Ha-'Îsh Moshe Studies in Scriptural Interpretation in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature in Honor of Moshe J.... (Binyamin Y. Goldstein (Ed.) Etc.) (Z-Library)

Hā-ʾîsh Mōshe
Studies on the Texts of the

Desert of Judah
Edited by
George J. Brooke
Associate Editors
Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar

Jonathan Ben-Dov
Alison Schofield
VOLUME 122
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/stdj

Hā-ʾîsh Mōshe
Studies in Scriptural Interpretation in the
Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature in Honor of
Moshe J. Bernstein
Edited by
Binyamin Y. Goldstein
Michael Segal
George J. Brooke
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Goldstein, Binyamin Y., editor. | Segal, Michael, 1972 editor. |

Brooke, George J., editor. | Bernstein, Moshe J., festschrift honoree.
Title: ha-Ish Moshe : studies in scriptural interpretation in the Dead Sea
Scrolls and related literature in honor of Moshe J. Bernstein / edited by
Binyamin Y. Goldstein, Michael Segal, George J. Brooke.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018] | Series: Studies on the texts
of the desert of Judah ; volume 122 | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017041674 (print) | LCCN 2017042723 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004355729 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004354685 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Dead Sea scrolls. | Bible. Old Testament—Criticism,
interpretation, etc. | Judaism—History—Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.–210 A.D.
Classification: LCC BM487 (ebook) | LCC BM487 .I75 2017 (print) | DDC
296.1/55—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041674
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0169-9962
isbn 978-90-04-35468-5 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-35572-9 (e-book)
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Contents
Abbreviations vii
Bibliography of the Writings of Moshe J. Bernstein viii
List of Contributors xvi
Introduction 1
Binyamin Y. Goldstein, Michael Segal, and George J. Brooke
1 Writing a Descriptive Grammar of 4Q252: The Noun Phrase 6

Martin G. Abegg, Jr.
2 A Newly Discovered Interpretation of Isaiah 40:12–13 in the Songs of the

Sage 28
Joseph L. Angel
3 Missing and Misplaced? Omission and Transposition in the Book of

Jubilees 40
Abraham J. Berkovitz
4 Hot at Qumran, Cold in Jerusalem: A Reconsideration of Some Late

Second Temple Period Attitudes to the Scriptures and their
Interpretation 64
George J. Brooke
5 The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Hodayot 78

Devorah Dimant
6 The Quantification of Religious Obligation in Second Temple Judaism—

And Beyond 96
Yaakov Elman and Mahnaz Moazami
7 The Temple Scroll as Rewritten Bible: When Genres Bend 136

Steven D. Fraade
8 Hellenism and Hermeneutics: Did the Qumranites and Sadducees Use

qal va-ḥomer Arguments? 155
Richard Hidary
vi CONTENTS
9 The Puzzle of Torah and the Qumran Wisdom Texts 190

John I. Kampen
10 An Interpretative Reading in the Isaiah Scroll of Rabbi Meir 210

Armin Lange
11 “Wisdom Motifs” in the Compositional Strategy of the Genesis

Apocryphon (1Q20) and Other Aramaic Texts from Qumran 223
Daniel A. Machiela
12 On the Paucity of Biblical Exemplars in Sectarian Texts 248

Tzvi Novick
13 The Mikhbar in the Temple Scroll 257

Lawrence H. Schiffman
14 Harmonization and Rewriting of Daniel 6 from the Bible to

Qumran 265
Michael Segal
15 The Textual Base of the Biblical Quotations in Second Temple

Compositions 280
Emanuel Tov
16 From Genesis to Exodus in the Book of Jubilees 303

James C. VanderKam
17 Deuteronomy in the Temple Scroll and Its Use in the Textual Criticism
of Deuteronomy 319
Sidnie White Crawford
18 Exegesis, Ideology, and Literary History in the Temple Scroll: The Case
of the Temple Plan 330
Molly M. Zahn
19 The Neglected Oaths Passage (CD IX:8–12): The Elusive, Allusive

Meaning 343
Shlomo Zuckier
Index of Ancient Sources 363

Index of Modern Authors 391
Abbreviations
Abbreviations, where used, and most matters of style follow those set out
in The SBL Handbook of Style for Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early
Christian Studies (ed. Patrick H. Alexander et al.; Peabody: Hendrickson
Publishers, 1999).
Bibliography of the Writings of Moshe J. Bernstein
Books
Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran: I. Genesis and Its Interpretation

and Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran: II. Law, Pesher, and the
History of Interpretation, 2 volumes of collected essays on the Bible and its
interpretation at Qumran (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 107;
Leiden: Brill, 2013).
In Preparation
Selected Aramaic Literary Texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls (text, translation,
notes) [with Edward M. Cook and Aaron J. Koller], to appear in the Writings
from the Ancient World series of the Society of Biblical Literature (projected
date of publication 2018).
Text Editions
Co-editor (with Eileen Schuller, McMaster University) 4Q371–373 “Narrative

and Poetic Compositiona,b,c,” in Wadi Daliyeh II and Qumran Cave 4.XXVIII
(Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 28; Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 151–204.
Preliminary editions and translations of 4Q159 “Ordinances”; 4Q162 and 4Q164
“Pesher Isaiahb,d”; 4Q179 “Apocryphal Lamentations,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls
Reader Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (ed. D. W. Parry and E. Tov;
Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1.320–23; 1.422–27; 2.414–17.
In Preparation
Editor with George J. Brooke (and in collaboration with a number of other
scholars) of a completely revised edition of all of the texts in John M. Allegro,
Qumran Cave 4, I (4Q158–186) (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 5; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1968) to be published by Brill (projected date of publication 2019).
Volumes Edited
Editor with John Kampen, Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law
and History (SBL Symposium Series 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN ix
Associate Editor (with Esther G. Chazon), “Qumran Prayer,” in Prayer from

Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology (ed. M. Kiley, et al.; London
and New York: Routledge, 1997).
Editor, with Florentino García Martínez and John Kampen, Legal Texts and
Legal Issues: Second Meeting of the IOQS, Cambridge 1995. Published in Honor
of Joseph M. Baumgarten (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 23;
Leiden: Brill, 1997).
Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters
(* reprinted in Reading and Re-reading Scripture, vol. 1; ** reprinted in Reading

and Re-reading Scripture, vol. 2).
**“Midrash Halakhah at Qumran? 11QTemple 64.6–13 and Deuteronomy 21:22–
23,” Gesher [Yeshiva University] 7 (1979): 145–66.
**“‫להים תלוי‬-‫( כי קללת א‬Deut. 21:23): A Study in Early Jewish Exegesis,” Jewish
Quarterly Review 74 (1983): 21–45.
“A New Manuscript of Tosefta Targum,” Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress
of Jewish Studies, Division A (Jerusalem, 1986), 151–57.
“Epithets of Moses in Targumic Literature,” Proceedings of the Tenth World
Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A (Jerusalem, 1990), 167–74.
“Two Multivalent Readings in the Ruth Narrative,” Journal for the Study of the
Old Testament 50 (1991): 15–26.
**“Walking in the Festivals of the Gentiles: 4QpHoseaa and Jubilees 6:34–38,”
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 9 (1991): 21–34.
*“4Q252: From Re-Written Bible to Biblical Commentary,” Journal of Jewish
Studies 45 (1994): 1–27.
**“Introductory Formulas for Citation and Re–Citation of Biblical Verses in
the Qumran Pesharim: Observations on a Pesher Technique,” Dead Sea
Discoveries 1 (1994): 30–70.
“The Halakhah in the Marginalia of Targum Neofiti,” Proceedings of the
Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A, (Jerusalem, 1994),
223–30.
“Translation Technique in the Targum to Psalms: Two Test Cases. Psalms 2 and
137,” SBL Seminar Papers 1994 (ed. E. H. Lovering; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1994), 326–45.
*“4Q252 i 2 ‫לא ידור רוחי באדם לעולם‬: Biblical Text or Biblical Interpretation,”
Revue de Qumrân 16/63 (1994): 421–27.
*“4Q252. Method and Context, Genre and Sources (A Response to George J.
Brooke, ‘The Thematic Content of 4Q252’),” Jewish Quarterly Review 85
(1994): 61–79.
x BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN
*“Three Notes on 4Q464” [Hebrew, “4Q464 ‫]”שלש הערות על תעודת קומראן‬,

Tarbiz 65 (1995): 29–32 (English version in Reading and Re–reading).
“Halakhah, in Jubilees and at Qumran,” Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical
Period (New York: Macmillan, 1996), 268–70.
“Introduction” [with John Kampen], in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on
Qumran Law and History (ed. J. Kampen and M. J. Bernstein; SBL Symposium
Series 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 1–7.
**“The Employment and Interpretation of Scripture in 4QMMT: Preliminary
Observations,” in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and
History (ed. J. Kampen and M. J. Bernstein; SBL Symposium Series 2; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1996), 29–51.
*“Re-Arrangement, Anticipation and Harmonization as Exegetical Features in
the Genesis Apocryphon,” Dead Sea Discoveries 3 (1996): 37–57.
“An Introduction to Prayer at Qumran,” (with Esther G. Chazon) in Prayer from
Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology (ed. M. Kiley, et al.; London
and New York: Routledge, 1997), 9–13.
“Hymn on Occasions for Prayer (1QS 10:8b–17),” translated and annotated in
Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology (ed. M. Kiley, et
al.; London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 33–37.
“Torah and Its Study in the Targum of Psalms,” in Hazon Nahum: Studies in
Honor of Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. J.
Gurock and Y. Elman; Hoboken: Yeshiva University Press, 1997), 39–67.
*“Pentateuchal Interpretation at Qumran,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty
Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam;
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 1.128–159.
*“Noah and the Flood at Qumran,” in The Provo International Conference on
the Dead Sea Scrolls: New Texts, Reformulated Issues and Technological
Innovations (ed. E. Ulrich and D. Parry; Studies on the Texts of the Desert of
Judah 30; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 199–231.
“The Given Levites: Targumic Method and Method in the Study of the
Targumim. An Illustrative Exercise in Targumic Analysis,” in Targum Studies,
vol. 2, Targum and Peshitta (ed. P. Flesher; South Florida Studies in the
History of Judaism 165; Atlanta: Scholars, 1998), 93–116.
**“Pseudepigraphy in the Qumran Scrolls: Categories and Functions,” in
Pseudepigraphic 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 Related Literature,
12–14 January, 1997 (ed. M. E. Stone and E. G. Chazon; Studies on the Texts of
the Desert of Judah 31; Brill, 1999), 1–26.
Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam;
New York: Oxford University Press, 2000):
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN xi
“Interpretation of Scripture,” 1.376–383.

“Pesher Habakkuk,” 2.647–650.
“Pesher Hosea,” 2.650–651.
“Pesher Isaiah,” 2.651–653.
“Pesher Psalms,” 2.655–656.
“Scriptures: Quotation and Use,” 2.839–842.
*“Angels at the Aqedah: A Study in the Development of a Midrashic Motif,”
Dead Sea Discoveries 7 (2000) [thematic issue on “Angels and Demons”]:
263–91.
“The Aramaic Targumim: The Many Faces of the Jewish Biblical Experience,”
in Jewish Ways of Reading the Bible: Proceedings of the British Association
for Jewish Studies Annual Meeting, June 1999 (ed. G. J. Brooke; Journal of
Semitic Studies Supplement 11; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
133–65.
*“The Contours of Genesis Interpretation at Qumran: Contents, Contexts and
Nomenclature,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash (ed. J. L. Kugel; Harvard Center
for Jewish Studies/Harvard University Press, 2001), 57–85.
“The Righteous and the Wicked in the Aramaic Version of Psalms,” Journal of
the Aramaic Bible 3 (2001): 5–26 (Memorial Volume for Professor Michael L.
Klein).
“The Aramaic Versions of Deuteronomy 32: A Study in Comparative Targumic
Theology,” in Targum and Scripture: Studies in Aramaic Translation and
Interpretation in Memory of Ernest G. Clarke (ed. P. V. Flesher; Studies in the
Aramaic Interpretation of Scripture 2; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 29–52.
**“4Q159 Fragment 5 and the “Desert Theology” of the Qumran Sect,” in
Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor
of Emanuel Tov (ed. S. M. Paul, R. A. Kraft, L. H. Schiffman and W. W. Fields;
Vetus Testamentum Supplement 94; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 43–56.
“Poetry and Prose in 4Q371–373 Narrative and Poetic Compositiona,b,c (for-
merly “Apocryphon of Joseph”a,b,c),” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and
Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fifth International
Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
Associated Literature, 19–23 January 2000 (ed. E. G. Chazon with the collabo-
ration of R. A. Clements and A. Pinnick; Studies on the Texts of the Desert of
Judah 48; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 19–33.
**“The Contribution of the Qumran Discoveries to the History of Early Biblical
Interpretation,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of
James L. Kugel (ed. H. Najman and J. H. Newman; Journal for the Study of
Judaism Supplement 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 215–38.
**“Women and Children in Legal and Liturgical Texts from Qumran,” Dead Sea
Discoveries 11:2 [theme issue on Women at Qumran] (2004): 191–211.
xii BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN
“ ‘‫’כלכל’ שמשמעותו ‘יכל‬,” [“‫ כלכל‬with the Meaning ‫]”יכל‬, Lešonenu 67:1
(December 2004): 45–48.
“A Jewish Reading of Psalms: Some Observations on the Method of the Aramaic
Targum,” in The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception (ed. P. W. Flint and
P. D. Miller; Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature IV;
Vetus Testamentum Supplement 99; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 476–504.
**“The Interpretation of Biblical Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Forms and
Methods,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. M. Henze; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2005), 61–87 [with Shlomo A. Koyfman].
*“ ‘Rewritten Bible’: A Generic Category Which Has Outlived Its Usefulness?”
Textus 22 (2005): 169–96.
*“From the Watchers to the Flood: Story and Exegesis in the Early Columns
of the Genesis Apocryphon,” in Reworking 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, 15–17
January, 2002 (ed. E. G. Chazon, D. Dimant and R. A. Clements; Studies on
the Texts of the Desert of Judah 58; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 39–63.
“Genesis Apocryphon,” in New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible 2: D–H
(Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 538–39 [with Esther Eshel].
“Oaths and Vows in the Pentateuchal Targumim: Semantics and Exegesis,” in
Sha‘arei Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic and Jewish Languages Presented
to Moshe Bar-Asher (ed. A. Maman, S. Fassberg and Y. Breuer; Jerusalem:
Bialik Institute, 2007), 2.*20–*41.
**“What Has Happened to the Laws? The Treatment of Legal Material in
4QReworked Pentateuch,” Dead Sea Discoveries 15 (2008): 24–49 (issue in
honor of Professor James C. VanderKam).
*“Divine Titles and Epithets and the Sources of the Genesis Apocryphon,”
Journal of Biblical Literature 128 (2009): 291–310.
**“The Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish Biblical Interpretation in Antiquity:
A Multi–Generic Perspective,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at 60: Scholarly
Contributions of New York University Faculty and Alumni (ed. L. H. Schiffman
and S. L. [Berrin] Tzoref; Studies in the Texts of the Desert of Judah 89;
Leiden: Brill, 2010), 55–90.
*“The Genre(s) of the Genesis Apocryphon,” in Aramaica Qumranica: The Aix-
en-Provence Colloquium on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. K. Berthelot
and D. Stökl Ben Ezra; Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 94; Leiden;
Brill, 2010), 317–43 (including discussion and responses).
**“Biblical Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Looking Back and Looking
Ahead,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture: Proceedings of
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN xiii
the International Conference held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem ( July 6–8,
2008) (ed. A. D. Roitman, L. H. Schiffman, and S. L. [Berrin] Tzoref; Studies
on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 93; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 141–59.
**“4Q159: Nomenclature, Text, Exegesis, Genre,” in The Mermaid and the
Partridge: Essays from the Copenhagen Conference on Revising Texts from
Cave Four (ed. G. J. Brooke and J. Høgenhaven; Studies on the Texts of the
Desert of Judah 96; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 33–55.
“Introduction to Aramaic Studies 8.1/2: Studies in the Genesis Apocryphon and
Qumran Aramaic,” Aramaic Studies 8:1/2 (2010): 1–4.
*“Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity? What Sort of Unity Were You Looking
For?” Aramaic Studies 8:1/2 (2010): 107–134.
*“The Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Targumim Revisited: A View
from Both Perspectives,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context: Integrating the
Dead Sea Scrolls in the Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures (ed.
A. Lange, E. Tov and M. Weigold; Vetus Testamentum Supplement 140;
Leiden: Brill, 2011), 2:651–71.
“The Aramaic Texts and the Hebrew and Aramaic Languages at Qumran:
The North American Contribution,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly
Perspective: A History of Research (ed. D. Dimant; Studies on the Texts of the
Desert of Judah 99; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 155–95 (with Aaron Koller).
“The Genesis Apocryphon: Compositional and Interpretive Perspectives,” in A
Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism (ed. M. Henze; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 157–79.
**“The Re-Presentation of ‘Biblical’ Legal Material at Qumran: Three Cases
from 4Q159 (4QOrdinancesa),” in Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian
Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman (ed. S. Secunda and S. Fine; Brill Reference
Library of Judaism 35; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 1–20.
“Where Are the Patriarchs in the Literature of Qumran?” in Rewriting and
Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead
Sea Scrolls (ed. D. Dimant and R. G. Kratz; Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 439; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 51–76.
Review Essays
R. Alter and F. Kermode, eds., Literary Guide to the Bible (Tradition 31 [1997]:
67–82).
L. H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism,
the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (AJSReview 22
[1997]: 77–93).
xiv BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN
Reviews
M. Klein, Anthropomorphisms and Anthropopathisms in the Targumim of the

Pentateuch (Jewish Quarterly Review 76 [1986]: 45–50).
E. Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Journal of Biblical Literature 106
[1987]: 711–13).
E. G. Clarke et al., Concordance to Pseudo–Jonathan (Jewish Quarterly Review
79:2–3 [October, 1988–January 1989]: 227–30).
D. M. Golomb, A Grammar of Targum Neofiti (Religious Studies Review 15 [April,
1989]: 74).
M. Goshen-Gottstein, ‫( שקיעין מתרגומי המקרא הארמיים‬Jewish Quarterly Review,
80 [1990]: 376–379).
E. Levine, The Aramaic Version of the Bible (Journal of the American Oriental
Society 112 [1992]: 324–25).
M. Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Critical Review 5 [1992]:
386–87).
J. H. Charlesworth, Graphic Concordance to the Dead Sea Scrolls (Bible Review
9:3 [June 1993]: 55–56).
A. Shinan, The Embroidered Targum: The Aggadah in Targum Pseudo–Jonathan
of the Pentateuch (Jewish Studies 34 [1994]: 59–64).
D. Dimant and U. Rappaport, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research
(Journal of Semitic Studies 40 [1995]: 130–35).
J. C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Biblical Archaeology Review 22:4
[July/August, 1996]: 18, 68).
J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner, eds., Proceedings of the International
Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18–21 March 1991 (Dead Sea
Discoveries 3 [1996]: 79–84).
J. M. Lindenberger, Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters (Journal of Biblical
Literature 115 [1996]: 565–67).
E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, eds., Qumran Cave 4. V: Miqṣat Maʿase Ha-Torah
(Jewish Studies 36 [1996]: 67–74).
D. M. Stec, The Text of the Targum of Job: An Introduction and Critical Edition
(Journal of the American Oriental Society 116 [1996]: 555).
M. McNamara and M. Maher, tr., Targum Neofiti 1: Leviticus and Targum Pseudo-
Jonathan: Leviticus (Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58 [1996]: 716–18).
H. Attridge, et al., eds., in consultation with J. VanderKam, Qumran Cave 4. VIII:
Parabiblical Texts, Part I (Dead Sea Discoveries 4 [1997]: 102–12).
F. García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in
English; G. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English; M. Wise,
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF MOSHE J. BERNSTEIN xv
M. Abegg, Jr., and E. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (Bible
Review 14:5 [1998]: 12, 14, 16–17, 50, 52).
J. M. Baumgarten, Qumran Cave 4. XII: The Damascus Document (4Q266–273)
(Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 [1999]: 154–55).
F. García Martínez and J. Trebolle Barrera, The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls:
Their Writings, Beliefs and Practices (AJSReview 23 [1998]: 253–55).
W. F. Smelik, ed., A Bilingual Concordance to the Targum of the Prophets. Volume
Two: Judges; B. Grossfeld, ed., A Bilingual Concordance to the Targum of the
Prophets. Volumes Six–Eight: Kings (Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61 [1999]:
556–58).
M. L. Klein, The Masorah to Targum Onqelos (as preserved in mss Vatican Ebreo
448, Rome Angelica Or. 7, Fragments from the Cairo Genizah and in Earlier
Editions by A. Berliner and S. Landauer): Critical Edition with Comments
and Introduction (Aramaic Studies [formerly Journal of the Aramaic Bible]
1 [2003]: 142–46).
B. Grossfeld, Targum Neofiti 1: An Exegetical Commentary to Genesis (Including
Full Rabbinic Parallels) (Review of Biblical Literature, 4/2003).
T. H. Lim, Pesharim (Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls 3; London: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2002) (Journal of Semitic Studies 49 [2004]: 390–91).
S. D. Fraade, A. Shemesh and R. Clements, eds., Rabbinic Perspectives on the
Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium of the
Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature,
7–9 January 2003 (Review of Biblical Literature, 2/2009).
Translation
Y. Maori, “The Attitude of Classical Jewish Exegesis to Peshat and Derash and
Its Implications for the Teaching of Bible Today,” Tradition 21:3 (Fall 1984):
40–53.
List of Contributors
Martin G. Abegg, Jr., PhD

recently retired from his position as Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead
Sea Scroll Studies at Trinity Western University. He has written extensively
on the Dead Sea Scrolls and has led the team responsible for work on their
concordances.
Joseph L. Angel, PhD

is Associate Professor of Jewish History in the Bernard Revel Graduate School
of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University. His revised thesis was published as
Otherworldly and Eschatological Priesthood in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 2010).
is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University. In addition to publishing in
Revue de Qumrân, he will soon complete his dissertation on The Life of Psalms
in Late Antiquity; it explores the Jewish and Christian reception of the Psalter
from the perspectives of materiality, textuality and reading practices.
George J. Brooke, Phd, DD

is Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis Emeritus at the University
of Manchester. He has published widely on the Dead Sea Scrolls, including two
sets of essays, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament (Fortress, 2005) and
Reading the New Testament: Essays in Method (SBL, 2013). He is the Editor of the
Brill series Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah.
Devorah Dimant, PhD

is the George and Florence Wise Professor of Judaism in the Ancient World
Emerita at the University of Haifa. Amongst many studies she has published
Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts (Clarendon, 2001) and History,
Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Mohr Siebeck, 2014).
Yaakov Elman, PhD

is Professor of Jewish History and holds the Herbert S. and Naomi Denenberg
Chair in Talmudic Studies in the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish
Studies at Yeshiva University. He is the founder of the field known as Talmudo-
Irania. Amongst many publications is his book Reading the Hebrew Bible: Two
Millennia of Biblical Commentary (Ktav, 2009).
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xvii
Steven D. Fraade, PhD

is the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University. He has
published widely on the history and literature of late Second Temple Judaism
and early rabbinic Judaism. His latest book is Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and
Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (Brill,
2011).
Binyamin Y. Goldstein
is a doctoral candidate at Yeshiva University. His current primary research
focus is on Syriac texts that penetrated into Jewish circles.
Richard Hidary, PhD

is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University. He is the author of
Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud (Brown University
Press, 2010) and Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory
in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
John I. Kampen, PhD
is Van Bogard Dunn Professor of Biblical Interpretation at the Methodist
Theological School in Ohio. He co-edited (with Moshe Bernstein) Reading
4QMMT: New Perspectives in Qumran Law and History (Scholars Press, 1996)
and (with Moshe Bernstein and Florentino García Martínez) Legal Texts and
Legal Issues (Brill, 1997); he is the author of Wisdom Literature (Eerdmans, 2011).
Armin Lange, DrTheol

is Professor of Second Temple Judaism at the University of Vienna. His publica-
tions concern the Hebrew Bible, its textual criticism, ancient Judaism, and the
Dead Sea Scrolls. He is general editor of the Textual History of the Bible (Brill).
Daniel Machiela, PhD

is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario. His research interests center on biblical inter-
pretation in antiquity and Judaism in the Second Temple period. Much of
his published work has dealt with the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the Jewish
Aramaic literature discovered near Qumran.
Mahnaz Moazami
is Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University, and Visiting Professor
at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University. She
is associate editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica.
xviii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Tzvi Novick, PhD

occupies the Abrams Chair in Jewish Thought and Culture at the University of
Notre Dame. He has published on topics in Second Temple literature, rabbinic
literature, and late antique liturgical poetry, including What is Good, and What
God Demands: Normative Structures in Tannaitic Literature (Brill, 2010).
Lawrence H. Schiffman, PhD

is Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and
Director of the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies at
New York University. Amongst many books he has published The Courtyards of
the House of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll (Brill, 2008) and Qumran and
Jerusalem: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism (Eerdmans,
2010).
Michael Segal, PhD

is Father Takeji Otsuki Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He is the author of The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and
Theology (Brill, 2007) and is the Editor of the Hebrew University Bible Project.
Emanuel Tov, PhD

is Professor Emeritus of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has
published two handbooks on textual criticism, is the co-editor of Textual
History of the Bible vol. I (Brill, 2016–2017) and was the editor-in-chief of the
Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project.
James C. VanderKam, PhD

is John A. O’Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures Emeritus at Notre Dame
University. He has written many books on the Dead Sea Scrolls; some of his
other research interests are presented in From Revelation to Canon: Studies in
Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Brill, 2000) and in From Joshua to
Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile (Fortress, 2004)
Sidnie White Crawford, PhD

is Willa Cather Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches in the areas of Hebrew Bible, Second
Temple Judaism, and Hebrew language. She has written widely on the Dead
Sea Scrolls and on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Most recently, she
co-edited with Cecilia Wassen, The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept
of a Library (Brill, 2016). She currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees
of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and as a
member of the Society of Biblical Literature Council.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xix
Molly M. Zahn, PhD

is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. She has
published numerous studies on textual transmission, rewriting, and interpre-
tation in Second Temple Judaism, including Rethinking Rewritten Scripture
(Brill, 2011).
Shlomo Zuckier
is a doctoral candidate at Yale University. He has published on Ezra in rabbinic
literature.
Introduction
Binyamin Y. Goldstein, Michael Segal, and George J. Brooke
The essays in this volume—all on biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls
and related literature—range from the highly technical to the broadly concep-
tual, a characteristic that befits the volume’s honoree: Moshe J. Bernstein is
one of the most deeply thinking, broadly thinking, and careful scholars that
many of us have ever had the pleasure to know. It is not those traits alone,
however, that many of us admire most. Whether one points to his selfless sac-
rifice of time in engaging with his students, his sincere integrity, his academic
honesty, his sharp reading skills, his quick wit, or his support of his students’
academic careers and intellectual development, Professor Bernstein is a model
teacher, colleague, and friend whom many have striven to emulate.
The first-named editor of this volume writes as follows. “I first met Rabbi
Bernstein in my first semester in Yeshiva University as an undergraduate. Early
in the semester, I showed him some conjectural emendations that I had pen-
ciled into my copy of a Miqra‌ʾot Gedolot Mishle (Proverbs). After first thorough-
ly deflating any confidence in my nascent skill as a text-critic, he expressed
his pleasure at having such interactions with his students, and shouted at me,
‘This is the greatest job in the world!’ in the usual Bernsteinian fashion. I’m not
sure if it was that particular incident or other interactions that we had over
that year, but my decision to become an academic was primarily motivated by
Professor Bernstein.” Indeed, over the years, at Yeshiva College, at Stern College
for Women, at New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and
Judaic Studies, and at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies,
Professor Bernstein has motivated many students to become academics; and
perhaps just as importantly, he has encouraged others to pursue different
paths to which they have been better suited.
Moshe J. Bernstein was born to Michael Bernstein and Adina Gerstel Werfel
Bernstein on December 24, 1945, in New York. His father Rabbi Michael
was a Rosh Yeshiva and Professor at Yeshiva University. Moshe is a graduate
of Yeshiva College, and got his semikha (rabbinic ordination) there, from
the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He holds an MA and a PhD
from Fordham University in classical languages, an MA in Semitic Languages
from Yeshiva University, and pursued further doctoral coursework at Yeshiva
University in Bible and Semitics. His doctoral dissertation at Fordham was on
Euripides’ Trojan Women, and during his graduate studies at Yeshiva University
2 Goldstein, Segal, and Brooke
he focused his own research on Targum of Psalms, a topic on which he subse-

quently wrote several articles.
From 1970 to 1975 Moshe Bernstein taught Latin and Greek at the University
of Illinois at Chicago. He has spent two semesters at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, as a Fellow and as a Visiting Professor. He taught at Stern College
for twenty years, and has taught at Yeshiva College for nearly forty years. He is
indeed a distinguished and dedicated teacher, a man devoted to his vocation.
The scriptural echoes of Numbers 12:3, and even Exodus 11:3, in our chosen
title, Hā-ʾîsh Mōshe, are deliberately selected to reflect Moshe’s special place
as our teacher.
The nineteen papers in this volume are all engaged with aspects of scriptural
interpretation. Some engage with particular compositions, such as the Book
of Jubilees (Berkovitz; VanderKam) or the Temple Scroll (Fraade; Schiffman;
White Crawford; Zahn). Some focus on uses of certain scriptural passages in
particular texts (Angel; Dimant; Tov; Zuckier) or on other specific features
of individual compositions (Abegg). Some draw attention to broader catego-
ries, such as wisdom (Kampen; Machiela) or reflect on the hermeneutics of
compositional strategies (Segal). Some reflect on the broader contexts of in-
terpretation (Brooke; Hidary; Novick). Some are suggestive of much longer
interpretative trajectories (Elman & Moazami; Lange). However, rather than
attempt to put the essays into small somewhat artificial sub-groups, we pres-
ent them in this volume simply in the alphabetical order of their authors. We
hope that such an order will allow the reader to appreciate how richly the
studies in this book touch on many of the dimensions of scriptural interpreta-
tion in the late Second Temple period and beyond, dimensions which have
certainly featured in the profound and varied contributions on the topic by
Moshe Bernstein.
In “Writing a Descriptive Grammar of 4Q252: the Noun Phrase,” Martin
Abegg provides a thorough and well-organized investigation of the noun
phrase in the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, bringing in comparative data
from Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew.
In “A Newly Discovered Interpretation of Isaiah 40:12–13 in the Songs of the
Sage,” Joseph Angel examines the usage of Isaiah 40 in the magical poetry of
4Q511. Following the new sequence of the fragments, he argues for the Isaianic
material’s function as legitimating the maskil and the power of his words,
based on this compositional setting.
In “Missing and Misplaced? Omission and Transposition in the Book of
Jubilees,” Abraham Berkovitz investigates some of the compositional strate-
gies of the author of Jubilees. Focusing on Genesis 1–34, Berkovitz gives a close
Introduction 3
reading of instances in which Jubilees omits or transposes biblical material. In

many instances, he finds interesting literary and theological motivations for
such compositional moves.
In “Hot at Qumran, Cold in Jerusalem,” George Brooke deploys Lévi-Strauss’s
model of hot and cold societies as adapted through the writings of John
Rogerson to frame possible attitudes towards scripture and history at Qumran
and Jerusalem. He sets them up as antipodes, where Qumran for the most part
shines as a model of the Lévi-Straussian “hot” society (forward-looking, with
social and interpretative innovation), while Second Temple Jerusalem glistens
chiefly as a “cold” society (looking to the past for legitimacy, with low social
“motion”).
In “The Interpretation on Ezekiel in the Hodayot,” Devorah Dimant looks at
the use of Ezekiel in the Hodayot, providing an insightful study of Qumranic
biblical exegesis. Among her significant conclusions is the identification of
shared exegetical “clusters” between the Hodayot and the Damascus Document.
In “The Quantification of Religious Obligation in Second Temple Judaism—
And Beyond,” Yaakov Elman and Mahnaz Moazami present a broad study
of the effects of Hellenization on the quantification of religious observance.
They employ analysis of the quantification of agricultural tithes at Qumran as
their starting-point, and progress to cover rabbinic literature and parallels in
Zoroastrian literature.
In “Temple Scroll as Rewritten Bible,” Steven Fraade examines the category
of “Rewritten Bible/Scripture,” pushing for the inclusion of legal material with-
in it and positing that the Temple Scroll does indeed fit this mold. At the same
time, he argues for nuanced generic definitions.
In “Hellenism and Hermeneutics: Did the Qumranites and Sadducees Use
Qal Va-ḥomer Arguments?” Richard Hidary argues (contra Daniel Schwartz and
others) that the Sadducees and the Qumranites did not use the qal va-ḥomer
mode of legal reasoning. He concludes that it is a purely rabbinic method. For
Hidary sectarian law tends toward realism and has a strong revelatory compo-
nent; we should not expect to find the qal va-ḥomer in sectarian works.
In “The Puzzle of Torah and the Qumran Wisdom Texts,” John Kampen in-
vestigates wisdom, knowledge, and their identification with Torah in several
Qumran and Second Temple texts.
In “An Interpretative Reading in the Isaiah Scroll of Rabbi Meir,” Armin
Lange takes into consideration a textual variant in Isa 21:11 that is recorded in
rabbinic literature as having been found in the Isaiah scroll written by R. Meir.
By analyzing it primarily not from a textual perspective but rather from one of
reception history and exegetical history, Lange reminds us of the far-reaching
consequences that textual criticism sometimes has.
4 Goldstein, Segal, and Brooke
In “ ‘Wisdom Motifs’ in the Compositional Strategy of the Genesis Apocryphon

(1Q20) and Other Aramaic Texts from Qumran,” Daniel Machiela addresses
the use of “wisdom motifs” (embodied in terms such as ‫ חכמה‬and ‫ )קשט‬in the
Genesis Apocryphon, as well as in 4Q212, 4Q213, and 4Q541, and traces them to
their origins in Psalms and Proverbs.
In “On the Paucity of Biblical Exemplars in Sectarian Texts,” Tzvi Novick ex-
pands on a recent piece of research by Professor Bernstein, in which he noted
the literary flattening of biblical characters in the literature of Qumran. Novick
argues that it was the Qumran sect’s Weltanschauung of continuous revelation
and “future-looking” (as limned by Brooke in his contribution) that influenced
the Qumran authors to flatten the ancient heroes.
In “The Mikhbar in the Temple Scroll,” Lawrence Schiffman treats the pas-
sage in 11QTa 3:15–17, which deals with the mikhbar (a part of the temple altar)
of Exodus 27:4. Schiffman brings a large amount of Second Temple and rab-
binic material to bear on the issue, and situates the Temple Scroll’s interpreta-
tion within a larger ancient interpretative context.
In “Harmonization and Rewriting of Daniel 6 from the Bible to Qumran,”
Michael Segal shows how a hermeneutical method that was employed in the
composition or textual development of Daniel continued to function in the
composition of 4Q243, a “para-Danielic” text.
In “The Textual Base of the Biblical Quotations in Second Temple
Compositions,” Emanuel Tov executes a thorough analysis of biblical quota-
tions in Second Temple literature and their Vorlagen, coming to some very
interesting conclusions, especially that MT was not used as a Vorlage for any
Second Temple compositions.
In “From Genesis to Exodus in the Book of Jubilees,” James VanderKam dis-
cusses issues surrounding Jubilees’ retelling of the Pentateuch at the Genesis-
Exodus nexus, locating Jubilees in a widely-attested ancient tradition that
treats the Genesis-Exodus nexus as a smooth one, while critiquing the reading
of Betsy Halpern-Amaru on the matter.
In “Deuteronomy in the Temple Scroll and its Use in the Textual Criticism of
Deuteronomy,” Sidnie White Crawford analyzes the textual variations from MT
preserved in one and a half columns of the Temple Scroll, and concludes that
the Temple Scroll should not serve as an independent witness to earlier read-
ings of Deuteronomy.
In “Exegesis, Ideology, and Literary History in the Temple Scroll: The Case of
the Temple Plan,” Molly Zahn adopts a stance in the “exegesis/Tendenz” debate,
taking the position that the two must overlap. Looking at the architectural
plan in the Temple Scroll (and its parallels in 4Q365+365a), Zahn points to the
ideologically-laden exegesis, and argues that the two are inextricable.
Introduction 5
In “The Neglected Oaths Passage (CD IX:8–12): The Elusive, Allusive

Meaning,” Shlomo Zuckier establishes an exegetical framework out of which
the law of the oath in CD IX:8–12 developed. He identifies six biblical intertexts
that are alluded to in the short pericope that he treats.
The many people who played some part in helping us make progress on this
volume and who labored to prevent the Festschrift from further delay are
too numerous to name, but thanks need to be offered in several directions.
First, of course, thanks are due to all of the contributors, who have submitted
high-quality papers that needed little editing and who have dealt graciously
with delays on our part. In addition, several helpful and nameless individuals
are due profuse thanks. Thanks also go to the assistant editors at Brill, Tessa
Schild and Marjolein van Zuylen, and to other colleagues and friends who
offered words of encouragement and reinforced our conviction that Moshe
J. Bernstein must receive this honor for his 70th birthday. Moshe has known of
our plans for a while. We only wish that his mother had lived to see this book
in print; after Judy, she was, we believe, the second to hear from Moshe of the
planned Festschrift.
Of Moshe at 70, we can say that his eye for critical reading has not dimmed,
and his academic strength has not fled him—we wish that he might continue
in such manner in health and happiness ‫ביז הונדערט און צוואנציג יאהר‬.
May 30, 2017 ‫ערב שבועות ה׳תשע״ז‬

Binyamin Y. Goldstein New York, NY, USA
Michael Segal Jerusalem, Israel
George J. Brooke Manchester, UK
CHAPTER 1
Writing a Descriptive Grammar of 4Q252: The Noun

Phrase
Martin G. Abegg, Jr.
1 Introduction
This study has its roots in two distinct sources. The first was the preparation
of the Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance: The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert1
and the careful cataloguing of variants to MT so as to assure that no “cross-pol-
lination” occurred while creating the raw data. The second involved a graduate
student assistant’s application to the University of Toronto and the fortuitous
meeting with Robert Holmstedt in the process. The first “root source” made me
aware of the fact that my text-critical training did not prepare me for the spe-
cies of variants that the biblical manuscripts evidenced, while the second pro-
vided the stimulus to investigate them. When I met Robert Holmstedt he was
in the midst of preparing a funding proposal to Canada’s Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for a project that intended to investi-
gate the linguistic nature of Second Temple Hebrew. Seeing the opportunity
to satisfy my own curiosity, I was able to convince him that we could build his
proposed linguistic data on the back of my morphological data and thus—
I argued—save an immense amount of time. He agreed, and shoe-horned me
into his proposal in the final days before SSHRC’s deadline in the fall of 2008.
Although it eventually took two attempts to convince SSHRC of the value of
the project, we nonetheless began in earnest in the spring of 2009. Over the
next several years we developed a tagging scheme and produced a workable
database containing the analysis of CD, 1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb, 1QHa, 4Q215a, 4Q256,
4Q298, 4Q383–4Q390, 4Q391–4Q399 and 11QTemple. In a parallel project
Holmstedt also began analyzing the text of the Hebrew Bible (HB).2 For this
paper, prepared in honor of my friend, Moshe Bernstein, I have added the text
of 4Q252 to our database and present the fruit of this labor in what might be
1 Martin G. Abegg, Jr., James E. Bowley, and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls
Concordance III: The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
2 Robert D. Holmstedt, Syntax of the Hebrew Bible (HMT-W4.syntax, version. 2.3), (Altamonte
Springs, FL: OakTree Software, 2015).
Writing A Descriptive Grammar Of 4q252 7
best termed “Toward the Writing of a Descriptive Grammar of 4QCommentary

on Genesis A (4Q252).”
First, a word about the need of such a study is appropriate. The preparation
of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert publications approached a fine art
in the last ten years of production under the able editorship of Emanuel Tov.
These volumes present a wealth of information founded on a scientific tran-
scription, notes on the readings, textual notes, studies on paleography, orthog-
raphy, morphology, and well-reasoned translations, but only in one volume of
forty is there a focused attempt to describe the linguistic profile of the text.3
In a couple of forays of my own into this arena4 I have come to realize that a
global approach is not the desiderative at the present time. We are yet infants
in our understanding. And so, prodded by wise counsel of Jackie Naudé: “each
grammar of QH must be looked at separately,”5 it follows that a document by
document approach is the preferred method of initial study. This was the moti-
vation that led E. Qimron to include a prominent section on grammar as a part
of his contribution to DJD 10:
In order to characterize the language of any given text from Qumran, we

would have to analyze it as we have analyzed MMT, i.e., we would have to
try to isolate those characteristics that are not common to all the phases
of the history of Hebrew, and then identify the various components of
the text’s language.6
It thus seems clear that no other approach is defensible lest we miss the
uniqueness of individual documents in our haste to understand the whole. It
3 Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, Cave 4. V: Miqṣat Maʿaśe Ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1994).
4 “The Linguistic Analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls: More Than (Initially) Meets the Eye,” in
Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods
(ed. Maxine L. Grossman; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 48–68, “Linguistic Profile of the
Isaiah Scrolls,” in Qumran Cave 1. II: The Isaiah Scrolls, Part 2: Introduction, Commentary, and
Textual Variants (ed. Eugene Ulrich and Peter W. Flint; DJD 32. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2010), 25–42, and “The Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Hebrew Syntax,” in
Celebrating the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Canadian Collection (ed. Peter W. Flint, Jean Duhaime,
and Kyung S. Baek; Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and Its Literature 30. Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) 163–72.
5 J. Naudé, “The Transition of Biblical Hebrew in the Perspective of Language Change and
Diffusion,” in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. Ian Young; London:
T&T Clark, 2003) 207.
6 Qimron, Cave 4. V, 106.
8 Abegg, Jr.
is in this spirit that I offer this current study on 4Q252 as a personal experiment
to stand in the linguistic breach alongside the presentation of the manuscript
by George Brooke in DJD 22.7
In my approach I am indebted Robert Holmstedt and John Screnock’s study,
“Writing a Descriptive Grammar of the War Scroll.” One of the stated goals of
their study is to “offer a pattern that others may follow to describe fully the
grammar of each text, thereby laying a much better foundation for future com-
parative studies.”8 This then, I would hope, is the first in a series of articles
working through the corpus text by text so as to make amends for the general
lack of attention to grammar and syntax in the critical editions of the Dead
Sea Scrolls.
Before I begin the description proper, a few short words about the writing of
a descriptive grammar are necessary.9 First, I will follow the outline presented
by Holmstedt and Screnock in their study on the War Scroll. This means I will
likewise confine myself to a description of the Noun Phrase in 4Q252, as this is
suitable to the space allowed me by the editors of this volume.10
Second, following Holmstedt’s lead in the nearly six years of data analysis, I
have become convinced of a methodology that is focused very tightly on clause
syntax rather than addressing the more subjective semantic or discourse-prag-
matic features of the Hebrew texts. There is a place for the latter approach
but we must first establish the former. To accomplish this we have adopted
a generative syntactic theoretical orientation. In brief, we owe this dominant
syntax theory to the pioneering work of Noam Chomsky.11 The underlying
thesis for generative grammar is that the human mind is hard-wired with a
7 George J. Brooke, “252. 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” in Qumran Cave 4. XVII: Parabiblical
Texts, Part 3 (ed. George Brooke et al.; DJD 22; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 185–207. All
of the transcriptions of 4Q252 in this article reflect DJD 22.
8 Robert D. Holmstedt and John Screnock, “Writing a Descriptive Grammar of the Syntax
and Semantics of the War Scroll (1QM): The Noun Phrase as Proof of Concept,” in The
War Scroll, Violence, War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature (ed. Kipp
Davis et al.; STDJ 115; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 68. I thank both Holmstedt and Screnock for their
interactions on various points of data analysis and their comments on drafts of this study.
9 For a fuller discussion see Holmstedt and Screnock, “Writing,” 72–75.
10 I am thankful for discussions with Robert Holmstedt while writing this paper and the re-
sultant outline for a full description: I. Grammatical Categories, II. Noun Phrase, III. Verb
Phrase, IV. Clause structure, V. Constituent Order, VI. Valency Lexicon, VII. Intertextual
Lexicon.
11 N. Chomsky, The Minimalist Program (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995); Cartesian
Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009).
subconscious set of procedures. Our goal is to determine what the speakers

of Second Temple Hebrew subconsciously knew about the syntax of their lan-
guage. In other words, our goal is to tease out their subconscious set of linguis-
tic procedures. We can only do this by means of the texts that they left to us.
Given the fact that to many of us such a focused grammatical discussion is
the scholarly equivalent to “watching paint dry,” I have gathered the notable
nuggets from the next few pages in the conclusion to the article. Perhaps their
importance will be sufficient to convince the reader of the necessity of such an
exercise and thus be steered into the body of the study to take a deeper look.
2 The Noun Phrase
Minimally, a noun phrase (NP) may consist of a single noun. Thus ‫להים‬-‫א‬, “God”
(4Q252 1:1), satisfies the definition. However, a noun phrase also includes all
of those elements that might be called upon to describe such a noun, so that
‫ב]שנת ארבע מאות ושמונים לחיי נוח‬ ֯ , “In] the four hundred and eightieth year of
Noah’s life”12 (4Q252 1:1), is also a noun phrase in which the noun ‫]שנת‬֯ is quali-
fied by a number and modified by a prepositional phrase.
2.1 Determination
Determination is a binary category as nouns are either determinate or inde-
terminate. This can be accomplished by means of a determiner—the definite
article, the quantifier ‫כל‬, numerals, an enclitic pronoun, in construct (bound)
to a determined noun—or by means of a uniqueness that is inherent.
2.1.1 Inherent
2.1.1.1 Proper Nouns
There are 51 (30 different) inherently definite nouns in 4Q252, most being prop-
er nouns (e.g. ‫נוח‬, 4Q252 1:1, et al.). The exceptions are the nouns ‫ל‬-‫( א‬God),
‫להים‬-‫( א‬God),13 and ‫די‬-‫ל ש‬-‫( א‬El Shaddai),14 which are unique appellatives. The
12 The translations in this article are from Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg, Jr., and Edward
M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco,
2005), (hereafter: WAC) modified and corrected as needed to fit the needs of this gram-
matical study.
13 See §13.4.12 in Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
(Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990).
14 WO §13.4.14.
10 Abegg, Jr.
terms (‫“( תהום )רבה‬the great deep”15), and, perhaps distinctive of 4Q252, ‫מבול‬
(“the flood,” 4Q252 1:3 [bis]), are also unique as to referent—and thus inher-
ently definite—in the mind of the ancient Hebrew writer. Unless Bernstein is
right and ‫( ארץ‬4Q252 2:8) is an unmarked relative interpreting ‫אהלי שם‬: “the
tents of Shem, which is the land …,”16 it too might be inherently definite: “The
land he (God) gave to Abraham his beloved.”
2.1.1.2 Gentilic Nouns

