A.274, 304
Duensing, H.266 Green, J.M.322
Green, P.246
Eichler, L.115. See also Berkun, L.E. Greenberg, M.11
Eichrodt, W.12, 14 Greenfield, J.C.2930, 72, 367
Elbogen, I.227 Grelot, P.18, 20
Eliav, Y.Z.254 Grolnick, S.A.303, 309
Elior, R.261, 297, 307, 31025 Gruen, E.210
Elman, Y.131 Gruenwald, I.25861, 26870, 27273,
Emerton, J.A.347 27881, 289, 309, 319
Endres, J.C.3941, 45
Epstein, A.32930, 351, 361 Habermann, A.M.329
Epstein, L.M.341 Habicht, C.191, 19395, 201, 203, 207,
23536
Feldman, L.204, 222, 23233 Hadas, M.212
Fields, W.W.59 Hallo, W.W.55
Fine, S.240, 245 Halperin, D.J.257, 25960, 26263, 268,
Finkelstein, L.212, 221 27172, 291, 29798, 300, 3089, 319,
Fischel, H.213 323
Fishbane, M.59, 100, 104, 309 Halpern-Amaru, B.12829, 179
Fleisher, E.38, 127 Hamacher, E.310
Flemming, J.266 Hanson, P.D.14
Flusser, D.156, 362, 36970 Haran, M.68
Fournier-Bidoz, A.24 Hatch, E.197, 241
Fraade, S.D.183, 188 Hayes, C.E.84
Freedman, D.N.168 Hellholm, D.283
Frey, J.50, 316 Hempel, C.152, 161, 166
Fuks, A.214 Hengel, M.28, 4243, 191, 195, 211, 213,
Fuller, R.H.212 215, 235, 292
Hennecke, E.266, 284
Index of Modern Authors 391
Henrichs, A.283 Lemke, W.E.260

Himmelfarb, Martha1718, 39, 64, 73, Lesses, R.M.308
77, 8081, 8384, 86, 96, 9899, 1013, Levenson, J.D.1214
1058, 113, 123, 129, 163, 168, 170, Levine, B.71, 112, 117, 122
172, 181, 216, 222, 23537, 24951, Lewy, H.297
266, 274, 28081, 286, 288, 296, 299, Lieber, E.364, 36870
3045, 309, 330, 35152, 35556, 358 Lieberman, S.213
Himmelfarb, Milton210 Licht, J.156
Hollander, H.W.36, 367 Lim, R.282
Hopkins, K.9697 Lim, T.H.175, 310, 313
Horbury, W.107 Lindars, B.111
Houtman, C.94 Lipscomb, W.L.330, 362
Hurtado, L.W.292 Liver, J.44
Hurvitz, A.168 Lorton, D.97
Louvish, D.310
Idel, M.298, 303, 307 Luijendijk, A.97
Jacoby, F.231, 233 Mack, B.L.2223, 24748

James, M.R.284 Maier, J.82. 115, 26768, 274
Japhet, S.113, 11718, 120 Maltomini, F.297
Jaubert, A.313 Margulies, M.357
Jellinek, A.280, 331, 361, 364 Marx, A.347
Jonas, H.265 Masella-Gayley, M.214
McLean, B.H.245, 247
Kahana, A.330 Meier, S.103
Kampen, J.30, 49, 83, 95, 112, 155 Merkur, D.303, 305, 309
Katz, S.T.290 Meyer, M.W.289, 296
Keaney, J.206 Milgrom, J.65, 67, 97, 99100, 1035,
Kellerman, U.203 11415, 11820, 12326, 136, 140, 142,
Kister, M.148, 168, 185 144, 146, 149, 158, 164, 16667, 169,
Klawans, J.86, 13132, 135, 155 171, 177, 179, 368
Klein, S.34344 Milik, J.T.16, 1920, 124, 135, 260, 333,
Knibb, M.A.16, 19, 89, 15356, 266, 363
288, 302 Millar, F.192, 208, 222, 231
Knohl, I.98, 100, 1045, 113, 116, 121, Miller, P.D.260
127, 131, 13637 Moehring, H.R.192, 214, 235
Koenen, L.28384, 301 Momigliano, A.194, 214, 222
Korteweg, T.331, 344, 36364, 367 Morgenstern, M.6768
Kraft, R.A.4, 42 Mosshammer, A.A.35859
Krauss, S.335 Mulder, M.J.204
Kugel, J.28, 3738, 51, 54, 128 Mullen, E.T.274
Kugler, R.A.2833, 37, 39, 42, 6167, Munter, S.364
7273, 8485, 123, 128 Myers, D.N.222, 235
Kuhrt, A.195, 215, 221
Neubauer, A.346
Lange, A.50, 316 Neugebauer, O.316
Lauterbach, J.B.330, 363 Newsom, C.A.14, 81, 275, 299
Lee, T.R.246
392 Index of Modern Authors
Nickelsburg, G.W.E.1516, 22, 36, 42, Sanders, E.P.121, 155