The only occurrence of a gentilic noun in 4Q252 is ‫“( כשדיים‬Chaldeans,” 4Q252
2:9), an allusion to Gen 11:31 with ‫ ַכּ ְשׂ ִדּים‬. It is notable that the orthography of
4Q252 reflects the spelling found in the ketiv at Ezek 23:14 and 2 Chr 36:17. The
word occurs nowhere else in non-biblical Qumran documents, but see 1QIsaa
(Isa 13:19; 23:13; 43:14; 47:1, 5; 48:14, 20), 4QJerc (Jer 21:9; 22:25), and 1QDana
(Dan 2:2) with ‫ כשדיים‬whereas 1QIsab (Isa 47:5; 48:20) and Mur XII (Hab 1:6)
have ‫כשדים‬. The MT has ‫ ַכּ ְשׂ ִדּים‬in all of these occurrences. The fact that 4QJerc
and 1QDana reflect a conservative approach to orthography suggests that we
have detected an LBH convention preferring a full spelling of the gentilic rath-
er than a marker for a particular scribal practice.
2.1.2 Articular
There are 54 words in 4Q252 that are marked as grammatically definite by the
attachment of the article -‫( ה‬e.g. ‫הארץ‬, 4Q252 1:3) and 8 that are preceded by
a compound-preposition article (e.g. ‫ ַבחודש‬, 4Q252 1:4).17 There is, however,
at least one noun in 4Q252—‫כסא‬ ̇ —that although grammatically indefinite, is
normally translated in English as if it were definite. It is found in the noun
phrase ‫כסא לדויד‬ ̇ (4Q252 5:2). Waltke and O’Connor’s (hereafter WO) descrip-
tion of such a construction is typical: “An l phrase must be used if the phrase
must unambiguously refer to an indefinite.”18 But countering this is the fact
that the indefinite ‫כסא‬̇ is restricted by the prepositional phrase ‫לדויד‬. Thus this
is not just an arbitrary throne but one that belonged to David. This introduces
15 WO §13.4.16.
16 Moshe Bernstein, “4Q252: Method and Context, Genre and Sources: A Response to
George J. Brooke,” JQS 85 (1994): 78.
17 The listing all the evidence for each discussion in this publication is not feasible given
space limitations, but in cases where the data is not readily available or of particular in-
terest, I will present the references. Occurrences of compound-preposition articles are:
‫( בחודש‬4Q252 1:4, 6, 8, 10, 22), ‫( ביום‬4Q252 1:4; 2:2), and ‫( לחודש‬4Q252 2:1).
18 WO §11.2.10.f.
us to the matter of specificity. Whereas all definite nouns are also specific,
some indefinite nouns are as well. Generally speaking, whereas definiteness is
clear to both the writer and the reader, specificity resides mainly in the mind
of the writer. However, there are instances where the reader may also possess
enough knowledge—i.e. how many thrones did David have?—to gain some-
thing of the mind of the writer. So we translate: “the throne of David.” On the
other hand, a similar construction at 4Q252 4:1—‫—פילגש לאליפז‬is not specif-
ic in the mind of the reader. We do not know how many concubines Eliphaz
might have had, but we assume that he probably kept more than one. So we
translate, “Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz.”
2.1.3 Pronominal
There are 50 inherently definite pronouns in 4Q252. Of these, 11 are free form
pronouns (e.g. ‫אתה‬, 4Q252 4:3) and the other 37 are clitic pronouns (e.g. ‫ימיהם‬,
4Q252 1:2). For the pronoun ‫ הוא‬in its role as a demonstrative, see below at
modification by adjectives and demonstratives (paragraph 2.2.1). ‫ מי‬and ‫ מה‬do
not occur in 4Q252.
2.1.4 Cliticization
There are at least 58 nouns that are made definite by means of cliticization
(construct form) to a following definite component (e.g. ‫חיי נוח‬, “the life of
Noah,” 4Q252 1:1). Of special note are the occurrences of ‫ שנת‬at 4Q252 1:1, 3
where the construct form at first blush appears to be ordered by the following
numeral: ‫ב]שנת ארבע מאות ושמונים‬ ֯ , “In] the 480th year” (4Q252 1:1). As there
are no other nouns in Qumran Literature (QL) or in the HB that are ordered
by such a construction,19 Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley (GKC) suggest that such
cases with ‫ שנת‬are “to be explained by supposing that, e.g. in Lv 25:10, the
proper meaning is the year of the fifty years which it completed, i.e. the fiftieth
year.”20 So 4Q252 1:1 could then be translated, “in the year of the 480th (year).”
Note that at 4Q252 1:3, the noun ‫ שנה‬is repeated, ‫שנת שש מאות שנה‬, “the year of
the 600th year” (a quotation of Gen 7:11) in keeping with this explanation (see
paragraph 2.3.2.5.4.1 below).
19 It also is possible to add ‫ יום‬which is found in the Hebrew Bible in a parallel construction:
‫( ‏יֹום ָה ֶא ָחד וְ ֶע ְשׂ ִרים‬Exod 12:18). See related discussion at paragraph 2.2.1.3.
20 See §134o, footnote 2 in Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar (ed. Emil Kautzsch, trans. Arthur E.
Cowley; 2nd edn.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1910).
12 Abegg, Jr.
2.2 Modification
2.2.1 By Adjectives and Demonstratives
There are 89 adjectives in 4Q252 of which 66 are cardinal numbers. This latter
group will be discussed at paragraph 2.3.2 under the heading “Quantification.”
Of the 23 remaining adjectives, 16 are attributive, 6 are substantival, and one
is indeterminate due to the fragmentary nature of the context (‫צדיקים‬, 4Q252
3:3). In addition there are 2 far-demonstratives (‫ )הוא‬and 1 near-demonstrative
(‫ )זאת‬that will be considered in this section.
2.2.1.1 Attributive Adjectives

There are 16 attributive adjectives in 4Q252 (e.g. ‫רבה‬, 4Q252 1:5). Fully 11 of
these are ordinal numbers (‫השני‬, 4Q252 1:4). Attributive adjectives in 4Q252
always follow the noun they modify and agree in gender, number, and definite-
ness of the head. The two far-demonstrative pronouns (‫ההוא‬, 4Q252 1:4; 4Q252
2:2) and one near-demonstrative ([‫הזאת‬
֯ , 4Q252 3:3) are also included here.
2.2.1.2 Predicative Adjectives

There are no predicate adjectives in 4Q252.
2.2.1.3 Substantival Adjectives

There are 6 substantival adjectives in 4Q252 (e.g. ‫שליט‬, 4Q252 5:1). The 3
substantival adjectives ‫ ̇ה ̇רביעי‬, ‫החמישי‬, and ‫( הששי‬4Q252 1:9–10) are worthy
of closer examination, as not all would classify them as such. Noting that
“Sometimes the attributive adjective is definite and the noun indefinite, es-
pecially with numerals,” WO locates the parallel construction of Exod 20:10
(‫ )יֹום ַה ְשׁ ִב ִיעי‬in the discussion of attribution.21 GKC prefers to understand
the structure as appositional: “‫ יֹום ַה ִשּׁ ִשּׁי‬the sixth day (prop. a day namely the
sixth …).”22 Joüon places the construction in the discussion of “Attribute with
the article, in apposition to a noun without the article,” but then comments
on Gen 1:31 (‫)יֹום ַה ִשּׁ ִשּׁי‬, “But here it is more likely to be a genitive (literally:
the day of the seventh), as there is a genitive in Ezr 7:8 ‫ ְשׁנַ ת ַה ְשּׁ ִב ִעית ַל ֶמּ ֶלְך‬the
seventh year of the king (literally: the year of the seventh).”23 Thus given the
clear occasions of ‫ שנה‬bound to an ordinal number in like manner (see also 2
Kgs 17:6; 25:1, Jer 46:2; 51:59) the definite ordinals with ‫ יום‬are best understood
21 WO §14.3.1d.
22 GKC §126w.
23 Paul Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (trans. and revised by T. Muraoka; 2 vols.;
Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1991), §138b.
as substantives acting as genitives of the bound form of ‫יום‬. These three oc-
currences in 4Q252 are the only clear instances of such a construction in all
of QL.24
2.2.1.4 Adverbial Adjectives

There are no adverbial adjectives in 4Q252.
2.2.2 By NP-Internal Prepositional Phrase (PP)

In Hebrew the prepositional phrase is largely event oriented and so over-
whelmingly modifies the verb as an adjunct or complement. Thus it is notable
that of the 100 extant prepositional phrases in 4Q252 fully 27 of them are NP
internal. In comparison, the War Scroll (1QM) has 886 extant PPs and only
7 NP-internal PPs.25 The large number in 4Q252 is due to the use of NP-internal
PPs in dating formulas. The following chart documents all of the various types
of NP-internal PPs in 4Q252. The PP is marked by boldface while the head-
noun is indicated by a light font (Hebrew text) and italics (in the translation).
‫ב]שנת ארבע מאות ושמונים לחיי נוח‬

֯ 1:1 In the] four hundred and
eightieth year of Noah’s life
‫בשנת שש מאות שנה לחיי נוח‬ 1:3–4 in the six hundredth year of
Noah’s Life
‫ב(יום)אחד בשבת‬ 1:4 on the first (day) of the week
(1:8, 17, 19–20; 2:2, 3)
‫עשר בו‬
̇ ‫ב(יום)שבעה‬ 1:4 on the seventeenth (day) of (the
month) (1:11)
‫עשרים וששה בחודש‬
̇ ‫יום‬ 1:6 the twenty-sixth day of the
month (1:8, 10)
‫יום חמשה בשבת‬ 1:7 on the fifth day of the week
(1:13)
‫… ̇בשלושה בשבת‬ ‫… בחודש‬ ‫יום‬ 1:8 the … day of the month … on
the third (day) of the week
(1:17)
‫יום רביעי לשבת‬ 1:11–12 on the fourth day of the week
24 See the partial reconstructions at 4Q324d 7 ii 2 and 4Q394 1–2 ii 8.

25 Holmstedt and Screnock, “Writing,” 84, to which I would add 1QM 6:21 (‫ומלאים בתכון‬
‫ימיהם‬, “full-grown”) and perhaps 1QM 1:3 where the PP is adjunct to the missing noun
(‫] לכול גדודיהם‬, “] against all their troops”).
14 Abegg, Jr.
(cont.)
‫ יום עשרה בעש֯ [תי עשר] החודש‬1:13–14 the tenth day of the eleventh
month
‫… לעשתי עשר החודש‬ ]…‫ יום‬1:16–17 the … day] of the eleventh
month
‫ ב(יום)אחד בחודש‬1:22 on the first (day) of the month
‫מאות שנה לחיי‬
̇ ‫ ב(שנת)אחת ושש‬2:1 In the six hundred and first year
‫נוח‬ of Noah’s life
‫ בשבעה עשר יום לחודש‬2:1 on the seventeenth day of the
month
‫ לקץ שנה תמימה לימים‬2:2–3 at the end of a complete year, to
the day.
‫ ]◦ים לבדם יחרמו‬3:4 these only shall be destroyed
‫ תמנע היתה פילגש לאליפז‬4:1 Timna was a concubine of
Eliphaz
֯ ‫ [לוא‬5:2
̇ ‫י]כ ֯רת יושב‬
‫כסא לדויד‬ the one who sits on the throne of
David [shall not] be cut off
2.2.3 By Relative Clause

The relative clauses in 4Q252 are limited to seven occasions introduced by
the relative marker ‫אשׁר‬. Other markers—‫ ֶשׁ‬, ‫זֶ ה‬‎/‫‏זוּ‬‎/‫ מי‬,‫ זֹו‬and ‫—מה‬are not used,
nor are there any certain unmarked relative clauses.26 One additional occur-
rence of ‫ אשׁר‬introduces a nominal clause (‫‏אשר הוכיחו‬, 4Q252 4:5) that is the
complement of a null verb (subject ‫ )פשרו‬and thus is not relative.27 As two of
the seven cases classified here as relative—4Q252 4:5 (second occurrence) and
4Q252 5:4—have been translated as causal clauses, they are worthy of atten-
tion. These two passages are given below as I translated them in The Dead Sea
Scrolls: A New Translation.28
26 See paragraph 2.1.1.1 and Bernstein, “4Q252,” 78.

27 Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2016) 223,
n. 9.
28 WAC, 355.
‫ הוכיחו אשר שכב עם בלהה‬4:5–6 he rebuked him because he lay with

Bilhah
[◦ ‫… אשר שמר‬ ‫ נתנה ברית מלכות‬5:4–5 the covenant of the kingdom … has
been given … because he has kept [
Robert Holmstedt has recently examined the relative clause in biblical and
post-biblical Hebrew literature and concluded, “the data indicate that the
word ‫ אׁשר‬encodes a single syntactic-semantic function, to nominalize clauses.
This is manifested in two ways: as a relative clause strategy and as a verb and
noun-complement clause strategy.”29 In the following table I have translated
these two passages following Holmstedt’s lead. The head or pivot constitu-
ent is marked with a solid underline and the relative is marked with a hashed
underline.
‫ הוכיחו אשר שכב עם בלהה‬4:5–6 He rebuked him who lay with Bilhah
‫… אשר שמר‬ ‫ ברית מלכות עמו‬5:4–5 the covenant of the kingdom of His
people … that he kept
2.2.4 By Appositive
Apposition occurs 37 times in 4Q252. Apposition with numerals, both noun-
numeral (12 times) and numeral-noun (1 time, 4Q252 2:3) are frequent. Noun-
noun apposition occurs 13 times. Prepositions are also found frequently in
PP-PP relationships (9×) and also in PP-NP (2×) combinations. The construc-
tion ‫הכ[ה] שאול‬̇ ‫( הוא אשר‬4Q252 4:1–2) has been classified a parenthesis and
thus is not included here. As apposition with numerals will be discussed under
Quantification below and noun-noun apposition is common, I will present the
more unusual PP appositions below. The head is indicated by the light font
while the appositional component is marked by boldface.
29 Holmstedt, The Relative Clause, 236.

16 Abegg, Jr.
Prepositional-phrase to Noun-phrase
‫ ארבעים יום וארבעים לילה עד יום‬1:6 forty days and forty nights until
‫עשר̇ ים וששה‬ the twenty-sixth day
‫ חמשים ומאת יום עד יום ארבעה עשר‬1:7–8 one hundred and fifty days until
the fourteenth day
Prepositional-phrase to Prepositional-phrase
‫… בחודש‬ ‫בשנת שש מאות שנה‬ in the six hundredth year …, in the

1:3–4
‫השני‬ second month
‫… באחד‬ ‫בשנת שש מאות שנה‬1:3–4 in the six hundredth year …, on
‫בשבת‬ Sunday
‫… בשבעה‬ ‫בשנת שש מאות שנה‬ 1:3–4 in the six hundredth year …, on the
̇
‫עשר‬ seventeenth
1:12–13 at the end of forty days, at the
‫̇מק֯ץ ארבעים יום להר̇ אות ראשי‬
‫ההר֯[ים‬ appearance of the tops of the
mountain[s]
‫ ברבי]עי באחד בחודש‬1:22 on Wednesday, on the first day of
the month
‫… ובשבעה‬ ‫מאות שנה‬
̇ ‫ באחת ושש‬2:1 in the six hundred and first year …,
‫עשר יום‬ on the seventeenth day
‫… באחד‬ ‫מאות שנה‬
̇ ‫ באחת ושש‬2:1–2 in the six hundred and first year …,
‫בשב‬ on Sunday
‫… לקץ שנה תמימה‬ ‫ ביום ההוא‬2:2–3 on that day …, at the end of an
exact year
‫… באחד בשבת‬ ‫ לקץ שנה תמימה‬2:2–3 at the end of an exact year … on
Sunday
2.3 Quantification
2.3.1 ‫לוכ‬
The only occurrence of the universal quantifier ‫ כ(ו)ל‬is at 4Q252 1:5 (‫כול מעינות‬
‫תהום רבה‬, “all the fountains of the great deep”). As is normal, it precedes the
noun it qualifies. Although the unvocalized form is ambiguous as to state, it is
reasonable to assume that it is cliticized to the noun it qualifies. In this case the
NP headed by ‫ כל‬is the subject of the clause. Here ‫ כל‬quantifies a grammati-

cally plural constituent.
2.3.2 Cardinal Numbers

There are 38 cardinal numbers in 4Q252, 20 are represented by simple numer-
als, 7 are teen, and 10 are additive.30 Of the additive numerals, 3 also have mul-
tiplicative components (4Q252 1:1; 2:1, 3). Finally, there is one number that is
solely multiplicative (4Q252 1:3). By definition cardinal numbers are quanti-
fiers; however, they are used quite often as ordinals in Hebrew. This is true es-
pecially for numbers greater than ten, because ordinal numerals do not exist in
the lexicon, but, as we shall see, cardinal numbers are also used in some dating
formulas for first-tenth. Although the ordinal use of cardinal numbers could
arguably be considered at Modification (paragraph 2.2) it more convenient to
discuss the two functions together here.
2.3.2.1 Simple Numerals

There are 20 simple cardinal numerals, i.e. those numbers that are represent-
ed by single components. In 4Q252 these include not only the numerals one-
ten (e.g. ‫וחמש שנים‬, “five years,” 4Q252 2:9) but also simple multiples of ten
(e.g. ‫ארבעים יום‬, “forty days,” 4Q252 1:12). The numerals one-ten always agree in
gender with the qualified noun whereas the multiples of ten are always in the
masculine plural form.
Since ordinals only occur for the lower units (second-tenth), for other ordi-
nal needs—eleventh and higher—it is the norm for teen, additive, and mul-
tiplicative cardinal numerals to be used: e.g. 4Q252 1:6, ‫עשרים וששה‬ ̇ ‫‏יום‬, “the
twenty-sixth day.” So it is of note that 11 of the simple cardinal numerals are
used as ordinals for first-tenth in 4Q252 when referring to the days of the week
(e.g. ‫באחד בשבת‬, “on the first [day] of the week,” 4Q252 1:4)31 and the month
(e.g. ‫באחד בו‬, “on the first of it [i.e. of the month],” 4Q252 1:11).32 This number-
ing of the days of the week is unique to QL and Rabbinic Hebrew (see para-
graph 2.3.2.5.1) and appears to be an extension of the numbering of the days
of months and years, a pattern that is found in the HB: “In numbering days
30 The three numerals occurring in the scribal error of 4Q252 2:3–4 are not included in the
figures. The first, ‫בשבע ̇ה‬
֯ , is likely a corollary of ‫עשר בו‬
̇ ‫“( בשבעה‬on the seventeenth of
the month”) at 4Q252 1:4 and thus a “teen.” The second, ‫אחת ושש‬, is probably a false start
for the additive and multiplicative numeral, six-hundred and one: ‫ מאות ושש אחת‬as at
4Q252 2:1.
31 See also 4Q252 1:7, 8, 13, 17; 2:2, 3.
32 See also 4Q252 1:13, 19, 22.
18 Abegg, Jr.
of the month and years, the cardinals are very frequently used instead of the
ordinals even for the numbers from 1 to 10.”33 This pattern of “day of the week”
syntax also occurs among the calendar texts: 4Q319 4:10 (‫בשב[ת‬ ̇ ‫בארבעה‬, “on
the fourth day of the week”), 4Q320 1 i 3 (‫ בשבת‬4‫ב‬, “on the fourth day of the
week”), 4Q320 4 iii 2 (‫בשבת‬ ̇ 3‫ב‬, “on the third day of the week”), and 4Q320 2 14
(‫ ̇ביו̇ ̇ם שנים‬, “on the second day”). In those cases where day is expressed, it always
precedes the number: ‫“( יום חמשה בשבת‬on the fifth day of the week,” 4Q252
1:7) and ‫בעש[תי עשר] החודש‬ ֯ ‫“( יום עשרה‬the tenth day of the eleventh month,”
4Q252 1:13–14). The noun modified is always in the singular. Ordinals also occur,
especially for months (e.g. ‫בחודש השני‬, “in the second month,” 4Q252 1:4)34 but
also for days (e.g. ‫יום רביעי לשבת‬, “the fourth day of the week,” 4Q252 1:11–12).35
There remain 9 simple cardinal numerals that retain the element of count-
ing rather than ordering.36 Of these, 3 occur in their bound form and are
ordered numeral-noun (e.g. ‫שני ימים‬, “two days,” 4Q252 1:9).37 The remaining
6 occur in their absolute form (appositional) and are also ordered numeral-
noun (e.g. ‫ארבעים יום‬, “forty days,” 4Q252 1:6).38 The absolute form of the mul-
tiples of ten are followed by the noun in the singular (e.g. ‫[ב]עי̇ ̇ם שנה‬ ̇ , “forty
֯ ‫ואר‬
years,” 4Q252 2:8) whereas the number five is followed by the plural (‫וחמש שנים‬,
“five years,” 4Q252 2:9). The bound form numerals (only two and seven are ex-
tant) are also followed by the noun in the plural (e.g. ‫שבעת ימים‬, “seven days,”
4Q252 1:15).39
Regarding the bound form of numerals, Holmstedt and Screnock posit that
in 1QM the bound form is used to designate definite numeral phrases (e.g.
‫שלושת השבטים‬, “the three tribes,” 1QM 3:14) and apposition is used to designate
indefinite numeral phrases (e.g. ‫שלושה גורלות‬, “three lots,” 1QM 1:13).40 This
pattern does not appear to pertain to 4Q252 as it is not born out by the limited
evidence. The 3 unambiguous cases with simple numbers: ‫חסרו המים שני ימים‬
33 GKC §134p.
34 See also 4Q252 1:6–7, 8, 10, 11.
35 See also 4Q252 1:22.
36 See 4Q252 1:6 (bis), 9, 12, 15, 18; 2:9 (2), 10.
37 See also 4Q252 1:15, 18.
38 See also 4Q252 1:6, 12; 2:9 (bis), 10 (?).
39 A survey of all Qumran literature shows that cardinal numbers one-ten consistently quan-
tify nouns that are in the plural while numbers greater than thirteen quantify nouns that
are in the singular. The numbers eleven and twelve, with some exception (‫]שתים עשרה‬ ̇
‫אמה‬, “twelve cubits,” 1QM 4:16, and ‫ושתים עשרה מעלה‬, “twelve steps,” 11Q19 46:6–7),
follow the pattern of one-ten. However, when a cardinal number is used in place of an
ordinal, the noun modified is always singular.
40 Holmstedt and Screnock, “Writing,” 97.
(“the waters decreased for two days,” 4Q252 1:9), ]‫‏ויחל עוד שבעת ימים ̇א[חרים‬
(“He waited a[nother] seven days,” 4Q252 1:15), and ‫‏מקץ שבעת ימים ֯א ֯ח ֯ר[ים‬
(“at the end of anoth[er] seven days,” 4Q252 1:18), are all indefinite.
2.3.2.2 Teen Numerals

There are 7 teen cardinal numerals (e.g. ‫ארבעה עשר‬, “fourteen,” 4Q252 1:8),
those numerals that are represented by two components, the second of which
is ‫( עשרה‬m.) or ‫( עשר‬f.). In the case of 4Q252 all examples are masculine and
both parts of the combination agree in gender with the modified noun, except
for the number eleven whose first component is ‫“( עשתי‬one”) with common
gender.
Most of the teen numerals, 6 in all, are used as ordinals and modify the day
of the month (e.g. ‫‏יום ארבעה עשר בחודש‬, “the seventeenth day of the month,”
4Q252 1:8)41 or the number of the month (e.g. ‫לעשתי עשר החודש‬, “the eleventh
month,” 4Q252 1:17).42 In those cases where ‫ יום‬is expressed, both number-
noun (4Q252 2:1) and noun-number (4Q252 1:8, 10) are found.
Only one teen numeral retains the element of counting rather than order-
ing. ([‫אנשים‬
̇ ֯ ‫‏‬, “twelve men,” 4Q252 3:1–2). The order is number-noun
‫]שנים עשר‬
and the noun is in the plural, as is usual in QL for the numeral twelve (see
footnote 39).
2.3.2.3 Additive Numerals

We will examine here the 7 numerals that are additive—i.e. they have a waw as
a component—but are not multiplicative, i.e. they are less than three-hundred
(‫)מאות שלש‬. In the case of 4Q252 the examples are both masculine (agree-
ing with ‫ )יום‬and feminine (agreeing with ‫)שנה‬, but only the one–ten element,
when present (e.g., ‫עשרים וששה‬
̇ ‫יום‬, “the twenty-sixth day,” 4Q252 1:6), agrees
with the gender of the modified noun, as the other elements are either a mul-
tiple of ten (m.), or hundred (f.), or thousand (m.), none of which have both
masculine and feminine forms.
Only 2 of the additive numerals are used as ordinals and both modify the
day of the month (e.g. ‫עשרים וששה בחודש‬ ̇ ‫‏יום‬, “the twenty-sixth day of the
month,” 4Q252 1:6).43 The ordered noun in the singular, ‫יום‬, is extant at 4Q252
1:6 (reconstructed at 4Q252 1:16–17). The numeral follows the noun it modifies.
There are 5 additive numerals that retain the element of counting rather
than ordering. (e.g. ‫‏מאה ועשרים ̇שנה‬, “one hundred and twenty years,” 4Q252
41 See also 4Q252 1:4, 10; 2:1.

42 See also 4Q252 1:14.
43 See also 4Q252 1:16–17.
20 Abegg, Jr.
1:2–3).44 The order is always number-noun and the noun, when extant, is in
the singular, as is expected for numerals larger than twelve (see footnote 39).
The one new factor is that the word ‫ מאה‬is bound to the following noun (e.g.
‫חמשים ומאת יום‬, “one hundred and fifty days,” 4Q252 1:7) when it is the last
element in the construction (see also 4Q252 1:8–9). It is not evident from the
limited data that there is a distinction to be made between the two construc-
tions: ‫( מאה ועשרים ̇שנה‬apposition, “one hundred and twenty years,” 4Q252
1:2–3) and ‫( חמשים ומאת יום‬bound, “one hundred and fifty days,” 4Q252 1:7). See
paragraph 2.3.2.1.
Based on our current understanding of the syntax of numerals in 4Q252
and in QL in general, the reconstructed ‫“( שלו̇ ֯ש[ים ואחד ימים‬thirt[y-one days,”
4Q252 1:20)45 should instead be ‫( שלו̇ ֯ש[ים ואחד יום‬see ‫ ֶע ְשׂ ִרים וְ ֶא ָחד יֹום‬, “twenty-
one days,” Dan 10:13).
2.3.2.4 Multiplicative Numerals

There are 3 numerals that are additive and multiplicative—i.e. they have a
waw as a component as well as a multiple of the hundred element—and one
that is solely multiplicative. As was the case with the purely additive numer-
als, the additive-multiplicative numerals of 4Q252 are both masculine (agree-
ing with ‫ )יום‬and feminine (agreeing with ‫)שנה‬, but only the one-ten element,
when present (e.g., ‫‏שלוש מאות ששים וארבעה‬, “three hundred and sixty four
[days],” 4Q252 2:3), agrees with the gender of the modified noun (in this case,
‫יום‬, which is masculine) as the other elements are either a multiple of ten (m.),
or hundred (f.), or thousand (m.), none of which have both masculine and
feminine forms. The multiplicative element—in the case of 4Q252 2:3, ‫—שלוש‬
agrees with ‫ מאות‬which is feminine. The only solely multiplicative number is
‫“( שש מאות‬six hundred,” 4Q252 1:3) which qualifies the feminine, but since it
has no additive one-ten element, would have the same form if it qualified the
masculine ‫יום‬.
Three of the multiplicative numerals are used as ordinals (e.g. ‫בשנת שש‬
‫מאות שנה‬, “in the year of the six hundredth year,” 4Q252 1:3).46 All of the ex-
amples modify the year and thus the one-ten element agrees in the feminine.
There is one multiplicative numeral that retains the element of counting
(‫‏שלוש מאות ששים וארבעה‬, “three hundred and sixty four [days],” 4Q252 2:3).
The quantified noun ‫ יום‬is null in this case but we can assume that if it were
present, it would have followed the numeral in the singular.
44 See also 4Q252 1:7, 8–9, 20; 2:8.

45 Brooke, “252. 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” 194.
46 See also 4Q252 1:1; 2:1. For the bound form, ‫שנת‬, see the discussion at paragraph 2.1.4.
2.3.2.5 Other Aspects of Numeral Syntax

In 4Q252 alone there is a rather dizzying assortment of idioms used to express
the quantification and ordering of days, months, and years. A full study of this
matter in the Judean Desert documents is a desideratum and given the limits of
space I will confine my comments to only 4Q252 with brief mention as to how
idioms in this document compare to the larger context of Hebrew literature.
2.3.2.5.1 Day of the Week

1. ‫“( באחד בשבת‬on the first [day] of the week,” 4Q252 1:4) is a dating idiom
used frequently in 4Q25247 and also in the calendar documents: 4Q319
4:10 (‫בשב[ת‬ ̇ ‫בארבעה‬, “on the fourth day of the week”) and 4Q320 1 i 3
(‫ בשבת‬4‫ב‬, “on the fourth day of the week”)48 where Talmon posited,
“As in other Qumran documents, the term ‫ שבת‬signifies here a septad
of days, not the seventh day of the week (cf. 11Q19 18:11, 19:12; 21:13).”49 It
must also be related to the dating idiom used in 4Q321 1:1 (and often)
where ‫ בשנים באבי[ה‬could be translated, “on the second day (of the week
of) Abijah.50 This idiom nearly always follows the month number, the
sole exception being at 4Q252 2:3 after the tally of the number of days
in the full year. Although this idiom is not used in the HB or our current
sources of Second Temple Hebrew, it is also found with some frequency
in Rabbinic Hebrew.51
2. ‫“( יום חמשה בשבת‬the fifth day of the week,” 4Q252 1:7) is also found in
one additional instance at 4Q252 1:13 but not in the HB, Second Temple
Hebrew, or the Hebrew of late antiquity.52 While the complete idiom is
not found in the HB, it would seem preferable to understand the phrase
‫ ְבּיֹום ֶא ָחד‬at Esth 3:13 followed by the dating formula ‫לֹושׁה ָע ָשׂר ְלח ֶֹדשׁ‬
ָ ‫ִבּ ְשׁ‬
‫ים־ע ָשׂר‬
ָ ֵ‫“( ְשׁנ‬on the thirteenth of the twelfth month”) as the “first day” (i.e.
Sunday) rather than “on a single day” or the like. See also Esth 8:12.
47 See also 4Q252 1:8, 17, 19–20; 2:2, 3.

48 See also 4Q320 3 i 11; 4 ii 13–14; 4 iii 2.
49 Shemaryahu Talmon, Jonathan Ben-Dov, and Uwe Glessmer, Qumran Cave 4. XVI:
Calendrical Texts (DJD 21; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 45.
50 See 4Q319 4:11; 4Q320 1 ii 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12; 2 9, 10, 11, 12; 4 iii 4, 5, 6; 4 iv 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9;
4 v 10; 4 vi 1, 2, 6, 7; 4Q321 1:2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; 2:4; 3:3, 4, 5, 7, 8; 4:1, 2, 3 (2), 5; 4Q321a 1:5; 5:4, 5, 6,
7, 9; 4Q322 1 2a; 4Q329a 1 6.
51 For the first day of the week see m. Taʿan. 4:3 (although lacking in the Kaufmann Codex);
t. Ketub. 1:1; b. ʿErub. 41a, 43b; b. Taʿan. 19b, 27b, 29b; b. Meg. 31a; for the fourth day see
b. ʿArak. 11b; and for the fifth day see Mekilta Vayassa 1:2.
52 See the Aramaic deed of gift, 5/6Hev7 (P.Yadin 7) OTR:46, with ‫“( יום ארבעה בשבה‬the
fourth day of the week”).
22 Abegg, Jr.
3. ‫“( יום רביעי לשבת‬the fourth day of the week”) is an idiom found only at
4Q252 1:11–12 in all our sources of ancient Hebrew. Similar expressions
are possible among partially reconstructed passages of the calendar
texts: 4Q322 1 3 (‫ויום ר[ביעי ביקים‬, “the fo[urth day of Jakim”), 4Q324a 1 ii 3
(‫לכי̇ ה‬
̇ ‫[ב]מ‬
֯ ̇ , “the fourth day [of ] Malchijah”), 4Q324c 1 2 (‫יום רביע[י‬,
‫יום ̇ר ֯בי֯ עי‬
“the fourth day of …”).
4. ‫“( יום ̇ה ̇רביעי‬on the fourth day [of the week],” 4Q252 1:9). See paragraph
2.2.1.3 above where I determined that ‫ יום ̇ה ̇רביעי‬and the following, ‫יום‬
‫החמישי‬, and ‫( יום הששי‬4Q252 1:9–10) are to be understood as bound
constructions and thus parallel to the year formula, ‫“( ְשׁנַ ת ַה ְשּׁ ִב ִעית‬the
seventh year”), at Ezr 7:8. The only other QL occurrences are partially re-
constructed: 4Q324d 7 ii 2; 4Q394 1–2 ii 8; and 11Q20 14:2. This idiom is
also found in the HB: Gen 1:31; 2:3; Exod 12:15; 20:10; Lev 19:6; 22:27; and
Deut 5:14.
5. ‫“( ברבי]עי‬on the fourth [day],” 4Q252 1:22). In similar contexts a cardinal
number is used instead of an ordinal (e.g. ‫באחד בחודש הריאשון‬, “the first
day of the first month,” 4Q252 1:22),53 so even if this partial reconstruc-
tion is expanded to ‫( ביום הרביעי‬Gen 1:8, 13, 19, 23) it represents an alter-
nate means of counting the day.
2.3.2.5.2 Day of the Month

1. ‫עשרים וששה בחודש‬
̇ ‫“( יום‬the twenty-sixth day of the month,” 4Q252 1:6).
This idiom is the most common day of month formula in 4Q252, found
elsewhere at 4Q252 1:8, 10, 13–14, and once among the calendar texts
(4Q320 2 14), but it is not used in the HB or elsewhere in the Hebrew of
antiquity.
2. ‫עשר בו‬
̇ ‫“( בשבעה‬on the seventeenth of it [the month] 4Q252 1:4). This pat-
tern occurs twice in 4Q252 (again at 4Q252 1:11) but often in the calendar
texts.54 In the HB this pattern only occurs in the book of Esther (Esth 8:9;
9:17, 18 [tris]).
3. ‫“( באחד בחודש‬on the first of the month,” 4Q252 1:22). This idiom occurs
only this once in 4Q252 but elsewhere at 4Q330 1 ii 1; 2 2; 4Q332 1 3; 11Q19
17:6; and 25:10. In the HB see Num 10:11; Ezek 45:20; and Ezra 10:9.
53 See 4Q330 1 ii 1; 11Q19 25:10 and Num 10:11; Ezek 45:20; Ezra 10:9.
54 See 4Q317 1+1a ii 2, 5, 7, 12, 15, 18, 22, 26, 27, 32, 33; 6 4, 6; 7 ii 16; 17 2, 3, 4, 5; 4Q321 1:1, 3, 7–8;
2:3, 3–4, 4; 3:6, 7; 4:5, 6, 7–8; 4Q321a 2:2; 5:3, 4; 4Q323 1 2; 4Q324 1 3, 5; 4Q324a 1 ii 1, 4; 4Q324d
2 2, 3; 3 ii 4; 4Q325 1 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (2), 4Q325 1 6; 4Q325 1 1; 2 3; 4Q326 1 2, 4; 4Q332 1 2; 4Q394
1–2 iii 3–4; 1–2 iii 5–6; 4Q394 1–2 i 3–5; 1–2 ii 1–2, 3–5; 1–2 iii 2–3, 4–5, 6–8; 1–2 iv 3–4, 5–7;
1–2 v 1–2, 3–5.
4. ‫“( בשבעה עשר יום לחודש‬on the seventeenth day of the month,” 4Q252 2:1).
This idiom occurs only once in 4Q252 and elsewhere in QL only at 11Q19
27:10. It is, however, fairly common in the HB.55
5. ‫“( יום עשרים] וארבעה לעשתי עשר החודש‬on the twenty-fourth day of the
twelfth month,” 4Q252 1:16–17). There are two partially reconstructed in-
stances of this idiom; the second, at 4Q252 1:19, is reconstructed to read
‫“( יום ֯א ֯ח[ד לשנים עשר] החודש‬on the first day of the twelfth month”). It
only occurs in 4Q252 with months eleven and twelve and never again in
all of QL. In the HB see Hag 1:1; Ezra 3:6; 10:16–17; Neh 8:2; 2 Chr 29:17
2.3.2.5.3 Number of the Month

1. ‫“( בחודש השני‬in the second month,” 4Q252 1:4). Ordinal numbers are regu-
larly used in 4Q252 for months two-ten (also 4Q252 1:6–7, 8, 10, 11, 22; 2:1).
However, as ordinals do not exist in Hebrew for eleventh and twelfth, see
pattern 2 (below) with cardinals used in those contexts. The designation
of the month with ordinals is the most common method used elsewhere
in QL56 and the Bible.57 Babylonian and Canaanite month names are
used very rarely in QL.58 On the other hand, Babylonian month names
are the normal means of designating the months in the Judean Desert
documentary texts (e.g. 5/6Hev42 1:1) whereas numbered months never
occur there.
2. ‫“( לעשתי עשר החודש‬the eleventh month,” 4Q252 1:17). This idiom, an ex-
tension of the pattern above, is adopted for eleventh (4Q252 1:14, 17)59
and twelfth (4Q252 1:19)60 months because the ordinals do not exist for
these numerals.
55 Gen 7:11; 8:4, 14; Exod 12:18; 16:1; Lev 23:6, 34, 39; Num 9:5; 28:16, 17; 29:12; 33:3; Josh 5:10; 1
Kgs 12:32; Ezek 45:21, 25.
56 4Q216 1:5; 4Q266 11 17; 4Q270 7 ii 11; 4Q275 1 3; 4Q320 1 i 4; 4Q321 4:8; 4Q321a 2:8; 4Q324a 1 ii
3; 4Q325 1 3, 6–7; 2 4; 4Q329 2a–b 4; 4Q330 1 ii 1; 2 4; 3 2; 4Q333 1 5; 4Q379 12 3–4, 7; 4Q400
1 i 1; 11Q19 14:9; 17:6.
57 See Gen 7:11; 8:4, 14; Exod 19:1; 40:17; Lev 16:29; 23:5, 24, 41; 25:9; Num 9:1, 11; 10:11; 20:1; 28:16;
29:1; 33:3, 38; 1 Kgs 12:32, 33; 2 Kgs 25:1, 8, 25; Jer 1:3; 28:1, 17; 36:9, 22; 39:1, 2; 41:1; 52:4, 6, 12;
Ezek 24:1; Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1; 7:3; Esth 2:16; 3:7, 12; 8:9; Ezra 3:8; 7:8; Neh 8:14; 1 Chr 12:16; 2 Chr
3:2; 15:10; 29:3; 30:2, 13; 31:7.
58 The Babylonian months that occur in QL are Shebat (4Q318 7:4), Adar (4Q318 8:1), Elul
(4Q345 1R 1) and the Canaanite month, Abib (4Q368 2 10).
59 Also see 4Q320 2 13; 4Q321 1:4; 3:6; 4:6; 5:3, 7; 6:2; 7:5.
60 Also see 4Q320 1 ii 3; 2 14; 4Q321 1:5; 4Q321 2:8; 4:7; 5:3, 8; 6:2–3; 4Q321a 2:6; 4Q321a 5:8.
24 Abegg, Jr.
2.3.2.5.4 Number of the Year

1. ‫“( בשנת שש מאות שנה‬in the six-hundredth year,” 4Q252 1:3). The number
of the year occurs in three variations in 4Q252; this instance is an exact
quote from Gen 7:11. In accordance with the discussion at Cliticization
(paragraph 2.1.4) it is likely that 4Q252 1:3—with both ‫ בשנת‬and ‫—שנה‬is
the fullest form, whereas 4Q252 1:1 (pattern 2 below), without the final
‫שנה‬, is an abbreviation. The full idiom occurs only here in QL but in 22
times in the HB.61
2. ‫[ב]שנת ארבע מאות ושמונים‬ ֯ (“in the four hundred and eightieth [year],”
4Q252 1:1). This pattern—without the final ‫—שנה‬is understood here as a
shortened form of the idiom discussed above. It occurs only here among
the Qumran manuscript finds but is likely present in the opening line
of the ostraca found at Khirbet Qumran in 1996: KhQ1 1:1 (‫בשנת שתים‬,
“in year two”). This second number-of-year idiom occurs even more fre-
quently in the HB than the first, 59 times, with a decided emphasis on the
later books.62 In the Judean Desert documentary texts this pattern oc-
curs only once (e.g. ‫בשנ̇ ̇ת ̇א ̇ח ̇ת‬, “in the first year,” Fesh-Arch3 1:1). However,
without the beth this year pattern occurs 14 times (e.g. ‫שנת שלוש‬, “in the
third year,” 5/6Hev45 1:1) among the Hebrew documentary texts.63
3. ‫מאות שנה‬
̇ ‫( באחת ושש‬in the six hundred and first year,” 4Q252 2:1). This
pattern, without the leading ‫ שנת‬of the first two patterns, is a direct quote
of Gen 8:13.64 It is found only here in QL. It occurs 24 times in the HB.65
2.4 Negation
There is no negation of noun clauses in 4Q252.
61 Gen 7:11; Lev 25:10, 11; 1 Kgs 16:8, 15, 23, 29; 2 Kgs 8:25; 9:29; 12:7; 13:1, 10; 14:23; 15:1, 8, 13, 17, 23,
27; 16:1; 25:8; Jer 52:12.
62 Num 33:38; Deut 15:9; 1 Kgs 15:1, 9, 25, 28, 33; 16:10; 22:41, 52; 2 Kgs 1:17; 3:1; 8:16; 12:7; 14:1;
15:30, 32; 17:1; 18:1, 10; 24:12; Jer 52:28, 29, 30; Hag 1:1, 15; 2:10; Zech 1:1, 7; 7:1; Esth 1:3; 2:16; 3:7;
Dan 1:1, 21, 2:1; 8:1; 9:1, 2; 10:1; 11:1; Ezra 1:1; 7:7; Neh 1:1; 2:1; 5:14; 13:6; 1 Chr 26:31; 2 Chr 3:2; 13:1;
15:10, 19; 16:1; 16:12, 13; 17:7; 34:8; 36:22.
63 Fesh-Arch3 1 1; Mur22 1–9ITR 1; Mur24 B 1; C 1; D 1; E 1; I 1 1; Mur29 ITR 1; OTR 9; Mur30 1OTR
8; 5/6Hev44 1:1; 5/6Hev45 1:1; 5/6Hev46 1:1; XHev/Se49 1R 1.
64 Note that Gen 8:13 begins with ‫וַ יְ ִהי‬. As is common in QL this element is trimmed in
the quotation. See Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Harvard Semitic
Studies 29; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985) §400.03.
65 Gen 14:5; Deut 1:3; 1 Kgs 6:1; 2 Kgs 25:27; 2 Kgs 18:13; 22:3; 23:23; Isa 36:1; Jer 1:2; 39:2; Jer 52:31;
Ezek 1:1; 26:1; 29:17; 30:20; 31:1; 32:1, 17; 33:21; 40:1 (2); 2 Chr 34:3; 35:19.
2.5 Coordination
2.5.1 Simple
The clitic particle waw is the main coordinating particle in ancient Hebrew;
there are 58 extant occurrences in 4Q252. The coordinator ‫ או‬does not occur
in 4Q252.
The most common use of waw is, ironically, not coordinating at all: the
phrase-edge marker, occurring 35 times (e.g. ‫הארץ‬ ̇ ‫ויגברו המים על‬, “The waters
prevailed upon the earth …,” 4Q252 1:7). There are 2 cases where an apposi-
tional noun phrase series is introduced with a waw ([◦ ‫‏ושלליה וטפיה ושאר‬, “its
spoil, its children, and the rest of [,” 4Q252 3:5–6) and also 1 occasion where an
appositional prepositional phrase is preceded by a waw (e.g. ‫ובשבעה עשר יום‬,
“on the fourteenth day,” 4Q252 2:1).
In the 19 instances where coordination does take place, 10 are with additive
numerals (e.g. ‫חמשים ומאת יום‬, “one hundred and fifty days,” 4Q252 1:8–9), 7 are
coordinating noun phrases (e.g. ‫ארבעים יום וארבעים לילה‬, “forty days and forty
nights,” 4Q252 1:6), 1 coordinates prepositional phrases (e.g. ‫לו ולזרעו‬, “to him
and to his seed,” 4Q252 5:4), and 1 occurs with adverbial infinitives (e.g. ‫]הלוך‬֯
‫וחסור‬, “continued to abate,” 4Q252 1:11). Finally, 1 occurrence is indeterminate
due to the fragmentary context (‫וגם‬, “and also …,”4Q252 3:2).
2.5.2 Distributive
There is no distributive coordination in 4Q252.
3 Conclusions
3.1 Transcription and Translation

This close grammatical study of the text of 4Q252 uncovered only one misstep
among reconstructions of the editio princeps of 4Q252. In paragraph 2.3.2.3 and
based on our current understanding of the syntax of numerals in 4Q252 and in
QL in general, the reconstructed ‫“( שלו̇ ֯ש[ים ואחד ימים‬thirt[y-one days,” 4Q252
1:20)66 should instead be ‫שלו̇ ֯ש[ים ואחד יום‬.
As detailed in paragraph 2.2.3 I have modified my published translation
to agree with Holmstedt’s assessment that causal ‫ אשר‬clauses do not exist.
“He rebuked him because he lay with Bilhah” is properly “He rebuked him who
lay with Bilhah” at 4Q252 4:5–6 and “the covenant of the kingdom … because
66 Brooke, “252. 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” 194.

26 Abegg, Jr.
he has kept [” should be “the covenant of the kingdom … that he has kept [”
(4Q252 5:4–5).67
3.2 “Not Common”

In keeping with Qimron’s challenge to discover those characteristics that are
not common,68 I list the points of discussion that could be considered unusual
either as an aspect of QL not found elsewhere in ancient Hebrew, or unique to
4Q252 in the context of QL.
3.2.1 The noun ‫“( מבול‬the flood”) is inherently definite at 4Q252 1:3 (bis). See
paragraph 2.1.1.1.
3.2.2 The three cases of ordinal numbers used substantively—‫ ̇ה ̇רביעי‬, ‫החמישי‬,
and ‫( הששי‬4Q252 1:9–10) are unique in 4Q252 in QL. These are discussed above
at paragraphs 2.2.1.3 and 2.3.2.5.1.4.
3.2.3 The numbering of days of the week incorporating the word ‫שבת‬, mean-
ing “septad” or “week” is especially characteristic of 4Q252. The most common
of these, ‫“( באחד בשבת‬on the first [day] of the week,” 4Q252 1:4) is in com-
mon with 4Q319 and Rabbinic Hebrew but is not found in the HB or other
sources of Second Temple Hebrew. The two additional idioms, ‫יום חמשה בשבת‬
(“the fifth day of the week,” 4Q252 1:7) and ‫“( יום רביעי לשבת‬the fourth day of
the week,” 4Q252 1:11–12) are unique in all extant sources of ancient Hebrew.
These are considered in paragraphs 2.3.2.1 and 2.3.2.5.1.1–3. Additionally, these
idioms may be the solution to the potentially ambiguous phrase ‫ ְבּיֹום ֶא ָחד‬at
Esth 3:13 followed by the dating formula ‫ים־ע ָשׂר‬
ָ ָ ‫“( ִבּ ְשׁ‬on the
ֵ‫לֹושׁה ָע ָשׂר ְלח ֶֹדשׁ ְשׁנ‬
thirteenth of the twelfth month”). In parallel to the similar expressions in QL
(albeit without ‫ )בשבת‬it likely refers to the “first day” (i.e. Sunday) rather than
“on a single day.” See also Esth 8:12.
3.2.4 The idiom most frequently used to express the day of the month—‫יום‬
‫עשרים וששה בחודש‬̇ (“the twenty-sixth day of the month,” 4Q252 1:6 and also 1:8,
10, 13–14)—is only found elsewhere in the Hebrew of antiquity at 4Q320 f2:14.
See paragraph 2.3.2.5.2.1.
67 WAC 355. In addition to these, note the error of “Monday” for “Sunday” (‫יום אחד בשבת‬,
4Q252 1:13), WAC 353.
68 Qimron, DJD 10, 106.
3.3 Onward
There is clearly much more that could be said on the basis of such a study. And
lest we consider the results attained here a bit meager, we must remember
that a full linguistic profile would also include a description of the verb phrase,
clause structure, constituent order, and verb valency. But even with this ex-
ploratory study and the nascent linguistic profile that it reveals, there is strong
evidence of a web of relationships providing a context for 4Q252 among other
manuscripts of the DSS, the Hebrew Bible, and more broadly, the Hebrew
of antiquity. Repeating this research across the corpus promises to establish
a new “lens” that should prove useful to our understanding of the Dead Sea
Scrolls: their origins (e.g. single or multiple sources), their classification (e.g.
generic, sectarian), and of course their language (e.g. the DSS’ location[s] on
the continuum of the Hebrew language, from the Hebrew of the Bible to the
Hebrew of the rabbis).
CHAPTER 2
A Newly Discovered Interpretation of

Isaiah 40:12–13 in the Songs of the Sage*
Joseph L. Angel
Since ancient times, practitioners of Jewish magic have sought to harness the
divine power assumed to inhere in the words of the Hebrew Bible. From all in-
dications, the employment of biblical phrases and verses for magical purposes
was a creative and fluid process, and there was never a fixed list of scriptural
sources designated for such purposes.1 Nevertheless, certain texts were utilized
more often than others, and while the vast majority of the extant evidence for
early Jewish magic derives from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, in
some cases it is possible to trace the magical application of particular scrip-
tural passages back to Second Temple times and even earlier. Three striking
examples are Zech 3:2, Ps 91, and Num 6:24–26, all of which are recognized
as efficacious apotropaic formulae not only in rabbinic tradition and roughly
contemporary materials such as Aramaic magic bowls, amulets, and magical
handbooks like Havdalah de-Rabbi Akiva, but also in textual finds of a much
earlier period such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ketef Hinnom amulets.2
In the light of these better known examples, it is not surprising to find that
Isaiah 40:12, a passage cited in late antique amulets and magic bowls and in
* It is a pleasure to dedicate this study to my teacher, colleague, and friend, Moshe Bernstein,
from whom I have learned and continue to learn much about ancient Jewish biblical
interpretation.
1 See Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), 309. According to Joshua Trachtenberg , Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study
in Folk Religion (New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House; repr. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 108, a specific passage was selected for citation on the basis
of one or both of the following two rationales: (1) It contains the name of God or speaks of
God’s tremendous power, and thus came to be regarded as a source of divine power itself.
(2) It seemed to have a more or less immediate relevance to the situation in which it was
employed.
2 For some specific examples, see Joseph Angel, “The Use of the Hebrew Bible in Early Jewish
Magic,” Religion Compass 3 (2009): 789–90.
A Newly Discovered Interpretation Of Isaiah 40:12–13 29
Sefer ha-Razim,3 also makes an appearance in 4QSongs of the Sageb (4Q511), a

first-century collection of hymns for protection against demons that has been
characterized by some scholars as “magical poetry.”4 In the present study, I
would like to reexamine the citation of Isa 40:12 (and 40:13a) in 4Q511 30 and
offer a new suggestion for its function within its larger compositional setting
on the basis of the recent material reconstruction of the manuscript, which
has clarified the positioning of fragments in the original scroll.5 Ultimately, I
shall argue that the newly established sequence of the text of frg. 30 just before
that of frgs. 44–47 sheds new light on the manner in which the Isaiah passage
was interpreted and employed in the Songs of the Sage.
It is suitable to begin by studying frg. 30, which preserves the remnants of
six lines from the bottom of a column.
] [◦◦◦ ‫א]רצ‬ ̇ ̇ ‫ ̇ח‬1

[‫תמ ̊ת ̊ה‬
] [‫ומח‬ ̊ [ ̇‫ ויעמקו‬2
̇ ‫ ]ש ̊מי̊ ם ו̇ תהומות‬
] [‫ולאשר‬ ̊ ‫ אתה אלי̊ ̊ח ̊ת ̊מתה בעד כולם ואין פותח‬3
6]‫ הימדו בשועל אנשים מי רבה ו̇ ̊אם בזרת[ יתכן איש שמים ובשליש‬4
3 See Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late
Antiquity (3rd ed.; Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1998), 104–5, 190–91; Michael A. Morgan,
Sepher Ha-Razim: The Book of the Mysteries (Chico: Scholars Press, 1983), 42.
4 For the dating of 4Q511 to around the turn of the era, see Maurice Baillet, Qumran grotte
4.III (4Q482–4Q520) (DJD 7; Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 219. Bilhah Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and
Religious Poetry (trans. Jonathan Chipman; STDJ 12; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 227–72, treats the
Songs of the Sage in a chapter entitled “Magical Poetry.” However, Esther Eshel argues that
whereas magical incantations, such as 11QApocrpyhal Psalms (11Q11) are characterized by
direct addresses and adjurations of the demons, the Songs of the Sage refer to evil forces
in the third person, and thus should be categorized as an apotropaic prayer (Esther Eshel,
“Apotropaic Prayers in the Second Temple Period,” in Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and
Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium of
the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 19–23 January
2000 [ed. E. Chazon; STDJ 48; Leiden: Brill 2003], 69–88). In fact, the evidence of some of the
smaller, often ignored fragments suggests that the Songs also may have included adjurations
directly addressed to demons, blurring the distinction between apotropaic prayer and incan-
tation and complicating the classification of the composition. See further Joseph L. Angel,
“Reading the Songs of the Sage in Sequence: Preliminary Observations and Questions,” in
Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period (ed. Mika S. Pajunen and
Jeremy Penner; BZAW 486; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 185–211.
5 J. L. Angel, “The Material Reconstruction of 4QSongs of the Sageb (4Q511),” RevQ 105 (2015):
25–82.
6 This reconstruction, based on the continuation of Isa 40:12, follows the suggestion of
E. Qimron, ‫ החיבורים העבריים—כרך שני‬:‫( מגילות מדבר יהודה‬Jerusalem: Yad ben-Zvi, 2013),
30 Angel
] ‫בפלס הרים ו̇ ̇ג ̊ב ̊עו̊ ̊ת ̊ב ̇מו̇ זנ̇ [ים‬

̊ ‫ויש ̊ק[ו]ל‬ ̇ ‫ יכול עפר‬5
̇ ‫הא ̊רץ‬
7]‫לוהים‬-‫רוח[ א‬ ̇ ‫עשה[ ]א ̊ד ̊ם[ ]י̊ ו̇ כל איש לתכן את‬
̊ ̊‫ ̇את אלה לוא י‬6
bottom margin
1 You sealed[… e]arth […]
2 And they are profound[…]heavens and the deeps […]
3 You, my God, sealed up all of them and there is no one who may
open (them). And to who[m …]
4 May the great waters be measured with the hollow of a human’s
hand? And with a span [may a person measure the heavens? And
with a measure]
5 may one mete the dust of the earth, or we[i]gh mountains with a
scale and hills with a balanc[e? …]
6 Human beings did not make these things. […]Can a person measure
the spirit[ of God?]
The citation of Isa 40:12–13a appears in lines 4–6, and is apparently preceded
in lines 1–3 by words of praise addressed directly to God in the second per-
son singular. In light of the appearance of the words “[l]and,” “heavens,” and
“deeps” in these lines, the focus seems to be on cosmological phenomena as
testimony to God’s grandeur and unrivaled powers, a theme that connects
naturally with the material from Isaiah that follows.8 Notably, the verb ‫חתמתה‬
(“you sealed up”) appears both in line 1 and 3, but the object is unclear in each
case (as it is followed by a lacuna in line 1, and the vague ‫ בעד כולם‬in line 3).
It is possible that what is envisioned in line 3 is the sealing up of some ele-
ment of nature, as in Job 9:7, which, in the midst of a passage emphasizing the
overwhelming quality of divine power in relation to the puniness of humanity,
asks rhetorically, “Who seals up the stars?” (‫)ובעד כוכבים יחתם‬.9 Another pos-
sibility, given the overall apocalyptic orientation of the Songs of the Sage, is
325. Similarly, Baillet reconstructs ]‫( [יתכנו שמים ומי בשליש‬DJD 7, 236). Either way the
length of the reconstructed line, which necessitates some version of the words ‫ שמים‬,‫תכן‬
and ‫בשליש‬, would require a column width of about 16 cm. See also the following note.
7 This reconstruction is based on the practice of the Songs to avoid use of the Tetragrammaton,
which appears here in both the MT and 1QIsaa. Since the column was about 16 cm in width
(see the above note), it is much more likely that this word appeared at the end of this column
than at the beginning of the next one.
8 In line with the theory of a cosmological focus, perhaps the verb ‫ ויעמקו‬at the beginning of
l. 3 was followed by the word ‫( מחשבתיך‬or some comparable term), as in Ps 92:6, ‫מאד עמקו‬
‫מחשבתיך‬. Cf. 4Q115 24 7, ]…‫ואדעה מחשבתכה […] כיא בידכה לפתו[ח‬.
9 The parallel language is observed by Baillet, DJD 7, 236.
that the language of “sealing up” and “opening” refers to the secrets of divine
wisdom (which, of course, include cosmology), in which case this line would
be emphasizing God’s exclusive power to “open” such secret knowledge to
whomsoever he should choose.10 This suggestion would tally well with the sen-
timent expressed elsewhere in the composition that God in fact has endowed
the speaker of these hymns, the maskil, with divine knowledge (4Q511 28–29
2–3; 48–49+51 1). Indeed, this privileged figure is able to state: “I know your
thoughts … for it is in your power to ope[n” …] (‫ואדעה מחשבתכה […]כיא בידכה‬
]… ‫ ;לפתו[ח‬4Q511 42 7–8).11
The words of praise continue in lines 4–6, a reworked citation of Isa 40:12–
13a, which also focuses on the grand elements of creation as evidence of God’s
incomparable power and wisdom. Scholars have noted how this citation ex-
hibits some affinities with the text of the Great Isaiah Scroll.12 At the same time
it differs in significant ways both from this version and the Masoretic Text.
4Q511 30 4–6 Isa 40:12–13a (MT) Isa 40:12–13a (1QIsaa)
‫הימדו בשועל אנשים מי רבה‬ ‫מיא מדד בשועלו מי ים מי מדד בשעלו מים‬
]‫ו̇ ̊אם בזרת[ יתכן איש שמים ובשליש‬ ‫ושמים בזרת תכן‬ ‫ושמים בזרתו תכן‬
‫הא ̊רץ‬̇ ‫וכל בשליש עפר הארץ וכל בשלש עפר הארץ יכול עפר‬
‫בפלס הרים‬
̊ ‫ויש ̊ק[ו]ל‬ ̇ ‫ושקל בפלס הרים‬ ‫ושקל בפלס הרים‬
]… ‫ו̇ ̇ג ̊ב ̊עו̊ ת ̊ב ̇מו̇ זנ̇ [ים‬ ‫וגבעות במאזנים‬ ‫וגבעות במוזנים‬
] [‫עשה[ ]א ̊ד ̊ם‬
̊ ̊‫̇את אלה לוא י‬
]‫לוהים‬-‫רוח[ א‬
̇ ‫י̊ ו̇ כל איש לתכן את‬ '‫מי תכן את רוח ה‬ ’‫מיא תכן את רוח ה‬
In the MT and 1QIsaa, as well as in the LXX, these rhetorical questions may be
understood as part of the prophet’s polemic against the idols of the nations
(see esp. Isa 40:18–20).13 Thus, the answer to the “who … and (who)” questions,
10 Praises utilizing the language of “opening up” (‫ )לפתוח‬in connection with the revela-
tion of divine wisdom appear elsewhere in Qumran literature. See, e.g., 1QH 20:16; 22:31;
1QS 11:15–16.
11 Cf. 4Q511 63 iii 1: “And as for me, my tongue shall extol your righteousness, for you have
opened (i.e., released) it” (‫)ואני תרנן לשוני צדקכה כי פתחתה‬.
12 See Baillet, DJD 7, 236.
13 So Nitzan, Qumran Prayer, 258; Yitzhak Avishur, ”,‫ מסורה‬:)12 ‫‘מי מדד בשעלו מים’ (ישעיה מ‬
‫ “קומראן ואכדית‬in ‫ ספר זכרון ליהושע מאיר גרינץ‬:‫( עיונים במקרא‬ed. B. Oppenheimer;
32 Angel
though left unexpressed, is obvious. No other being and certainly no idol could
do the tasks described. However, as Yizhak Avishur observes, the version in
frg. 30 propounds a subtle shift. The question is no longer “who … and (who),”
but rather “may … and (may).” This formulation removes the “rhetorical sting”
from the questions and marks a more sapiential orientation seeking to em-
phasize God’s superiority not over idols or other gods, but rather over human
beings. This shift in perspective is made clear by the partial answer to the ques-
tion offered in 30 5, “Human beings did not make these,” which is unparalleled
in the other versions. This same point of view is reflected in the addition of the
words “people” and “person” in lines 4 and 6 respectively.14
The preceding remarks perhaps may be seen to favor the second interpreta-
tion of line 3 offered above, namely that God has sealed up the mysteries of
divine knowledge and that no one has the power to “open” them but him. Such
a statement would flow nicely into the Isaiah citation in the following lines,
which in its reworked form emphasizes the inability of humans to match the
wisdom and grandeur with which God created the world. I shall return to this
reading of line 3 below.
To my knowledge, the only previous attempt to explain how Isa 40:12–13a
might function within the larger compositional setting of the Songs of the Sage
has been made by Bilhah Nitzan. She makes two relevant points. First, whereas
in later Jewish magical sources Isa 40:12 is cited directly and employed in the
context of direct adjurations (e.g., “I adjure you by He who has measured the
waters in the palm of his hand …”),15 in the Songs of the Sage the passage ap-
pears in the form of an “exegetical” paraphrase, and it is not part of a fixed
magical formula seeking to alter reality. This fits a broader diachronic pattern
that Nitzan observes in the sources: “Whereas in Qumran [magical poetry] we
find free literary use of biblical passages, in later magical sayings biblical vers-
es are mostly quoted directly, intertwined with fixed formulae of incantation
and adjuration.”16 Second, the manner in which the Isaiah passage is reworked
Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University; ha-Qibuts ha-meʾuḥad, 1982), 133. As noted by J. Goldingay
and D. Payne, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40–55 (2 vols.; ICC; London:
T & T Clark International, 2006), 1:99–100, in light of the focus on God’s lordship over hu-
manity in vv. 15–17, a contrast between God and humans may be implied. However, they
conclude that “links with Babylonian beliefs about their gods suggest that in vv. 12–14 the
point is rather that Yhwh had no heavenly help.”
14 See Avishur, “’‫ ‘מי מדד בשעלו מים‬,” 133. Thus, with Qimron, it seems plausible to recon-
struct the word ‫ איש‬or some equivalent at the end of l. 4.
15 Morgan, Sepher Ha-Razim, 42. See also, Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls,
104–5, 190–91.
16 Nitzan, Qumran Prayer, 359.
reflects the specific aim of the hymnic collection (known from the other frag-
ments) to protect the children of light from demonic attack in the present “pe-
riod of the dominion of wickedness” (4Q510 1 6–7 par. 4Q511 10 3). In particular,
she suggests that the shift in focus to God’s superiority vis-à-vis humanity in
fact is intended “as an ironic polemic with the bastardly spirits that originate
in man, which presume to impose their will upon God and bring ‘eternal de-
struction’ upon the children of light.” In the current context, the maskil would
be expressing his conviction that “there is no power in the world, human or
super-human, which can change or violate the divine law and edict.”17 While
this interpretation is not presented as anything more than educated specula-
tion, it is difficult to accept, not least because according to the Enochic demo-
nological perspective adopted in the Songs of the Sage, wicked spirits originate
not from within human beings, but rather from the bodies of the giants who
were drowned in the great flood (e.g., 1 En. 7:2–6; 10:4–15).18 To be sure, these gi-
ants are conceived as partially human—they are the offspring of the unnatural
union between the watchers and human women—but it would be a stretch to
imagine that the added references to humans and people in the Isaiah citation
were intended to make a polemical point against demonic beings.
New light is shed on this issue by the recent material reconstruction of
4Q511, according to which some ninety percent of the extant textual material
has been positioned in its original order within sixteen reconstructed columns
(see illustration below).19 For the first time, it is possible to analyze the con-
tents of Songs of the Sageb in their original sequence, and, in some cases, to
gain new insights from fragments that can now be placed in close proximity
to one another.20
17 Nitzan, Qumran Prayer, 259.

18 This Enochic perspective is reflected especially in the references to “the congregation
of the bastards” (4Q511 2 ii 3) and “the bastard spirits” (4Q511 10 1; 35 7; 4Q510 1 5). For
further discussion of the identification of the demons mentioned in the Songs in re-
lation to other Second Temple period texts, see B. Nitzan, “‫שירי שבח מקומראן ‘לפחד‬
‫ולבהל’ רוחות רשע‬,” Tarbiz 55 (1986): 19–46, esp. 22–29. See also Giovanni Ibba, “The Evil
Spirits in Jubilees and the Spirit of the Bastards in 4Q510 with Some Remarks on Other
Qumran Manuscripts,” Henoch 31 (2009): 111–16; Philip S. Alexander, “ ‘Wrestling against
Wickedness in High Places’: Magic in the Worldview of the Qumran Community,” in The
Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran Fifty Years After (ed. S. E. Porter and C. A. Evans; JSPSup
26; Roehampton Institute London Papers 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997),
318–37, esp. 319–24.
19 Angel, “The Material Reconstruction.”
20 For an initial attempt to interpret the contents of 4Q511 in sequence, see Angel, “Reading
the Songs of the Sage in Sequence.”
34 Angel
The reconstruction, however, has yielded just one clear case where continuous
text from separate fragments has been restored: from the bottom of the eighth
reconstructed column, represented by frg. 30, to the top of the ninth recon-
structed column, represented by frgs. 44–47.21 It is important to note here that
these particular fragments appear in the portion of the scroll that has been
reconstructed most confidently.22 Thus, it is now possible to read what is very
likely the direct continuation of the text of frg. 30 in frgs. 44–47, and to inquire
how this new data might enrich our understanding of how the Isaiah passage
is employed.
Unfortunately, frgs. 44–47 preserve just a few words from the right and left
sides of the top of the column.
(1) For to the righteous ones (‫ ]…[ )כיא לצדיקים‬his [ ] by the source (‫)במקור‬
(2) […] and [… al]l the foundations of (3( )‫ ]…[ )כ]ול סודי‬and mighty fire
(4) […] for their wounds (5) and [the] foundation of (‫ ]…[ )ויסוד‬a human
being (‫ )אדם‬upon (6) a righteous one (‫ )צדיק‬in […] his wondrous myster-
ies (‫)רזי פלאו‬.23
21 The numbering of columns presented here begins from the first reconstructed column.
Since the beginning of the composition could not be identified, “column 1” may not have
been the first column of the original manuscript. The scroll could have been longer. See
further Angel, “The Material Reconstruction.”
22 For the detailed argumentation, see Angel, “The Material Reconstruction,” 31–45.
23 Adaptation of the translation of Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, in
Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, Vol. 6: Additional Genres
and Unclassified Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 189.
The first thing to note is that there is no grammatical problem with the re-
stored text from column to column. The last words of the eighth column, “Can
a person measure the spirit [of God?]” (Isa 40:13a) constitute a complete sen-
tence. The first words of the ninth column, “For to the righteous ones,” can
begin a new sentence. It should be noted, however, that the word ‫ כיא‬implies
a close conceptual relationship with the previous clause.24 Unfortunately, the
precise relationship remains unclear due to the fragmentary nature of the text.
However, some suggestions can be made on the basis of the few tantalizing
words preserved on frgs. 44–47, as well as the likelihood that the continuation
of Isaiah 40 is in view.
Since the bottom of frg. 30 cites Isa 40:12–13a in sequence, it is plausible to
suggest that frgs. 44–47 relate to Isa 40:13b–14, which in the MT reads as follows:
Which human could tell him his plan? (‫)ואיש עצתו יודיענו‬. Whom did he
consult, and who taught him (‫)את מי נועץ ויבינהו‬, guided him in the way of
right? (‫ )וילמדהו בארח משפט‬Who guided him in knowledge (‫)וילמדהו דעת‬
and showed him the path of wisdom? (‫)ודרך תבונות יודיענו‬25
In the context of Isaiah, this set of rhetorical questions emphasizes the supe-
rior wisdom of God—no created being, human or otherwise, can compare.26
The answer to each question is clearly “none/nobody.” Within the context of
Qumran literature, however, where the line between human and divine wis-
dom is much blurrier, these questions would have evoked a quite different set
of notions. As noted above, this is especially true of the Songs of the Sage, for
which the idea that divine wisdom is possessed by the maskil is pivotal. As I
have demonstrated elsewhere, the apocalyptic discourse of knowledge in the
Songs of the Sage is similar to (and perhaps dependent upon) that found in the
24 For a discussion of the various uses of the particle ‫ כי‬in BH, see Anneli Aejmelaus,
“Function and Interpretation of ‫ כי‬in Biblical Hebrew,” JBL 105/2 (1986): 193–209. See fur-
ther multiple examples in Paul Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (trans. and rev. by
Takamitsu Muraoka; 2 vols.; Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1993), §§153–75.
25 Adaptation of the NJPS translation. 1QIsaa has only one variant, and it is orthographic in
nature (‫)באורח‬. For discussion of the grammatical ambiguity of this passage and the vari-
ous possible renderings, see Goldingay and Payne, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary,
1:101–5.
26 For the notion that this passage represents an inner-biblical polemic against the idea that
God was advised by a divine council (Gen 1:26; 11:7), and, perhaps, a covert polemic against
Enuma Elish, see Shalom Paul, Isaiah 40–66: Translation and Commentary (Eerdmans
Critical Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 140–41.
36 Angel
Treatise on the Two Spirits (1QS 3:13–4:26).27 According to the latter text, divine
wisdom, or “the truth of the mysteries of knowledge” (1QS 4:6), is possessed
by the elect ones, “the children of truth.” The maskil, who is designated “to in-
struct and teach all the children of light” (1QS 3:13), is the instrument through
which divine knowledge reaches the elect community.28 Similarly, in the Songs
of the Sage the maskil serves as a conduit of God’s wisdom. Time and again, he
announces that by the grace of God he has been imbued with heavenly knowl-
edge (e.g., 4Q511 48–49 1; 18 ii 7–8; 29 3; 63–64 iii 1–2). The liturgical community
is characterized as “the ones who know [ ( [‫( ”)יודעי‬4Q511 2 i 2), and it is clear
from different parts of the work that they are meant to share in the salvific and
luminous knowledge of the maskil.29
With this web of ideas in mind, it is possible to clarify the potential rela-
tionship between frgs. 44–47 and Isa 40:13b–14. Consider again the question
of Isa 40:13b: “Which human could tell him his plan? (‫ ”)ואיש עצתו יודיענו‬Since
the citation of Isaiah in frg. 30 exhibits certain affinities with 1QIsaa,30 it is im-
portant to note the slightly different reading found there, ‫איש עצתו יודיענה‬. It
seems that according to this version, the antecedent of the feminine pronomi-
nal suffix is the word ‫עצה‬.31 In this case, the phrase could have been under-
stood in a number of different ways. If the word ‫ איש‬is read as the subject, the
question might be rendered “Which human could make known His [i.e., God’s]
counsel?” Or, it might be read as a declaration: “A human may make known his
[i.e., God’s] counsel.” Alternatively, assuming a slight textual adaptation, it is
conceivable that God was understood as the subject: “[To] a human, He [i.e.,
God] makes known His counsel.” Or, as a question, “Does He make His counsel
known [to] a human?”32
The reading of 1QIsaa, ‫איש עצתו יודיענה‬, could very well be the version that
is in view at the top of the ninth column (although, to be sure, given the free-
dom with which the author reworked Isa 40:12–13a, it would not have required
much imagination to arrive at comparable understandings on the basis of the
27 Joseph L. Angel, “Maskil, Community, and Religious Experience in the Songs of the Sage
(4Q510–511),” DSD 19, 1 (2012):1–27, esp. 6–12.
28 Cf. 1QS 9:18: “He shall guide them in knowledge and enlighten them in the mysteries of
wonder and truth.”
29 See further Angel, “Maskil, Community, and Religious Experience.”
30 See n. 13.
31 It is also possible to take ‫ איש עצתו‬as a construct and to interpret the suffix of ‫ יודיענה‬as
referring back to the word ‫ רוח‬in v. 13a. This would yield something like: “Who has mea-
sured the spirit of YHWH? Can the man of his counsel make it (the spirit) known?”.
32 This rendering and the previous one would seem to require the addition of a ‫ל‬, i.e., ‫ולאיש‬
‫עצתו יודיענה‬.
MT or a similar version). While in the context of Isaiah the emphasis is on

the unbridgeable chasm between divine and human wisdom, it stands to rea-
son that the meaning would shift within the context of the Songs of the Sage.
As noted above, the maskil and his elect community, “the righteous ones”
(4Q510 1 8), are privy to the counsel of God. Indeed, it is interesting to note in
this connection that in the top line of the next column (the tenth column),
in language that perhaps alludes to Isa 40:13b, the maskil declares: “… in the
counsel/council33 of God (‫)בעצת אל‬, for He set [the wisdom] of His under-
standing [in my] hear[t]” (4Q511 48–49 1). This passage appears to confirm that
according to this composition the maskil has access to the ‫ עצה‬of God and
that God has imbued him with divine understanding. It is impossible to know
whether this is coincidental or it represents some type of extended engage-
ment with Isa 40:13b–14. In either case, however, it renders more plausible the
notion that the reference to the righteous ones at the beginning of the ninth
column relates to Isa 40:13b, ‫איש עצתו יודיענה‬. In line with this suggestion, one
might reconstruct the beginning of the ninth column as follows: ‫כיא לצדיקים‬
]‫[עצתו יודיענה‬, “for/but to the righteous ones [he makes known his counsel].”34
Interestingly, this would parallel the rendering of Targum Jonathan, which in-
terprets this verse as referring to the revelation of divine knowledge, specifi-
cally to the righteous: “To the righteous ones (‫ )צדיקיא‬who perform his speech
he makes known the words of his will.”35 This suggestion is bolstered by the
appearance of the word “source/fountain” (‫ )מקור‬at the end of the line, which
is used to refer to concealed wisdom in Qumran literature.36 Moreover, strong
wisdom connotations are evident in some of the other words preserved in
frgs. 44–47, such as ‫“( סוד‬secret counsel/council/foundation”; line 2) and ‫רזי‬
‫“( פלאו‬His wondrous mysteries”; line 6). Note also the appearance of the words
‫“( אדם‬man/human”) and ‫“( צדיק‬righteous one”) in lines 5–6, which perhaps
reflects in some way the move from the more general ‫ איש‬in Isa 40:13b to the
more specific ‫ צדיקים‬in 44–47 1.
Finally, if frgs. 44–47 indeed read Isa 40:13b from this particular interpretive
perspective, the questions of Isa 40:14 would have taken on new meaning as
well. Once again, that verse reads as follows:
33 See John Worrell, “‫עצה‬: ‘Counsel’ or ‘Council’ at Qumran?” VT 20 (1970): 65–74.
34 In this case, the ‫ כי‬would have adversative force. See, e.g., Joüon (trans. and rev. Muraoka),
A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, §172c. For an analogous example in Qumran literature, see,
e.g., 1QS 11:10.
35 Note that for Targum Jonathan, the righteous ones are the prophets. By contrast, in the
Qumran text they would refer to the elect community.
36 See, e.g., 1QS 11:3; 1QH 18:32–33; 4Q418 81 1, 11–12.
38 Angel
Whom did he consult, and who taught him (‫)את מי נועץ ויבינהו‬, guided
him in the way of right? (‫ )וילמדהו בארח משפט‬Who guided him in knowl-
edge (‫ )וילמדהו דעת‬and showed him the path of wisdom? (‫ודרך תבונות‬
‫)יודיענו‬.
While for Isaiah these lines express the impossibility of another god or cre-
ated being revealing wisdom to the creator, within the context of the Songs of
the Sage they easily could have been interpreted as referring to the revelation
of divine wisdom to elect humanity. Indeed, when one identifies God as the
subject of the verbs (instead of as the object, as in Isaiah),37 it is only natu-
ral to understand the maskil/corporate entity of the righteous ones as the ob-
ject. Again, it is interesting to note that a similar understanding is reflected in
Targum Jonathan, which also views God as the subject—the one who causes
only certain deserving human beings to apprehend His wisdom.
Conclusion
While it is regrettable that so little of the text of frgs. 44–47 has been preserved,
enough has survived to clarify how the Isaiah material in frg. 30 likely was un-
derstood in the Songs of the Sage. Nitzan is correct to note that the “exegetical”
paraphrase in the Qumran composition is to be distinguished from citations of
the Isaiah passage appearing in later Jewish magical texts, which seek to draw
from the inherent power of the words as part of direct adjurations. However, it
is unlikely that the added references to human beings in the reworked version
of frg. 30 served to polemicize against the demons, even though it is true that
a major concern of the Songs of the Sage is to combat wicked spirits. Rather, in
light of the textual continuation in frgs. 44–47, it now appears that the added
references to human beings are intended to shift the focus to God’s relation-
ship with humanity as part of a larger statement that is central to the apoca-
lyptic anthropological perspective of the Songs of the Sage. Namely, while in its
current form the version of Isa 40:12–13a in frg. 30 underscores the notion that
human beings cannot match the wisdom and grandeur with which God cre-
ated the world, this does not mean that all humans are hopelessly cut off from
divine wisdom. As I have suggested, frgs. 44–47 may be seen as an interpreta-
tion of Isa 40:13b–14, according to which God does indeed reveal “His won-
drous mysteries” to certain fortunate human beings, namely “the righteous,”
understood in this context as the elect community of the maskil.
37 That is, for all of the verbs except for ‫נועץ‬, where God is clearly the subject.
Finally, it is noteworthy that this understanding coheres well with the sec-
ond interpretation of 30 3 (“You, my God, sealed up all of them and there is
no one who may open them”) offered above. If this line is in fact a praise of
God emphasizing His exclusive power to open the mysteries of divine knowl-
edge that He has sealed up, then the interpretation of the Isaiah passage in
the immediately following lines would be an elegant illustration of this prin-
ciple. Drawing upon the words of Isaiah, the hymnist has shown that although
human wisdom cannot compare to divine wisdom, God has chosen to reveal
His wondrous mysteries to the righteous ones. Within the broader context of
the Songs of the Sage, this notion serves both to authorize the words of the
maskil and to convince the liturgical community of the apotropaic power of
his words.
CHAPTER 3
Missing and Misplaced? Omission and

Transposition in the Book of Jubilees*
1 Introduction
Can silence speak? When scholars analyze the exegetical practices of texts
grouped under the “re-written bible genre”1 they typically lavish attention
* Students of Rabbi Moshe Bernstein are fortunate. In him they find a teacher who is generous
with both time and knowledge. I recall the common experience of knocking on his office
door to ask a simple question only to leave two hours later after an intense and informed
conversation. His generosity and infectious excitement for Jewish studies inspired me to pur-
sue an academic career. It is with him I took my first Jewish Studies courses. Additionally,
his mentorship of students continues well after they graduate. Or, in other words, once a
student, always a student. Among the many skills Rabbi Bernstein cultivates is the ability to
“close-read” a text. In this paper, I hope to employ the skills my dedicated teacher imparted
unto me and contribute to a scholarly discourse he pioneered: Second Temple exegesis and
reading practices.
I wish to also thank the close-readers of this paper: Binyamin Y. Goldstein, Martha
Himmelfarb, and Shani Tzoref. Mark Letteny and the other members of the Religions of
Mediterranean Antiquity graduate workshop at Princeton University were also generous
with feedback and critique.
1 The definitions and parameters of this genre, if indeed such a genre exists, are a source of
much scholarly controversy and cannot be dealt with in this paper. At the very broadest,
for my purposes in this paper, I mean texts that bear a very close relationship to their bibli-
cal counterpart and are assumed to be copying from and editing it. This is certainly true of
Jubilees, which bears a very close relationship to the text of Genesis. For Bernstein’s discus-
sion of the issue of re-written Bible, see especially Moshe J. Bernstein, “ ‘Rewritten Bible’: A
Generic Category Which Has Outlived Its Usefulness?,” in Reading and Re-Reading Scripture
at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1.39–62. For further discussions, see the history of scholarship
in Michael Segal, “Qumran Research in Israel: Rewritten Bible and Biblical Interpretation,” in
The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective: A History of Its Research (ed. Devorah Dimant
and Ingo Kottsieper; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 315–33; Sidnie White Crawford, “Re-Written Bible in
North American Scholarship,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective, 75–78; Geza
Vermes, “The Genesis of the Concept of ‘Rewritten Bible,’ ” in Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years:
Texts, Terms, or Techniques?: A Last Dialogue with Geza Vermes (ed. József Zsengellér; Leiden:
Brill, 2014), 3–9; Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Textual Fidelity, Elaboration, Supersession
Missing And Misplaced ? 41
on details that these works add to or alter from their biblical base text.2 Are
omissions—details that appear in the source text of a rewritten composition
but not in the rewritten work itself—significant? In other words, even though
authors and scribes almost naturally omit text during the rewriting process is
it possible, nonetheless, to detect a group of details that were meaningfully
passed over? Taking Jubilees as a case study, I answer in the affirmative. The
omissions discussed below stem from specific theological or compositional is-
sues. Thus, in selecting the categories under which to group these omissions,
I seek to strike a balance between features that are particular to Jubilees and
those that could pertain to the genre as a whole. Some of the specific omis-
sions discussed below have been noted in earlier scholarship. By analyzing the
examples in aggregate, I aim to point out significant patterns in the working
or Encroachment? Typological Reflections on the Phenomenon of Rewritten Scripture,” in

Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years, 13–48. See also George J. Brooke, “Hypertextuality and the
‘Parabiblical’ Dead Sea Scrolls,” in In the Second Degree: Paratextual Literature in Ancient Near
Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Culture and Its Reflections in Medieval Literature (ed.
Philip S. Alexander, Armin Lange, and Renate Pillinger; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 43–64; Jonathan
G. Campbell, “Rewritten Bible: A Terminological Reassessment,” in Rewritten Bible after Fifty
Years, 49–81; Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Rewritten Bible as a Borderline Phenomenon—
Genre, Textual Strategy, or Canonical Anachronism?,” in Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls
and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino Garcia Martinez (ed. A. Hilhorst et al.;
Leiden: Brill, 2007), 285–306; Molly Zahn, “Talking about Rewritten Texts: Some Reflections
on Terminology,” in Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions
in the Second Temple Period (ed. Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila;
Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 93–120; Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “The Book of Jubilees as
Paratextual Literature,” in In the Second Degree, 65–95.
2 Examples of such studies include Moshe J. Bernstein, “Rearrangement, Anticipation and
Harmonization as Exegetical Features in the Genesis Apocryphon,” in Reading and Re-
Reading Scripture at Qumran, 1.175–94; Menachem Kister, “Observations on Aspects of
Exegesis, Tradition and Theology in Midrash, Pseudepigrapha, and Other Jewish Writings,”
in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (ed. John C. Reeves;
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 1–34; Howard Jacobson, “Biblical Quotations and Editorial
Function in Pseudo-Philo’s ‘Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum’,” JSP 5 (1989): 47–64; Michael
Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Leiden: Brill,
2007), 11–12. See pages 11–21 for a general overview of the state of Jubilees scholarship pre-
2007. For a study that features omission and altering in Jubilees among other works, see Juha
Pakkala, God’s Word Omitted: Omissions in the Transmission of the Hebrew Bible (FRLANT 251;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 155–66. See his introduction for a thorough his-
tory of scholarship on omission in biblical studies.
42 Berkovitz
method of Jubilees, and to demonstrate the significance and utility of paying

attention to the missing.3
Not everything missing from its place in the biblical base text, however,
remains lost. These details may appear earlier or later in Jubilees’ retelling of
Genesis. They are transpositions, or “re-arrangements.” As Moshe Bernstein
demonstrated with regards to the Genesis Apocryphon, a rewritten text will
sometimes re-arrange its biblical base material in order to facilitate a smooth
narrative or solve an interpretive crux.4 This is also true of Jubilees.5 We
would benefit, however, from paying attention to a wider spectrum of trans-
position. As we will see below, some connect two unrelated stories, and others
simply underscore a scriptural conservatism in Jubilees, a desire to retain omit-
ted elements by introducing them into other contexts.
I focus on Jubilees in general, and the material before chapter 34 in particu-
lar, because of its closeness to its biblical base text. This helps minimize the
inevitable speculation involved in analyzing missing phenomena.
3 Many of the omissions discussed below are also noted in the careful and compelling work
of Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis
11:26–25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14–23:8 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten,
Primaeval History Interpreted: The Rewriting of Genesis 1–11 in the Book of Jubilees (Leiden:
Brill, 2000). I not only offer different interpretations for many of these omissions, but also
examine a larger scope of Jubilees. Furthermore, I seek to draw patterns by placing omission
at the center of my study. His work tends to limit itself to the passage he is explicating or
to the subject of his book as a whole. Thus, he rarely synthesizes his data into a larger por-
trait. Additionally, the careful attention he pays to every feature in the passages he explicates
sometimes overshadows the omissions.
4 Bernstein, “Rearrangement, Anticipation and Harmonization as Exegetical Features in the
Genesis Apocryphon,” Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran, 1.176–81. Van Ruiten,
Primaeval History Interpreted, 373, likewise suggests that rearrangement “is mainly used for
the goals of harmonizing, to smooth down inconsistencies and tensions within the biblical
story.”
5 There are cases, of course, in which a verse is transposed a large distance precisely for the
purposes of creating a smoother narrative. One example is the transposition of Gen 37:1–2,
Jacob’s settling and the age of Joseph, from its position before Joseph’s sale (Jub. 34:10) to
Jub. 39:2, Joseph in the house of Potiphar. This transposition is due to narrative resumption.
It follows the long extra portion of the war between Jacob and Esau, and re-centers the nar-
rative on Joseph. On the technique of narrative resumption, see James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s
House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994),
34, 205–6.
2 Omissions
2.1 Introduction
This section analyzes and groups together omissions that indicate general
trends in the working method of Jubilees. In particular, we will pay close atten-
tion to key theological and compositional concerns, such as: the presentation
of God, genealogy, etymology, narrative redundancies and perceived contra-
dictions. In isolation, each example of omission may be the product of scribal
happenstance and deemed not noteworthy. In aggregate, however, they offer
insight into the reading and writing practices of Jubilees. We must also always
remember that no text is monological. A single omission, much like any addi-
tion, could result from numerous factors and achieve multiple goals.
2.2 Omissions Pertaining to God

Jubilees portrays God as omnipotent and omniscient.6 It omits or heavily re-
works biblical texts that could be interpreted to suggest otherwise, including
parts of the Garden of Eden narrative (Gen 3). After recounting that Adam
and his wife ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Gen 3:8–13 continues the
narrative by describing how they hid from God upon hearing his movement
in the Garden. This successful strategy prompts God to call out: “Where are
you?”7 (v.9). Adam, fearful, reveals himself to God and blames his wife for feed-
ing him fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (v.12). The wife, in turn, incriminates
the serpent (v.13). Only then does God mete out punishment for the trespass.
While some later interpreters account for God’s question by ascribing it a
non-literal rhetorical force,8 Jubilees simply removes it. This omission may
result from at least two factors, not necessarily mutually exclusive. First, the
author of Jubilees could not countenance the portrayal of a God in want of
knowledge. Second, he wished to tighten the link between the crime of eating
6 See Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 97–98 for further discussion. For a discussion of Jubilees’
reworking of narrative details in the Binding of Isaac story that would challenge God’s
omniscience see pages 189–91. For this particular example see also James Kugel, “Jubilees,”
in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (ed. Louis H. Feldman,
James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman; 3 vols.; Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society, 2013), 1.358. For the role of angels in motivation for the Akedah see also the discus-
sion of God’s role in creation below.
7 Biblical quotes taken from NRSV with minor adaptations.
8 See, for example, Gen. Rab. 19:9, which repoints ‫ איכה‬to read “how.”
44 Berkovitz
the fruit and the punishment of expulsion by shortening the textual distance
between them.9
Jubilees’ reworking of Abel’s murder provides another example of omitting
details from Genesis in order to preserve God’s omniscience. Jubilees, retelling
Gen 4:8–11, writes:
When he killed him in a field, his blood cried out from the ground to
heaven—crying because he had been killed. The Lord blamed Cain re-
garding Abel because he had killed him. While he allowed him a length
(of time) on the earth because of his brother’s blood, he cursed him upon
the earth.
Jub. 4:3–410
This retelling accomplishes as least two goals. First, it removes any dialogue,
avoiding the perplexing biblical lacuna in MT Gen 4:8: “And Cain spoke to Abel
his brother, and when they were in the field Cain rose up against his brother
and killed him.”11 What did Cain say? The reader is not told.12
9 For the emphasis of Jubilees on punishment see Segal, Jubilees, 140, 143, 155, 247. The
movement of the garment of fig leaves up from the end of the chapter would be a form
of anticipation according to Bernstein. Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 97–98,
suggests that the omission of God’s question results from multiple factions, including the
problem of God’s lack of omniscience and the portrayal of Adam as anxious and guilty. He
argues that Jubilees wants to present a positive view of Adam. For a reading of this story
that highlights Jubilees impugning the character of Adam by turning his unintentional
eating of the fruit of the tree into a willful one see Cana Werman, The Book of Jubilees:
Introduction, Translation and Interpretation (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2015), 187.
10 All translations from the book of Jubilees come from James C. VanderKam, The Book of
Jubilees (Louvain: Peeters, 1989).
11 This interpretation assumes that Jubilees’ Vorlage was of a Proto-MT type. A fuller ver-
sion of the dialogue—in which Cain says “let us go to the field”—exists in the LXX and
Samaritan Pentateuch. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 22, notes that singular of “blood”
accords with LXX, Samaritan, Syriac and Old Latin against the MT. Perhaps this indicates
that Jubilees had a base text that included the dialogue. If so, the omission may result from
the removal of dialogue in general from Gen 4:2–7. Could the author of Jubilees have done
so because he had trouble understanding the notoriously difficult Gen 4:7. On the textual
and interpretive issues surrounding these verses see, for example, Ronald S. Hendel, The
Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 46–47. For a recent full discussion of the textual variants and their implications
see Mark William Scarlata, Outside of Eden: Cain in the Ancient Versions of Genesis 4.1–16
(London: T & T Clark, 2012), 74–129.
12 The Fragment Targum on this verse, for example, provides an extensive dialogue. Van
Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 142–43, notes that nothing is left of the narrative
Second, this retelling also excludes Gen 4:9: “And the Lord said to Cain:
‘Where is Abel your brother?’ And he said, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ ” As
Kugel plausibly suggests, Jubilees was troubled by the potential to read this
verse as an indication of God’s lack of knowledge.13 How could God not know
where Abel was? As they did with Gen 3:9, some later interpreters ascribe to
this question a non-literal rhetorical force.14
Jubilees’ retelling of the “fallen angels” narrative also exhibits concern with
maintaining the image of a powerful God. In describing God’s reaction to the
proliferation of sin, Jubilees writes:
The Lord saw that the earth was corrupt, (that) all animate beings had
corrupted their prescribed course, and (that) all of them—everyone that
was on the earth—had acted wickedly before his eyes. He said that he
would obliterate people and all animate beings that were on the surface
of the earth which he had created. He was pleased with Noah alone.
Jub. 5:3–5
Jubilees omits any instance of God relenting or being heartbroken. Gen 6:6
notes that “The Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth,
and it grieved him to his heart.” Gen 6:7 similarly ends with, “For I repent that
I made them.” How can an omniscient and powerful God be heartbroken and
filled with regret?15
drama and concludes that the author is only interested in the murder itself. As he notes
with regard to the omission of God’s question, though, more than one issue can be at
stake in this re-writing.
13 Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:454 n. 58.
14 See for example Gen. Rab. 22:9–10, which demonstrates that this language is used against
thieves who are caught red-handed. It is interesting that in these two cases Jubilees jet-
tisons the text while Genesis Rabbah subtly reworks it. For further on the reworking of
Cain in Jubilees see Pakkala, God’s Word Omitted, 162–64, who argues that Jubilees seeks to
read Cain in as bleak a light as possible. Another example in which Jubilees reworks text
to preserve God’s omniscience appears in its treatment of the Binding of Isaac (Gen 22). It
first provides a reason for God’s desire to test Abraham. It also makes certain that the test
demonstrates Abraham’s righteousness to others. God always knew Abraham was righ-
teous. See Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 189–91; Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:357; van Ruiten, Abraham
in the Book of Jubilees, 209–10; Moshe J. Bernstein, “Angels at the Aqedah: A Study in the
Development of a Midrashic Motif,” in Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran,
1.323–51. For further bibliography see Atar Livneh, “The ‘Beloved Sons’ of Jubilees,” Journal
of Ancient Judaism 6.1 (2015): 87 n. 9.
15 Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 191, notes similarly. Perhaps this or some other
challenge to God’s power motivates the omission of Abram’s quarrel with God over the
destruction of Sodom. For an alternative view see van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of
46 Berkovitz
2.3 Genealogical Omissions (and Transpositions)

In reworking Genesis and parts of Exodus, Jubilees seeks, inter alia, to retell
covenantal Israelite history.16 Jub. 1:5 succinctly describes this goal:
He said to him: Pay attention to all the words which I tell you on this
mountain. Write (them) in a book so that their offspring may see that I
have not abandoned them because of all the evil they have done in stray-
ing from the covenant between me and you which I am making today on
Mt. Sinai for their offspring.
Jubilees primarily retells the events that move this narrative goal forward.
Deviations and extraneous details are often omitted. This logic may account
for the omission of the lengthy biblical description of the dimensions of Noah’s
ark. It may also underlie the removal of a systematic recounting of the flood.
Additionally, the desire to focus on the patriarchs may underlie the omission of
the entirety of Genesis 24 (the story of Abraham’s servant and Rebecca), which
diverts attention from the patriarchs.17
Jubilees, 177, who claims that “the omission of the passage accords very well with the gen-
eral picture of Abraham and Lot that the author of Jubilees draws. It is not convenient
to have a depiction of Abraham making a plea for the righteous Lot. At the same time,
a bargaining Abraham, who dares to contradict God, does not accord very well with the
picture of Abraham as the ultimate righteous person.” Our suggestions need not be mutu-
ally exclusive.
16 James VanderKam, “The Origins and Purposes of the Book of Jubilees,” in Studies in
the Book of Jubilees (ed. Matthias Albani, Jörg Frey, and Armin Lange; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 1997), 18.
17 For an alternate view as to the omission see van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees,
235, who argues that “the story of the search for and discovery of Rebekah might have
been problematic for the author of Jubilees, since Genesis presents it as a coincidence
and the result of delegated authority.” I do not believe that Genesis presents the meeting
as a coincidence, especially as Gen 24:15 recounts that: “Before he had finished speaking,
there was Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s
brother, coming out with her water jar on her shoulder.” The biblical narrative leaves no
ambiguity as to the connection of the prayer and arrival of Rebekah. Why should del-
egated authority be problematic to Jubilees? Echoes of this narrative appear in Jub. 20:4,
the prohibition against taking a foreign wife. Gen 24:27, the servant’s blessing, appears
verbatim in Jub. 31:24, 45:4. Instances like this will be explored below, in which omissions
gets transposed. Werman, Book of Jubilees, 278, 324 suggests that Jubilees wished to con-
vince the reader that Nahor and his descendants lived in Canaan.
The near-systematic omission of non-Israelite genealogies may also reflect

this goal.18 Within this category, however, a distinction exists between genea-
logical chains pre- and post-Abraham that do not lead to Jacob. The former
tend to end after the second generation; the latter tend to be fully omitted.
This working method removes non-Jews from Israelite history, and ties in with
Jubilees’ larger worldview that imagines non-Jews as ontologically different.19
Our first example comes from Jubilees’ reworking of the genealogical list of
Cain’s descendants in Gen 4:17–22. Genesis recounts Cain’s descendants until
Tubal-Cain, six generations after Cain. Jubilees, however, twice deviates from
the Genesis sequence. First, Jub. 4:7–8 transposes the birth and naming of Seth
from Gen 4:25–26 to before Cain’s genealogy. Second, Jubilees shortens Cain’s
genealogy by only mentioning his son Enoch.20 It only elaborates Seth’s line.
The shortening of Cain’s genealogy centers the narrative on covenantal history.
The transposition of Seth’s line before Cain’s may function similarly. It cre-
ates a narrative precedence that gives Seth’s children—and ultimately Israel—
primacy over Cain’s descendants.21 Another reworking, with what appears to
have a similar effect, occurs with Shem. Jub. 7:9: “And Shem took his garment,
and he stood up, he and Japheth….” reworks Gen 9:23: “and Shem and Japheth
took the garment….”22 Shem, the ancestor of Israel, precedes Japheth. More
strikingly, a similar transposition occurs in Jubilees’ recounting of the birth of
Jacob and Esau in Jub. 19:13: “In the sixth week, during its second year [2046],
Rebecca gave birth to two sons for Isaac: Jacob and Esau. Jacob was perfect and
18 By non-Israelite genealogies I refer to genealogical chains that do not lead to Jacob and his
children.
19 See, for example, Jub. 30:7, 11–15. VanderKam, “The Origins and Purposes of the Book of
Jubilees,” 18–19. See also Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “Abraham and the Nations in the
Book of Jubilees,” in Abraham, the Nations, and the Hagarites: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
Perspectives on Kinship with Abraham (ed. Martin Goodman, Geurt Hendrik van Kooten,
and Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 105–16; Todd R. Hanneken, “The Sin
of the Gentiles: The Prohibition of Eating Blood in the Book of Jubilees,” JSJ 46.1 (2015):
1–27.
20 Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 120, 150, notes that Jubilees is not interested in
Cain’s line, but Jubilees mentions Cain due to his role later in the story. While this is pos-
sible, mention of the first children of lines not followed seems to be a steady pattern.
21 Ibid., 157. Werman notes the transposition and suggests the Jubilees seizes on the use of
the singular in the biblical text. Werman, Book of Jubilees, 235.
22 Van Ruiten notes the primacy of Shem but does not connect this to a larger pattern.
Although, as van Ruiten points out, this may just be the result of the singular verb.
Another example of precedence may appear in Jub. 7:18, in which Shem’s line precedes
that of Japhet.
48 Berkovitz
upright, while Esau was a harsh, rustic, and hairy man. Jacob used to live in
tents.” Although Jacob’s birth, by dint of etymology and according to Gen 25:25,
must follow Esau’s, Jubilees presents the birth of Rebecca’s children as if Jacob
were born first.23 In light of Jubilees’ adoption of the birthright narratives, the
fronting of Jacob is ideologically significant.
Genealogical shortening also occurs in Jubilees’ treatment of Gen 10, the
Table of Nations. Jub. 7 lists the sons of Shem (v. 18), Ham (v. 13) and Japheth
(v. 19) but not their grandchildren. Only Gen 11:10ff, the line of Arpahshad, re-
ceives full attention in Jubilees 8.24
Non-Israelite genealogies from the time of Abraham are usually entirely
omitted. Such examples include the list of descendants of Ishmael in Gen
25:12–1825 and those of Esau in Gen 36:1–30, 40–43. When they appear, they
serve the rhetorical goal of establishing Israelite genealogy and supremacy. For
example, Gen 22:20–24 recounts the eight sons of Nahor from Milcah and the
four sons from the concubine Reumah. Jubilees 19:10, in contrast, drastically
shortens the genealogy of Nahor in order highlight Rebecca and her immedi-
ate family:
In its fourth year [2027] he took a wife for his son Isaac. Her name was
Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel (the son of Abraham’s brother Nahor),
the sister of Laban—Bethuel was their father26—the daughter of Bethuel,
the son of Milcah who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor.27
23 This point is made by VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 112, who argues that this gives the
reader their first clue as to Jacob’s importance. He does not connect it with these other in-
stances. On the portrait of Jacob and Esau in Jubilees see Werman, Book of Jubilees, 470–77.
24 For further see van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 290–93.
25 We do, however, get Ishmael’s son Nebaioth in Jub. 17:14, but this is part of a different bibli-
cal narrative and not a list. Van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 261–62 argues that
“in a certain way Jub. 20:12b–13 rewrites Gen 25:18.” This only applies to place names, not
actual genealogy. Michael Francis, “Defining the Excluded Middle: The Case of Ishmael in
Jubilees,” JSP 21.3 (2012): 270, notices the absent genealogy but does not connect it to other
ones, or suggest why it is missing.
26 The double instance of “daughter of Bethuel” may be a product of some sort of combina-
tion of the genealogical remarks in Gen 22:23; 24:15, 47. The last sentence of the verse
comes directly from 24:15. For a more full discussion of the complex composition of this
passage see van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 234–37.
27 For the textual issues regarding this verse see VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 111–12. See
also Werman, Book of Jubilees, 322 n.11.
This genealogical note likely only exists in order to assure the reader that
Abraham took a wife for his child from his own family and not from the cursed
daughters of Canaan. Jewish genealogy is at stake and secure.28
Another strategic use of genealogy is the transposition of Gen 36:31–39—
the Edomite King list—to Jub. 38:15–24. In its biblical location it follows the
peaceful parting between Jacob and Esau. Its new context in Jubilees 38 follows
the destruction of Esau’s army by Jacob and his children. The list serves as an
affirmation that Isaac’s blessing, “the older shall serve the younger,” remains
true to the days of Moses and implicitly to the days of Jubilees’ author: “The
Edomites have not extricated themselves from the yoke of servitude which
Jacob’s sons imposed on them until today” (Jub. 38:14; emphasis mine).29 The
genealogical list serves as an index of Edomite servitude and was likely im-
ported due to its first line: “And these are the kings who ruled in Edom before a
king ruled the children of Israel” (Gen 36:31). In fact, Jubilees adapts this verse
by adding: “today in the land of Edom” (Jub. 38:15).30 The list affirms the reality
of Jub. 38:14 that “until today” (i.e. right now) Israel rules Edom. Non-Israelite
genealogies are unimportant to the author of Jubilees unless they are useful in
illustrating his retelling of covenantal history.
2.4 Omitting Narrative Redundancy

In addition to curtailing or eliminating genealogical lists, Jubilees also displays
a general tendency to omit perceived repetitions, especially with regards to the
classic biblical doublets and triplets. As we will discuss in detail below, some of
the omitted material was transposed elsewhere.
28 On the significance of endogamy in Jubilees see Betsy Halpern-Amaru, The Empowerment
of Women in the Book of Jubilees (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Martha Himmelfarb, “Sexual
Relations and Purity in the Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees,” in Between Temple and
Torah: Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period and beyond
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 126–29; Cana Werman, “ ‘Jubilees 30’: Building a Paradigm
for the Ban on Intermarriage,” HTR 90 (1997): 1–22. If Werman is correct that Jubilees imag-
ines Nahor in Canaan, then this genealogical note stresses that he is part of Abraham’s
extended family. See Werman, Book of Jubilees, 324.
29 That this entire episode is a fulfillment of Isaac’s prophetic words see Kugel, “Jubilees,”
1:420.
30 Werman, Book of Jubilees, 469, insightfully notes that this addition makes clear the fact
that these are the kings who ruled in Edom before an Israelite king ruled in the land of
Edom. Without the addition one could read the verse as indicating Edomite kings who
ruled before Israel had a king. I disagree, however, with her distinction between Edom
and Esau in these passages. Within the broader context the list comes to underscore the
servitude of the children of Esau.
50 Berkovitz
The first large-scale omission is that of Gen 2:4–17.31 This story contains a
creation myth that does not fit smoothly into a flowing narrative in which an
elaborate creation story was already told. Examples of transposed elements,
which we will discuss in detail below, include the transplanting of the Garden
of Eden (Gen 2:8) to the third day of creation (Jub. 2:7), the commandment to
work and guard the Garden (Gen 2:15) to after the creation of Eve (Jub. 3:9, 15)
and the results of eating from the Tree of Knowledge (Gen 2:17) to the death
scene of Adam (Jub. 4:30).
The narratives recounting the banishment of Hagar in Gen 16:4–14 and
Gen 21:9–21 receive similar treatment by Jubilees. It omits Gen 16:4–14 in favor
of retelling Gen 21:9–21. While previous scholarship suggests that Jubilees’
exclusion of the former story from its narrative stems from a desire to avoid
painting Sarah in a negative light, I contend that narrative economy best ex-
plains its absence.32 In fact, Jub. 17:4 adds details to Gen 21:9 that clearly im-
pugn Sarah’s character: “When Sarah saw Ishmael playing and dancing and
Abraham being extremely happy, she became jealous of Ishmael. She said to
Abraham: ‘Banish this girl and her son because this girl’s son will not be an heir
with my son Isaac’ ” (emphasis mine). Additionally, Jubilees disambiguates the
Hebrew ‫מצחק‬, rendering it as playing and dancing.33 Jubilees could have—as
31 For further see van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 75. He points to both contradic-
tions and duplications as the cause of the omission.
32 Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “Hagar in the Book of Jubilees,” in Abraham, the Nations,
and the Hagarites: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Perspectives on Kinship with Abraham (ed.
Martin Goodman, Geurt Hendrik van Kooten, and Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten; Leiden:
Brill, 2010), 125, who suggests the omission is due to Jubilees’ positive view of Sarah. He
goes so far as to say: “Everything that overshadows the positive image of Sarah and the
harmonious cooperation of wife and husband, united in an exemplary marriage, is omit-
ted by Jubilees….” relying on Amaru, The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees,
51. This view is also adopted by Francis, “Defining the Excluded Middle,” 263; while this
article overall attempts to stress the differences between Esau and Ishmael, with regards
to genealogy, Jubilees treats them similarly. George J. Brooke, “Memory, Cultural Memory
and Rewriting Scripture,” in Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques?:
A Last Dialogue with Geza Vermes (ed. József Zsengellér; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 131, suggests
that this omission is due to a change in cultural memory, one that no longer needed to
preserve the cruel treatment of Hagar by Sarai. This does not explain, however, the ap-
pearance of the doublet in Jub. 17. A more elegant solution is that Jubilees dislikes doublets
and triplets.
33 LXX and Vulgate likewise understand this as playing. For further discussion see Kugel,
“Jubilees,” 1:354; van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 200–201.
some commentators do—understood ‫ מצחק‬as “mocking” or “deriding,”34 giv-

ing Sarah just cause to banish Hagar and Ishmael. Instead, Jubilees discerns
the cause of banishment as Sarah’s jealousy. Preserving Sarah’s lofty character
must not underlie the omission of Gen 16:4–14.35 Its omission, rather, substan-
tiates and exemplifies Jubilees’ dislike of similar-sounding narratives. Jubilees
likely preserves Gen 21:9–21 over Gen 16:4–14 because of its role in the overall
plot of Genesis. The narrative solidifies Ishmael’s removal from covenantal his-
tory and affirms Isaac as Abraham’s true heir.
Jubilees’ treatment of the “kidnapped wife” and the “covenant with
Philistines” motifs further establishes its avoidance of redundancies. Each
motif exists only once in Jubilees. Jubilees 13:13–15 retells Gen 12:10–12. It omits
Abraham’s instructions to lie,36 but preserves Sarah’s kidnap, God’s plagues and
Pharaoh’s gifts.37 In turn, it entirely omits Abraham’s sojourn in Gerar (Gen
20:2–18) and the incident between Abimelekh and Rebecca (Gen 26:6–11).
Instead of traveling to Gerar proper (Gen 20:1), Abraham settles in “the moun-
tains of Gerar” (Jub. 16:10, emphasis mine). This obviates any need to posit inter-
action between Abraham and Abimelekh while still allowing Abraham to dig
the wells that will be subject to dispute later on. These scenes were not omitted
because they were embarrassing to the author.38 If this were the case, Jubilees
34 This would actually be the proper Biblical Hebrew nuance of this word. See Segal, The
Book of Jubilees, 305 n. 84, for a list of biblical examples and thorough discussion of how
later interpretive tradition understands this word as “rejoice.”
35 Contra van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 131–34, who argues that Jubilees omits
the first banishment because “the author of Jubilees probably felt that it would contradict
the fact of Sarai’s decision to give Hagar to Abram and Abram’s positive response. By omit-
ting these verses, the author of Jubilees again stresses his positive view of Sarai.” I do not
understand van Ruiten’s first argument. He is correct that in eliminating the passage the
author ultimately saves face for Sarai, but he does not sufficiently deal with the jealousy
of Sarah later on. He reads Sarah’s jealousy as “motivated by Abraham’s happiness, which
jeopardizes the divine promise…”, 204. Regardless, a word other than jealousy could have
been used to convey this.
36 The omission of Abraham’s instructions to Sarah to tell others that she is his sister exists
throughout Jubilees. The motive behind this may be the preservation of Abraham’s righ-
teousness. See ibid., 75–77; Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:341. Contrast this to the Genesis Apocryphon,
col. 19, which retains the instruction.
37 In that order, which is actually transposed. See Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:341. Werman, Book of
Jubilees, 283 notes that the transposition directly connects the taking with punishment.
Could this be another example of reworking narrative to conjoin action and conse-
quence? See note 9 above. It is also worth noting that that the transposition of Lot’s cattle
may be due to scriptural conservatism.
38 Cf. Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:351, 380.
52 Berkovitz
could have easily kept the base of the story while removing or modifying most
of the offending details. It does so for Sarah’s capture by Pharaoh. The complete
omission likely indicates Jubilees’ stylistic avoidance of repetitive narratives.
Jubilees’ omission of the entirety of Gen 20:2–18 allows it to use the “cov-
enant with the Philistines” motif during Isaac’s sojourn in Gerar (Gen 26 =
Jub. 24:8–33). Jubilees’ retelling begins by omitting any reference to Isaac’s
fear of Gerar’s lawlessness.39 It may omit the first part of this story because it
“clearly embarrassed Jubilees’ author,”40 or, more likely, because this motif was
already used in the retelling of Sarah and Egypt. Jubilees includes, however,
the covenant between Isaac and Abimelekh as well as the naming of the
place “Well of the Oath” (Gen 26:26–32 = Jub. 24:24–26), a scene paralleled in
Gen 21:22–32 but omitted from Jubilees’ sequential narrative. Avoidance of nar-
rative repetition governs Jubilees’ selection of biblical stories.
2.5 Omissions Due to Potential Contradictions

As Jubilees rewrote Genesis it omitted contradictory passages. It either elimi-
nated both conflicting verses or privileged the one closer to its rhetorical
goals.41 Jubilees’ treatment of Gen 1:20 and 1:24, the beginning of the fifth and
sixth days of creation, furnishes an example of small-scale elimination brought
about by potential contradiction. Genesis 1:20 begins an account of the fifth
day by noting that, “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living
creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ ” The
next verse, however, claims: “And God created the great sea monsters and every
living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and
every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” Who brought
forth swarms: God, or the water? Jub. 2:11 eliminates this problem by omitting
Gen 1:20 from its retelling. Instead, it reads: “On the fifth day He created the
great sea monsters within the watery depths, for these were the first animate
beings made by His hands; all the fish that move about in the waters, all flying
birds, and all their kinds.” Instead of commanding the waters (or another enti-
ty) to create, God Himself fashions the sea monsters, swarms and birds. Similar
39 For a close reading of the additions to this narrative, see Christopher T. Begg, “The
Rewriting of Genesis 26 in Josephus and Jubilees,” Revista Catalana de Teologia 34.1 (2009):
115–23. He notices the omissions but does not discuss their significance, save the omission
of the Rebecca incident, which he reads as a measure to reduce the embarrassment of a
patriarch.
40 Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:380.
41 An example of complete elimination is the omission of how many pure animals are
brought into the Ark: two or seven? For this point see ibid., 1:309.
occurs in the treatment of Gen 1:24 = Jub. 2:13. The former begins with God’s
command that “the earth bring forth living creatures.” Gen 1:25, however, states
that “God made” them. Jubilees resolves this by privileging Gen 1:25. Ultimately,
these omissions support Jubilees’ goal of affirming God as the primary creator.42
Jubilees further underscores this goal by omitting: “Let us make man in our
image and likeness” (Gen 1:26). Instead, it records: “After all this, He made man-
kind—as one man and a woman he made them …” (Jub. 2:14). God creates, not
others or with others.43 At stake for Jubilees is God’s position as the sole creator.
The fact that “let us make” refers to angels is unproblematic. That this is the
case may be seen in Jubilees’ treatment of another passage in which God acts
in concert with angels. It preserves sections of the Tower of Babel narrative in
which God tells His angels:
Then the Lord our God said to us: “The people here are one, and they have
begun to work. Now nothing will elude them. Come, let us go down and
confuse their tongues so that they do not understand one another and
are dispersed into cities and nations and one plan no longer remains with
them until the day of judgment”.
Jub. 10:2244
In light of this passage, the omission of “let us make man” more likely stems
from a desire to glorify God as the sole creator than discomfort with angels
acting in concert with God.
Jub. 2:14 also omits the idea that God (and the angels) created man in “our
image and likeness.”45 This, too, may reflect a desire to ascribe God the sta-
tus of sole creator.46 Kugel suggests that Jubilees skips this section of the verse
42 Werman, Book of Jubilees, 158, notes this pattern. On other aspects of Jub. 2:13 reworking
Gen 1:24, see Pakkala, God’s Word Omitted, 159–61; George J. Brooke, “Exegetical Strategies
in Jubilees 1–2: New Light from 4QJubilees,” in Studies in the Book of Jubilees (ed. Matthias
Albani, Jörg Frey, and Armin Lange; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 41–42. See further in
van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 41, 44.
43 Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 44; Werman, Book of Jubilees, 158.
44 It must be noted that even within the Tower of Babel narrative God ends up acting alone.
Jub. 10:24 states: “and He mixed up their tongues.” This may be stand in for Gen 11:8, which
records God acting alone: “So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of
all the earth, and they left off building the city.”
45 Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 45, claims that it is difficult to surmise the rea-
son for the omission.
46 See James C. VanderKam, “Genesis 1 in Jubilees 2,” DSD 1 (1994): 314.
54 Berkovitz
because it “was apparently too anthropomorphic for the author.”47 This argu-
ment, however, does not explain why Jubilees allows the image of God to stand
in its retelling of Gen 9:6 = Jub. 6:8: “The person who sheds the blood of man
will have his blood shed by man because he made mankind in the image of
the Lord.” Additionally, after recounting Jacob’s change of name to Israel (Gen
35:9–13), Jub. 32:20 notes that: “When he had finished speaking with him, he
went up from him, and Jacob kept watching until he had gone up into heaven.”
The biblical text does not contain the last part of this verse—its most anthro-
pomorphic feature. In addition to declaring God the sole creator, the omission
of “image of God” in Jub. 2:14 may also reflect its general preference to avoid
replication, saving “image of God” for the context of blood and bloodshed—a
particularly important issue for the author.48 Regardless, we must revisit and
revise the claim that Jubilees omits biblical material because it seeks to avoid
anthropomorphism.
2.6 Omissions and Etymologies

The author of Jubilees had a penchant for etymology. He not only maintains
name etymologies found in the biblical text, but also innovates or records
many others.49 In light of this strong preference, omission of etymological
reasoning given in the biblical text requires explanation. The meaning of Eve’s
name provides one example. According to Gen 3:20, “Man called his wife’s name
Eve, for she is the mother of all living things.” In retelling this section of Genesis,
Jubilees omits the etymology. This omission likely stems from the problematic
etymological reasoning. Eve is not the mother of all life, but merely human
life.50 Creating an ontological distinction between human and animal life

48 Blood is particularly significant to Jubilees. It contains many injunctions against blood-
shed, eating blood, and not washing off blood. See Cana Werman, “Consumption of
Blood and Its Covering in the Priestly and Rabbinic Traditions,” Tarbiz 63 (1994): 173–183;
Hanneken, “The Sin of the Gentiles.”
49 Some examples include Shelach (8:5), Peleg (8:8), Reu (10:18), Serug (11:6), Terach (11:12),
Nebaioth (17:14).
50 Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 104, suggests that the omission may be delib-
erate but does not suggest a reason. He does so because he thinks that Jubilees leaves
out “many other naming speeches.” He lists 19 naming speeches in note 93. The etymo-
logical derivations for these are either represented in Jubilees or omitted for good cause:
Gen 2:23—Jubilees omits Gen 2 entirely; Gen 3:20—omitted due to problem discussed
above; Gen 4:1—omitted because of problematic etymology; Gen 4:25—Jub. 4:7;
Gen 5:29—Jub. 4:28; Gen 16:11—entire episode omitted because of doublet; Gen 29:32, 33,
34, 35; 30:6, 8, 11, 13, 18, 20, 24 are the names of the tribes and are systematically omitted.
likely also underpins the transposition of Gen 3:18, God’s desire to make Adam
a helper, until after Gen 3:20, Adam naming all the animals, a transposition
that Kugel attributes to the scandalous inference of God attempting to pair
Adam with an animal—a violation of the prohibition on bestiality.51
Jubilees also omits the etymology of Cain’s name. Cain’s name presents both
theological and interpretive problems for early exegetes.52 Jubilees is no ex-
ception. Cain’s etymology in Gen 4:1 roughly translates as either: “I acquired
a man with God,” perhaps implying that Eve became pregnant from God;53 or,
“I acquired man, God,”54 implying that Eve birthed God. Jubilees likely would
not entertain either possibility and omitted it, perhaps an easier tactic than
fashioning a new or revised etymology.55
Ultimately, Jubilees is an extremely sensitive reader of Genesis, often omit-
ting passages for the sake of literary or theological concerns. It exalts God, is
Israel-focused, avoids potential misreadings and prefers to say things once.
3 Transpositions
3.1 Introduction
Jubilees counterbalance some of its omissions by moving eliminated narrative
details to other contexts. In this way, Jubilees conserves parts of the biblical
text it removes. Thus, transposition often begins with an act of omission. The
reasons for and functions of transpositions vary. In total, however, they repre-
sent a general tendency to preserve as much biblical text as possible. For the
purposes of this paper I have organized the transpositions into two categories:
I cannot determine why at the moment, but this should be treated as one unit. Menasseh
and Ephraim are to be treated similarly, and are part of a section of Jubilees that mirrors
the biblical text the least. Regardless, the addition of multiple names in the early part of
Jubilees places the omission of Eve’s and Cain’s into sharper focus.
52 See, for example, its treatment in Gen. Rab. 22:1.
53 This is not the only problematic way to read this verse. Perhaps Jubilees is also sensitive
about combining God and Eve as co-creators?
54 This depends on whether one understands the ‫ את‬as “with” or as an object marker.
For further on the problematic etymology of Cain’s name, see Ilana Pardes, “Beyond
Genesis 3,” Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 17 (1989): 167–75. For a de-
tailed bibliography on the issue, see van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 137 n. 45.
55 Van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 137, notes the omission and the problematic
etymology. I disagree that the omission of both Eve’s and Cain’s name are due to the at-
tempt to “diminish the negative side of Eden.” The etymology itself is troubling enough.
56 Berkovitz
“local” and “extended”. “Local transpositions” are those that occur in relatively
close proximity to the site of deletion.56 The results of these transpositions are
often akin to the “re-arrangement” Bernstein described with regards to Genesis
Apocryphon: smoother narrative and sharper rhetoric. The appearance of de-
tails relatively far from its originally deleted context typify the “extended trans-
position”. These serve either to draw connections between passages, or simply
to conserve previously deleted biblical text.
3.2 Local Transposition

Jubilees often transposes locally for narrative effect. For example, Gen 3:6 re-
counts: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that
it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one
wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who
was with her, and he ate.” Jub. 3:20 inverts the order of Eve’s desire and seeing.
According to Jubilees, “The woman saw that the tree was delightful and pleas-
ing to the eye and (that) its fruit was good to eat. So she took some of it and
ate (it).” She first sees that it was a delight, and then that it was good to eat.
This extremely local transposition tightens the biblical text by presenting the
expected order of first seeing the tree as delightful and then noticing its fruit
are fit for consumption.57
Transposition to smooth out a narrative also occurs when Jubilees moves
the famine that drove Isaac to Gerar (Gen 26:1 = Jub. 24:2) to before Jacob’s
purchase of the birthright (Gen 25:29 = Jub. 24:3). Esau’s hunger thus stems not
from his exhausting fieldtrip, but from widespread famine.58
Another instance of local transposition occurs in Jubilees’ discussion of the
growth of Isaac’s wealth in Gerar. Gen 26:12–13 reads: “(12) Isaac sowed seed in
that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him,
(13) and the man became rich; he prospered more and more until he became
very wealthy.” Jub. 24:14–15 inverts the order of these two verses. Perhaps the
inversion is intended to shift the initial cause and effect of Gen 26:12–13? Gen
26:12–13 reads as if Isaac first sowed seeds, reaped many, was blessed by God
56 The transposition of Gen 1:18 (discussed above) represents such an example.
57 Point made by Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:298. It is always possible that these local transpositions
are actually evidence of Jubilees working from a different base text than that of the proto-
MT. See van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 94–95. Werman, Book of Jubilees, 186–
87 suggests that Jubilees is solving two problems. First, how could a tree be good to eat?
Second, how can a tree understand?
58 See Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:379.
and therefore became wealthy. Jubilees, instead, uses the abundant harvest as
an indication of Jacob’s prosperity.59
3.3 Extended Transposition