8083, 8586, 8889, 91, 203, 260, 274, San Nicol, M.156
286, 303, 316, 322, 367 Satlow, M.254, 320
Niese, B.203 Satran, D.181
Norich, A.254 Sauneron, S.97
Norlin, G.246 Scarborough, J.364
Schfer, P.3, 108, 254, 25758, 26163,
Odeberg, H.287 267, 26971, 273, 27677, 279, 28687,
Olyan, S.M.46 290, 298302, 3079, 32324, 356
ONeil, E.N.289 Schiffman, L.H.99, 11213, 115, 118,
Oppenheim, A.L.97 122, 144, 148, 167, 170, 17576,
Oppenheimer, A.311 17981, 18385, 188, 310, 315
Orrieux, C.19698, 218 Schlter, M.257, 286, 298, 307, 356
Osterloh, K.108 Schneemelcher, W.266, 284
Scholem, G.25762, 265, 268, 27073,
Patton, W.R.206 27677, 27980, 28990, 298301,
Paul, S.M.55 30725
Petuchowski, J.J.38, 127 Schunck, K.-D.193
Pfann, S.124, 135 Schrer, E.192
Pinsker, S.359 Schwartz, D.R.1002, 1045, 139, 197
Pomerance, A.308 Schwartz, S.193, 208, 237
Poznski, A.34 Schwarz, E.4043
Preisigke, F.335 Sed, N.280
Purvis, J.42 Segal, A.268, 3012
Sellers, O.R.71
Qimron, E.3135, 6768, 8485, 111, Sharf, A.345, 35253, 370
148, 175, 315 Sharpe, C.J.3233, 35, 41
Quinn, C.12 Shemesh, A.101, 16162
Sherwin-White, S.195, 215, 221
Rabbinowitz, J.34 Silman, Y.101
Rabin, C.38, 156 Sivan, D.6768
Rajak, T.240, 252 Skehan, P.W.24851
Rappaport, U.100, 112 Smith, M.27, 21314, 218, 223, 263,
Redpath, H.A.197, 241 268, 274, 29598, 3012
Reed, A.Y.75, 82, 89, 99, 324 Solomon, A.187
Reeves, J.C.123 Speiser, E.A.34142
Regev, E.64, 101, 155 Stegemann, H.112
Reiner, E.97 Stern, D.210
Renaud, B.197, 199, 2012 Stern, S.313
Rickenbacher, O.25 Stone, M.E.2930, 37, 63, 72, 90, 181,
Rmer, C.28384, 301 260, 290, 305, 309, 330, 335, 36263,
Rothstein, D.101 367
Rowland, C.305 Strugnell, J.3135, 84, 111, 148, 175, 315
Rubenstein, J.L.1012, 104 Sturdy, J.107
Ruderman, D.B.222, 235 Sussmann, Y.111, 131, 175, 315
Rudolph, K.265 Suter, D.S.16, 36, 8283, 85, 322
Swartz, M.D.308, 31011, 323
Sysling, H.204
Index of Modern Authors 393
Tcherikover, V.45, 19398, 21315, 218 Watts, J.W.97, 99, 104