Extended transpositions particularly underscore Jubilees’ scriptural conser-
vatism, the penchant for relocating to other context details it omits from its
sequential retelling of Genesis. The earliest example is Jubilees’ use of Genesis
2. As explored above, Jubilees omits most of Genesis 2 because it duplicates
the creation narrative. Key details, however, are transposed to other logical
areas. For example, Jubilees moves the creation of the Garden of Eden—one
of the holiest places in the world60—to its retelling of the 3rd day of creation
(Jub. 2:7).61 The Garden is a central plot point the narrative cannot do without.
Jubilees also places the commandment to “work and guard” the Garden of
Eden (Gen 2:15) in its summary of Adam and Eve’s first seven years:62
59 The other example of this kind of transposition is the inversion of Gen 29:31–32 in
Jub. 28:11–12. Some other examples of local transpositions include: Gen 13:18 = Jub. 14:10—
Dwelling by Oaks of Mamre and building an altar, which is moved to the covenant be-
tween the pieces; Gen 23:1 = Jub. 19:7, the actual years of Sarah’s life; Gen 6:3 = Jub. 5:8. ‫לא‬
‫ ידון‬as applied to Nephilim (See Ibid., 1:307.); Gen 3:7 = Jubilees 3:21—Eve covers herself
up before giving Adam to eat. Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:298, thinks this has to do with modesty.
Note that earlier in Jub. 3:16 it only says that Adam was naked, though Eve is likely implied.
60 See for example Jubilees 3:12. For the motif of Garden of Eden as Temple, see Segal,
The Book of Jubilees, 49. See also, Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “Eden and the Temple:
The Rewriting of Genesis 2:4–3:24 in ‘The Book of Jubilees,’ ” in Paradise Interpreted:
Representations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity (ed. Gerhard Luttikhuizen;
Leiden: Brill, 1999), 63–94; Michael Segal, “The First Patriarchs: Law and Narrative in
the Garden of Eden Story,” in Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical
Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Devorah Dimant and Reinhard Gregor
Kratz; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 77–100.
61 For the reasons behind the transposition see van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted,
34–35. Alternatively, seemingly important narrative details such as any reference to the
Tree of Life are systematically omitted. Perhaps this is related to the rather inconsequen-
tial placement of the Tree of Life in 1 Enoch 24? For the clam that the language of Jub. 2:7
best resembles Genesis 2 see Werman, Book of Jubilees, 155.
62 This transposition may first appear in the Jubilees legal passage that describes the origins
of Lev 12, impurity stemming from birth: “After 40 days had come to an end for Adam in
the land where he had been created, we brought him into the Garden of Eden to work
and keep it. His wife was brought (there) on the eightieth day. After this she entered the
Garden of Eden” (Jub. 3:9, emphasis mine). For the time being, my observations regard-
ing Jubilees’ penchant for non-duplication pertains to the narrative portions that rewrite
Genesis, and not to the halakhic Heavenly Tablet sections. The Halakhic and Narrative
portions of Jubilees are quite distinct from one another, and sometimes at odds. See, in
58 Berkovitz
During the first week of the first jubilee Adam and his wife spent the
seven years in the Garden of Eden working and guarding it. We gave him
work and were teaching him (how) to do everything that was appropri-
ate for working (it). While he was working (it) he was naked but did not
realize (it) nor was he ashamed. He would guard the garden against birds,
animals, and cattle. He would gather its fruit and eat (it) and would store
its surplus for himself and his wife. He would store what was being kept.
Jub. 3:15–16, emphasis mine
These verses contain a transposition and exegetical expansion of the com-

mand to work and guard the Garden. A hyper-sensitive reader of Genesis 2
would ask how a newly-formed Adam would know how to work the land, and
what exactly Adam would guard.63 Jubilees answers the former by supplying
Adam with angelic guidance. It resolves the latter by noting that Adam guard-
ed fruits from animals and set some aside.64
Jubilees also transposes the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge
and its consequence from its initial position in Gen 2:17 to the death of Adam
in Jub. 4:30. Genesis 2:17 is the first time God prohibits Adam from eating from
the Tree. By omitting this section, Jubilees places the first discussion of the pro-
hibition in Eve’s statement that she can neither eat from nor touch the Tree of
Knowledge. For Jubilees, is it possible that God prohibited even touching the
Tree of Knowledge? Regardless, Jubilees does find use for Gen 2:17 in describing
the conditions of Adam’s death:
He lacked 70 years from 1000 years because 1000 years are one day in the
testimony of heaven. For this reason it was written regarding the tree of
general, Segal, The Book of Jubilees. If dislike of redundancy is a consistent characteristic,

then perhaps the author of Jubilees drew from one narrative source. On the distinction
between Halakha and Narrative see also James Kugel, “The Composition History of the
Book of ‘Jubilees,’ ” RevQ 26.4 (104) (2014): 531; James Kugel, “On the Interpolations in the
‘Book of Jubilees,’ ” RevQ 24.2 (94) (2009): 215–72. See pages 26–7 for discussion of this
particular legal section. For a moderating critique see James VanderKam, “Jubilees as the
Composition of One Author?,” RevQ 26.4 (104) (2014): 501–16.
63 Or, perhaps, what kind of work would Adam do?
64 Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:298 argues that Jubilees plays on both senses of shamar in this passage:
Adam guards the fruit from the birds, but he also “stores” (= shamar) the already harvest-
ed fruit. For further see, van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 90. See also Werman,
Book of Jubilees, 186. All three do not connect its appearance here as a means of conserv-
ing material deleted.
knowledge: ‘On the day that you eat from it you will die’. Therefore he did
not complete the years of this day because he died during it.
Jub. 4:30
In this passage, Jubilees attempts to explain why Adam only lived 930 years.
It transposes Gen 2:17b, “for on the day you eat from it you will surely die,” to
this context, and interprets ‘day’ to equal one thousand years.65 The prohibi-
tion that begins the drama in Genesis concludes it in Jubilees.66 These trans-
positions from Gen 2 conserve elements of a narrative omitted due to stylistic
concerns.
Another example of moving a text from the beginning of a narrative to its
conclusion occurs when Jubilees transposes Genesis’ declaration of Noah’s
righteousness (Gen 6:9), which introduces Noah, to his death (Jub. 10:17).67
Genesis 6:9 introduces Noah: “These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was
a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.” Jubilees
skips over this verse in its sequential retelling—jumping from Gen 6:8 to 6:13—
and transposes it to Jub. 10:17, the account Noah’ death:
(He) who lived longer on the earth than (other) people except Enoch be-
cause of his righteousness in which he was perfect ([i.e.] in his righteous-
ness); because Enoch’s 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.
This verse references Genesis 6:9 and exegetically expands it. “Because of his
righteousness in which he was perfect” directly refers to “ish tzadik tamim.”
“(He) who lived longer on the earth than (other) people except Enoch” likely
highlights a particular reading of “in his generation” (dorotav). In his generation
65 On the interpretation of one thousand years see Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 311; Kugel,
“Jubilees,” 1:305; van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 170–71. Werman, Book of
Jubilees, 205.
66 This example, though, may be suspect because “for this reason it was written” seems to
indicate a written text. Since this verse does not appear in Jubilees, it is likely referring to
Genesis proper.
67 van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 192, proposes that the omission of Gen 6:9–10 is
due to the genealogy in Jub. 4:33. This does not explain why Noah’s righteous and blame-
less status is omitted here. I suggest that there may be a pattern of preference for com-
bining beginnings with ends. Further, the mention of Noah’s righteousness in Jub. 5:9 is
unproblematic because it is, once more, in a halakhic passage.
60 Berkovitz
he lived longer, but he still could not compete with Enoch. The desire to com-
pare Noah with Enoch further stems from an important shared trait: both
walked (hlk) with God (Gen 5:22, 24; 6:9).
Jubilees does not only transpose forwards, but also backwards.68 Jub. 10:18–
26 retells the Tower of Babel narrative. It preserves most of the biblical text,
but omits the first verse in Genesis: “and the whole earth was of one language
and speech” (Gen 11:1). These exact words, however, do appear much earlier
in discussing the exile of the animals from the Garden of Eden: “On that day
the mouths of all the animals, the cattle, the birds, everything that walks and
everything that moves about were made incapable of speaking because all
of them used to converse with one another in one language and one tongue”
(Jub. 3:28, emphasis mine). In transposing this verse, Jubilees highlights the
similarities between the scattering of the animals and the dispersion of hu-
mankind. Both were able to communicate effortlessly, and both resided in one
location. More than crafting a smoother narrative, this transposition draws a
connection between two similar stories.69
Jubilees’ retelling of the Binding of Isaac (Gen 22 = Jub. 18) provides anoth-
er example of its tendency to omit perceived redundancies as well as its aim
to conserve biblical text by transposing ignored material to another context.
After Isaac asks Abraham where the sacrificial lamb is, Abraham responds:
“He said: ‘The Lord will provide for himself a sheep for the sacrifice, my son’ ”
(Jub. 18:7). This response replicates Gen 22:8 with one significant phrase miss-
ing: “and they both went together.” This omission results from the presence of
this exact formulation two verses earlier: “He took the wood for the sacrifice
and placed it on his son Isaac’s shoulders. He took fire and a knife in his hands.
The two of them went together to that place” (Jub. 18:5 = Gen 22:6).70 Jubilees,
68 For the related phenomenon, “anticipation,” see Bernstein, “Rearrangement, Anticipation
and Harmonization as Exegetical Features in the Genesis Apocryphon.”
69 Both Phillip Michael Sherman, Babel’s Tower Translated: Genesis 11 and Ancient Jewish
Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 104; and van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted, 328,
note the transposition. The reason why Gen 11:1 does not show up here is not due to the
need to avoid the suggestion that Shinar had only one language (contra van Ruiten), but
rather due to the stylistic concern of non-repetition. I further disagree with Sherman,
105, who suggests that 3:28 indicates that humans and animals were able to speak to one
another. Humans do not appear in the verse. It seems to imply that animals were once
able to communicate amongst themselves but now lost that privilege. This loss of unified
speech then mirrors the Tower of Babel narrative in which humankind was once able to
communicate flawlessly amongst themselves and then lose that privilege.
70 van Ruiten, Abraham in the Book of Jubilees, 211, notes three instances in which duplica-
tions of words and phrases are removed from the Binding of Isaac narrative. He does not
comment on the transposition of our phrase.
however, does not completely erase the second half of Gen 22:8. After describ-
ing Abraham’s blessing to Jacob in the sight of Rebecca (Jub. 19:15–29), it notes,
“The two of them departed together from Abraham” (Jub. 19:30). By borrowing
this phrase from the Binding of Isaac, perhaps Jubilees wishes to emphasize
the chain of continuity from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, even if at the moment
“Isaac loved Esau much more than Jacob” (Jub. 19:31).71
Finally, Jubilees also transposes details in order to dramatically change the
outcome of narratives in Genesis. Genesis 28:6–9 describes Esau’s realization
that “the daughters’ of Canaan were displeasing in the eyes of Isaac his father”
(Gen 28:8). Wishing to obey his father’s desire he, “went to Ishmael and took
Mahalath daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be
his wife in addition to the wives he had” (Gen 28:9). These verses portray Esau
as conciliatory and obedient to his father. Jubilees omits this entire episode
in its sequential retelling, proceeding from Isaac’s command to secure a wife
in Padan Aram (Gen 28:2–5 = Jub. 27:9–11) to Jacob’s departure (Gen 28:10 =
Jub. 27:12). It does, however, move Esau’s marital details to after Jacob’s return.
Jubilees 29:14–20 contrasts Jacob’s respect for his parents with Esau’s disre-
spect. Jacob supported them; Esau abandoned them:
For Isaac had returned from the well of the oath, had gone up to the tower
of his father Abraham, and had settled there away from his son Esau, be-
cause, at the time when Jacob went to Mesopotamia, Esau had married
Mahalath, Ishmael’s daughter. He had gathered all his father’s flocks and
his wives and had gone up and lived in Mt. Seir. He had left his father
Isaac alone at the well of the oath.
Jub. 29:17–18, (emphasis mine)
Esau’s taking an Ishmaelite wife, a sign of obedience in Genesis, becomes

the stimulus for the disrespectable acts of abandoning his father and steal-
ing his flock. The missing details are not misplaced, but rather transposed and
resignified.
4 Conclusion
Jubilees’ reworking of Genesis contains more than additions and revisions. In

this paper, I have attempted to shed further light on the discussion of Jubilees’
71 The fact that the phrase is transposed elsewhere may suggest that Jubilees tends to avoids
linguistic redundancies within one single unit, and motivic redundancies throughout the
text.
62 Berkovitz
working and exegetical practices by examining and classifying two additional

compositional strategies: omissions and transpositions. Jubilees employs the
former to staunchly defend God’s omniscience, remove details irrelevant to
Israelite history, omit redundancies and erase verses that lead to contradiction
or discomfort. Jubilees uses the latter to tighten narrative flow, connect one
story to another, conserve previously omitted biblical details, and even provide
an entirely new meaning to an older biblical narrative.
What role does omission and transposition play in other rewritten works? Is
Jubilees unique because of its closeness to its base biblical text? How do omis-
sion and transposition as exegetical practices relate to works not categorized
as ‘rewritten bible’? Further research will clarify these questions. We can state
with confidence, however, that our understanding of Second Temple bibli-
cal interpretation would be enriched by paying attention to the missing and
misplaced.
Chart of Specific Omissions and Transpositions Discussed
Omitted
Gen 1:20—Water bringing forth creatures omitted in favor of God in Jub. 2:11
Gen 1:24—Earth bringing forth creatures omitted in favor of God in Jub. 2:13
Gen 1:26—“Let us make man” omitted in favor of its mention in Gen 9:6 =
Jub. 6:8
Gen 2:4–17—second creation narrative completely omitted.
Gen 3:8–13—God walking in Garden and asking ‘where are you’ expected
between Jub. 3:22–23
Gen 3:20—Etymology of Eve’s name is omitted in Jub. 4:1
Gen 4:9—“where is Abel your brother”, excluded from Jub. 4:3–4
Gen 4:17–22—Cain’s genealogy until 6th generation.
Gen 6:6–7—God feeling sorry and repenting having created man excluded
from Jub. 5:3–5
Gen 10—Only the sons of Shem, Ham and Japheth are mentioned in Jub. 7,
with only line of Arpahshad (Gen 11:10ff) gets full attention in Jub. 8.
Gen 16:4–14—First banishment of Hagar omitted
Gen 18:13–14—God asking why Sarah laughed omitted from Jub. 16:2
Gen 20:2–18—Abraham’s sojourn in Gerar omitted, expected around Jub. 16:10
Gen 21:22–32—Omits the first time the well is named Well of Oath in favor of
the second mention in Gen 26:26–32 = Jub. 24:24–26.
Gen 22:20–24—Full recounting of family of Nahor becomes only about Bethuel
and Rebecca in Jub. 19:10
Gen 25:12–18—Ishmael’s genealogy omitted

Gen 26:6–11—Incident between Abimelekh and Rebecca omitted. Expected
around Jub. 24:13
Gen 36:1–30, 40–43—Esau’s genealogy omitted, excepted somewhere between
Jub. 33:23–34:1
Transposed
Gen 2:8—Garden of Eden moves to Jub. 2:7, the 3rd day of creation
Gen 2:15—Commandment to “work and guard” moved to Jub. 3:9/3:15
Gen 2:17—Consequence of eating from the fruit moved to Jub. 4:30
Gen 3:18—God’s desire to make man a helper (Jub. 3:4) transposed to after
Gen 3:20, Adam names the animals = Jub. 3:1.
Gen 3:6—Jub. 3:20 inverts the order of Eve’s desire and seeing
Gen 4:25–26—Birth and naming of Seth transposed to Jub. 4:7–8, before Cain’s
genealogy in Gen 4:17–22 (= Jub. 4:9)
Gen 6:9—declaration of Noah’s righteousness moved to his dead in Jub. 10:17
Gen 9:23—Japheth and Shem take the garment becomes to Shem first taking
the garment and then he and Japheth act in Jub. 7:9
Gen 11:1—First verse of Tower of Babel narrative removed from Jub. 10:18 and
placed in Jub. 3:28
Gen 22:8—“And they walked together” transposed Jub. 19:30
Gen 25:25–26—Jacob born after Esau becomes Jacob being mentioned before
Esau in Jub. 19:13
Gen 26:1 = Jub. 24:2—Jubilees’ movement of the famine that drove Isaac to
Gerar to before Jacob’s purchase of the birthright (Gen 25:29 = Jub. 24:3)
Gen 26:12–13 inverted in 24:14–15
Gen 28:9—Esau taking Mahalath as a wife moved from expected place in
Jub. 27:9–12 to 29:17–18
Gen 36:31–39—Edomite king list, expected somewhere in between Jub. 33:23–
34:1, repositioned to Jub. 38:15–24
CHAPTER 4
Hot at Qumran, Cold in Jerusalem:

A Reconsideration of Some Late Second Temple
Period Attitudes to the Scriptures and their
Interpretation
George J. Brooke
1 Introduction
Many scholars of biblical interpretation in late Second Temple period Judaism

are indebted to Moshe Bernstein for providing them with suitable frames of
reference, finely-tuned insights, and rich resources with which to interact.
Those are now mostly assembled in his essay collection, Reading and Re-
Reading Scripture at Qumran, which is already well established as a point of
reference in the field.1 Many of my own published studies on biblical interpre-
tation, especially that interpretation which is found in both the non-sectarian
and the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls found in eleven caves at and near Qumran,
have been either directly engaged with his work or indirectly influenced by his
many powerful insights and methods of analysis. Two well-known instances
make the point. One of our first major interactions concerned the suitable in-
terpretation of Commentary on Genesis A (4Q252). Commentary on Genesis A
is a collection of interpretative excerpts, of various genres, strung together in
the order of Genesis, from Genesis 6 to Genesis 49. In 1992 I was entrusted
with preparing the principal edition of the manuscript for the Discoveries
in the Judaean Desert Series.2 Some preliminary studies and editions had
already been published3 and Moshe Bernstein was one of the first to engage
1 Moshe J. Bernstein, Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran: Vol. 1, Genesis and Its
Interpretation; Vol. 2, Law, Pesher and the History of Interpretation (STDJ 107; Leiden: Brill,
2013).
2 Published as George J. Brooke, “252. 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” Qumran Cave 4.XVII:
Parabiblical Texts Part 3 (ed. James C. VanderKam; DJD 22; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),
185–207.
3 See especially, Ben-Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg, A Preliminary Edition of the
Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four: Fascicle Two
(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992), 212–15; Robert H. Eisenman and
Hot At Qumran, Cold In Jerusalem 65
with the exegetical profile of the text.4 Whilst I was occupied with trying to
discern some overall thematic concern of the compiler of the Commentary,5
Moshe Bernstein was concerned with trying to discover much more precisely
what it was, particularly in the precise phraseology of the text of Genesis, that
was motivating the various simple-sense items of interpretation.6 On another
occasion, a few years later in 1999, when I found myself as President of the
British Association of Jewish Studies, I was delighted to welcome Moshe to
Manchester as the guest of the Association for its annual conference. His paper
was a fine survey of interpretation in the targumim, his other main research
interest;7 but my Presidential address was an attempt to convince him that I
could indeed engage with the plain meaning of the text, both in its own right
and as interpreters in Jewish antiquity might engage with it.8
This essay in Moshe Bernstein’s honour is of a somewhat different sort. It is
a kind of thought experiment, a brief attempt at trying to explain something
of the differing attitudes to Scripture and its interpretation between what is
evident in what has been found in the Qumran caves and what was likely to
be taking place in Jerusalem, especially in Hasmonean circles. So, rather than
being a study in the mechanics of exegesis or the processes of Jewish inter-
pretation, it takes a step back and investigates what might be some of the
components that constitute the character of the attitudes to Scripture that are
reflected in the various uses of Scripture in antiquity.
2 Background
Over the years I have found in my teaching that I have regularly returned to the
insights of Claude Lévi-Strauss; I have even published a study on how some
of his insights might assist modern readers in the better understanding of the
Michael O. Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (Rockport: Element, 1992), 77–89; Timothy H.
Lim, “The Chronology of the Flood Story in a Qumran Text (4Q252),” JJS 43 (1992): 288–98.
4 Moshe J. Bernstein, “4Q252: From Re-Written Bible to Biblical Commentary,” JJS 45 (1994):
1–27; repr. in Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran, 1.92–125.
5 George J. Brooke, “The Thematic Content of 4Q252,” JQR 85 (1994–95): 33–59.
6 Moshe J. Bernstein, “4Q252: Method and Context, Genre and Sources (A Response to George
J. Brooke, ‘The Thematic Content of 4Q252’),” JQR 85 (1994–95): 61–79; repr. in Reading and
Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran, 1.133–50.
7 Moshe J. Bernstein, “The Aramaic Targumim: The Many Faces of the Jewish Biblical
Experience,” in Jewish Ways of Reading the Bible (ed. George J. Brooke; JSS Supplement 11;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 133–65.
8 George J. Brooke, “Reading the Plain Meaning of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Jewish
Ways of Reading the Bible, 67–90.
66 Brooke
literary dynamics of the narrative of Joseph and Aseneth.9 I had not consid-
ered in any detail the relevance of Lévi-Strauss for understanding scriptural in-
terpretation in antiquity until I read John W. Rogerson’s remarkable A Theology
of the Old Testament.10
John Rogerson is a careful reader of the ideas of others; some might consid-
er that he has distorted or misrepresented the insights of Lévi-Strauss, not least
because he seems to make value judgements where Lévi-Strauss avoided them
and also because he approaches Lévi-Srauss through the way that he is read in
the writings of Jan Assmann.11 Nevertheless, in this study I wish to work with
the ways in which Rogerson re-presents Lévi-Strauss, slight distortion or not.
Rogerson is motivated in his work by a strong concern for trying to find a way
of using the resources of historical criticism “in the service of the interpreta-
tion of Old Testament texts, on the assumption that they have something to
say to the present.”12 Though some readers of this essay might indeed begin to
wonder about the significance of the categories used for how texts, especially
sacred texts, are used in the present, my concern is to use Rogerson’s work to
wonder about the character of the attitudes behind the transmission of texts
and traditions in various settings in the late Second Temple period.
Rogerson is concerned to describe the role the construction of history plays
in various societies. For him Claude Lévi-Strauss casts light on two basic cat-
egories of society; in his book The Savage Mind (La Pensée Sauvage) he dis-
tinguished broadly between “hot” and “cold” societies.13 Briefly put “cold”
societies are those “in which mechanisms were developed for neutralizing the
effects of economic or social upheavals. It was not that such societies had no
history, but that they were able to transform their history into a ‘form without
content’.”14 Assmann has pointed out that it is important to keep in mind that
“cold” societies do not represent “culture at an all-time low,” but that through
9 George J. Brooke, “Joseph, Aseneth, and Lévi-Strauss,” in Narrativity in Biblical and Related
Texts/La Narrativité dans la Bible et les textes apparentés (ed. George J. Brooke and Jean-
Daniel Kaestli; BETL 149; Leuven: Peeters/University Press, 2000), 185–200.
10 John W. Rogerson, A Theology of the Old Testament: Cultural Memory, Communication and
Being Human (London: SPCK, 2009).
11 See, e.g., Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2006), 11–14; Assmann uses Lévi-Strauss to interpret the tribal festivals of
the Osage Indians. Intriguingly Lévi-Strauss is nowhere mentioned in the otherwise ex-
cellent survey volume edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, A Companion to Cultural
Memory Studies (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010).
12 Rogerson, A Theology of the Old Testament, 12.
13 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1966).
14 Rogerson, A Theology of the Old Testament, 25; citing Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 235.
particular intellectual strategies and forms of institution, they resist any struc-
tural change that might permit history to enter.15 On the other hand, “hot” soci-
eties “were those that were able to internalize and deploy the historical process
in order to make it ‘the moving power of their development’.”16
Rogerson has underlined that there are no societies that are entirely “hot”
or entirely “cold.” Rather the metaphorical terms describe options that are
present in various mixtures in most societies. Nevertheless, Rogerson has con-
tinued his use of Lévi-Strauss and Assmann by setting up an intriguing set of
readings of historical works. In the first place he has argued that Chronicles
represents a “classical example of ‘cold’ history in the Old Testament.”17 How
so? A relatively uncontroversial reading of 1–2 Chronicles shows how it stresses
continuity with the past, through David right back to the beginning of time
with genealogies that begin with Adam. “Anything in Samuel or Kings that
has to do with successful rebellions is omitted or passed over in a few verses.
Chronicles says nothing of David’s desertion to the Philistines … there is no
mention of the coups d’état that led to the reigns of Omri and Ahab, nor of the
prophetic revolution led by Elijah and Elisha that brought the downfall of the
house of Omri.”18 Rogerson has proposed that one of the principal purposes
of Chronicles was to present things as a matter of stability reaching back to
the beginning of time. And through that picture of stability the religious com-
munity of Jerusalem of the fourth century BCE is legitimated, together with its
temple and other institutions.
Over against the “cold” history of Chronicles, Rogerson has argued that the
so-called Deuteronomistic History (Joshua–2 Kings) is “hot” history, by which
he means to indicate that it is history presented in such a way that any audi-
ence is provoked to examine their situation with lenses that create the kind
of critical attitude that is in search of changing and improving the situation.
“Looked at as a whole, the Deuteronomistic History is characterized by change.
This is in stark contrast to the stability represented in Chronicles. The change,
or rather changes, are ascribed to moral and religious factors.”19 At least part of
the dynamism of the Deuteronomistic History can be ascribed to the role that
the Book of Deuteronomy itself has played in the construction of the social
and moral perspective of the narrative in which divine favour cannot be as-
sumed. The storyline is replete with multiple instances of instability, especially
15 Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 12.

16 Rogerson, A Theology of the Old Testament, 26; citing Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 234.
68 Brooke
rulers who have no heirs as in the Book of Judges. But for Rogerson, “what
makes the Deuteronomistic History ‘hot’ is the fact that it seems to anticipate
a time when, under God’s rule, the people of ‘Israel’ … will enjoy permanent
peace and prosperity. Yet this hoped-for state never materializes.”20 Rogerson
then goes on to argue that the narrative of the wilderness wanderings is an-
other ‘hot’ history, which moves from crisis to crisis but which portrays a sense
of hope against all the odds.
All these scriptural narrative histories are in large measure social constructs.
For the purposes of this short essay it is not necessary to belabour the descrip-
tions of the similarities and differences between them. Rather I wish to take
the basic ideas expressed in respect to societies and their constructions of
cultural memories through the use of texts and traditions, and to transpose
them to some discussion about attitudes to those texts in the first century BCE
or thereabouts, remembering all the while that no attitude is likely to be en-
tirely “hot” or “cold.” My thesis is that the dominant influence of the Book of
Deuteronomy in several significant compositions that have come to light in the
caves at and near Qumran suggests that it is not inappropriate to read several
of the pre-sectarian texts and their sectarian successors as promoting predom-
inantly a “hot” attitude to the tradition. Over against such an attitude, it is pos-
sible to construct some aspects of what was taking place contemporaneously
in Jerusalem as concerned in large measure with asserting, unsuccessfully in
the end, a kind of stability that reflects some of those “cold” characteristics
outlined by Lévi-Strauss, Assmann, and Rogerson.
3 Hot Attitudes at Qumran
Something of the suggestiveness of this essay becomes clearer when at least

four sets of observations are made about how some of the compositions from
the caves at and near Qumran reflect a “hot” approach to texts and traditions.
First, there is the existence of multiple forms of the authoritative texts, both
scriptural and non-scriptural ones; and together with that evidence there is
the explicit sense that what is being received as in some way authoritative is
nevertheless incomplete. Second, there is the evidence for a concern with the
internalisation of text and tradition in several significant ways. Third, there
is the presence of several theological conundra which indicate an open-
ended and hopeful outlook despite what might be thought of as unfortunate

circumstances. And fourth, there is the ongoing vivacious interpretation of

scriptural and other texts.
First, it is widely recognised that the manuscript copies of the various books
of authoritative texts, most of which ended up in the rabbinic Bible, contain
multiple, mostly minor variations from one another and from later forms of
the texts and the versions. While some scholars have generally paid attention
to the continuities between the evidence from the Qumran caves and much
later rabbinic texts, it remains the case that for the textual remains there is no
single manuscript copy of a scriptural book that agrees letter for letter with
those later texts. Various theories have been put forward to explain that diver-
sity, all of which have a strong emphasis on diachronic explanations. The fact
remains, however, that the texts of scripture existed in a variety in one set of
caves synchronically. Unless one insists that only one form of the text ever has
authority at any one time (a form of diachronic explanation), then there has
to be some kind of explanation that allows for the existence of multiple forms
of the same authoritative work. It is for that reason that I consider that Eugene
Ulrich’s attempt at giving some priority to multiple editions in his explanation
of scriptural diversity is the most appealing option.21 Whatever the case the
diversity of texts of authoritative scriptures, and indeed of other compositions
such as the Rule of the Community, indicate a strong preference amongst their
copyists and traditors for an appreciation of change and development and the
“heat” that accompanies such diversity and its ongoing changeability.
Second, “hot” societies, “hot” histories, “hot” attitudes to sacred texts are
in some measure about the ability to internalize changes of all kinds so as to
make them significant for personal and social change and development. In the
sectarian scrolls from the Qumran caves such internalisation is evident in sev-
eral ways, only a few of which can be mentioned here. To begin with it is appar-
ent in the evidence for the practice of private prayer as in the use of the tefillin.
Notably the tefillin from Qumran generally contain relevant texts from Exodus
and Deuteronomy, those parts of the Torah that reflect a “hot” ideal to which
one should change and direct one’s life. In addition, internalisation is evident
in the way in which certain significant idioms refer to the moral appropriation
of the significance of being part of the community: it is a community that pays
21 See Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Studies in the Dead
Sea Scrolls and Related Literature; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 34–50, 99–120;
ibid., The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (VTSup 169;
Leiden: Brill, 2015), 94–103, 201–7.
70 Brooke
attention to the circumcision of the heart or the stiff neck.22 Furthermore, such
an attitude is discernible in the terminology used in the Damascus Document
of “new covenant,” a label that depends upon the renewal of the covenant and
its significance through it being written on the heart: “But such is the covenant
I will make with the House of Israel after these days—declares the Lord: I will
put My Teaching into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts.
Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer 31:33; NJPS).23
Third, it has been noted that the sectarian outlook gives some weight to how
things have been determined by God and yet, nevertheless, there still seems
to be room for individual and communal choice and decision making.24 The
significant position of the Book of Deuteronomy as a work that commands
choice for life and which provides a significant ideal for those who wish to
attempt worthwhile obedience is reflected in the opening words of the Cave 1
version of the Rule of the Community (1QS 1:1–3): “in order to seek God with [all
(one’s) heart] and with a[ll (one’s) soul; ] in order to do what is good and just
in his presence, as he commanded by the hand of Moses and by the hand of
his servants the Prophets.”25 The “hot” aspirations of the sectarian movement
are probably also to be found in the place that is given to three other books,
Genesis, Isaiah and the Psalms. Genesis provides a patriarchal authority which
can be understood as the working out of divine promises on a series of jour-
neys. Isaiah is the prophetic work whose oracles of judgment turn to promises
of hope, promises which the movement, part of which took up residence at
Qumran, certainly took as eschatological. And the Psalms are energetic poems
that engage with change, in both social and personal ways.26
22 1QS 5:4–5; 1QpHab 11:13; cf. 4Q434 1 i 4; 4Q504 4, 11. See David R. Seely, “The ‘Circumcised
Heart’ in 4Q434 Barkhi Nafshi,” RevQ 17 (1996): 527–35.
23 A similar perspective is to be found in Ezek 36:26–27; cf. Rogerson, A Theology of the
Old Testament, 34. For this kind of internal transformation see also Judith H. Newman,
“Covenant Renewal and Transformational Scripts in the Performance of the Hodayot and
2 Corinthians,” in Jesus, Paulus und die Texte von Qumran: Festschrift for Heinz-Wolfgang
Kuhn (ed. Jörg Frey and Enno E. Popkes; WUNT II/390; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015),
291–329.
24 See, notably, Philip S. Alexander, “Predestination and Free Will in the Theology of the
Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment (ed.
John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole; LNTS 335; London: T&T Clark, 2006), 27–49.
25 Trans. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study
Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1.71. Cf. 4Q255 1.
26 See further George J. Brooke, “The Canon within the Canon’ at Qumran and in the New
Testament,” in The Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran Fifty Years After (ed. Stanley E. Porter
And fourth, there is an ongoing and lively process of study and interpreta-
tion of authoritative texts. It is certainly the case that the four scriptural books
just mentioned are amongst those that are treated in rich and variegated ways
by the authors represented in the collection of compositions found in the
caves at and near Qumran. For Genesis, Bernstein has provided a thorough-
going survey in which he concludes that “variety and diversity characterize
the Qumran treatment of Genesis, perhaps illustrating, by the many uses to
which Scripture was put, one aspect of the non-uniform nature of the Qumran
‘library’ even within this fairly narrow selection of material.”27 For Deuteronomy
there are multiple uses in liturgical (as in the tefillin, or in 4QDeutn), legal (as
in the Temple Scroll), and other contexts, such as at the opening of the Cave 1
version of the Rule of the Community cited above.28 For Isaiah the range of use
and eschatological reuse has been considered from many angles; an overall
perspective can be found in some of my own writings.29 The range of uses of
the Psalms has been much discussed, not just in relation to how all the manu
scripts containing scriptural Psalms might be best understood, whether as au-
thoritative collections or not, but also in terms of how much of the idiom of
the Psalms is reused in various kinds of poetry, liturgical or otherwise (as in
the Hodayot) and indeed elsewhere. Amongst those compositions that seem
to depend upon but also take further the Psalms for their own, seemingly “hot”,
purposes are the so-called non-canonical Psalms compositions (e.g., 4Q381),30
and such literary works seem to be indicative of the open-ended character of
those Psalms which were eventually to become canonical. In relation to all four
and Craig A. Evans; JSPSup 26; Roehampton Institute London Papers 3; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1997), 242–66.
27 Moshe J. Bernstein, “The Contours of Genesis Interpretation at Qumran: Contents,
Contexts and Nomenclature,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash (ed. James L. Kugel;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Center for Jewish Studies/Harvard University Press, 2001), 85;
repr. in Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran, 91.
28 On the significance of some of the variety of uses of Deuteronomy see, e.g., Bernard
M. Levinson, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in
Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll (Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible 1; Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013).
29 See, e.g., George J. Brooke, “Isaiah in Some of the Non-Scriptural Dead Sea Scrolls,”
in Transmission and Interpretation of the Book of Isaiah in the Context of Intra- and
Interreligious Debates (ed. Florian Wilk; BETL 280; Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 243–60.
30 See, e.g., Mika S. Pajunen, The Land to the Elect and Justice for All: Reading Psalms in the
Dead Sea Scrolls in Light of 4Q381 (JAJSup 14; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013).
Pajunen also has plenty to say about the value and significance of other collections of
“apocryphal” psalms.
72 Brooke
scriptural books the majority of the re-use of the authoritative texts is implicit
in new compositions through which the authoritative text is both confirmed
in its authority but also through such use confers authority on the new com-
positions; there is, of course, also some explicit use of the scriptural texts, such
as in the pesharim. Interpretative engagement with scriptural texts seems to
have been an ongoing feature of life in the community (cf. 1QS 6:6–8); and the
text of Scripture was known to be in need of suitable commentary (cf. CD 4:8).
Recently this has been expressed somewhat differently but in a helpful
manner with some greater attention to a diachronic perspective and the char-
acter of change that needs to be discerned and acknowledged; Aryeh Amihay’s
words are consistent with what I am arguing about attitudes to Scripture and
its interpretation being “hot” at Qumran and elsewhere in the movement of
which the Qumran group was a part:
The contentious nature of the sect was sure to encourage schisms and
factions, each group claiming the sole truth. The consequence would be
a potentially volatile relationship between obligation and authority, al-
though one might expect these two notions to be complementary. If the
source of obligation lies in authority, the danger for obligation lies in a
contested authority. Interpretive authority is particularly prone to such
contestations, since interpretation is by its very nature a dialectic process
of fluid or ambiguous meanings. Regardless of claims for unique, straight-
forward interpretations, the imposition of counter-intuitive meanings on
scripture could lead to challenging interpretations. Pesher Habakkuk fa-
mously states that God revealed secrets concealed in the prophets to the
Righteous Teacher (1QpHab 7:3–5). This claim places the sole authority
for interpretation in the hands of the Teacher, but at the same time rein-
forces the notion that scripture is imperfect, and requires interpretation
for proper applicability.31
4 Cold Attitudes in Jerusalem
Having considered how in the scrolls from the Qumran caves at least some of
the transmission of authoritative texts and the interpretative work associated
with them might be categorized through the approach of John Rogerson and
his use of Lévi-Strauss as “hot,” I now move to suggest that what might have
31 Aryeh Amihay, Theory and Practice in Essene Law (New York: Oxford University Press,
2017), 84–85.
been taking place in Jerusalem was largely dominated by a “cold” attitude. Here
there are three matters to be discussed, each of which deserves much fuller at-
tention than I will allocate them in this study. The first concerns the scholarly
association of initial moves in the canonical process with the Hasmoneans.
The second restates some information about the character of some particular
scriptural works which happen to be largely absent from the Qumran caves.
The third wonders about the link between those two matters and the align-
ment of the Hasmoneans with the Sadducees during the first half of the first
century BCE.
First, there is an emerging consensus that within Judaism in antiquity the
move from authority to Scripture, even canon, was a process that took sev-
eral centuries. The start of such a process, however, seems to belong in the
Hasmonean period. Armin Lange has argued that in Second Temple Judaism
a paradigm shift took place at the time of the desecration of the Temple in
167–164 BCE: “In Maccabean times, authoritative literature replaced the tem-
ple as the place in which Israel encountered its God. This replacement was his-
torically related to the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by an idol of Zeus
Olympios erected in 167 BCE. For this historical reason, authoritative litera-
ture gained a dignity of its own and became scripture.”32 Lange considers that
this move, in effect the institutionalisation of the text, characterizes ancient
Judaism as a whole and that it is not possible to discern differing approaches
between groups within Judaism. He argues his case not least because a text
such as MMT, which supposedly engages more than one group, does not dwell
on the delimitation of scripture or its exact citation, but appeals to it as an
authority in debate.
Other scholars have attempted to be more precise about the role of the
Maccabees and their Hasmonean successors.33 A text key to the discussion
32 Armin Lange, “From Literature to Scripture: The Unity and Plurality of the Hebrew
Scriptures in Light of the Qumran Library,” in One Scripture or Many? Canon from
Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives (ed. Christine Helmer and Christof
Landmesser; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 107.
33 See, e.g., Arie van der Kooij, “The Canonisation of Ancient Books Kept in the Temple of
Jerusalem,” in Canonization and Decanonization: Papers Presented to the International
Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), Held at Leiden 9–10
January 1997 (ed. Arie van der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn; SHR 82; Leiden: Brill, 1998),
17–40. Van der Kooij’s reading of 2 Macc 2:13–15 might be saying too much about the struc-
ture of the canon but it has some part to play in describing processes of the collecting
of books: see the challenge to some aspects of van der Kooij’s views by Eugene Ulrich,
“Qumran and the Canon of the Old Testament,” in The Biblical Canons (ed. Jean-Marie
Auwers and Henk Jan de Jonge; BETL 163; Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 57–80 (esp. 77).
74 Brooke
is 2 Macc 2:13–15. Put together very probably during the reign of Alexander
Jannaeus (103–76 BCE), and thus reflecting issues of the time, the significant
text is part of a second introductory letter addressed to Jews in Egypt. The pas-
sage mentions three things. First, it sets out a parade example of the collecting
of books, namely Nehemiah’s activity in relation to the books about the kings
and prophets. Second, it indicates that Judas Maccabeus “also collected all the
books that had been lost on account of the war that had come upon us, and
they are in our possession.” And third, it underlines, perhaps as a matter of
control, that they can be consulted in Jerusalem, if needed, by implication at
the Temple. The control of the books through their deposition in the Temple is
an example of the institutional grip over what itself, as a set of texts, was well
on the way to being institutionalized. And such institutionalisation without an
immediate and developing tradition of interpretation, for which there is little
or no evidence amongst the Hasmoneans, is a reflection of an overall “cold”
attitude.
Second, over the years some scholars who have engaged with the scrolls
from the caves at and near Qumran have been principally concerned to dem-
onstrate that every book that is now known as part of the Jewish Bible was
indeed represented in the caves. The exception of Esther was noted, though
even the resonances of Esther were pointed out, either in terms of the traces
of its distinctive idiom or in terms of its possible Aramaic sources.34 Although
it might be a matter of happenstance, it is nevertheless notable that, alongside
Esther, there is virtually nothing of Ezra–Nehemiah or the Books of Chronicles
in what survives. It is completely clear that the movement that collected the
scrolls knew about and could indeed use those books,35 but the paucity of
34 See, e.g., Shemaryahu Talmon, “Was the Book of Esther Known at Qumran?” DSD 2
(1995): 249–67; Sidnie White Crawford, “4QTales of the Persian Court (4Q550 a–e) and its
Relation to Biblical Royal Courtier Tales, especially Esther, Daniel and Joseph,” in The Bible
as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries (ed. Edward D. Herbert and
Emanuel Tov; London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press in association with The
Scriptorium: Center for Christian Antiquities, 2002), 121–37.
35 See, e.g., an excellent study of Chronicles in the Temple Scroll: Dwight D. Swanson, “The
Use of Chronicles in 11QT: Aspects of a Relationship,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years
of Research (ed. Devorah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport; STDJ 10; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 290–
98. For Ezra–Nehemiah see the allusions in CD 1–8 laid out very clearly by Jonathan G.
Campbell, The Use of Scripture in the Damascus Document 1–8, 19–20 (BZAW 228; Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1995). On both books in the non-scriptural manuscripts from Qumran, see the
helpful but not extensive list of allusions compiled by Armin Lange and Mathias Weigold,
Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Second Temple Jewish Literature (JAJSup 5; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 189–95.
copies, compared with books of the Torah or of most of the Prophets is very
noticeable. I am inclined to think that the knowledge of such works, espe-
cially as reflected in the second-century BCE compositions found in the caves,
but their almost complete absence from the first-century BCE collections at
Qumran, implies that they had been taken over for some purpose by other
Jews.36 The priestly, yet monarchic thrust of the Books of Chronicles would be
very suitable to supporting the Hasmonean ideology of priest-kingship; per-
haps the books were also part of their authoritative Temple repository. When
those factors about the Books of Chronicles are put alongside Rogerson’s read-
ing of them as “cold” history, then the general “heat” of what is discernible in
the Qumran collection of texts, scriptural and interpretative, might suitably
be set against the Hasmonean approach which does not seem to court change
unless it promotes Hasmonean authority and hegemony.
Third, there is the matter of the alignment in some way through much of
the first half of the first century BCE of the Hasmoneans with an early form of
the Sadducean party. So little is really known about the Sadducees that what-
ever is said might seem to be historically imaginary or need much nuance.
Furthermore, they often seem to receive a negative assessment. Although in
one of his earlier publications Martin Goodman made the derogatory state-
ment that “Sadducaism embodied a smug self-congratulation about the status
quo that only the rich could accept,”37 more recently he has offered a highly
nuanced assessment of the group and dared to conclude, at least for the first
century CE, that “the evidence may perhaps be best explained by suggesting
that Sadducees might be admired as intellectuals but that their advice would
not therefore necessarily be taken seriously in practice any more than is that
of university professors in contemporary society.”38 Such more balanced
views of the Sadducees owe not a little to Ed Sanders, who notably tried to
indicate how the Sadducees must have had teachings and opinions beyond
those of the Torah taken in a literal way, not least in relation to the practice of
36 George J. Brooke, “The Books of Chronicles and the Scrolls from Qumran,” in Reflection
and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Robert
Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim, W. Brian Aucker; VTSup 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 35–48.
37 Martin Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome
A.D. 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 89.
38 Martin Goodman, “The Place of the Sadducees in First-Century Judaism,” in Redefining
First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders (ed.
Fabian E. Udoh et al.; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 139–52; repr. in
ibid., Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays (AJEC 66; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 123–35
(134).
76 Brooke
the calendar, about which the Torah says very little.39 Those who read some
texts from the Qumran caves, such as MMT, as reflecting Sadducean halakhah
tend to align their interests with a conservative and stringent view of Temple
practice.40 Jonathan Klawans has noted that what we seem to know about
them is largely negative as the descriptions of them in the writings of
Josephus and in the New Testament set them over against others, especially
the Pharisees.41 Nevertheless, by aligning them with some of the teachings of
Ben Sira, he is able to associate them with some elements of wisdom teaching.
They are likely to have associated themselves with and then formed part of the
aristocratic elite from the start of the first century BCE onwards, if not earlier,
and as such are unlikely to have been in favour of change and development.
They seem to have been much in support of the temple as an institution and
its priesthood, sometimes occupying leading roles; their halakhic position was
one that might be described as “cold.”
5 Conclusion
Essays such as this tend to make their points by overstatement and over-
simplification. It is important to note that most groups are a mixture of the
two types of social entity that Lévi-Strauss has attempted to characterize.
Indeed, there are very likely to be many other factors at play which no descrip-
tion can adequately capture. Nevertheless, the rich variety of engagement
with scriptural texts that is now evident in the non-scriptural compositions
from the Qumran caves seems to reflect an attitude to authoritative traditions
that ascribes them profound recognition whilst at the same time highlight-
ing the need for improvement, clarification, supplementation, and interpreta-
tion. Sometimes that improvement might lead to the support of institutional
39 Ed P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM Press, 1992),
332–36.
40 See especially Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Temple Scroll and the Systems of Jewish
Law of the Second Temple Period,” in Temple Scroll Studies: Papers Presented at the
International Symposium on the Temple Scroll (Manchester, December 1987) (ed. George
J. Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 239–55; Yaʿakov Sussmann, “The History
of the Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqṣat Maʿaśe Ha-Torah
(ed. Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell; DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 179–200.
41 Jonathan Klawans, “Sadducees, Zadokites, and the Wisdom of Ben Sira,” in Israel’s God
and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity.
Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal (ed. David B. Capes et al.; Waco, TX:
Baylor University Press, 2007), 261–76.
stability of some kind, such as a generally rigorous attitude to matters of purity,

but more often it seems to have been the way in which the movement who col-
lected all those compositions together attempted to define and redefine them-
selves in the light of the tradition, justifying their self-understanding as heirs
to the divine promises in an age which seemed to be heralding the end of all
things familiar.
And the two interactions that I mentioned at the opening of this essay
seem to bear out something of what is evident in that which I would charac-
terize as the generally “hot” sectarian reading and interpretation of scripture.
In Commentary on Genesis A each of the various interpretative extracts that
are strung together has its own ingenious way of addressing issues in the base
text of Genesis as well as sharing some concerns with other pericopae in the
composition; the appreciation of the problems and opportunities of the text
of Genesis signals an improved understanding. And it is often attention to the
plain meaning of a text that then gives rise to a range of questions that can
move significantly beyond merely dealing with a problem in grammar or syn-
tax. Like many of those ancient interpreters whose creative insights are reflect-
ed in the compositions found in the Qumran caves, Moshe Bernstein is also a
master of the exegetical arts, of reading and re-reading scripture at Qumran.
CHAPTER 5
The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Hodayot