Tedesche, S.194 Weinfeld, M.156, 22425
Testuz, M.49 Werblowsky, R.J.Z.259
Thackeray, H.St. J.31, 34, 23233 Werline, R.A.249
Theodor, J.35657 Werman, C.28, 37, 73, 101, 123, 12729,
Tigchelaar, E.J.C.82, 161, 165, 322 131, 159, 16162
Tiller P.A.87, 89 Werrett, I.188
Tisserant, E.330 Wertheimer, A.Y.330
Tov, E.59 Wertheimer, S.A.261, 330
Townsend, P.107 Whitaker, G.H.229
Trebolle Barrera, J.54, 119 Will, E.19698, 218
Wills, L.115
Ulrich, E.58 Wilson, A.115
Urbach, E.E.259, 27172 Wilson, R.McL.26566, 284
Wintermute, O.S.275, 288
Van den Broek, R.268 Wirszubski, Ch.259
Van der Horst, P.W.22930 Wolfson, E.307, 311, 321
VanderKam, J.C.16, 28, 38, 4950, 52, Wright, D.P.168
54, 59, 7475, 11112, 125, 128, 130, Wright, J.L.93
13233, 284, 316, 351, 35456, 360, Wright III, B.312
36768 Wuthnow, R.211
Van Henten, J.W.2034, 206, 232 Wutz, F.335
Van Hook, L.246
Vegas Montaner, L.54, 119 Yadin, Y.11113, 11719, 156
Vermaseren, M.J.268 Yarbro Collins, A.288
Vermes, G.38, 53, 127, 192, 208 Yardeni, A.124, 135
Von Fritz, K.223
Von Mutius, H.G.257, 286, 298, 307, Zeitlin, F.206
356 Zeitlin, S.194
Wacholder, B.Z.4951, 53, 58, 111, 197

Wasserfall, R.R.145
Subject Index
Aaron22, 27, 32, 44, 46, 63, 66, 75, 84, Baraies the Teacher28385, 287, 293,
8990, 98, 1046, 184, 192, 198, 249, 3013
278, 318, 323 Bar Kokhba Revolt96, 208
Abraham30, 53, 5758, 7276, 84, 107, Benjamin39, 43, 337, 361
217, 23233, 24849, 25253, 275, Ben Zoma270, 272
28890, 303, 334, 35658, 367 Bilgah42
Abyss18 Bilhah56,12526, 128, 33338, 341
Adam21, 37, 52, 72, 76, 12324, 130, Blessings15758
228, 28385, 287, 35860 Book of Life39, 56
Adultery5758, 129, 241 Book of Remembrance39
Aggadah345 Burial180
Aher. See Elisha b. Abuyah
Allegory22830 Calendar5152, 5658, 72, 11112, 130,
Amoraim259 132, 152, 215, 31120, 32324
Ancient of Days80 Canaan1213, 27, 40, 102, 224, 237,
Angel(s)1213, 1517, 1921, 29, 31, 356
3839, 51, 5458, 61, 77, 7982, 8587, Canaanite(s)27, 40, 242, 338, 340,
12528, 141, 221, 24950, 257, 26164, 35758
26667, 26972, 27580, 28493, 295, Canon58
298300, 3023, 308, 313, 315, 31719, Chariot1516, 80, 232, 249, 258,
324, 35456, 360, 365 26264, 267, 270, 27374, 276, 278,
of the presence49, 53, 56, 364 281, 28889, 291, 299300, 3023, 313.
Antiochus III195, 199 See also Merkavah, Throne
Antiochus IV19192, 19498, 2012, Cherub(im)1416, 18, 80, 268, 32022
204, 2089, 22223, 244, 253 Childbirth114, 116, 120, 12324, 136,
Antiochus V197, 199 147, 149, 15152, 159, 162, 16870,
Apotheosis29597 173, 17778, 18283, 35859
Aqiba107, 26263, 272, 274, 27677, Children of Darkness106
281, 288, 3001, 323 Children of Light106
Ark50, 75, 262 Christ. See Jesus
Ascent1617, 80, 82, 25782, 286, 288, Circumcision123, 196, 198, 229, 233
290, 295305, 307, 30910, 315 Cosmology27980, 284, 355
Astrology15, 212, 232, 280, 297, 355, Covenant27, 29, 39, 4647, 49, 74, 128,
370 153, 198, 22425, 227, 233, 241, 248,
252, 31920
Baal-peor27, 4344, 127 Creation17, 2223, 54, 76, 106, 128, 232,
Babylonia11, 14, 16 248, 28486, 29192, 32021, 35960,
Balaam94 365
Baptism15556, 159 of Adam and Eve12325, 35859
396 Subject Index
of Angels360 Garden of Righteousness1921

of the Torah57 Gatekeeper(s)26467, 269, 277, 280,
29899
Daniel252 Genealogy15, 34, 37, 51, 1067, 33334,
David46, 192, 23839, 24142, 25052 33637, 354
Day of Atonement95, 100, 103 Gehinnom1920
Demon(s)141, 362, 36566 Geography1112, 18, 21, 128, 271, 338,
Diaspora96, 212, 292 369
Dinah2731, 3738, 47, 84, 12628 Gnosticism258, 26566, 28081, 284,
Divorce30, 83 292, 309
Gymnasium45, 19598, 207, 209, 211,
Eden. See Garden of Eden 218, 235, 237
Egypt14, 54, 89, 96, 194, 213, 22427,
22930, 23234, 242, 248, 253, 284, H (Torah source)98, 100, 105, 11316,
357, 366 12122, 128, 13132, 13738, 154, 179.
Eleazar44, 104, 2025, 2078, 244, 251 See also Holiness Code
Eliashib86, 9394, 97, 100, 226 Halakhah, 3233, 11112, 131, 135, 138,
Elijah249, 252, 346 152, 15759, 161, 175, 18788, 311,
Elisha b. Abuyah262, 324 315, 320
Endogamy28, 31, 38, 40, 47, 96, 126. See Heavenly Tablets3940, 49, 52, 5458,
also Intermarriage, Marriage 126, 128, 313, 315
Enoch1521, 36, 51, 5758, 72, 76, 81 Hekhal(ot)1, 3, 5, 25782, 28691,
82, 85, 87, 92, 100, 106, 228, 27879, 295302, 30712, 32125, 356
283, 28587, 291, 3023, 315, 317, 319, Hellenismos191, 19697, 209, 211
324, 35556, 367 Hermetic(s)265, 309
Essenes168, 172, 176 Hezekiah25051, 34748
Eve21, 52, 12324, 130, 228, 334, Holiness98, 106, 11617, 121, 127,
35859 15456, 267, 31920, 360
Exodus (from Egypt)56, 128, 224, 226, Holiness Code38, 106, 11314, 12122,
242 12627, 129, 13738, 146, 154, 17172,
Ezekiel1118, 2122, 25, 8081, 285, 177, 179, 18182. See also H (Torah
291, 302, 311 source)
Ezra2728, 33, 42, 97, 225, 305 Holy of Holies14, 80, 105, 192, 320
Homer228, 231, 245
Feast of Booths. See Sukkot
Feast of Weeks. See Shavuot Idolatry27, 38, 4445, 90, 127, 131,
Festival(s)56, 69, 72, 76, 89, 13031, 13738, 150, 198200, 202, 211, 218,
152, 194, 219, 23132, 259, 31315, 219, 222, 238, 25152, 321
31921, 36768 Incense24, 62, 6770, 7477, 95, 103,
Flood15, 364 107, 137, 199. See also Frankincense
Foreigner(s)27, 33, 38, 4446, 64, 82, 84, Incest12122, 129, 137, 321
86, 94, 12728, 196, 225, 235, 247, 250, Initiation15556, 159
254, 322 Intermarriage5, 2747, 54, 8384, 96,
Frankincense6769, 7476 12728, 322. See also Endogamy, Mar-
riage
Gabriel26465 Ioudaismos191, 196, 198, 20911
Garden of Eden11, 1315, 1825, 52, 76, Isaac2931, 37, 39, 5253, 57, 6169,
12325, 130, 228, 355, 359 7174, 77, 84, 232, 367
Subject Index 397
Isaiah17, 80, 200, 26667, 275, 288, 290, Marriage30, 3435, 38, 41, 4347,
302, 304 6264, 72, 8286, 96, 122, 12628, 168,
Ishmael (rabbi)262, 269, 27374, 172, 31922, 325, 33940, 342
27678, 281, 286, 288, 301, 323 inappropriate16, 27, 29, 3237, 40, 54,
Ithamar104 61, 92, 114, 121, 128. See also Endoga-
my, Intermarriage
Jacob24, 31, 37, 39, 52, 54, 5758, 72, Martyrdom19294, 198, 20110, 232,
75, 86, 125, 221, 243, 33435, 337, 25153
34041, 343, 357, 36061, 363, 36667 Masada96
Jason of Cyrene45, 19398, 203, 206, Matriarchs361
218 Mattathias44, 192, 198, 23638, 243,
Jeremiah199, 207 25254
Jericho24243 Menelaus43
Jesus26667, 296, 298, 301 Merkavah25760, 27273, 276, 281,
John Hyrcanus192, 193, 208, 23637, 28990, 3002, 30725. See also
240 Chariot, Throne
John of Patmos301 Metatron27879, 28687, 291, 324, 356
John the Baptist156 Methuselah15
Jordan River12, 2425, 243 Michael286
Joseph54, 5758, 106, 125, 25253, Midrash141, 273, 300
33738 Minhah (sacrifice)6770, 7476
Joshua243, 252 Mithras Liturgy266, 289, 29597, 299
Josiah94, 241, 25051 Molech38, 12728
Judah Maccabee19294, 2012, 2056, Moses1213, 18, 24, 3839, 4954, 87,
209, 23638, 24344, 252 89, 9394, 9798, 1036, 126, 137, 186,
Judah (patriarch)37, 12526, 198, 199, 22324, 24950, 301, 304, 323,
33843, 361 366
Mount Gerizim42, 322
Korahs Rebellion105 Mount of Olives185
Mount Sinai12, 49, 62, 11718, 125, 278,
Laban52, 33335, 338, 341, 366 304, 367
Levi2731, 3640, 42, 47, 52, 54, 57, Mount Zion1214, 1718, 20, 23, 25,
6165, 67, 7173, 77, 84, 106, 123, 126, 125
128, 303, 333, 367 Murder138
Levite(s)27, 33, 89, 128, 274 Mysticism25760, 268, 281, 290, 303,
Literacy22627 305, 30725, 370
Liturgy
heavenly61, 76, 262, 268, 27380, Nebuchadnezzar87
288, 299, 308, 310, 317 Nehemiah2728, 42, 86, 9394, 9697,
synagogue299 100, 107, 226
Nehuniah b. haQanah26365, 268, 272,
Maccabean Revolt2728, 4044, 4647, 277, 290
79, 19192, 195, 21719, 222, 23537, Noah51, 5758, 68, 72, 75, 123, 128,
244, 247, 313, 316 35658, 36270
Magic15, 25758, 26466, 26869, 274, Nominalism1004
277, 280, 289, 292, 296301, 309, 366
Mani283, 285 Oath161
Manicheism285, 301 Ofanim268
398 Subject Index
Onias III195, 200, 202, 2068 Pseudepigraphy290, 301, 305, 323,