Devorah Dimant
The book of Ezekiel exercised a great deal of influence on various sectarian

and nonsectarian Qumran texts, such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,
the Aramaic New Jerusalem, and the reworking of the prophet’s oracles in
Pseudo-Ezekiel.1 Although no running pesher of Ezekiel’s prophecies has been
preserved, the pesher of Ezek 44:15 cited by the Damascus Document (III, 21–
IV, 4) is well-known. However, these explicit instances seem to be but a few
remnants of a more extensive and detailed exegesis of Ezekiel nurtured by the
Qumranites. This is suggested by the scattered allusions to various passages
from this prophet, which appear frequently in the Hodayot. Such allusions
imply the presence in the sectarian texts of a systematic interpretation, and
perhaps even a pesher, of certain passages from Ezekiel’s oracles.2 Therefore,
there is a particular interest in exploring the Hodayot in order to uncover these
inconspicuous exegetical kernels that have yet to be fully catalogued and
mapped.3 Of particular importance is the detection of unrecognized pesharim
1 Cf. my discussion in Devorah Dimant, “The Apocalyptic Interpretation of Ezekiel at

Qumran,” in Messiah and Christos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, Presented to
David Flusser on the Occasion of his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (eds. I. Gruenwald, S. Shaked, and
G. G. Stroumsa; TSAJ 32; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 31–51.
2 On the phenomenon of allusions to detailed interpretation of specific prophecies, especial-
ly in the Damascus Document, see Menahem Kister, “Biblical Phrases and Hidden Biblical
Interpretations and Pesharim,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (ed. D. Dimant
and U. Rappaport; STDJ 10; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 27–39. On inexplicit pesharim that are not
formally marked and embedded in texts of other genres, see Devorah Dimant, “Pesharim,
Qumran,” ABD 5:244–51 (248).
3 Many of them are noted by Jacob Licht, The Thanksgiving Scroll (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute,
1957), 92 (Hebrew). Some are discussed by Julie A. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis
in the Hodayot (STDJ 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006). See also Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, The Hymns of
Qumran (Chico: Scholars Press, 1981), 53–55, and the series of articles by John Elwolde on
the reworking of the Psalms in the Hodayot. See most recently idem, “The Hodayot’s Use
of the Psalms: Text-Critical Contributions (Book 4: Pss 90–106),” in The Scrolls and Biblical
Traditions (ed. G. J. Brooke, D. K. Falk, E. J. C. Tigchelaar, and M. M. Zahn; STDJ 108; Leiden:
Brill, 2012), 65–87 with further references.
The Interpretation Of Ezekiel In The Hodayot 79
embedded in the Hodayot, for they may broaden and deepen our perception
of this sectarian genre.
The investigation presented here aims at contributing to this line of research
by examining the reworking of Ezekiel’s oracles in Hodayot col. XII. It also sug-
gests approaching such a reworking from a biblical rather than sectarian per-
spective, the latter being the usual practice. Such an approach may shed more
light on the reasons for choosing a particular biblical text for interpretation
and on the varied ties that link the interpretative context to its biblical object.
1QHa XII, 6–234
Column XII of the main Hodayot copy from cave 1, the fullest and best known,
contains most of a single literary unit, introduced in line 6 following a vacat. It
opens with the introductory formula ‫דוני‬-‫“( אודכה א‬I thank you, O my Lord”),
conventional in the Hodayot, and continues until the final line (41) which is
only partially preserved. Various overlapping lines have been preserved in
three copies from cave 4 (4Q428, 4Q430, 4Q432) but none contains the conclu-
sion of the unit. The available text consists of two distinct sections: the first
one, contained in lines 6–23a, comprises a sharp denunciation of the writer’s
theological adversaries; the following section in lines 23b–41 is a description
of the writer’s own revelations, contrastively introduced by “and I” )‫ ;ואני‬line
23b).5 The influence of Ezekiel’s prophecies is noticeable especially in the po-
lemical first section, and therefore it is the main object of the present analysis.
] [‫ומ‬
‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ ‫דוני כיא האירו֯ תה פני לבריתכה‬-‫‬אודכה א‬vacat ] [ 6
‬‬‬‬
] [‫עמכה‬ ‫והמה‬
֯ ‫[תי]ם הופעתה לי‬
֯ ‫לאור‬
֯ ‫ [ ] אדורשכה וכשחר נכון‬7
] [
‬‬‬‬ ‫כיא‬ ֯ ‫ ֯ב ֯ת ֯ע[ותם‬8
̇ ‫ו]ד ֯ברים החליקו למו ומליצי רמיה ֯ה ֯תעו̇ ֯ם וילבטו בלא בינה‬
‬‬‬‬‫ ‬בהולל מעשיהם כי נמאסו למו ולא יחשבוני בהגבירכה בי כיא ידיחני מארצי‬9
‬‬‬‬‫ ‬כצפור מקנה וכול רעי ומודעי נדחו ממני ויחשבוני לכלי אובד והמה מליצי‬10
‬‬‬‬‫ כזב וחוזי רמיה זממו עלי {כז} בליעל להמיר תורתכה אשר שננתה בלבבי בחלקות‬11
4 The edition of 1QHa used throughout the present article is that of Eileen M. Schuller and
Carol A. Newsom, The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Psalms): A Study Edition of 1QHa (SBLEJL 36;
Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), based on the Stegemann-Schuller edition pub-
lished in DJD XL. The translation is that of Newsom, ibid. (referred to hereafter as “Newsom”),
with occasional modifications of my own.
5 The passage is similarly defined by Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space (STDJ 52;
Leiden: Brill, 2004), 312; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 105.
80 Dimant
‬‬‬‬‫ הבט אל‬6‫ ‬לעמכה ויעצורו משקה דעת מצמאים ולצמאם ישקום חומץ למע‬12
‬‬‬‬‫ל תנאץ כל מחשבת‬-‫ ‬תעותם להתהולל במועדיהמ להתפש במצודותם כי אתה א‬13
‬‬‬‬‫ בליעל ועצתכה היא תקום ומחשבת לבכה תכון לנצח והמה נעלמים זמות בליעל‬14
‬‬‬‬‫ יחשובו וידרשוכה בלב ולב ולא נכונו באמתכה שורש פורה רוש ולענה במחשבותם‬15
‬‬‬‬‫ ‬ועם שרירות לבם יתורו וידרשוכה בגלולים ומכשול עוונם שמו לנגד פניהם ויבאו‬16
‬‬‬‬‫[ו]עג שפה ולשון אחרת ידברו לעמך‬ ֯ ‫[ב]ל‬
֯ ‫ ‬לדורשכה מפי נביאי כזב מפותי תעות והם‬17
‬‬‬‬‫לב]כה ולא האזינו לדברכה כי אמרו‬ ֯ ‫ ‬להולל ברמיה כול מעשיהם כי לא ֯בחרו בדר[ך‬18
‬‬‬‬‫ל תענה להם לשופטם‬-‫ ‬לחזון דעת לא נכון ולדרך לבכה לא היאה כי אתה א‬19
‬‬‬‬‫‬בגבורתכה [כ]גלוליהם וכרוב פשעיהם למען יתפשו במחשבותם אשר נזורו מבריתכה‬ ֯ 20
‬‬‬‬‫מעשיך‬
‫במ[שפ]ט כול אנשי מרמה וחוזי תעות לא ימצאו עוד כי אין הולל בכול‬ ֯ ‫ ‬ותכרת‬21
‬‬‬‬‫רמיה ֯במזמת לבכה ואשר כנפשכה יעמודו לפניכה לעד והולכי בדרך לבכה‬ ֯ ‫ ‬ולא‬22
‬‬‬‬‫לנצח‬
֯ ‫ יכונו‬23
6. [ ] vacat I thank you, Lord, that you have illuminated my face for your
covenant, and[ ]
7. [ ] I seek you, and as a sure dawn with [perf]ect light you have appeared
to me.7 But they, your people [ ]
8. in [their] straying, [and] they used slippery words to them, and de-
ceitful interpreters8 led them astray, so they are confused9 without
understanding.
For[ ]
6 Read ‫למען‬.
7 The Hebrew is based on Hos 6:3, as noted by Jacob Licht, The Thanksgiving Scroll (Jerusalem:
Bialik Institute, 1957), 91 (Hebrew) and Svend Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran
(Aarhus: University Press, 1960), 80.
8 With Newsom, translating ‫מליצי‬. This sense is in line with the entire passage in which the
adversaries are “interpreters of deceit” )‫—מליצי כזב‬lines 10–11). Compare elsewhere in the
Hodayot the contrast between the adversaries being “interpreters of error” ‫—מליצי תעות‬
1QHa X, 16) and the author an “interpreter of knowledge” )‫—מליץ דעת‬1QHa X, 15; see also
4Q171 1–10 i 27). Note also Isa 43:27 ‫ומליציך פשעו בי‬, where Targum Jonathan translates
‫ מליציך‬by ‫“( מלפך‬your teachers”), an interpretation recorded also in Eusebius’ commentary
on Isaiah. It may also be appropriate here. Another tradition understands ‫ מליץ‬as “official,
noble” (cf. 2 Chr 32:31; LXX Hos 4:15; see also David Kimhi ad loc.), but it does not fit with the
context of the present hodayah.
9 The phrase ‫ וילבטו בלא בינה‬is built on Hos 4:14. The verb ‫וילבטו‬, a 3mp qal impf. of ‫לבט‬,
has been translated as “come to ruin,” e.g., Newsom ad loc.; Florentino García Martínez and
Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1997), (= DSSSE) 1:167,
or “brought down”, e.g. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 99, following the modern interpretation
of the verb occurrences in Hos 4:14 and Prov 10:8, 10. See HALOT, 2:517; DCH, 2:517. However,
the two biblical instances stand in the context of lack of understanding (as understood
by, e.g., Ibn Ezra and David Kimhi to Hos 4:14), a sense clearly evoked by 1QHa X, 21, where
the locution ‫…“( להלבט במשגתם‬ to be confused by their error”) is combined with Isa 27:11
9. with folly10 are their deeds, for they were rejected by them. And they have
no regard for me when you show your strength through me, for they drive
me away from my land
10. like a bird from its nest. And all my friends and my acquaintances have
been driven away from me, and they regard me as a broken vessel. But
they are interpreters of falsity
11. and seers of deceit. They have schemed devilry11 against me to exchange
your law, which you repeated in my heart, for slippery words
12. for your people. And they withhold the drink of knowledge from the
thirsty, and for their thirst they give them sour wine to drink, so that they
may observe
13. their error, acting madly at their festivals in order to be caught in their
nets. But you, O God, despise every devilish plan,
14. and it is your counsel that will stand, and the plan of your heart that will
be established forever. But they are wicked; they devise devilish plans12
15. and they seek you with a divided heart, and so they are not steadfast in
your truth. A root that grows poison and wormwood is in their schemes.
16. and in the stubbornness of their heart they explore and they seek you
through idols, and the stumbling block of their iniquity they have placed
in front of their faces. And they come
17. to seek you by means of words of prophets of deception (who are) en-
ticed by error. And they,13 [with] mo[c]king lips and strange tongue speak
to your people,
18. in deceitful folly are all their deeds. For they have not chosen the wa[y of]
your [heart], and they have not listened to your word, but they say
‫“( כי לא עם בינות הוא‬for they are a people without understanding”). The same meaning
is also intended in the passage here.
10 The Hebrew has ‫בהולל‬, also appearing in line 17 and 1QHa X, 38; note also line 31
‫“( להתהולל‬to act madly”) and compare Jer 25:16. For the sense of “folly” translated above
(similarly in DSSSE 1:169), see HALOT, 1:249; DCH, 2:562. Licht explains it as “with lies”, as in
line 17 (idem, The Thanksgiving Scroll, 92). Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 76–77 translates both
instances as “foolishness.” Newsom has “delusion” in all instances.
11 The Hebrew has here ‫בליעל‬, but given the syntax it must stand as the object of the verb
“schemed” (‫)זממו‬, rather than as the proper name of the leader of the evil camp (as in,
for instance, CD IV, 13; V, 18; 1QM XIV, 9). So Newsom’s “devilry,” followed here, is more
appropriate than the rendering Belial, as translated, for instance, by DSSSE, 1:69 and
Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 109.
12 In Hebrew: ‫זמות בליעל‬. Here ‫ בליעל‬should be given the same sense as in line 10, namely
“devilry, evil.” Cf. previous note.
13 Apparently referring to the prophets. Cf. Discussion below.
82 Dimant
19. of the vision of knowledge, “It is not certain,” and of the way of your heart,
“It is not that.” But you, O God, will answer them by judging them
20. in your strength [according to] their idols and the multitude of their
transgressions, so that those who have turned away from your covenant
will be caught in their own schemes.
21. And you will cut off in ju[dgem]ent all men of deception and seers of
error will no longer be found. For there is no folly in any of your works,
22. and no deceit in the deliberation of your heart. Those who are (in har-
mony) with you will stand before you forever, and those who walk in the
way of your heart
23. will be established everlastingly.
Following the two introductory lines 6–7, in which the author expresses thanks
for the divine revelation bestowed on him, the section constitutes a string of
contrastive segments: stretches describing the author’s adversaries, introduced
by the caption “they” (‫והם‬/‫ ;והמה‬lines 7, 10, 14, and 17), alternating with sections
depicting God, starting with “for” (‫ ;כי‬lines 13, 19, and 21). The parts that por-
tray the rivals present a coherent picture of the author’s opponents. The chief
feature attributed to this wicked group is that of being deceiving teachers and
leaders, who draw upon the words of false prophets. Indeed, Carol Newsom de-
fines “truth” as the central issue of the hodayah.14 So, befittingly, the supporting
biblical references for such an issue are taken mainly from prophecies against
false prophets. In this context, the place assigned to the criticism of the elders
of Israel and the deceiving prophet in Ezekiel 14 is central.
Ezek 14:1–1115
In this passage, the prophet castigates the elders of Israel who visited him
in order to inquire of God. He refuses to accede to their wish, for “these men
have raised their idols into their hearts and set their stumbling block of iniq-
uity before their faces” (‫האנשים האלה העלו גלוליהם על לבם ומכשול עונם נתנו נכח‬
‫)פניהם‬. Commentators have debated the identity of the inquirers, for although
14 Cf. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 318.

15 On the place of chs. 13–14 in Ezekiel’s collection of oracles about prophecy, see
Shemaryahu Talmon and Michael Fishbane, “The Structuring of Biblical Books: Studies
in the Book of Ezekiel,” ASTI 10 (1975–1976): 129–53, and the comments of Leslie C. Allen,
Ezekiel 1–19 (WBC 28; Dallas; Word Books, 1994), 193–96.
accused of idolatry, they have nevertheless come to inquire of God. Hence, the
kind of idolatry involved here is interpreted in various ways. Some of the mod-
ern commentators interpret the offence of the elders as the actual worship of
idols evidenced by the wearing on their breasts of amulets containing images
of idols.16 A different interpretation is suggested by Jewish medieval commen-
tators, who explain that while externally the elders presented themselves as
faithful to God, God revealed to Ezekiel that in their hearts they adhered to
idolatry (thus, for instance, Rashi and David Kimhi to Ezek 14:3). Noting the
unspecific formulation of the idolatry in question (‫ ;גלולים‬compare, e.g., Lev
26:30), most of the modern interpreters adopt a similar approach, viewing the
sin in question as a “divided loyalty” between YHWH and the idols.17 Others
understand the prophetic accusation as the denouncing of a sinful mental-
ity or attitude.18 As will be shown below, the general character of the idolatry
facilitates the task of the Qumran author in interpreting it as a frame of mind.
The main thrust of the prophetic message is developed in the second part
of the oracle (vv. 4–11), extrapolating from the case of the elders a general dual
rule, formulated in a priestly legal style (cf. Leviticus 17).19 The first portion
(vv. 3–8), addressed to all the Israelite individuals, prescribes that a per-
son coming to a prophet to inquire of God while still adhering to idolatrous
thoughts and/or practices will be cut off from among the people of Israel
(v. 8). In the second portion, the same punishment is meted out to the prophet
“who is so misled as to speak an oracle” to such an idolatrous person (v. 9).
Thus, doubly sinful and doubly punished are the idolatrous inquirer and the
acquiescent prophet. The sin of the prophet is especially grave since the or-
acle implies that he should have refused to comply with the requests of such
16 Cf. J. Schoneveld, “Ezekiel XIV 1–8,” OuS 15 (1969): 193–204 (193–96).

17 The formulation is that of Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (IBC; Louisville: John Knox,
1990), 71. Similarly Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel (trans. C. Quinn; London: SCM Press, 1970),
179–80; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (trans. R. E. Clements; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979),
307–8; Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 205; Rimon Kasher, Ezekiel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004), 307
(Hebrew).
18 An “unregenerate state of mind,” in the terms of Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB 22;
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 253. Daniel I. Block speaks of “the internalization of
idolatry, not its external expression.” Cf. idem, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1–24 (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 1:425.
19 See the discussions of Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, 303–4; Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 252; Allen,
Ezekiel 1–19, 205–6; Block, The Book of Ezekiel, 1:427. Kasher, Ezekiel, 306, surmises that by
adopting a legal style the prophet aims “to lend his prophecy an aspect of a new Torah.”
84 Dimant
iniquitous inquirers, as did Ezekiel to the request of the elders.20 The theme
of the misleading prophet is undoubtedly connected to Ezekiel’s oracle in
ch. 13:13–16, which contains a sharp censure of the false prophets. But while
ch. 13 condemns false prophets for prophecies delivered without divine au-
thority, here God himself sends misleading oracles in order to judge and cut off
the misleading prophet.21 So the oracle in ch. 14:1–11 makes a clear distinction
between the elders of Israel, the people of Israel, and the deluding prophet.
Ezek 14:1–11 in 1QHa XII, 6–2322
It seems that the presentation in col. XII retains the above three-way distinc-
tion, although it is not always expressed in clear-cut terms. The various figures
involved in the discourse are indicated by different personal pronouns. In line
with other Hodayot units is the use of the first person singular style, by which
the author expresses his own reflections. This is evident in lines 6–11. Equally
clear are the second person singular addresses to God, formulated in lines 6–7,
9–11, 13–14, 16–19, and 21–22, but less clear-cut are the criticized groups, referred
to in the third person plural. A close reading reveals that more than one party is
involved in this series. The subjects of these phrases are portrayed in two sec-
tions, the first in lines 10–13a, the second in lines 14b–19a, both introduced by
the pronoun “they” )‫ ;[ו]המה‬lines 10, 14).
The first section dubs the members of the opposing group as “interpreters of
falsity and seers of deceit” (‫ ;מליצי כזב וחוזי רמיה‬lines 10–11) who plan to replace
the divine Torah with slippery things. The group is already referred to in line 8
in similar terms, “interpreters of deceit” (‫)מליצי רמיה‬, and blames them for lead-
ing a third party astray and for confusion. This misled group should be identi-
fied as the people of Israel, mentioned in line 12 (“to your people”; ‫)לעמכה‬.
So the “interpreters of falsity and seers of deceit” of line 10 are the mislead-
ing “interpreters” of line 8 as indeed they are identified by the pronoun “and
20 Note the formulation of Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 209: “It is clear that the overall concern of
this literary unit is not simply prophecy but the relationship between the people and the
prophecy.” In a more elaborate way, this also may be said of the present hodayah.
21 The case is reminiscent of Deut 13:2–6 (evoked by the Temple Scroll [11QTa LIV, 8–18]) and
1 Kgs 22:20–23. Cf. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 253–54.
22 Some of the following comments were already made by the early commentaries on
Hodayot and are used throughout the present article: Licht, Thanksgiving Scroll; Holm-
Nielsen, Hodayot; J. Carmignac, “Les Hymnes,” in Les Textes de Qumran (eds. J. Carmignac
and P. Guilbert; Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1961), 1:129–280; Matthias Delcor, Les Hymnes de
Qumran (Hodayot) (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1962). See also Newsom, The Self as Symbolic
Space, 312–25; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 97–134.
they” (‫)והמה‬. Similar accusations are leveled against the same group in the
second section (lines 10–13a), namely, that they are leading the people astray
and withholding from them “the drink of knowledge,” supplying them instead
with “sour wine.”23 The hodayah goes on to state that these evil men act in this
fashion in order to ensnare the people “in their nets” (‫(במצודותם‬. The similarity
of this term to the statement in CD IV, 15 that speaks of the “the three nets of
Belial” (‫ )שלושת מצודות בליעל‬that catch Israel is striking. CD identifies the three
as “whoredom,” “wealth,” and “defilement of the sanctuary” (CD IV, 17–19a).
In the present hodayah, however, the net in question refers to celebrating fes-
tivals at the wrong times. This is evident from the formulation “acting madly
at their festivals” (‫ (להתהולל במועדיהם‬in line 13, which is based on Hab 2:15.
This prophetic verse was understood by the Qumranites to refer to celebrat-
ing the festivals according to an incorrect calendar, as is clear from the com-
ment on the verse in the Pesher of Habakkuk (1QpHab XI, 3–8),24 alluding to
the well-known sectarian polemics regarding the correct calendar.25 So here,
too, the adversaries are blamed essentially for substituting the true knowledge
revealed to the author with lies and slippery things and thus leading the people
astray. Although some of the terms used in this section, such as ‫“( חוזי רמיה‬seers
of deceit”; line 11), evoke Ezekiel’s denunciation of false prophets (cf. below),
the description seems to depict figures of standing, perhaps leaders of Israel.
The second section in lines 14b–19a is centered on a quotation from Ezekiel
14 in the following way:
1QHa XII, 14–17
‫ והמה נעלמים; זמות בליעל‬1 4

‫ וידרשוכה בלב ולב ולא נכונו באמתכה‬,‫ יחשובו‬15
‫שורש פורה רוש ולענה במחשבותם‬
‫ ועם שרירות לבם יתורו וידרשוכה בגלולים‬16
23 The formulation of the hodayah ‫“( ולצמאם ישקום חומץ‬and for their thirst they give
them sour wine”) is based on Ps 69:22. Kister, “Biblical Phrases,” 37–38, suggests that the
hodayah interprets also the first part of the verse.
24 The Pesher of Habakkuk has the variant ‫“( מועדיהם‬their feasts”) instead of the MT
‫“( מעוריהם‬their nakedness”). The same variant occurs here in the hodayah. Cf. the com-
ments of Licht, Thanksgiving Scroll, 92; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 112–13. Kister, ibid.,
suggests that the hodayah reflects a double exegesis of MT Hab 2:51 ‫“( מעוריהם‬their na-
kedness”), one reflected in ‫“( תעותם‬their error”) and the other in ‫“( מועדיהם‬their feasts”).
25 See CD III, 14–15; 4Q166 (4QpHos) ii 10, which refer to this controversy.
86 Dimant
‫ ויבאו‬,‫ומכשול עוונם שמו לנגד פניהם‬

‬‬‬‬‫ ‬לדורשכה מפי נביאי כזב מפותי תעות‬17
‫[ו]עג שפה ולשון אחרת ידברו לעמך‬
֯ ‫[ב]ל‬
֯ ‫והם‬
14 But they are wicked; they devise devilish26 plans,

15 and they seek you with a divided heart, and so they are not steadfast
in your truth. A root that grows poison and wormwood is in their
schemes,
16 and in the stubbornness of their heart they explore and seek you
through idols, and the stumbling block of their iniquity they have
placed in front of their faces. And they come
17 to seek you by means of words of prophets of deception (who are)
enticed by error. And they,27 [with] mo[c]king lips and strange
tongue speak to your people …
The passage is contrasted with the divine qualities previously described: ab-
horrence of evil schemes and everlasting counsel and plans. In opposition to
these divine attributes, the group designated by the pronoun “they” is labeled
‫נעלמים‬, namely “wicked.”28 The following stanza accuses this group of devising
diabolic schemes. The wording echoes Isa 32:7, ‫“( והוא זמות יעץ‬he forges plots”),
referring to the wicked (compare Ps 26:10). It appears that the application of
this Isaiah verse to the community’s rivals is a piece of exegesis well known
in the sectarian circles, since it is also introduced by another sectarian text,
4QCatenaA (4Q177 5–6 5).29
26 The Hebrew reads ‫בליעל‬, also mentioned in line 11. It is translated above in the general
sense of “wicked, devilish,” following Newsom, but given the general formulation in this
case it may be translated as the personal name of the chief demonic figure in the sectar-
ian texts, “(plans) of Belial” (thus DSSSE 1:160).
27 Apparently referring to the prophets, as noted correctly by Delcor, Les hymnes de Qumran,
142. Cf. Discussion below.
28 The term, also occurring in 1QHa XI, 29; XV, 37; 4Q424 1 4, is based on Ps 26:4, where the
word stands in parallelism to ‫“ =( מתי שוא‬scoundrels”) (see the comment of Licht, The
Thanksgiving Scroll, 68). ‫ נעלמים‬is equated with “wicked” also by the Septuagint and the
Vulgate ad loc. The medieval commentators understood the terms as people “committing
transgression in secret” (Rashi, David Kimhi, Ibn Ezra). A similar meaning is conveyed by
the use of the verb ‫ עלם‬in CD VIII, 16 = XIX, 18–19 (note Isa 58:7 and 11QTa LXIV, 13–14).
29 Col. VIII, 6 in the 4Q174 + 4Q177 combined edition of Annette Steudel, Der Midrasch zur
Eschatologie aus der Qumrangemeinde (4QMidrEschata, b) (STDJ 13; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 71.
There are some exegetical and contextual links between 4Q177 and 1QHa XII that merit
further study, e.g., the bird (‫ )צפור‬wandering from its nest as a simile for exile in 1QHa XII,
9–10 and 4Q177 5–6 9 (combined edition: col. VIII, 9).
Having stated the chief fault of his adversaries, the author goes on to elab-
orate their various misdeeds. Firstly, the group is accused of “seeking” God
(‫ )וידרשוכה‬with a divided heart )‫)בלב ולב‬, namely doing it in a halfhearted and
insincere manner. The locution ‫ בלב ולב‬is borrowed from Ps 12:3, a psalm de-
picting evil men who are also accused of speaking with “a slippery tongue”
(‫)שפת חלקות‬, already referred to in lines 8 and 11. Underlying this charge is
the offense of disregarding the Torah directive to seek God wholeheartedly
(Deut 4:29, linked with Deut 6:5; 10:12), which is laid at the door of the group
denounced by the author. The contrast is stark in light of the commitment as-
sumed by all the members of the community “to return to the Torah of Moses
wholeheartedly” (CD XV, 9, 12; 1QS V, 8–9). Indeed, the founders of the commu-
nity are said to “have sought him (i.e. God) wholeheartedly” (CD I, 10), and au-
thor of the Hodayot himself stresses his compliance with this command (e.g.,
1QHa VII, 23; VIII, 25). Since the group in question does not seek God in the
proper manner, the author affirms that “they are not steadfast in your truth,”
namely, they are not faithful to God.30
The following stanza is modeled on Deut 29:17–18, the admonitory discourse
that concludes Moses’ final address.
‫ שורש פורה רוש ולענה במחשבותם‬ 1QHa

‫ פן יש בכם שרש פרה ראש ולענה‬Deut 29:17
‫ ועם שרירות לבם יתורו‬ 1QHa

‫כי בשררות לבי אלך‬ … Deut 29:18
‫ יתורו‬ 1QHa
‫ ולא תתורו אחרי לבבכם‬Num 15:39
Deuteronomy defines the fundamental sin of not complying with the direc-
tives of the covenant but instead acting “in stubbornness of the heart” ‫)בשררות‬
‫)לבי אלך‬, namely, following one’s own will. The Deuteronomic exhortation com-
pares such a behavior to “a root that grows poison and wormwood.” The sectar-
ian reworking combines the two verses and applies the simile of poisonous
root to the wayward thinking of the opposing group. This is done by adding to
the biblical wording the term “their thoughts/plans” (‫)במחשבותם‬. Although the
addition is based on the formulation in Deut 29:17–18, which refers to a state
30 The word employed here, ‫אמתך‬, parsed as the noun ‫ אמת‬with 2ms possessive pronoun
(“your truth”), is used in the Hebrew Bible as a close parallel to or epithet of God (cf., e.g.,
Ps 57:11; 117:2), as it is in the sectarian texts (e.g. 1QHa IV, 38).
88 Dimant
of mind or intention, it also correlates with a string of references to thoughts/

plans scattered in the present passage; cf. lines 13–14, 20–22.
The sectarian elaboration inserts another significant alteration to the for-
mulation in Deut 29:18. Instead of the Deuteronomic ‫אלך‬, a 1sg qal impf. form
of the verb ‫הלך‬, the verb ‫ יתורו‬is introduced, a 3mp qal impf. of the verb ‫תור‬.
In the biblical usage, ‫ תור‬is used with the sense of “spy, explore, follow.”31 It
is the last meaning that fits with the Qumranic reworking, for it covers a se-
mantic field similar to that of the Deuteronomic ‫הלך‬. However, the choice of
this verb is governed by an additional factor, namely, its use in Num 15:39, ‫ולא‬
‫“( תתורו אחרי לבבכם‬do not follow your heart”), introducing a warning similar to
that in Deuteronomy 29.32 Numbers 15 instructs the Israelites to make fringes
on their garments in order to recall the divine commandments and not “fol-
low [their] own heart.” The pursuit of one’s own heart is conceived as the re-
verse of complying with the Torah precepts. This is also what is demanded by
Deut 29:18, and the author of the Hodayot sees the two references as referring
to one and the same commandment. The Numbers–Deuteronomy cluster of
references occurs elsewhere in the sectarian literature (CD II, 16; III, 11–12;
1QS III, 3; 4Q417 1 i 27), often in an abbreviated form, implying a familiar as-
sociation. However, the present hodayah presents a peculiar elaboration of it
by connecting the Numbers–Deuteronomy combination with the Ezekiel 14
oracle, the exegetical justification for this being their common warning against
idolatry.
1QHa XII, 16–17
‫ וידרשוכה בגלולים‬1QHa
‫ העלו גלוליהם על לבם‬Ezek 14:3
‫ ומכשול עוונם שמו לנגד פניהם‬1QHa

‫ ומכשול עונם נתנו נכח פניהם‬Ezek 14:3
‫ ויבאו לדורשכה‬1QHa
‫ האדרש אדרש לה‬Ezek 14:3
‫ מפי נביאי כזב מפותי תעות‬1QHa

ֻ ‫ והנביא כי‬Ezek 14:9
‫יפתה ודבר דבר אני ה’ פתיתי את הנביא ההוא‬
31 Cf. HALOT, 4:1708; DCH, 5:569.

32 See the comments of Licht, Thanksgiving Scroll, 93; Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 88.
1QHa A root that grows poison and wormwood is in their schemes,

Deut 29:17 Perchance there is among you a root that grows poison and
wormwood
1QHa and in the stubbornness of their heart they

Deut 29:18 … for I follow the stubbornness of my heart
1QHa explore …
Num 15:39 … so that you do not explore your heart
1QHa and they seek you through idols,

Ezek 14:3 And they have raised their idols into their heart
1QHa and the stumbling-block of their iniquity they have placed in

front of their faces
Ezek 14:3 and the stumbling-block of their iniquity they set before
their faces
1QHa and they come to seek you

Ezek 14:3 Shall I respond to their inquiry?
1QHa by means of words of prophets of deception (who are) en-

ticed by error
Ezek 14:9 And if a prophet is so seduced as to speak an oracle …
A comparison of 1QHa XII, 16–17 and Ezek 14:3, 9 reveals that the hodayah
borrows from the prophetic language but also alters it. Two significant adjust-
ments introduced by the hodayah modify the original prophetic meaning. The
first alteration concerns the term ‫גלולים‬. For the sectarian author, it is a matter
of “seeking God” (‫ (וידרשוכה‬through idols, namely lies and falsities, rather than
actual idolatry or an idolatrous attitude. Still, it is Ezekiel’s general formulation
that serves as the springboard for the more abstract Qumranic interpretation
of the kind of idolatry involved. It permits the sectarian author to use the term
‫ גלולים‬as an impure and evil attitude and behavior.33 This sense may have been
inspired by Ezekiel’s own usage, branding idolatry as defiling (e.g. 20:7; 22:4;
33 Thus also Chaim Rabin in interpreting the same Ezekiel quotation in CD XX, 9. Cf. idem,
The Zadokite Documents (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 39.
90 Dimant
23:30), but it is also in line with the meaning “impurity,” attributed to the term
‫ גלולים‬by the sectarian literature.34
The second modification, which further distances the hodayah from the
original prophecy, replaces the prophetic locution ‫… על לבם‬ ‫[“( העלו‬they] have
raised [their idols] into their heart”), with the verb ‫דרש‬: ‫“( וידרשוכה בגלולים‬and
[they] sought you through idols”). Adopting a sense current in the biblical
parlance,35 modern translators of the Hodayot have mostly rendered the verb
‫ דרש‬here as “to seek.”36
However, some elements in the formulation of the present section suggest
at times a different meaning. For while the prophetical hifʿil ‫“( העלו‬raised”) re-
quires that the noun ‫ גלולים‬stand as its direct object,37 in the sectarian text this
noun is construed as an indirect object, linked to the verb ‫“( דרש‬seek”) with
an instrumental bet.38 So, according to the sectarian reworking, the “search” of
God is performed by means of idolatrous lies and schemes. The repeated stress
laid on “thoughts, plans/schemes, words,” and even “torah” (line 11) suggests
that the said idolatry is connected to some sort of understanding or interpreta-
tion, formulated by teaching or preaching.
Notably, this change of meaning left no room for the term ‫“( לבם‬their heart”),
which was linked to the idols in the original prophecy. So the hodayah retains
only the wording “seek you through idols.” However, the author introduces
this physical organ—the seat of thought in the biblical view—by attaching
Ezekiel’s phrasing to the admonition in Deut 29:17–18. This connection hinges
on the similar warning of idolatry, ‫גלולים‬, in both verses,39 but the sectarian
writer goes on to cite the typical Ezekielien formula “and the stumbling-block
of their iniquity they set before their faces.”40 The original prophetic locution
was interpreted in various ways, for instance, “give way to a hankering for them
34 See 1QHa XII, 20 ‫ ;גלוליהם‬1QS IV, 5 ‫ ;גלולי נדה‬4Q174 1–2 i 17 ‫גלוליהמה‬.
35 See e.g. Judg 6:29; Amos 5:14. Cf. HALOT, 1:233.
36 Thus, e.g., Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 77; DSSSE, 1:169; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 99;
Newsom, ad loc.
37 Cf. Greenberg, Ezekiel, 248: “the passage expresses the deliberateness of their guilty think-
ing by using the hifʿil … a transitive mode of expression.”
38 For the bet used to express instrumental cause, see Paul Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka,
A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1991), §132e, §133c.
39 Thus already Rabin, The Zadokite Documents, 39.
40 The locution “a stumbling-block” (‫ )מכשול עון‬is an example of the peculiar vocabulary
in Ezekiel. It is used additionally in the present chapter (14:4, 7) and elsewhere in the
prophet’s addresses (e.g. 7:19; 18:30; 44:12).
(i.e. the idols),”41 “a metaphor of what is only in the mind,”42 and “to commit
oneself to.”43 The present sectarian text seems to have understood it as a sinful
attitude in thought and practice, since the faults of the adversaries concern
lies, slippery words, and evil schemes.
The last accusation in this small catalogue of evils attributed to the oppo-
nents is based on Ezekiel’s third admonition to the prophet. Interestingly, the
formulation in line 17, built as it is on Ezekiel 14, is the only one that makes a
clear distinction between those who seek God and those who provide them
with answers, labeled “prophets of deception (who are) enticed by error”
(‫)נביאי כזב מפותי תעות‬. This distinction reflects the prophetic one made be-
tween the inquirers and the respondent. In fact, the term ‫“( מפותי‬enticed by”),
a pl. masc. const. puʿal participle of the verb ‫“( פתה‬to entice, deceive”), builds
on Ezekiel’s reference to the faulty prophet who will be enticed by God to an-
swer the queries of his idolatrous audience so that he may be punished. Ezekiel
employs a 3ms puʿal impf. of the same verb (‫ ֻיפתה‬, v. 9) to designate the enticed
prophet. However, the sectarian reworking speaks of prophets in the plural
who are enticed not by God but by their own lies and errors, thus echoing the
depiction of false prophets in Ezekiel’s oracle in chapter 13.44 The construct
pair ‫ מפותי תעות‬seems to combine allusions to two prophetic passages con-
cerning false prophets. While the governing noun ‫“( מפותי‬enticed by”) hinges
on Ezek 14:9, the governed noun ‫“( תעות‬error”) echoes another prophetic refer-
ence to false prophets, that of Micah 3:5 ‫“( הנביאים המתעים את עמי‬the prophets
who lead my people astray [= to error]”).
While in the above pericope (lines 14–19) the false prophets are clearly differ-
entiated from those who follow their teaching, this distinction is not so evident
in the first section (lines 10–13a). For, while this section appears to depict op-
posing leaders, it also draws on the vocabulary of Ezekiel’s oracles about false
prophets (cf. ‫“ ;מליצי רמיה וחוזי כזב‬interpreters of falsity and seers of deceit”).45
Nevertheless, the adoption of Ezekiel 14 in lines 16–17 emphasizes the role
of a specific group within the author’s adversaries, those he labels “prophets
of deception” (‫(נביאי כזב‬. Here, the sectarian writer combines Ezekiel 13 and
14 for, to his mind, the two chapters speak of the same deceiving characters.
Perhaps he is referring in particular to the teachers who consult the leaders
41 Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 179.

42 Greenberg, Ezekiel, 248 (153).
43 Block, The Book of Ezekiel, 1:425.
44 Especially Ezek 13:2, 7–8.
45 See also ‫“( אנשי מרמה וחוזי טעות‬men of deception and seers of error”) in line 21.
92 Dimant
described in the first section (lines 10–13a) and in the first part of the second
section (lines 14–16).
That the sectarian text refers to Ezekiel’s formulas, especially that of
Ezek 13:6–9 in which the word ‫ כזב‬is repeated three times,46 is also evident
from the particular character of the negative locution ‫נביאי כזב‬. It is unique in
the sectarian literature, which usually employs the term “prophets” (‫)נביאים‬
in a positive way.47 It is inspired by the various depictions of the deceiving
prophets in Ezek 13:6–8, especially 13:8: ‫“( וחזיתם כזב‬and you have prophesied
deception”) and Ezek 13:9: ‫…“( הנביאים החזים שוא והקסמים כזב‬ the prophets who
prophesy falsity and who divine deception”).48
Next, in line 17, the author defines in what way the “prophets of deception”
betray their error. They49 do so by speaking to the people “[with] mo[c]king
lips and strange tongue” (‫)[ב]ל[ו]עג שפה ולשון אחרת‬. The expression is taken
from Isa 28:11: “… for he speaks to that people in mocking lips and strange
tongue” (‫)כי בלעגי שפה ובלשון אחרת ידבר אל העם הזה‬. The author of the hodayah
seems to have understood Isaiah to say that it is the prophet who speaks to the
people in an incomprehensible tongue.50 With this understanding of the con-
text of Isa 28:7–13, the hodayah applies Isa 28:11 to the false prophets and con-
nects it to the passage from Ezekiel 14. The same exegetical link is developed in
the parallel col. X of the Hodayot, which deals with the topics elaborated in col.
XII and shares its terminology and exegesis. The formulation of col. X, 20–21
is as follows: “But they have replaced them (i.e. the understanding and source
of wisdom) with uncircumcised lips and an alien tongue for a people without
46 In a survey of references to false prophets in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Alessandro Catastini
notes the repeated use of ‫ כזב‬in Ezekiel 13, except for a single instance in 13:22 where ‫שקר‬
appears. In contrast, when discussing these prophets, Jeremiah exclusively employs the
word ‫ שקר‬and the term ‫ כזב‬does not appear. Cf. idem, “Who were the False Prophets?,”
Hen 34 (2012): 330–66 (335, 353). However, a glance at the distribution of these terms in
each prophet reveals that their usage is based on their general lexical preferences and
does not seem to have a particular theological import. Jeremiah does not use ‫ כזב‬at all but
prefers the term ‫שקר‬, whereas Ezekiel favors ‫ כזב‬and utilizes ‫ שקר‬only once.
47 Cf., e.g., 1QpHab VII, 8; 1QS I, 3; VIII, 16; 4Q166 ii 5.
48 Cf. also Ezek 22:28: ‫“( ונביאיה טחו להם תפל חזים שוא וקסמים להם כזב‬her prophets
daub (the wall) for them with plaster; they prophesy falsity and divine for them deceit”).
Compare Lam 2:14: ‫“( נביאיך חזו לך שוא ותפל‬your prophets prophesy for you falsity and
folly”), probably based on Ezek 13:8–11. Cf. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 237.
49 The pronoun ‫“( והם‬and they”) in line 17 should refer to the prophets. Cf. n. 13 above.
50 Thus David Kimhi and Ibn Ezra to Isa 28:11.
understanding so that they might be confused by their error” 51‫וימירום בערול‬

)‫שפה ולשון אחרת לעם לא (בינות להלבט במשגתם‬. This passage also cites Isa 28:11
but connects it to Isa 27:11 and Hos 4:14, all three verses describing the people’s
lack of understanding. Their combination reveals once again the exegetical
technique of fusing different prophetic sayings pertinent to the same subject.
That the same exegetical nexus underlies also col. XII of 1QHa is evident from
the allusion to Isa 28:11 in line 17 and the reference to Hos 4:14 in line 8. A paral-
lel to this exegetical combination is found again in the Damascus Document V,
16–17, which refers to the early sinners in similar terms, citing Isa 27:11 and
Deut 32:28.
It is worthwhile noting that prophecies about false prophets from Isaiah and
Ezekiel are combined elsewhere in the present hodayah. The combination ap-
pears in the preceding sections, lines 10–11: … ‫והמה מליצי כזב וחוזי רמיה זממו‬
‫ תורתכה אשר שננתה בלבבי בחלקות‬52‫“( להמיר‬But they are interpreters of falsity
and seers of deceit.53 They have schemed … to exchange your law, which you
repeated54 in my heart, for slippery words”). The labels “interpreters of falsity
and seers of deceit” are influenced by Ezekiel but the term ‫חלקות‬, a pl. of ‫חלק‬
(“a smooth, slippery thing”), is taken from Isaiah. The entire line is based on
Isa 30:10: ‫אשר אמרו לראים לא תראו ולחזים לא תחזו לנו נכחות דברו לנו חלקות חזו‬
‫“( מהתלות‬who said to the seers ‘do not see’ and to the visionaries ‘do not envi-
sion for us correct things, speak to us slippery things, envision delusions’ ”).
Isaiah censures the people by quoting their demand that the prophets proph-
esy slippery things and falsities. In a strategy typical of the Pesharim, the ho-
dayah extracts from the negation of the prophetic quotation a depiction of
51 The author replaced the Isaiah expression, ‫בלעגי‬, appearing in col. XII, 17 as ‫בלועג‬, with
the term ‫ערול‬, probably based on the biblical ‫“( ערל שפתים‬uncircumcised lips”), with
which Moses describes himself in Exod 6:17, 30.
52 Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 109 is certainly correct in seeing in this term (‫ ;להמיר‬a hifʿil
inf. of ‫ )מור‬a reference to Jer 2:11 and Ps 106:20, which both refer to the replacing of the
worship of God with idolatry, a use that applies to both verses. (Hos 4:7 is somewhat
similar). The author of the present hodayah interprets the biblical wording with the sense
of replacing the divine torah with slippery things. The same hifʿil form, indicating an un-
derlying exegesis of Jer 2:11, appears also in col. X, 20, 38 and in 4Q286 7 ii 12.
53 It is characteristic of sectarian phraseology to create positive/negative counterparts in
their terminology, often based on biblical terms. Thus, the Isaian depiction of the false
prophets, ‫לא תחזו לנונכחות‬, is reversed to describe truthful prophets: ‫חוזי נכוחות‬
(1QHa X, 17).
54 The Hebrew has ‫שננתה‬, an allusion to Deut 6:7, enjoining a constant repeating of the
Torah directives. Cf. Licht, The Thanksgiving Scroll, 92; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 109,
n. 172.
94 Dimant
false prophets. It is done by borrowing the biblical terms “seers” (‫ )חזים‬and

‫“( חלקות‬slippery things”), a combination unique to Isaiah.55 In fact, the same
verse is referred to already in line 8 in another description of the adversaries: ]‫ו‬
‫“( בדברים החליקו למו‬and they spoke slippery things to them”). In the sectarian
nomenclature, the “slippery things” refers to easy ways to circumvent the cor-
rect way of observing the Torah commandments.
In using the Isaiah verse, the present passage resorts to a common piece
of sectarian exegesis, abbreviated as the sobriquet of the adversaries ‫דורשי‬
‫[“( (ה)חלקות‬the] interpreters of slippery things”). The label appears twice in
the analogous polemics of col. X (1QHa X, 17, 34) and is used in the Pesharim to
describe the community’s ideological opponents.56 The exegetical nexus lying
behind this nomenclature comes out more clearly in Damascus Document I,
18, the only passage that actually cites Isaiah. In addition, this citation turns
Isaiah’s negative accusation into an affirmative accusation, but this time ap-
plied to the Man of Mockery (‫(איש הלצון‬. However, the quotation is not only of
interest because of its explicit nature, but also due to the significant addition it
attaches to the Isaiah quotation, ‫“( ויצפו לפרצות‬and they expected breaches”).
This expression is inspired by the criticism of the false prophets in Ezek 13:4, in
which the seers are accused of not repairing the breaches (‫ )פרצות‬of the peo-
ple of Israel.57 So it appears that the exegetical connection between Ezekiel’s
oracles against the false prophet and Isaiah’s implied denunciation of such
seers is one of the stock exegetical traditions of the community. The Hodayot
passage under discussion incorporates the Isaianic simile into its own ideo-
logical framework but at the same time maintains its exegetical link to Ezekiel
13–14. This connection is indeed called for since the two passages concern false
prophets. At the same time, it should be noted that this combination seems to
be part of an exegetical cluster developed by the community and known to its
authors.
The foregoing survey has shown the character of the biblical connotations
and allusions intertwined in the hodayah fabric while also displaying their
links to other sectarian works. However, the peculiarity of the present passage
consists of its phrasing of all the accusations in the present tense. For what is
viewed by the Deuteronomic and Ezekielian admonitions as a probability to
be avoided is transformed in the sectarian pericope into a reality enacted by
55 In col. X, 17, the converse of Isaiah’s censure is used: ‫“( חוזי נכוחות‬seers of right things”), in
place of ‫“( חוזי רמיה‬seers of falsity”).
56 The term ‫ דורשי חלקות‬appears in 1QHa X, 17. Cf. CD I, 18; 4Q163 (pap pIsac) 23 ii 10; 4Q169
(pNah) 3–4 i 7; ii 2, 4; ii 3.
57 As noted by Édouard Cothenet, “Le Document de Damas,” in Les Textes de Qumran (Paris:
Letouzey et Ané, 1963), 2:153.
the denounced rivals. This fact lends the prophetic quotations the quality of
an actualized pesher. This particular flavor is apparent when the hodayah is
compared with occurrences of the same combination of citations—Ezek 14:3–
Deut 29:17–18—in other sectarian texts. It is used in the covenant initiation
ceremony celebrated annually by all the members of the community. Outlined
in the Community Rule (1QS I, 16–II, 25), the ceremony includes the curse pro-
nounced by the priests and Levites in which the Ezek 14:3–Deut 29:17–18 com-
bination describes the grave fault of the renegade that must be avoided.58 In
an abbreviated form but with the same sense, the two quotations are also used
in the Damascus Document (CD XX, 8–10) to define the offense of transgress-
ing all the directives of the community.59 Used in this way in the two sectarian
rules to define the most serious breach of the community’s regulations, this
composite citation appears to constitute a basic and well-known component
of the sectarian nomenclature.
However, in the Community Rule the combined citation presents the sin as
a general evil to be avoided. The Damascus Document uses the prophetic lan-
guage to designate the transgression of certain people among “the former and
the latter ones” (CD XX, 8–9), but it is the Hodayot quotation that is most spe-
cific and elaborate in ascribing the prophetic sin to a particular group. What
makes the hodayah version particularly explicit is the addition of a detail from
Ezekiel’s prophecy that is not mentioned in other citations of this combina-
tion, namely, the mention of prophets. Thus, in a manner typical of pesharim,
the hodayah seems to be referring to real historical personalities, perhaps the
Pharisees and their teachers.
Therefore it appears that col. XII, and apparently also col. X, contains an
exegetical procedure identical to that in the Pesharim but without their formal
markers. One of the indications of the presence of pesharim in the Hodayot
is the recurring connections to prophetic citations and to pesharim in the
Damascus Document. This association has become clear repeatedly through
the present investigation. Such a connection is not just a matter of style; it
indicates broad agreement on the link of specific exegetical clusters to spe-
cific issues. In other words, this common ground points to a sectarian exegesis
shared by the Hodayot and the Damascus Document. In fact, the emergence
of particular exegetical clusters, such as Ezek 14:2–3/Deut 29:17–18/Num 15:39
and Ezekiel 13/Isa 30:10, that are cited in several sectarian works points in this
direction.60 These aspects of the Hodayot still await a systematic investigation.
58 See the comments of Jacob Licht, The Rule Scroll (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1965), 64, 70
(Hebrew).
59 Cf. Rabin, The Zadokite Documents, 39.
60 For similar conclusions, see Kister, “Biblical Allusions.”
CHAPTER 6
The Quantification of Religious Obligation in

Second Temple Judaism—And Beyond*
Yaakov Elman and Mahnaz Moazami
1 Minimum Measures and Quantification
Aharon Shemesh has pointed to a striking parallel in halakhic thought be-

tween Qumran and rabbinic literature: the concern for setting minimum mea-
sures for requirements—mitzvot—for which the biblical text does not.1 Since
some of the disputes which are reported in this connection are attributed to
the Hillelites and the Shammaites, the issue must have arisen in early tannait-
ic times, and thus in an era contemporary with the evidence from Qumran.
Shemesh suggests that this concern was due to anxiety on the part of the
sectarians over whether they had fulfilled the Bible’s requirements. However,
one may wonder what personal anxiety an inhabitant of a desolate place like
Qumran had in regard to fulfilling biblical commands regarding mostly agri-
cultural gifts.2 Though some agricultural activity has been posited at Qumran,
* It is a pleasure and an honor to celebrate Moshe Bernstein’s sustained involvement with

Qumran studies, especially when his survey of sectarian methods of (what came to be called)
midrash halakhah can serve us in helping to answer the question captioned above. And on
a more personal note, his helpfulness and collegiality over a quarter-century have been an
example to me of the best the academic world has to offer. It is all the more pleasant when
we can combine the contributions to two fields in his honor—studies in Qumran and Pahlavi
literature—in a mutually illuminating study, with the help of one of my Iranist colleagues,
Dr. Mahnaz Moazami of Columbia University. Needless to say, Mahnaz is not responsible for
the various opinions that Yaakov expresses on matters pertaining to his Qumran and Jewish
studies.
1 Aharon Shemesh, “The History of the Creation of Measurements: Between Qumran and the
Mishnah,” in Ruth Clements, Aharon Shemesh, Steven D. Fraade, eds., Rabbinic Perspectives:
Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls; Proceedings of the Eighth International
Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature,
7–9 January, 2003 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 147–73.
2 Nevertheless, it is possible that the strict hierarchal lifestyle of the group did arouse more
anxiety than existed in other groups, and led to stringencies that in time were recognized as
praiseworthy, at least in part. In that case, quantification may then have arisen among the
sectarians but was adopted by the rabbis in response to popular demand. But that does not
The Quantification Of Religious Obligation 97
what outside poor gleaners might have been expected to take advantage of
mitzvot such as peah, olelot, shikekhah and the like? And what relevance did
first-fruits have for those who spurned the Temple in Jerusalem?
Moreover, that anxiety is not expressed in our rabbinic texts, and Shemesh
cites no corresponding rabbinic texts as parallels. Instead, he suggests that “the
development of measurements in rabbinic thought may be viewed as a direct
continuation of the process that had its inception in sectarian halakhah,”3
though, as noted above, the disputes between the Hillelites and Shammaites
over minimum measures are among the earliest rabbinic reports we have, and
ultimately, even Jacob Neusner has accepted these reports as historical.4
Again, anxiety is part of the human condition; the question is rather why
this anxiety manifested itself at that time and in that way. Even if the early tan-
naim were motivated by anxiety, why were they and the sectarians more anx-
ious than pious people of other religions who did not set minimum measures,
and why could that anxiety be assuaged (only?) by setting minimum measures,
rather than in some other way?
One possible factor that may have played a role has been proposed by Albert
Baumgarten (though not in this context) in his study of the rise of sectarianism
in the late Second Temple period, which he has attributed to the rise of literacy
and the habit of exact reading that arose in its wake.5 Applying his insight to
the present question we may suggest that that habit of exact reading could
have encouraged thought about minimum measures. If so, we have the recur-
rent problem: why did other religions in the Graeco-Roman world not develop
such a concern with minimum measures? After all, literacy and the habit of
exact reading would have increased there as well, and though we may look at
the various philosophical and legal schools that arose during Hellenistic times,
the Jewish penchant for exact measures seems not to have arisen there.
Baumgarten himself suggests that the Jewish encounter with Hellenism
was part of the cause for the rise of sects, but that gets us into the question of
when, where, and to what extent Hellenism had penetrated Jewish conscious-
ness, and, if anything, sharpens the question of why exact measures and the
like do not show up in Graeco-Roman religions. Of course, the application of
explain why a significant number of Houses’ debates also involve quantification. Below we
shall suggest factors that would have affected all Jews at more or less the same time.
3 Ibid., 173.
4 See Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981), 55, 59, 68.
5 Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation
(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 133.
98 Elman and Moazami
Baumgarten’s thesis to Shemesh’s observation is our own, and it may be that

the creation of measures was not looked upon as a sectarian issue. Indeed, it
does not show up in polemic literature. Still, the existence of this phenomenon
both in Qumran and early rabbinic literature requires explanation.
The following essay is thus an attempt on our part to answer both sets
of questions, that is, the timing of this concern and its cultural and histori-
cal setting and motivation, and why that setting did not have the same effect
elsewhere in the Graeco-Roman world despite the undoubted influence of
Hellenism in those cultures.
In our opinion, one important clue is the fact that one other religion of
late antiquity developed a concern for minimal measures: late Sasanian
Zoroastrianism. This datum may help us understand the phenomenon to
which Shemesh has pointed.
Shemesh’s observation fits well with one that our honoree made in a study
authored by himself and one of his students, Shlomo Koyfman, a study that
surveyed the exegetical techniques that can be “reverse engineered” from the
halakhic material of Qumran. In examining the opening rule of the Qumran
collection of Sabbath laws in the Damascus Document (CD 10:14–11:18),
Bernstein and Koyfman observe that this collection “is framed by biblical cita-
tions; that is to say, the first and last laws in the list are “justified” by explicit
scriptural texts: ‫אל יעש איש ביום השישי מלאכה מן העת אשר יהיה גלגל השמש רחוק‬
‫( מן השער מלואו כי הוא אשר אמר שמור את יום השבת לקדשו‬10:15–17); “No one
should do work on the sixth day, from the moment when the sun’s disk is at
a distance from its diameter from the gate, for this is what it says, ‘Keep the
Sabbath day to sanctify it.’ ” As they put it, this interpretation “could be open to
question; ‘keeping the Sabbath to sanctify it’ (Deut 5:12) need not refer to the
cessation from prohibited activities some length of time before the onset of
the Sabbath.”6
Moreover, we may add, where in this verse, or anywhere in the Bible, do we
find a measure of time such as the one given here? In Gen 1 we find “evening”
and “morning;” in Exod 12:18 we are enjoined to eat unleavened bread “in the
evening” of the fourteenth of first month; we find allusions to “ten degrees” of
6 Moshe J. Bernstein and Shlomo A. Koyfman, “The Interpretation of Biblical Law in the Dead
Sea Scrolls: Forms and Methods,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. Mathias Henze;
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 71–72. It should be noted that all the Qumran
legislation/interpretation regarding minimum measures dealt with by Shemesh in that ar-
ticle are from the Damascus Document, but see Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Miqṣat Maʿaśeh
ha-Torah and the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 14 (1990): 435–57, and in particular 446–47, where the
distance from the Temple city for an allowance of non-sacral slaughter is quantified.
a sundial in Isa 38:8. But the Qumran measure is not at all biblical, though it is
more stringent than the later rabbinic measure. This is not because the exac-
titude of time measure required both by the Qumran sect and the rabbis (and
presumably the Pharisees) did not exist in biblical times. The references to the
sun-dial in Isaiah and to hours of varying length (sha‌ʿot zemaniyyot), wherein
the day and night were each divided into 12 “hours,” a practice that goes back to
ancient Babylonian antiquity—hence the division into 12—suffice to indicate
that the early rabbis could have been more exact in regard to the onset of the
Sabbath as they were for the onset of the prohibition against leavening on the
eve of Passover.7 They evidently did not feel the need.
Instead, the Mishnah merely denotes the onset of the Sabbath with the
vague hashekhah, “darkness” and counterposes it with mibeʿod yom, “while it is
still day” (m. Eruv. 3:4). It is only in the talmuds that we find the attempt to more
precisely define the onset of the Sabbath (y. Ber. 1:1 [2b]; b. Shab. 34b), based
on a baraita which is not to be found in Tosefta. Aharon Shemesh, relying on
Yitzhak Gilat, suggests that “because the exact time at which the Sabbath be-
gins was not clearly determined and difficult to detect, the Qumranites (or it
might even be an earlier tradition) concluded that the Torah warns to stop all
work before sunset. Later, in the rabbinic age, when normative definitions for
day and night were developed, the old tradition of early cessation from work
was reinterpreted as ‘tosefet Shabbat’.”8
We submit that all these debates may be understood as a manifestation
of a cultural drive to quantification and precise definition, a drive fed by ad-
vances in Hellenistic science and mathematics but which extended to much
wider circles than those of acculturated intellectuals, because the drive for
more exact definition extended to governmental tax and economic policies.
Michael Satlow has recently pointed to the Ptolemaic drive for taxes as evi-
dence of their hold on the province. One need not have been very Hellenized,
or, indeed, Hellenized at all, or even literate, to be aware of the fact that taxes
were now being levied in a very exacting manner, much more so than in
earlier times.
7 See Francesca Rochberg, “Babylonian Seasonal Hours,” in her collection, In the Path of the
Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 167–87.
8 See Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis
(Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 2009), 97, and see Yitzhak D. Gilat, Peraqim
be-Hishtalshelut ha-Halakhah (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1992), 259–61. Earlier
Shemesh had noted that since the Qumranites did not distinguish between biblical and non-
biblical rules, they did not have the option of seeing the time before sunset as a “fence.” This
is then an example of “pure” quantification.
What this would have meant to a Jew living under Ptolemaic rule can be
gauged from Michael Satlow’s colorful description of the Ptolemaic drive for
taxes:
While the Ptolemies were largely content to stay out of local politics, they
were hands on when it came to money. Judea alone was required to pay
five hundred kilograms a year of silver to Egypt in tribute. The money was
raised through a tax system that was so elaborate it makes the American
tax code look simple. The Ptolemies taxed land, produce, salt, commerce,
services, and eventually people. A papyrus known as the “Revenue Laws,”
issued around 259 BCE by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, specifies in great (but
now fragmentary) detail the various taxes and their mode of collection.9
And taxation was only one aspect of the Hellenistic drive for exactness, of nail-
ing things down, which would have manifested itself in economic activities.
Indeed, when a farmer went to market to sell his produce, he had to deal with
the agoranomos who was in charge of weights and measures. We should also
note that such concern is already manifested in the Bible, in Deut 25:14–15. As
Daniel Sperber has observed, the biblical command indicates that there was
“some sort of controlling authoritative framework.”10 We may assume that the
biblical command would have made acceptance of a Ptolemaic enactment eas-
ier. Though Sperber’s evidence naturally dates from the Roman era, it is likely
that the Ptolemies (or the Seleucids) likewise instituted such measures and
such an office, given what we know of Ptolemy II’s tax and economic policies.
In sum, one need not have been a philosopher/scientist, an intellectual—
or even literate—to feel the need to accommodate this drive, even in matters
of religion. After all, a Jew might reason, should we be less exacting in fulfill-
ing our obligations to Heaven than we are in regard to our obligations to the
government?
9 Michael L. Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014),
105. His source is Dorothy J. Thompson, “Economic Reforms in the Mid-Reign of Ptolemy
Philadelphus,” in Ptolemy II Philadelphus and His World (ed. Paul McKechnie and Philippe
Guillaume; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 27–38.
10 Daniel Sperber, The City in Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 32,
and see 32–47 for a discussion of the institution as a whole. Sperber’s book illustrates the
many ways in which our illiterate peasant would have come into contact with Roman
ways of thinking, and some of them, to our mind, can be safely retrojected to pre-Roman
times.
Haym Soloveitchik’s observation regarding the multiplication of halakhic

manuals in contemporary Orthodoxy, will help us understand the change even
in the world of the illiterate, unlearned Ptolemaic peasant of the Land of Israel,
who was also affected by the matter of his obligations to the government and
to his wider society.
The world now experienced by religious Jews, indeed by all, is rule-

oriented and, in the broadest sense of the term, rational. Modern society
is governed by regulations, mostly written, and interpreted by experts ac-
counting for their decisions in an ostensibly reasoned fashion. The sacred
world of the orthodox and the secular one that envelops them function
similarly. While sharing, of course, no common source, they do share a
similar manner of operation. As men, moreover, now submit to rule rath-
er than to custom, the orthodox and modern man also share a common
mode of legitimacy, that is, they have a like perception of what makes a
just and compelling claim to men’s allegiance, a corresponding belief in
the kind of yoke people should and, in fact, do willingly bear. Religion
can endure under almost all circumstances, even grow under most, but
it flourishes more easily when the inner and outer worlds, the world as
believed and the world as experienced, reflect and reinforce one another;
as did a mimetic religiosity in a traditional society, and as does now, to a
lesser but still very real extent, a text-based religiosity in a modern, bu-
reaucratic society.11
And let us note that this taxation was Ptolemaic, which means that it predated
the rise of sectarianism in the wake of the Maccabean revolt. Indeed, the Dead
Sea community was not so cut off from general cultural developments as one
might suppose, as Lee Levine has observed. And, as he notes, it was not just
Hellenism, though Hellenism was an integral part of the culture of the eastern
Mediterranean.
A striking example of the penetration of wide-ranging Eastern influences

(and not only those of Greek origin) into the least expected area of Jewish
life is Qumran. The Dead Sea documents reveal a sect whose ideology and
practices were heavily influenced by the larger Hellenistic world. Among
the sect’s fundamental beliefs and practices—determinism, dualism,
the solar calendar, communal property, angelology, celibacy, the desire
11 Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary

Orthodoxy,” Tradition 28 (1994): 64–130; the quote is from 88.
to create a utopia, and many organizational patterns—most have little,

if any, roots in earlier Jewish tradition. However, they are well-attested
in the Hellenistic and Eastern worlds of the third and second centuries
BCE. Clearly, despite a conscious effort to isolate itself from both Jewish
and non-Jewish societies, this sect was heavily influenced by ideas from
the wider Hellenistic world to which it had presumably been exposed in
its formative stages. How and when this contact took place is unclear,
although various suggestions have been advanced. However, the fact that
such a complex process was at work is undeniable.12
One may presume, as do Adiel Schremer and Aharon Shemesh, following

Soloveitchik’s paradigm, that religion had been transmitted mimetically in
those earlier times, by imitating one’s parents and close family.13 The debates
over quantification by the Hillelites and Shammaites indicate that another
stage had been reached. It was no longer sufficient to rely on one’s training or
one’s ritual instinct: it had become necessary to determine strict definition,
at least as regards quantity.14 And once quantities had to be determined, the
12 Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence? (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1998), 20.
13 For Soloveitchik, see note above. For Schremer, see Adiel Schremer, “ ‘T]he[y] did not read
in the sealed book’: Qumran Halakhic Revolution and the Emergence of Torah Study in
Second Temple Judaism,” in Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba
in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. David Goodblatt, et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 105–26. For
for Shemesh, see Halakhah in the Making, 96.
14 See Tosafot Yoma 79b s.v. lomar lekha shiʾuro shel zeh, where the question is raised as to
how to understand this dispute in light of R. Yohanan’s statement that minimum mea-
sures are a Sinaitic halakhah (b. Suk. 5b; b. Eruv. 4a); they conclude that the dispute is not
halakhic, but simply one regarding the import of Exod 13:7. In the end, though, we must
still inquire as to why this became a subject of debate just then. Moreover, how would
the Tosafists’ solution here apply to the many other disputes over minimum measures?
See also y. Hag. 1:2 in regard to the measure of the offering required for pilgrims on the
festival, where R. Yohanan holds that the measure of a ma‌ʾah kesef is a Sinaitic halakhah,
while R. Hoshaya holds that it is a Torah requirement; see Raabad, Katuv Sham ad b. Hag.
18b. See also Sefat Emet on Passover 5641 s.v. be-midrash Harʾini. Similarly, see Tosafot b.
B.Bat. 66b, s.v. af al gav de-hashta regarding “drawn water.” While the tosafists naturally
refer to b. Tem. 12a, b. Shab. 14a and m. Miq. 6:8, the issue arises in the debate between
the Houses in m. Ed. 1:3. There are indeed no fewer than 10 such disputes. On some of the
Houses’ disputes and their possible philosophical basis, see R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin, Le-Or
ha-Halakhah (Tel Aviv: A. Tziyyoni, 1957), “Le-Shitot Beit Shammai u-Veit Hillel,” 302–9.
He notes that R. Shneur Zalman of Liady, the “Baal Hatanya,” had suggested that some
of the Houses’ disputes involved the concepts of ab initio versus in actu; my thanks to
substance itself—whether obligatory or prohibited—had to be defined more

exactly. Which aspect of precision came first—quantification or definitions—
is a “chicken and egg” question which need not detain us.
However, that need for definition brings us to another aspect of the process:
abstraction. This too need not necessarily be laid at the door of Hellenization
since abstraction is already evident in the Torah itself. We are not positing a
linear development, but merely pointing out that some degree of abstraction
existed in some circles in biblical times: a text must have a receptive context.
The category of what became known as a lav or lo taʿaseh, that is, a negative
commandment, is already mentioned in Lev 4:2 as a legal/ritual category:
“commands of God which shall not be done.” However, the fact that this cat-
egory is described by a phrase rather than a one-word term indicates that con-
ceptualization had not yet to run its course. Nevertheless, the Torah is full of
halakhic categories whose exact meaning is now obscure, such as huqim and
mishpatim, which indicates that a significant amount of sophisticated catego-
rization had already taken place in Israelite culture long before the time of the
Houses or Qumran or Hellenism.15
Nevertheless, we must see the process as complex and extended, and as part
of the transition from mimetic religion to a more analytic or scholastic system.
Quantification would have been one part of that process.
After all is said and done, however, and despite the strong possibility that, at
least on the part of some or even most people, quantification was not necessar-
ily tied to acculturation to Hellenistic culture, there is no doubt that accultura-
tion to Hellenistic culture would have fostered such an attitude, and that such
quantification can be linked to other features of that culture. These include an
analytic approach to religious matters, the validation of alternate approaches
to problems—legal or theological, and, if the view of David Daube and others
is correct, even certain aspects of midrash.16
Though even an illiterate farmer would have become aware of the demand
for greater exactitude in his affairs, we may see this as part of a wider change
my student, Rabbi Yosef Bronstein, for directing me to this article. One possibility is that
R. Yohanan referred to the use of olives, dates, etc. for purposes of measurements, but that
the exact application depended on the Sages’ determination.
15 See Elman, “Contrasting Intellectual Trajectories: Iran in Mesopotamia,” in By the Rivers
of Babylon (ed. Samuel Secunda and Uri Gabbay; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 7–105,
esp. 55.
16 See David Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” HUCA
22 (1949): 239–64, and, more recently, Maren R. Niehoff, ed., Homer and the Bible in the
Eyes of Ancient Interpreters (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
in the way that people viewed the world: through quantification. David C.
Lindberg has traced the “beginnings of Western science” to the Hellenistic
period. For example, in a section on “cosmological developments,” he notes
that “Eratosthenes (fl. 235 BC), a geographer and mathematician who headed
the library in Alexandria, had calculated the earth’s circumference a century
earlier [than Aristarchus, who calculated the earth-to-sun and earth-to-moon
distance—YE]; his value of 252,000 stades (very close to the modern figure) be-
came widely known and was never lost.”17 Again, Hipparchus (fl. 140 BCE), aside
from creating “methods that made possible a general solution to problems in
plane geometry” and discovering the precession of the equinoxes and a num-
ber of other important astronomical phenomena, “his greatest achievement
was to take Babylonian numerical astronomy seriously, to unite its numerical
methods with the exclusively geometrical that had, to this point, dominated
Greek astronomical thought; and thereby to provoke a radical reorienting
of the astronomical endeavor.”18 These are but a few examples of the many
that Lindberg examines in many areas of science and mathematics. Indeed,
Francesca Rochberg, an Assyriologist and a specialist in astronomical and as-
trological texts, has provided ample documentation for the deep Babylonian
roots for these scientific advances, which in the Hellenistic period became the
common heritage of the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond.19
17 David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in
Philosophical, Religious and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 (2nd ed., Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007), 96–97.
18 Ibid., 98–99.
19 See the studies collected in her In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination
and Its Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), especially chapter 7, “Elements of the Babylonian
Contribution to Hellenistic Astrology,” and chapter 11, “The Babylonian Origins of the
Mandean Book of the Zodiac,” and the work of Mark J. Geller on the survival of ancient
Babylonian scientific knowledge in the Babylonian Talmud, as in his “The Survival of
Babylonian Wissenschaft in Later Tradition,” in Melammû Symposia I: The Heirs of Assyria:
Proceedings of the Opening Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage
Project (ed. Sanna Aro and R. M. Whiting; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project,
2000), 1–6, and his “An Akkadian Vademecum in the Babylonian Talmud,” in From Athens
to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature, Papers
of the Symposium in Jerusalem, 9–11 September 1996 (ed. Samuel Kottek, et al.; Rotterdam:
Erasmus, 2000), 13–32, among others. See also Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing:
Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004). While it might be argued that this is a specifically Mesopotamian
phenomenon, the existence of these links in Hellenistic culture would argue against that
thesis.
Can we separate this interest from the similar interests as manifested in

the Book of Jubilees, the astronomical parts of the Enochic literature, or the
sectarian calendar? Or disconnect this from the Zeitgeist that produced the
Antikythera Mechanism, the astronomical calculator that was raised from an
ancient shipwreck in 1901, which was, as the New York Times described it, a
“complex clockwork assembly of bronze gears and display dials [which] ac-
curately predicted lunar and solar eclipses, as well as solar, lunar and planetary
positions …, tracked the dates of the Olympic Games,” and which was probably
made in 205 BCE, seven years after Archimedes’ death.20
It is worth quoting Lindberg’s summary of the factors that contributed the
development of Greek thought.
… The invention of writing was a prerequisite for the development of

philosophy and science in the ancient world. Second, the degree to which
philosophy and science flourished in the ancient world was, to a very sig-
nificant degree, a function of the efficiency of the system of writing (al-
phabetic writing having a great advantage over all the alternatives) and
the breadth of its diffusion among the people…. [However,] we must not
imagine that literacy was sufficient of itself to produce “the Greek mira-
cle” of the sixth and fifth centuries; other factors no doubt contributed,
including prosperity, new principles of social and political organization,
contact with eastern cultures, and the introduction of a competitive style
20 See New York Times, November 25, 2014, D3, reporting on a paper by Christian C. Carman
and James Evans, a historian of science and a physicist, respectively, “On the epoch of
the Antikythera mechanism and its eclipse predictor,” in the Archive for History of Exact
Sciences 68/6 (Nov. 2014): 693–774; see also François Charette, “High tech from Ancient
Greece,” Nature 444 (2006): 551–52. The abstract of the Archive article runs: “The eclipse
predictor (or Saros dial) of the Antikythera mechanism provides a wealth of astronomi-
cal information and offers practically the only possibility for a close astronomical dating
of the mechanism. We apply a series of constraints, in a sort of sieve of Eratosthenes, to
sequentially eliminate possibilities for the epoch date. We find that the solar eclipse of
month 13 of the Saros dial almost certainly belongs to solar Saros series 44. And the eclipse
predictor would work best if the full Moon of month 1 of the Saros dial corresponds to
May 12, 205 BCE, with the exeligmos dial set at 0. We also examine some possibilities for
the theory that underlies the eclipse times on the Saros dial and find that a Babylonian-
style arithmetical scheme employing an equation of center and daily velocities would
match the inscribed times of day quite well. Indeed, an arithmetic scheme for the eclipse
times matches the evidence somewhat better than does a trigonometric model.” See also
Helen R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Ancient
Astronomy and Archaeology Early Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 417–23, where the mecha-
nism and its relation to Qumran is discussed.
into Greek intellectual life. But surely a fundamental element in the mix
was the emergence of Greece as the world’s first widely literate culture.21
In another suggestive parallel, Alfred W. Crosby has traced the role that quan-
tification played in the development of Western science in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries and beyond. Quantification was the key to these advanc-
es first as applied to money/specie, which was always in chronically short sup-
ply in Europe and thus promoted progress in abstract thinking about it (and
so too earlier in late biblical times), and thus bookkeeping (which had been
invented perhaps for the first time by the third-millennium Sumerians), then
in regard to time with the invention of mechanical clocks, which allowed the
river of time to be harnessed into uniform quanta, and then space. Crosby
quotes A. J. Gurevich: “It was in the European city that time began, for the
first time in history, to be ‘isolated’ as a pure form, exterior to life.” And Crosby
adds: “Time, though invisible and without substance, was fettered.”22 Though
time was quantified in the thirteenth century with an exactitude not earlier at-
tained, it had been fettered and measured earlier, though with less exactitude,
in Hellenistic times. But, once again, economic factors also entered into the
equation.
That is not to say that the Qumranites, Sadducees or the Pharisees and/or
proto-rabbis were necessarily aware of all these advances, but they were not
totally divorced from the culture that gave rise to them, either.23 Thus, while a
“scientific” view of the world, and to whatever extent, quantification, figured in
late Second Temple understandings of the divine commands and were linked
to Hellenistic thought, they were not viewed in that light, but merely as neu-
tral, common knowledge, just as astrology was. And then, as noted above, this
change in Zeitgeist had real-world consequences in terms of taxes and eco-
nomic activities. As a consequence, we need not get into debates over whether
and to what extent Hellenization had or had not taken place.
21 Lindberg, 11–12.

22 Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 82. Crosby’s quote is from A. J. Gurevich,
“Time as a Problem in Cultural History,” in Cultures and Time (ed. L. Gardet, et al.; Paris:
UNESCO Press, 1976), 241.
23 We need only point to the well-known incidents involving Cleopatra’s anatomical experi-
ment on the development of an embryo (b. Nid. 30b) or the determination of the number
of bones in a woman’s body by autopsy (b. Bek. 45a). Though these are reported in the
Babylonian Talmud, centuries later and removed in space, it provides an indication of
how wide-spread such interest was.
2 Quantification and Scholasticism
This brings us to a yet wider phenomenon: quantification may have been the
harbinger of the application of scholastic thought to Jewish law, a process
Shaye Cohen has described as following:
The Mishnah constructs legal categories, which often appear to be theo-

retical or abstruse, and then discusses, usually in great detail, the precise
definitions and limits of those categories. It creates lists of analogous
legal phenomena, and then proceeds to define and analyze every item
on the list. It posits legal principles, and devotes much attention to those
objects, cases or times which seem to be subject to more than one prin-
ciple at once, or perhaps to none of the principles at all. These modes
of thinking or writing, which can be characterized as scholastic, are en-
demic to the Mishnah, from one end to the other, and are not found in
any pre-Mishnaic Jewish document. They will be developed further in
the Talmudim.24
However, a similar process was at work in developments in fifth- and sixth-

century CE Zoroastrian ritual thought. This can be seen for example, when we
compare the Pahlavi Vidēvdād, a late-fifth-century commentary on the scrip-
tural book devoted to pollution and purification, with another commentary
from a century later, where some Zoroastrian priests had concluded, in good
Euclidean fashion, that pollution can occupy space as opposed to flowing in
straight line fashion—in the the wake of Euclid’s solid geometry.25 Here too
we must speak of a mindset, one of whose important roots lie in Hellenistic
thought, but which penetrated Iranian priestly circles without the accompany-
ing characteristics of Greek language, literature, and culture.
Another interesting parallel between developments in early rabbinic
Judaism and late Sasanian Zoroastrianism is the founding of competing
schools, which we will examine below. However, we must note that Shaye
Cohen has already tied this development in early rabbinic Judaism to another
24 Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 2006), 207. See also Elman’s “Order, Sequence, and Selection: The Mishnah’s
Anthological Choices,” in The Anthology in Jewish Literature (ed. David Stern; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 53–80.
25 See Oktor Skjærvø and Yaakov Elman, “The Shared Scholastic Culture of Late Sasasnian
Iran, or: Does Pollution Need Stairs?” 26: 1 & 2 (2014): 1–29. ARAM.
aspect of the Hellenistic mind-set. As Cohen wrote in the abstract of one of the
arguably most influential papers in contemporary Jewish studies:
The major goal of the Yavnean rabbis seems to have been not the expul-
sion of those with whom they disagreed but the cessation of sectarianism
and the creation of a society which tolerated, even encouraged, vigor-
ous debate among members of the fold. The Mishnah is the first work
of Jewish antiquity which ascribes conflicting legal opinions to named
individuals who, in spite of their disagreements, belong to the same fra-
ternity. This mutual tolerance is the enduring legacy of Yavneh.26
Cohen connects this turn of events with the recognition of Pharisaic/rabbinic

schools as legitimate, and, and in another article, connects this development
with the “rabbis as philosophers and the Yavneh as a philosophical school,”27
à la the Hellenistic model.
The Yavnean sages, the contemporaries of Josephus, realized that the

Jewish “schools of thought” (haireseis) agreed with each other more than
they differed. Aware of the deleterious consequences of internecine
strife, the sages saw themselves as members of the same philosophical
school who could debate in friendly fashion the tenets of the school.28
26 Shaye J. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish
Sectarianism,” HUCA 55 (1984): 27–53; the quote is from 27. Of course, since the
Shammaites seem to have ceased functioning as a body after the Destruction, tolerance
was easy; moreover, reports such as y. Shab. 1:4 (3c) indicate that the disputes sometimes
resulted in violence.
27 See ibid., 51 n. 66. The article in question is Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Patriarchs and Scholarchs,”
PAAJR 48 (1981): 57–85, which points to a number of parallels between the two.
28 Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh,” 50–51. The interested reader may compare Elman’s
“Autonomy and Its Discontents: A Meditation on Pahad Yitshak,” Tradition 47/2 (2014):
7–40 and his “Rava as Mara de-Atra,” Hakirah, 11 (2011): 59–85, especially 59–60; “The
History of Gentile Wisdom According to R. Zadok Hakohen of Lublin,” Journal of
Philosophy and Jewish Thought 3 (1993): 153–87, as well as R. Isaac Hutner, Pahad Yitzhak,
Hanuka, 3.3–4 and 6.3, where R. Hutner specifically connects the Hasmonean response to
the dangers of Hellenization with the decision to give recognition to individual contribu-
tions to Torah learning; see Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, Chanukah in a New Light, Grandeur,
Heroism and Depth as Revealed through the Writings of Rav Yitzchak Hutner ‫זצוק״ל‬
(Lakewood: David Dov Foundation, 2005), 34–35.
We find the same division into schools in Sasanian times, both among the
Babylonian amoraim and the Zoroastrian dastwars; we suggest that the recog-
nition of the legitimacy of conflicting opinions, individual or collective, may
be tied to the rise of the concept of the individual in Hellenistic culture, and
that the absence—or rejection—of these characteristics at Qumran reflects a
fundamental difference in outlook, which Elman has connected with the fun-
damentalist personality, of which more elsewhere.29
Again, this uneven appearance of quantification in different areas of law at
different times, is precisely what we should expect when a mimetic tradition
grudgingly gives way to a more analytic, systematic reworking; such a process
not only takes time, but proceeds at differing rates in different areas of reli-
gious practice, and even in regard to specific practices in one particular area,
and likewise within different groups and subgroups. Lifestyles are not gener-
ally established by conceptual fiat.
Let us pause for a moment and consider what quantification meant and
what it implies. First, let us make a brief survey of these disputes. The Houses
dispute the minimal measures of leavening that violates the prohibitions of
Passover (m. Bez. 1:1), the amount of food to be set aside for an eruv (m. Bez. 2:1),
the worth of a festival offering (m. Hag. 1:2), the amount of “drawn water” that
will invalidate a miqvah (m. Ed. 1:3), until when one may perform labor on the
eve of Passover (m. Pes. 4:5), or even how much of a person’s body must be
within the sukkah in order to fulfill the mitzvah (m. Suk. 2:7), to name just a
few. Indeed, of the ten disputes between the Houses in m. Eduyot 1—a varied
sample, three involve quantification. Shemesh himself notes that “The precise
definition of the required measure for terumah mentioned in this mishnah
was disputed by Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel; thus it must be dated rela-
tively early. Nonetheless, this fixed measure was considered a rabbinic decree
(de-rabbanan), as according to the Bible (de-oraita) ‘one grain of wheat frees
the whole stack’ (b. Qidd. 58b).”30
Let us take a closer look at the dispute between the Hillelites and the
Shammaites in m. Bez 1:1 regarding the amount of hametz and seʾor that would
constitute a violation of the Passover prohibitions of Exod 13:7. There is no
doubt that prior to this dispute Jews refrained from eating these substances on
Passover, and that prohibition may have included any discernable, identifiable
amount of those substances, that is, what the rabbis later called a mashehu.
29 “Why Is There No Central Zoroastrian Temple?: A Thought Experiment,” in The Temple
of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah: Studies in Honor of Professor Louis H. Feldman
(Leiden: Brill, 2011), 151–70.
30 Shemesh, “Measurements,” 161.
However, this debate testifies to a major conceptual revolution: the conversion

of a prohibition regarding a substance to one regarding a category, which must
then be defined, in this instance, in terms of quantity as well as substance.
We should note that it is only the Shammaites who distinguished the two
with respect to minimum measure: the Hillelites, by applying the same mini-
mum standard to both forms of leavening, seem to have conflated the two,
and, in contrast to their general policy, take the stricter side of the debate. We
suggest that this may shed light on the early stages of the scholasticization of
tannaitic Judaism, that is, the period of transition from mimetic religion.
Thus, another somewhat anomalous debate between the Houses may also
date to that period. In m. Ed. 1:12, the Hillelites rule very narrowly in accor-
dance with precedent, and reject logical extensions of the original ruling,
while the Shammaites do extend the precedent, and, as the Mishnah reports,
the Hillelites gave way and ruled in accordance with the Shammaites’ more
reasonable position. Could this indicate that the Hillelites held to the mimetic
tradition a bit longer than the Shammaites? This is not the place to discuss the
entire issue, but the question of what residue of the period of mimetic/non-
scholastic transmission of norms should be addressed if we are to examine the
application of the Soloveitchik paradigm to Second Temple Judaism. Before
leaving the issue, let us suggest that m. Yad. 4:3 is also an example in which
the principle of holding to precedent held sway. This would also explain the
otherwise enigmatic report that before Hillel and Shammai there was only one
dispute among a long progression of scholars (m. Hag. 2:2).
To return to m. Bez. 1:1, there may well have been an earlier debate over
other aspects of this definition, as we find in rabbinic literature. The fact that,
as Aharon Shemesh has pointed out, such consideration of minimum mea-
sures had already taken place at Qumran indicates that this movement toward
minimum measures may have predated the Houses by at least a century, and
perhaps quite a bit more. The data to determine such questions simply does
not exist, but if our suggestion for the economic and cultural factors which
contributed to quantification is correct, there is no reason to reject an earli-
er date. From the data provided by Shemesh in his article, quantification at
Qumran involved the question of the amount one “gives”—in agricultural gifts
and in charity, but did not involve matters touching on prohibited substances
and the like, matters which might involve conceptualization of prohibitions
that are otherwise left undefined in the Torah. Thus, while that conceptual-
ization may have accompanied quantification in the Houses’ disputes, it was
not a significant factor at Qumran, though, as we shall show elsewhere, some
conceptualization (without quantification) seems to have begun at Qumran
as well. Likewise, by locating the drive to quantification in factors that would
have affected most of the population—the increasing quantification in taxa-

tion and economic life as well as the way in which the world was viewed—we
suggest that this was a motivation that was shared by both the elite and the
masses; that is, the Houses were responding to a felt need rather than imposing
new standards, and adding an analytical approach to the setting of standards
for prohibited substances such a hametz.
3 Scholasticization and Scriptural Command
Nevertheless, while all these developments played a part, and while they rep-
resent necessary conditions for the rise of concern for quantification, they are
not sufficient causes, since they do not explain the absence of such quantifica-
tion in other contemporary religions. Why only Jews, and, indeed, why only
some Jews?
As we suggested at the outset, one clue to this conundrum is provided by a
parallel process in another religion: late Sasanian Zoroastrianism as we find
in two large texts dating from the late fifth through the late sixth century CE:
the Pahlavi Vidēvdād (hereafter: PV), a translation into Middle Persian of, and
commentary on, the late second millennium BCE Avestan book on pollution
and purification, the Vidēvdād, and a later “super-commentary” on it, one
which often takes PV as its point of departure, the Zand ī Fragard ī Jud-dēv-
dād (“Commentary on Chapters of the Vidēvdād,” hereafter ZFJ).31 Both these
Pahlavi commentaries testify to this movement toward quantification, as we
shall see.
Let us then reframe the question. What is it about Qumran, rabbinic Judaism
and Sasanian Zoroastrianism that would have encouraged quantification of re-
ligious obligations? Asked in this way we begin to discern the glimmer of an
answer.
Both Judaism and Zoroastrianism looked to revealed scripture to provide their
adherents as individuals with exact (and exacting) instructions in their everyday
lives, and both of these ancient scriptures prescribed severe penalties for failure to
fulfill these obligations in the proper manner. Greeks may have looked to Homer
for theological and even moral lessons, as we find in Plutarch’s Essay on the Life
and Poetry of Homer, but these moral and prudential lessons hardly required
31 For details of this text’s “rediscovery,” see Elman, “Contrasting Intellectual Trajectories:
Iran in Mesopotamia,” (n. 15, above), 51.
quantification.32 We might ask why Philo did not attempt such quantification,
and we should, but that inquiry must remain for another time, though it may
be that his philosophical and apologetic interests led him in other directions.
Roman religion was the domain of the priests, and individual Romans did not
feel the kind of pressing and anxiety-provoking personal obligation that some
Jews or Zoroastrians would. An examination of the admittedly sparse data on
the details of ritual practice in the Graeco-Roman world indicates that this was
not the case.33 Thus, while the process of quantification and precise definition
was necessary for the need for quantification in religious matters to be felt, it
was not a sufficient condition. For that a scripture that obliged detailed com-
pliance with a series of regulations the violation of which could lead to seri-
ous consequences was needed. This then will explain why Pauline Christianity
did not develop in this direction: antinomian religions do not require quanti-
fication. However, as John Townsend has often remarked,34 Christians viewed
theological definition as Jews viewed Halakhah, and the scholasticization of
Christian theology is a pervasive tendency in this period.
Zoroastrianism was of course the age-old religion of the Iranians of the
Sasanian Empire, some of whose texts date from the second millennium BCE
onward and were transmitted orally in languages long out of use. However, by
late Sasanian times these authoritative texts had been translated into Middle
Persian, and were the object of comments by late fourth through sixth-century
commentators, many of whom we know by name. Mahnaz has recently pub-
lished an edition of the first text,35 and we have been working on an edition
32 See J. J. Keaney and Robert Lamberton, eds., [Plutarch] Essays on the Life and Poetry of
Homer (Atlanta: Scholars Press [published for the American Philological Association],
1996).
33 See in particular Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among
the Greeks (trans. Paula Wissing; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), which has
no indication of such concerns among the Greeks. And though, as Clifford Ando notes
in a somewhat different context, “ancient references to bodies of ‘law,’ whether pontifi-
cal or augural, have inspired heroic and sometimes quixotic attempts at historical re-
construction” (Clifford Ando, ed., Roman Religion [Edinburgh Readings on the Ancient
World; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003], 250, in his introduction to Part VI,
“Space and Time”) we know little about the kinds of ritual details that are the stuff of rab-
binic texts. For an explanation of this lacuna, see Alan Watson, The Spirit of Roman Law
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 38–41.
34 Personal communication.
35 Mahnaz Moazami, ed., Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēvdād: Transcription,
Translation, and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2014). References to PV in this paper are to
that edition.
of the second for the past eight years.36 Together, these texts—totaling 55,000
and 35,000 words respectively—give us a detailed picture of the progressive
scholasticization of Sasanian Zoroastrianism during a century or century and
a half of late Sasanian times, an era which overlapped the redaction of the
Babylonian Talmud.
Indeed, quantification in the Sasanian Empire mirrored other factors that
we have already examined, that is, most significantly, a reform in the taxation
system similar to that introduced by the Ptolemies and noted for its compre-
hensiveness and exactness was instituted in late Sasanian times by Kavad I,
during his second term of kingship, 499–531, and concluded under Xusrow I
(reigned 531–579).37 ZFJ was probably composed during his reign, or shortly
thereafter.
Of course, the ancient roots of quantification in the respective Jewish and
Zoroastrian scriptures38 encouraged the trend toward quantification, but the
evidence provided by the Pahlavi books is that we will be able to trace the de-
velopment of the concept of minimal measures in late Sasanian Zoroastrianism
as a continuous process, and furthermore, as part of a wider and deeper process
of development of scholastic thought. Although we will concentrate on quan-
tification, let us first place it in that wider context. Although quantification ap-
plies primarily to ritual materials, such as tithes and the like, it also may apply
to spatial and temporal measures; since it carries with it the notion of change,
it brings in its wake a host of legal questions.39 When things have changed,
how does one classify them? We will not be surprised to find striking analo-
gies between the problems dealt with by the rabbis and the Pahlavi scholars,
the dastwars. Thus, for example, the question of what role digestion plays in
purifying dead matter arises in both rabbinic and Pahlavi texts. As we shall see,
Qumran was not immune from the new ways of analysis and categorization;
the Qumranites were merely a party of resisters—and not all that resistant
when one considers that, despite the biblical prohibitions, astrological texts
36 Quotations from ZFJ are from that edition.