Ophite(s)26566 34344, 348, 370
Pseudonymity. See Pseudepigraphy
P (Torah source)6265, 68, 70, 97107,
11416, 12122, 12728, 13132, Qedushah Hymns26263, 276, 299. See
13640, 144, 146, 149, 151, 15354, also Trishagion
15759, 164, 17172, 177, 179, 182,
22526 Raphael21, 36466
Passover56, 69, 314, 320 Rapture285, 293, 3015
Patriarch(s)15, 28, 50, 5354, 5658, 72, Realism1014
86, 123, 128, 226, 283, 285, 301, 315, Red Heifer14748, 153, 170, 17778,
324, 330, 358, 36162, 364, 36768 18387
Paul the Apostle283, 285, 295, 3012 Reproduction114, 181, 319
Persecution192, 196, 198, 201, 205, 219, Reuben12526, 128
253 Revelation49, 54, 5658, 62, 89, 118,
Pharaoh1314, 242, 366 269, 27879, 28486, 289, 291, 293,
Pharisees95, 1001, 131, 14748, 155, 29697, 303, 313, 362, 36668
170, 17576, 183, 185, 187, 216, 223
Phinehas2729, 38, 44, 4647, 65, 106, Sabbath52, 7677, 89, 152, 161, 227,
192, 238, 250, 252 275, 31314, 320
Politeia2001 Sacrifice17, 29, 35, 38, 4445, 5758,
Polygamy30, 83, 129 6169, 7277, 82, 8990, 9899,
Priest(s)12, 14, 21, 2728, 40, 47, 50, 57, 111, 121, 127, 12930, 13640,
6164, 6669, 7273, 7677, 7985, 144, 14648, 15051, 154, 16672,
8992, 94, 96102, 1048, 11113, 121, 17779, 18284, 18687, 19698,
12731, 136, 14547, 151, 157, 16770, 200, 202, 208, 218, 23233, 249,
175, 177, 179, 18283, 18587, 196, 289, 313, 320, 364, 36768. See also
198, 200, 216, 22326, 230, 235, 242, Incense, Minah
245, 24849, 252, 267, 27475, 31124, Sadducees95, 100, 112, 131, 14748,
333, 36768 170, 175, 185
criticism of16, 2830, 3237, 40, 82 Samaritan(s)29, 4143, 82, 322
Egyptian22930 Sanballat42, 82
garments of62, 6465, 73, 99, 199, Saul23839, 242, 250
249, 275, 28687 Schechem(ites)40, 47, 52, 127
high2223, 3031, 3334, 41, 4346, destruction of2829, 31, 3738, 47, 54,
79, 8284, 9395, 97, 100, 104, 107, 84, 126
192, 195, 218, 238, 240, 25052, 287, Scribe(s)16, 81, 97, 100, 1057, 216,
313, 316, 323 223, 225, 22728, 251
Priesthood22, 28, 3740, 63, 82, 86, Sectarianism4950, 68, 72, 100, 1067,
9596, 1058, 198, 216, 25051, 278 112, 122, 13133, 13536, 152, 155,
eternal27, 44 159, 16162, 17172, 181, 217, 226,
law of the30, 57, 6162, 64, 7273 312, 318
Prophecy11, 14, 25, 86, 9091, 239, 248, Shavuot77, 259, 32021, 367
274, 280, 291, 304 Solomon87, 240, 25051, 348, 369
Prophet(s)1214, 16, 21, 25, 1045, 198, Sparta206, 217, 240, 245
200, 207, 211, 24445, 249, 258, 267, Sukkot52, 69, 76, 96, 224, 314
28081, 29091, 3045, 311, 347 Synagogue96, 215, 227, 262, 271, 276,
299
Subject Index 399
Tabernacle12, 24, 63, 80, 87, 91 Therapeutae230

Tamar12526, 33844 Throne1520, 8081, 25859, 26264,
Tannaim176, 259, 280, 307, 309, 312, 267, 268, 274, 27781, 28589, 291,
322 300, 313, 319, 321322. See also
Temple38, 4243, 4647, 61, 63, 6569, Chariot, Merkavah
7677, 79, 8182, 8587, 9091, 9394, Tithe39, 75, 146, 168, 184
97, 99, 103, 1078, 113, 116, 11921, Tobiah9394, 226
123, 12832, 179, 186, 192, 194, 198, Transformation29192
208, 219, 226, 229, 235, 240, 245, Tree of Knowledge13, 1921, 24
24850, 31013, 31618, 32021 Tree of Life11, 1314, 1820, 22, 2425,
defilement of45, 311 364
destruction of12, 63, 1067, 18788, Trishagion273, 27677, 29899, 318.
234, 291, 307, 311, 323 See also Qedushah Hymns
earthly1617, 21, 2325, 62, 77, 86,
223 Uzziah103, 137
First17, 8081, 8889, 91, 94, 104,
225, 240, 311 Virgin(s)31, 33, 83, 86, 121
future1115, 19, 22, 25, 81, 88, 91,
285 Watchers1516, 18, 21, 36, 64, 79,
heavenly1617, 2021, 6162, 7677, 8083, 8586, 303, 315, 317, 32022,
79, 8182, 8688, 92, 267, 27475, 35455, 366
28687, 308, 323 Widow(s)3031, 83, 150, 341
Samaritan42 Wisdom2225, 46, 216, 248, 250
Second17, 22, 64, 8692, 234, 311,
322 Yahad106, 317
Tevul Yom17588

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Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism

Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum

Between Temple and Torah

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-152139-3

2013 by Mohr Siebeck, Tbingen, Germany. www.mohr.de

Original Publication and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII

Priests, Temples, and Torah

2. Levi, Phinehas, and the Problem of Intermarriage at the Time

3. Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim to Authority

4. Earthly Sacrifice and Heavenly Incense: The Law of the Priesthood

5. Temple and Priests in the Book of the Watchers, the Animal

6. Found Written in the Book of Moses: Priests in the Era of Torah . . . . 93

Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls

8. Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

9. The Purity Laws of 4QD: Exegesis and Sectarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

10. The Polemic against the evul Yom: A Reexamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Judaism and Hellenism

11. Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

12. Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

13. The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Difference

14. He Was Renowned to the Ends of the Earth (1Macc 3:9):

15. Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses

16. Revelation and Rapture: The Transformation ofthe Visionary

17. The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World . . . . . . . . . 295

18. Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem: Rachel Eliors

The Pseudepigrapha and Medieval Jewish Literature

20. Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Index of Ancient Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

6.Found Written in the Book of Moses: Priests in the Era of Torah

8.Impurity and Sin in 4QD, 1QS, and 4Q512

9.The Purity Laws of 4QD: Exegesis and Sectarianism

10.The Polemic against the evul Yom: A Reexamination

11.Judaism and Hellenism in 2 Maccabees

12.Elias Bickerman on Judaism and Hellenism

13.The Torah between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Difference in Antiquity

16.Revelation and Rapture: The Transformation of the Visionary in the Ascent

17.The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World

18.Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem: Rachel Eliors The Three Temples

20.Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature

JSPSup Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha: Supplement Series

ford University Press, 1993).

phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

of Qumrn Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).

geography had a greater impact on later apocalypses, including apocalypses

Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981).

Mohr Siebeck, 2010), esp. 21115.

Himmelfarb, Midrash Vayissa u, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Non-Canonical

Princeton, N.J., June 28, 2012 Martha Himmelfarb

Judaism is a religion deeply informed by geography. Its historical imagination

Ezekiels Temple Vision

of Eden as opposed to Zion.

Family Purity in 1Enoch 616, HUCA 50 (1979): 11535.

to heavenly archetypes, is widespread in the ancient Near East and appears in a

the throne (24:3), is later identified as the throne (25:3).

In relation to this sight, the angel tells Enoch,

added to improve the English.

xxvi, lines 1718).

Wisdom in the Temple in Ben Sira

In the background to the identification of Wisdom / Torah as a tree stands Prov

37Gilbert, Lloge, 332.

London: Columbia University Press, 1971), 12125.

instructions as a whole are intended as a critique of contemporary priests is the absence of a

Princeton, N.J., June 28, 2012 Martha Himmelfarb