37 Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD (trans. Azizeh Azodi; London:
I. B. Tauris, 2001), 190–91, for a summary of Sasanian tax policy; likewise, Franz Altheim,
Utopie und Wirtschaft: Eine geschichtlicher Betrachtung (Frankfurt am Main: Vittoria
Klostermann, 1957), 88–95, and see the brief discussion in Arthur Christensen, L’Iran sous
les Sassanides (2nd edn [1944], repr. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1971), 122–26.
38 For example, the Vidēvdād provides a graduated scale of punishments for the violation of
its norms, ranging from three to 10,000 (!) lashes.
39 Of course, legalists will legalize and philosophers philosophize; see Ursula Coope, Time
for Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
have been found at Qumran.40 Evidently, divination was forbidden, but science
as then understood was permitted—not to mention all the other doctrines
noted by Lee Levine.
From a slightly different point of view, we may see both the scholasticization
of Second Temple Judaism and of late Sasanian Zoroastrianism as a process by
which mimetic religion gives way to a more precise approach to obligation,
and one in which individual or collective authorities (“schools”) hold more
sway than the religious practices learned mimetically in childhood. Indeed,
as Ab de Jong recently observed, “in the sixth century, two important develop-
ments changed Zoroastrianism drastically. The first was the destruction of the
Mazdakite movement … which led to a tightening grip of the priesthood on
the instruction of the laity. The second, possibly even more momentous, de-
velopment, was the writing down of the Avesta (with its Zand), which led to a
scriptural movement among the Zoroastrians.”41 That event is evident in both
PV and in ZFJ, and so we tend to date the writing down of the Avesta before the
composition of those Pahlavi books, though it is not impossible that it is the
orally-transmitted text that is being cited. In any case, PV refers to the Avesta by
name some 35 times, and ZFJ does so 51 times, but in both texts there are still
other references, either when verses are quoted (almost always incompletely;
the reader was assumed to be familiar with the whole), or alluded to. We sug-
gest that this is linked to the process that Guy Stroumsa pointed to more than
a decade ago: “the movement to scripture” in Christianity, Manichaeism, and
Zoroastrianism.42 He confessed himself puzzled by the rabbinic insistence on
an oral Torah, since he was unaware of Elman’s work on the earlier Sasanian
roots of that insistence along with the explicit resistance of the Babylonian rab-
bis to the apparently popular insistence on such scripturalization, which they
saw as a threat to their authority (see Rava in b. Eruv. 21b).43 Nevertheless, we
40 See Helen R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception (n. 39
above). See also Barbara Böck, “ ‘An Esoteric Babylonian Commentary’ Revisited,” JAOS 120
(2000): 613–20.
41 A. De Jong, “The Use of Writing and the Idea of the Avesta in Sasanian Iran,” in
Zarathushtra entre l’Inde et l’Iran. Études indo-iraniennes et indo-européennes offertes à
Jean Kellens à l’occasion de son 65e anniversaire (ed. E. Pirart and X. Tremblay; Beiträge zur
Iranistik 30; Wiesbaden, 2009), 27–41.
42 See Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity
(Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2005), 28–55; see also his “The Scriptural Movement
of Late Antiquity and Christian Monasticism,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2001):
61–77; my thanks to Shai Secunda for bringing this to my attention.
43 See Yaakov Elman, “Orality and the Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud,” Oral Tradition
14/1 (1999): 52–99, and “Acculturation to Elite Persian Norms in the Babylonian Jewish
must distinguish between Stroumsa’s second- and third-century movement,

and the scripturalization that accompanied Second Temple quantification,
which is clearly rooted in an earlier cultural development of uncertain date,
one connected with the canonization of the Hebrew Bible.
However, none of these minimal measures are derived in any simple fashion
from biblical texts, and Shemesh goes to some trouble in attempting to ferret
out the means by which the Qumranites arrived at these quantities. Moreover,
as we noted above, though quantification may have its roots in the Bible, the
Bible hardly stresses the idea of minimal measures in regard to these mitzvot,
aside from tithing. We may point to such harbingers of quantification as the
genealogical lists of Gen 46 with subtotals, the “seventy souls” of Exod 1:5,
the census lists of Numbers, the values placed on vows in Lev 27, the price
of sacrifices in Lev 5:15, 18, 25, or even more ancient roots in the ancient Near
East (Sumerian bookkeeping, for example), but the late Second Temple and
later drive to quantification was much deeper and more pervasive. Though we
may see Exod 30 with its “recipe” for the incense as a precursor, the numbers
given—250 and 500 sheqalim, a hin, indicate that the nomenclature for exact
recipes was not easily available, parallel to the absence of denominations of
coins rather than larger weights of gold or silver. The instructions for the build-
ing of the Tabernacle and its furnishings, as the instructions for the priestly
garments, contain “minimum measures” of a sort, and testify that the drive
for quantification has biblical roots, in contrast to the descriptions of divine
palaces in the so-called “Baal Epic” in Ugaritic texts indicate, where the pal-
ace of Baal is described as made of wood, choicest cedar, gold, silver and lapis
lazuli, and their extent is described as covering a “thousand fields,” a “myriad
hectares.”44 Above all, the books of Leviticus and Numbers are most concerned
with the details of the sacrificial rites in the Tabernacle, and, as far as pertains
to quantification, the amount of flour- and wine-offerings required to accom-
pany various sacrifices in Numbers 15; for example, in verse 4 a tenth of an
ephah of fine flour and a third of a hin of olive oil and another third of wine is
to accompany a burnt-offering. And so the same argument can be employed in
the opposite direction—why are the directions for compounding the incense
Community of Late Antiquity,” in Neti’ot Le-David (ed. E. Halivni, Z. A. Steinfeld, and

Y. Elman; Jerusalem: Orhot, 2004), 31–56.
44 See Simon B. Parker, ed., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (trans. Mark S. Smith, et al.; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1997), 130, 133–34, and of Yam on 95–96. True, narrative poetry need not in-
clude precise descriptions, and, in any case, Kothar wa-Hasis, the artificer of the Ugaritic
gods, is the builder, and the text does not concern human building of a temple; the ex-
ample is merely illustrative.
in Exod 30 so inexact, and why do we not find such precision in other instruc-
tions, such as those for terumah and other priestly gifts in Num 15 or Deut 18?45
Again, though we stress that Judaism and Zoroastrianism were similar in
their reliance on revealed scriptures which would have encouraged a move-
ment to quantification, we should not expect the process to proceed in lock-
step. Different cultures absorb and apply changes in Zeitgeist in different ways,
depending on their individual Gestalt. Thus, for example, the Babylonian
rabbis—but not their Palestinian colleagues—accepted the Zoroastrian idea
that finger-nail parings were dangerous and must be disposed of in a careful,
ritually cushioned, way. However, both the dangers and the manner of disposal
differed radically in the two religions. For the Zoroastrians, untreated finger-
nail parings would end up as weapons in the hands of the demons, the servants
of the Evil Spirit (PV 17), while for the rabbis the danger was that pregnant
women who might tread on them would miscarry (b. Nid. 17a). This entailed
an elaborate ritual which involved digging holes, reciting passages from the
Avesta, and so on.46 For the rabbis, burning or burial were recommended, with
burning the preferred method. But for Zoroastrians, burning finger-nail par-
ings would have constituted a commission of the cardinal sin of polluting the
fire, which symbolized Ohrmazd. As James Russell has noted, “influences from
one quarter … do not preclude promiscuous intermingling with material from
another tradition …; influences need not be a graft, but can be also a stimulus
that brings into prominence a feature that had been present previously, but
not important.”47 Another example involves the Iranian institution of tempo-
rary marriage, which was employed by some Babylonian rabbis and contin-
ues with contemporary Shiite Islam, but yet has a different valence in each of
these cultures. For the Sasanians it was a means of ensuring offspring for those
who would otherwise not have them, a religious value, but also ensuring the
45 See Tzvi Abusch and Daniel Schwemer, Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals
(Leiden: Brill, 2011), where, for example, highly-elaborate recipes are given for potions
involving many plants and herbs, but no measures are mentioned at all. The same is true
for Robert D. Biggs, ŠÀ.ZI.GA: Ancient Mesopotamian Potency Incantations (Texts from
Cuneiform Sources II; Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1967). Again, the same is true of
the Šurpu incantations designed to heal the sick; the ritual tablet gives no indication
of the amounts of the various materials to be used: flour, onion, dates, various types of
wool, goat’s hair, etc. See Erica Reiner, ed., Šurpu: A Collection of Sumerian and Akkadian
Incantations (Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 11; Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1970), 11.
46 See PV 17, in Moazami’s edition (n. 34, above), 390–97.
47 James R. Russell, “Ezekiel and Iran,” in Irano-Judaica V (ed. Shaul Shaked and Amnon
Netzer; Jerusalem: Makhon Ben Zvi, 2003), 6.
succession of property for the landed classes; for the rabbis, it was apparently
a health measure; for the Muslims, it was “marriage for pleasure.”48
To repeat: if the Houses disagree on the degree of quantification, the con-
cept itself must be earlier, that is, contemporary with D. That quantification
regarding the onset of the Sabbath arrived at Qumran before it was taken up
by the rabbis merely testifies to the uneven pace of conceptualization and
quantification, as does the appearance of concern over when night begins in
the ninth- or tenth-century Zoroastrian Supplementary Texts to the Šāyest nē
Šāyest chapters 11.1–2 and 16, devoted to the monetary equivalents of various
degrees of sin, or 14.4, which defines the onset of night as “when a single one
of the stars created by Ohrmazd is visible,” a datum that is important because
in 12.17–19 drawing water at night is forbidden, and eating at night requires
special prayers.49 The capacity to absorb and integrate elements of one culture
into another is a complex and drawn-out process, even when ancient elements
of one’s own tradition already emphasized aspects of this quantification.
Manichaeism represents an interesting exception in this case, since its
founder emerged more or less in the full light of history, and we have a good
deal of relatively reliable information about his own proclivities, and can eval-
uate their effect on subsequent developments. Thus, Mani himself seems to
have had a particular penchant for quantification, as manifested in the use of
the number five in his mythology/theology. It will therefore come as no sur-
prise to find Al-Biruni’s description of the life of the Elect in such terms:
He established laws which are obligatory only for the Righteous (sad-
diqun), that is, for the saints and ascetics among the Manichaeans, name-
ly, to prefer poverty to riches, to suppress cupidity and lust, to abandon
the world, to be abstinent in it, continually to fast, and to give alms as
much as possible. He forbade them to acquire any property except for food
for one day and dress for a year; he further forbade sexual intercourse, and
48 Maria Macuch, “The Function of Temporary Marriage in the Context of Sasanian Family
Law,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europæa held in
Ravenna, 6–11 October 2003, vol. I, Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies (Milan: Edizioni
Mimesis, 2003), 595–97; see 595–96. The interested reader is referred to an earlier paper of
hers, “Die Zeitehe im Sasanischen Recht: Ein Vorläufer die Šīʿitischen Mutʿa-ehe in Iran?”
in Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 18 (1985): 187–203.
49 See Firoze M. P. Kotwal, Zoroastrian Supplementary Texts to the Šāyest nē-Šāyest
(Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1969), 22 and 68–69, 55, 32–33, respectively. There is much
more of this concern for time throughout the work. On the date of this text, see Kotwal’s
introduction, 5; as he notes, some parts may be older, though we suspect that they are not
older than PV or ZFJ.
ordered them continually to wander about in the world, preaching his

doctrines and guiding people into the right path. Other laws he imposed
upon the Auditors (sammaʿun), that is, their followers and adherents who
have to do with worldly affairs, namely to give as alms a tenth of their
property, to fast during the seventh part of a life-time, to live in monoga-
my, to befriend the Righteous, and to remove everything that troubles or
pains them.50
Moreover, as Jason BeDuin emphasizes, “the Manichaens reduced their elab-

orate regulatory codes to a variety of formulas, such as “Three Seals,” “Five
Commandments,” and “Ten Commandments.”51
However, it is not at all clear that D was based on earlier written texts; most
of its legislation is not easily derived from biblical texts, as Bernstein and
Koyfman have shown. Moreover, if more precise readings of written texts were
the issue, one wonders why such precision was not demanded of narrative
texts and theological concepts, but only ritual ones. It may be that the rea-
son was simply that ritual texts lent themselves more easily to quantification;
moreover, cultural and intellectual changes often or most often have complex
roots. The rise of science and mathematics proceeded hand in hand with a rise
in literacy, as David Lindberg emphasized, and as we noted above.
Still, if the written text here was the Bible, that text would hardly have pro-
vided exact directions, but once the habit of exact reading set in, that would
not have mattered all that much. It is more likely that the Sabbath, as cele-
brated by all segments of Second Temple Jewish society, already had much the
character we find in D and the Mishnah, but that at Qumran some of the re-
quirements had been “tightened.”
The fact that the redactors of the Mishnah have not gone beyond general
terms such as “darkness” and “while it is still day” should not trouble us unduly,
since we have ample evidence of early tannaitic concerns for quantification: as
we noted above, many of the Houses’ debates involve quantification.
This passion for exact definition continued, as Shemesh points out in yet
another study, where he delineated the differences between the Akivan and
Ishmaelian schools in their understanding of how to define a negative or
50 Al-Biruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations (ed. Eduard Sachau; London: William H.
Allen, 1879), 190, as quoted in Jason David BeDuin, The Manichaean Body: In Discipline
and Ritual (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000), 32–33.
51 Ibid., 33.
positive commandment.52 As we noted above, Zoroastrian authorities mani-

fested a similar concern for defining the parameters of levels of sin.
4 The Zoroastrian Parallel
Historians of the rabbinic movement before the emergence of the Houses are
hampered by a lack of data; until the discovery of D in the Cairo Geniza and
among the Dead Sea Scrolls half a century later, they had to rely on the so-
called inter-testamental texts of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, which
are hardly halakhic. An even more serious problem faces historians of Sasanian
Zoroastrianism, where, aside from early Sasanian royal inscriptions, no con-
temporaneous documentation survives until the textual record increases
with the Pahlavi books whose origins may be traced to the late fourth century
through the late sixth century CE. These books include not only PV and ZFJ,
but the Hērbedestān on priestly training and the Nērangestān on the liturgy.
These books reveal a vibrant intellectual world, one with startling parallels to
rabbinic developments, as work on these texts by teams of Iranists and rab-
binics scholars over the last decade and a half have shown, a world not cut off
from developments in the West. How did these developments take place with
such startling suddenness? We suggest that the same process that we have ex-
amined in Second Temple Judaism took place in late Sasanian Zoroastrianism:
the movement from mimetic religion to scholasticism, which likewise accom-
panied by quantification, the valoration of individual opinions, and the forma-
tion of differing schools.
Among these parallels is an intense interest in more precisely defining the
parameters of what seems to have been, until that time, a religious teaching
whose intellectual labors were limited to the memorization of ancient scrip-
tural texts in languages that had not been spoken for well over a thousand
years, and whose ceremonies and rituals had hitherto been transmitted mi-
metically. In the following we will argue that the developments that we can
document in these texts reflect a process of scholasticization that paralleled
the one we have been examining in striking ways. Thus, Sasanian quantifica-
tion was accompanied by several other Hellenistically-themed intellectual
innovations: the discovery that pollution may be spread in three dimensions,
the use of systematic analysis in explicating and developing the age-old rules
of ritual pollution, the introduction of second-order analysis, and, indeed, the
52 See Aharon Shemesh, “Le-Toldot Mashmaʿam shel ha-Musagim Mitzvot ʿAseh u-Mitzvot
Lo Taʿaseh,” Tarbiz 72 (2003): 133–49.
establishment of named schools of Zoroastrian learning, one which resembles

the establishment of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai.
Thus, Sasanian scholars put their minds to defining the essentials elements
of processes which stood at the center of priestly concern, such as the differ-
ence between two states of polluted matter, “dead matter” (nasā) and “dry
dead matter” (hixr), with the latter considered less polluting. What indeed
converted the former into the latter? Was it merely its state of desiccation, or
were there other factors?
This was the burden of the debate between two scholars of the early fifth
century, Abarg and Mēdōmāh, as recorded in PV 5.1–3.53 However, these at-
tempts went far beyond the data that this ancient text could provide, and
necessitated quite a bit of ingenuity; in the case of nasā and hixr, it required
transforming a theological text to a “halakhic” one.54 The originally theological
question came to be mined for its halakhic implications. The case concerns a
pious Zoroastrian who unwittingly feeds polluted wood to the fire. The ques-
tion that Zoroaster poses is this: is the wood gatherer a sinner? Ohrmazd pro-
vides a general rule: wood intended for the fire (and all fires are sacred to some
degree) which became polluted in a way that the one who gathered it could
not have been aware does not make the one who gathers it a sinner. Here is the
passage, without the gloss which interrupts its flow.
5.3 (A) Ohrmazd answered: Neither carried by the dog, nor carried by the
bird, nor carried by the wolf, nor carried by the wind, nor carried by the
fly, dead matter causes a man to sin.55
This stanza/paragraph has been rendered in PV as follows, again in Moazami’s

translation:
V.5.4 (A) (For) if these corpses, which are carried by the dog, carried by
the bird, carried by the wolf, carried by the wind, and carried by the fly,
53 We rely on Alberto Cantera for dating these scholars, and on Oktor Skjærvø for dating
the Avestan texts; see, respectively, Alberto Cantera, Studien zur Pahlavi-Übersetzung des
Avesta (Iranica 7; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 220, and Prods Oktor Skjærvø,
“Zoroastrianism,” The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World (ed. Marvin
A. Sweeney and Michele Renee Saltzman; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013),
102–28; see 103.
54 We refer to the debate between Abarg and Mēdōmāh in PV 5.1–4, for which see Mahnaz’
edition (n. 28), 122–123. For the rabbinic parallel, see m. Ohol. 11:7.
55 PV, ed. Moazami, 123.
were to cause a man to sin, (B) right away, my entire material world would
have been searching the destruction of righteousness. Howling would be
given to (descend upon) that soul; everybody would be a tanāpuhl sinner
because of the great amount of these corpses who die on this earth.56
And finally:
(D) Abarg said: This question was asked regarding the dry dead matter
and (what is) the decision as to dead matter; for when the bird has eaten
something, (what comes out) is dry dead matter.
(E) Mēdōmāh said: This question was asked regarding both (that is, hixr
and nasā) and (what is) the decision as to dead matter; for it is dead mat-
ter until (the bird) digests it.
(F) They agreed that (ham-dādestān), by both doctrines, when one has
committed the heavy (sin), then one has (also) committed the light (sin).
The ancient Avestan text warns, in Oktor Skjærvø’s as-yet unpublished render-
ing, that “the Order of this hymn would be crippled,” referring to the ancient
poet-sacrificer of the Old Avestan times,57 but PV’s rendering instead speaks
of “sin” and “righteousness” and the “path of a life of good deeds.” Thus, quite
apart from a philological commentary—“preponderance” (frahistīh) glossed
with “large amount” (wasīh), we have a theological gloss which translates the
ancient thought-world of the Gathas to that of a more theologically “up-to-
date” theology. Then in turn Abarg and Mēdōmāh translate this theological
language into what we might call “halakhic” discourse, the language of the
rules of ritual, the language of degrees of pollution, and how one degree is
converted into a lesser one.
On the basis of this response Abarg and Mēdomāh (early fifth century au-
thorities who seem to have founded schools, or at least had followers who were
called “Abargites” and Mēdōmāhites”) debated the parameters of the bound-
ary between nasā and hixr, two degrees of pollution. In other words, they an-
chored a legal/ritual point in a theological passage.
56 Ibid., 123.

57 See P. O. Skjærvø, “Zarathustra: First Poet-Sacrificer,” in Paitimāna. Essays in Iranian,
Indian, and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Hans-Peter Schmidt (vols. I–II in one; ed.
S. Adham; Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2003), 157–94, and idem., “Truth and Deception in Ancient
Iran,” in Jamshid Soroush Soroushian Commemorative Volume, vol. II: Ātaš-e dorun—The
Fire Within (ed. Carlo G. Cereti and Farrox Vajifdar; Bloomington, Ind.: 1st Books Library,
2003), 383–434.
There is another aspect to this dispute that should be noted. It is likely

that the two categories existed before the disagreement between Abarg and
Mēdōmāh, and here in PV they were merely attempting to ground their views
in the Avestan text, similar to the process which Adiel Schremer and Aharon
Shemesh have recently suggested for the early development of midrash hal-
akhah in rabbinic legal history (see above). The question, perhaps unanswer-
able, is how much earlier may we assume that these Zoroastrian categories
existed. Whatever the date, however, their appearance in PV demonstrates
that an invigorated intellectual life was coming into existence in the fifth and
sixth centuries, perhaps in connection with the reduction of the Avesta to
written form.
The second category, hixr, which is usually translated as “dry dead matter,”
differs from nasā in that it does not pollute dry substances (PV 8.34). According
to Abarg, nasā becomes hixr when it was ingested by an animal; according to
Mēdōmāh, this occurs only when the nasā was digested. How do we decide
between the two positions? The redactors can do no better than carve out an
area of agreement, as we noted above:
(D) Abarg said: This question was asked regarding the dry dead matter
and (what is) the decision as to dead matter; for when the bird has eaten
something, (what comes out) is dry dead matter.
(E) Mēdōmāh said: This question was asked regarding both (that is, hixr
and nasā) and (what is) the decision as to dead matter; for it is dead mat-
ter until (the bird) digests it.
(F) They agreed that (ham-dādestān), by both doctrines, when one has
committed the heavy (sin), then one has (also) committed the light (sin).
It is also noteworthy that this technique of ham-dādestān (agreement), paral-

lel to the rabbinic ve-shavin, appears only here in PV, and only twice more in
ZFJ (510.1 and 632.9). It would seem that this was a tentative solution proposed
by the redactor(s) that did not come into more general use. That is, as we un-
derstand it, in any case, feeding wood polluted by hixr is still a sin, and so to
be avoided. In the end, neither ZFJ nor ŠnŠ included this case in their panoply
of hypotheticals, presumably because, by definition, it could hardly be known
whether the bird had vomited or defecated on the firewood, and thus this de-
bate was entirely theoretical. Again, in any case, the redactor has returned to
the original Avestan question of whether offering such firewood to the fire is
sinful. Apparently, the act is sinful, but the one who gathers and offers the fire-
wood is not a sinner—as Ohrmazd rules. That is, this sin does not “go to the
root,” it is not added to the gatherer’s store of sins to be accounted against
him on his death. And, we should point out, the question of quantification also
arose in the wake of this debate. Rōšn, apparently a disciple of Abarg, derived
the minimum measure of dead matter from the scripturally-attested datum
that a fly could carry the requisite amount to cause pollution. Rōšn defines
this amount as hambun-iz, “even the smallest amount.” The fact that though
he uses the term hambun-iz but links it with an Avestan verse, “(dead matter)
not carried by the flies” indicates that it is likely that systematic quantification
had not set in. Rōšn is still feeling his way. Now, as to his date: since he bases
himself on statement of Abarg in Hērbedestān 9.8, he must be later than the
beginning of the fifth century.58 This passage thus provides us with a terminus
ante quem for the process. We will return to this point below, and attempt to
trace the history of the use of the term hambun-iz, “even the smallest amount.”
At any rate, a process of quantification similar to what we find in Qumran
and rabbinic literature seems to have taken place within Zoroastrian priestly
circles in the century that lies between the two major surviving Middle Persian
commentaries on the scriptural Vidēvdād, PV and ZFJ. Moreover, from the
data supplied by ZFJ, it seems that by the late sixth century, three schools had
coalesced, named after three of these commentators, the third of which we
know only from ZFJ. As mentioned above, ZFJ is a late-sixth-century super-
commentary on PV, arranged in 539 subsections, each devoted to a specific
inquiry. It is this text, which represents a decided advance in scholasticiza-
tion over PV but which is rooted in it, that provides us with a window into
the vibrant intellectual life of late-sixth century Zoroastrianism. The version
that has come down to us has two layers added on to the original: comments
by someone who introduces them with the phrase az man, “according to me,”
which show continued advances, and three pages added by someone who ob-
jected to the original text’s liberal views on relations with non-Zoroastrians.
It is in the redactional layer of ZFJ that quantification really takes hold. For
details we refer the interested reader to our entry in the Encyclopedia Iranica.
We cite here the section of that entry that deals with quantification, with some
supplementary material:
ZFJ attempts to determine the parameters of the various categories of

pollution, the minimum measures of polluted substances (often ham-
bun-iz [a minimal amount]), and the effect of the interaction of pollution
58 See Elman’s “Toward an Intellectual History of Sasanian Law: An Intergenerational

Dispute in Hērbedestān 9 and Its Rabbinic Parallels,” in The Talmud in Its Iranian Context
(ed. Carol Bakhos and Rahim Shayegan; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2010), 21–57, in particu-
lar, 44–45.
with other substances that are important to humans (crops, water, fire,
firewood, tools and containers, etc.). ZFJ 564 (33.10) is a good example
of this. While PV 16.1 attempts to define the character of the onset of
the menstrual flow primarily in terms of color, ZFJ asks more pointedly:
“A woman who is in menses, then she has marks of menstruation and
what, how much, and how (are they)?”
ZFJ’s answer is a restatement in more exact terms of PV 16.1–2: a blood
flow is considered the most severe; then comes a flow with “the least
amount of yellowness (hambun-iz zardih),” and then some sort of mois-
ture with a reddish tinge, again, “even the smallest amount.” Whether the
latter use of hambun refers only to the amount of the flow, or also to the
degree of red tinge is not clear, but in any case, the redactor/author is
clearly concerned with defining the minimal amount of flow.
The word hambun appears some 19 times in ZFJ as denoting a mini-
mal measure in the legal sense (439 [2.1, twice], 475 [10.10], 487 [15.2], 495
[15.39], 496 [15.40], 505 [18.2], 515 [21.4], 537 [28.5], 563 [33.10, four times],
632 [37.8], 654 [39.1], 658 [40.1], 663 [40.5], 666 and 670 [Summary]).
In its concern with minimal measures ZFJ introduces three such mea-
sures beyond the smallest amount (hambun); two of them relate to the
amount of dead matter that constitutes a violation of the prohibition
against “chewing dead matter,” at least in the opinion reported in the
name of the Mēd(y)ōmāhites. According to this school, the amount is
either such that mizag dānēd, its taste may be discerned, or ōgārēd, it
may be swallowed, which perhaps refers to an amount small enough to
be swallowed at one go, so according to ZFJ 654 (39.1).
There is a fourth measure, based on PV 6.10C, where the Avesta prohib-
its leaving dead matter even “as little as the foremost *joint of the small-
est finger” in a field in which a human or a dog has died. ZFJ 486–487
(15.2) converts this to a minimal amount so that each finger’s-size con-
stitutes a sin.
As might be expected, this interest in minimum measures began earlier, as

we find in PV 3.14K–L, where Rōšn is reported to rule that the minimum mea-
sure of the amount of dead matter that pollutes is “as much as a fly can carry,”
thus referring to Ohrmazd’s statement in V/PV 5.3, where he absolves a pious
Zoroastrian of the heinous sin of inadvertently feeding a fire with polluted
wood, and uses (among other examples) the case of a fly which deposits some
dead matter on a tree branch. As noted above, he probably lived and worked
somewhat later than the beginning of the fifth century. Still, an anonymous
quote in PV 16.8A attributes the measure to Sōšāns, the earliest authority for
whom we have a substantial body of statements—around 70, and who is re-

puted to have been Abarg’s teacher,59 but this may merely be a retrojection of
what was becoming a standard measure. Thus, we have: “If that woman sees
the smallest (drop) of blood after three nights have passed, then she should
sit in the armešt-gāh, the place of infirmity [as opposed to the place for men-
struant women, the daštānestān], from that time till four nights have passed”
which is followed by the gloss: “(This is what) Sōšāns said.” The fact that
hambun-iz is attested twice in the somewhat earlier Hērbedestān, but only in
the sense of “definitely,” or, with the negative, “not at all” (Hb 8.5, 12.5)60 indi-
cates that the use of this term for quantification had not yet begun. The slightly
later Nērangestān uses hambun-iz in the same way (28.50, 38.1, 5, 39.5, 53.40;61
hereafter: Ner), but Ner 10.22 uses the term kamistagīh, “least quantity” (as
Firoze Kotwal and Philip G. Kreyenbroek, the editors of the most recent edi-
tion of that work render it), in the phrase kamistagīh hambun-iz, “at minimum
at least a little,” which marks the beginning of the process of considering mini-
mum measures.62 Likewise, we have pad kamistīh, “at least,” in Ner 28.25, refer-
ring to the use of at least three twigs in a parahōm ceremony.63 And while PV
does not use this phrase, it does at times insist on minimum measures, marked
with the phrase pad kamist (“smallest, fewest, rarely,” see PV 3.15E, 3.19A, 5.46C,
9.3B). PV 5.60 reports that the Zoroastrian sin of wasting (the equivalent of the
rabbinic bal tashhit), that is, allowing pollution to reach a person’s property
applies to hambun-iz, even the least amount. Elsewhere in PV, as in PV 2.5C,
3.40F, 4.2I, 5.42A, 13.36D, it has a more general signification: “of any size or
amount, altogether [see PV 4.2I].”
59 See Jehangir C. Tavadia, ed., Šāyast-nē Šāyast: A Pahlavi Text on Religious Customs
(Hamburg: Friederichsen, De Gruyter & Co., 1930), 28–29, n. 8.
60 See F. M. Kotwal and Ph. G. Kreyenbroek, with contributions by J. R. Russell, eds., The
Hērbedestān and the Nērangestān, vol. I: Hērbestān (Paris: Association pour l’Avancement
des Études Iraniennes, 1992), 50–51 and 64–65.
61 See F. M. Kotwal and Ph. G. Kreyenbroek, with contributions by J. R. Russell, eds., The
Hērbedestān and the Nērangestān, vol. I: Hērbestān, and Firoze M. Kotwal and Philip
G. Kreyenbroek, eds., The Hērbedestān and the Nērangestān, vols. II–IV: Nērangestān
(Paris: Association pour l’Avancement des Études Iraniennes, 1995, 2003, 2009); see
vol. III, 110–11, 160–61, 164–65, 166–67, 260–61.
62 See ibid., vol. II, 64–65. In our opinion, Hb and Ner date from the mid- to late-fifth cen-
tury, while PV was compiled somewhat later, that is, late-fifth to the early sixth-century,
and ZFJ perhaps to the late sixth. We hope to discuss this question elsewhere. In any case,
it would seem that the degree of quantifications correlates with this chronology.
63 Ibid., vol. IV, 82–83.
5 Quantification and Further Scholasticization
However, we should not focus on terminology exclusively, though terminol-

ogy is an index of systematic analysis. The ancient Avestan Vidēvdād shows a
systematic interest in determining the appropriate punishment, expressed in
number of lashes or strokes of the bastinado, for over four dozen sins or “mis-
demeanors,” from three lashes for “urinating while standing,” i.e., for urinating
while standing rather than squatting so as minimize the ensuing pollution of
the earth by urine, which, since it is now outside the body, is considered hixr,
“dry dead matter”; if one does not follow the rule, then it is a sin which makes
the Lie demon pregnant (PV 18.4–44), to 10,000 for killing an otter—unparal-
leled in its severity. The most common is a thousand. PV regularly converts
these punishments into sins of various weights and numbers, which ultimately
could be atoned for by a monetary payment, from 16 drachmas to 60,000, with
6,000 being the most common. PV’s redactor(s) and glossators attempt to ex-
tend this system to some extent. Thus, in 3.40C we have:
(C) [This is known from the Avesta. Regarding hiding (a corpse in the
earth), the Avesta says: “(Those) who bury corpses in this earth [the pen-
alty is 1,000 lashes/strokes].” (D) The consideration for digging: When one
digs and sweeps three shovels[worth], (the sin is) one tanāpuhl; when
one digs and sweeps five shovels[worth], it is two tanāpuhls, (and) when
one shall dig and sweep one, it is one tanāpuhl. He who sweeps (what)
one has already dug, the sin will not be additional for digging….
To gain an appreciation of the development of Zoroastrian thought, let us

compare this to the preceding paragraphs of the Avestan Vidēvdād, which are
perhaps a millennium and a half older, but, more significant, before the ad-
vent of Hellenism. As noted, some quantification has already taken place in
the Avesta, as it had in the Bible, but only in connection with the severity of the
crime of interring the dead; there is no analysis of the action itself. The transla-
tion is that of Oktor Skjærvø.
V.3.36
O Orderly maker of the world of the living with bones,
when dead dogs and dead men are interred in this earth
for half a year without being dug up,
what is the penalty for it?
Then Ahura Mazdā said:
One should strike five hundred strokes with the horse whip, five hundred
with the bastinado.
V.3.37
for a year without being dug up,
One should strike a thousand strokes with the horse whip, a thousand
with the bastinado.
V.3.38
for two years without being dug up,
What is the expiation for it?
What is the purification for it?
V.3.39
There is neither penalty for it,
nor is there expiation for it.
There is no purification for it.
In accordance within expiable deed‫׃‬
For ever and ever.
And then, though the Vidēvdād simply drops the topic of interment, PV fills
in the gap and continues with the question of digging and sweeping, as above.
In these stanzas, however, PV 3.37C’s concern is not only to find an equivalent
in sin to the strokes recommended by the Avesta, to which Ohrmazd answers
that the penalty is a thousand lashes (3.37D), but the redactor and glossators
provide three possible equivalents: five tanāpuhls, which reflects the usual 200
lashes = 1 tanāpuhl equation, or two or three (PV 3.37E), after which the glossa-
tor compares the sin of interring the dead with demon worship.
Now, the Vidēvdād does not record a this-worldly punishment for demon
worship,64 and so the redactors and glossators are forced onto their own re-
sources, in this case, comparing demon worship to interring dead matter. Why
the link? Presumably because PV 7.52–53 associates the two:
64 PV 19.29 and 19.41 assert that the demon Wizarš leads demon worshipers to hell, but that
does not relate to the usual lashes/tanāpuhl system.
7.53 (B) Where is a demon, where is a demon-worshipper [where do they

celebrate the worship the demons the most]? Where do the demons run
together [where is their coming and going]? Where is their coming to-
gether [where do they rush back the most with union (together)]?….
7.54 (A) Ohrmazd answered: In these ossuaries, O Spitama Zarathushtra,
that are built up all over this earth by building up (ossuaries) in which
dead men are placed. (B) That is where the demon is. That is where the
demon-worshipper is. That is where the demons run together; that is
where the demons come together….65
In subsequent stanzas, the ossuaries are described as places in which the de-
mons gorge and disgorge, in which illness, fever, severe pain, cold sweats, and
the like occur. Returning to 3.40C, the question then is what is the exact rela-
tionship between the punishment of interring dead matter (in the earth, not
an ossuary) and demon worship?
First, it is clear that the glossators do not consider the two as equivalent,
although they are associated. As we understand the passage, it would seem
that demon-worship is worse, but it is not worse than a tanāpuhl more than
interring a dead body or a dog or man, or, at worst two or three more.
That is, five tanāpuhl sins. From this up to the sin of demon-worship is
not more than a tanāpuhl (more). According to another law, (it is) as
much as two tanāpuhls (more); (one [authority] says it is as much as
three tanāpuhls (more), according to another law.]
This excerpt requires some unpacking. It seems that we must understand the
argument in the context of 3.37E, as a comparison of interring dead matter
with the sin of demon worship, and thus there are three possibilities. Either
we take the one, two or three tanāpuhl penalty as absolute, that is, the degree
of sin for demon-worship is one, two or three tanāpuhls, in comparison with
interring dead matter for which the sin is five. Alternately, the gloss may be as-
serting that the penalty is greater or less than five tanāpuhls.
As we understand the argument, the consideration seems to be that of
proportion (“From this up to the sin of demon worship is not more than a
tanāpuhl”). That is, worshiping the demons incurs no more than a one, two or
three tanāpuhl sins more than interring dead matter, and not less. The reason-
ing seems to be as follows: the next level of punishment is 1500 strokes, since
interring dead matter for half a year incurs 500 (PV 3.36) and interring it for a
65 PV, ed. Moazami, 211.

year incurs a thousand, but, according to PV 3.38, there is no atonement pos-

sible for the sin of interring dead matter for two years. The next step (which
is not explicit in the text) would thus be 1500 strokes for a year and a half. We
must conclude that the degree of sin incurred by demon-worship is up to three
tanāpuhls more than interring dead matter, and thus may be eight tanāpuhls,
or 1600 strokes. For some reason 1800 is not considered. The argument thus
seems to be that demon-worship cannot be worse than 1600 strokes, since the
next step after that is beyond atonement for interring dead matter, but that
limitation is not applied to demon-worship, that is, demon-worship may be
expiated. It seems to be a variety of an a fortiori argument plus the equivalent
of a rabbinic mi’ut, a limitation: interring dead matter for two years is beyond
atonement, but demon-worship can be atoned, and so it must be somewhat
less—but apparently not less than two tanāpuhls less.66
This step, which occurred in tannaitic and Zoroastrian thought but not in
Qumran, was the development of another consequence of the quantification
of religious obligations: the counting of sins, which seems to have begun with
attempting to achieve a more precise definition of positive and negative com-
mandments, which Aharon Shemesh has located in the school of R. Akiva.67
A further development was then the counting of the number of prohibitions
one might violate with one act; this too developed in fifth-century Zoroastrian
thought.68 Here, however, PV differs significantly from the later text, ZFJ. Here
is PV 6.5:
That is to say, consider this earth (to be) that on which a person passes
away; when a single hair remains on the earth, the entire earth up to the
[ground] water is unclean up to the length and width of the body just as
(it) lies. There is one who thus says: They should not draw water, or dig, or
plow it without the passing of a year’s time, nor should they let the water
66 Psychologically speaking, what seems to be in operation is what the Nobel Prize-winning
psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls the “anchoring effect”; see his Thinking Fast and Slow
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 119–28, whereby the range of a determination
(price, estimate of other sorts) is “anchored” by the initial offer or intuition. What remains
to be determined is how the initial proposition, that worshiping demons incurs one
tanāpuhl, is derived. It should be noted that the study of Pahlavi hermeneutics is at best
in its infancy; see Philip G. Kreyenbroek, “Exegesis 1., in Zoroastrianism,” Encyclopedia
Iranica: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/exegesis-i.
67 See Aharon Shemesh, “Le-Toldot Mashmaʿam”, 133–49.
68 We discussed this phenomenon at AJS in December, 2010, in our joint paper, “Scriptural
and Unscriptural Prohibitions: Zoroastrian and Rabbinic Sin-Counting and the Severity
of Atonement.”
run over it. If it is dug and plowed, it is a tanāpuhl sin; when one lets the
water run over it, it is a tanāpuhl sin; and if they do all three, it is two
tanāpuhl sins. If a tree grows over it and it is dug and plowed, it should
not be covered and one should not tread over it. If one covers or treads
over it, no sin is committed.
Responding to this, ZFJ 11.5 comments:
And in my opinion, however, when one who works with oxen, sows seeds,
lets water run over (the earth), or *weeds or performs any (other) work
on it, there is a tanāpuhl sin.
That is, the opinion expressed here, by the redactor who identifies himself as
az man, “in my opinion,” who is later than the redactor of most of the rest of
ZFJ, takes a more lenient view. Nevertheless, while rejecting PV’s more strin-
gent view, he implicitly acknowledges it, and later on complicates it by adding
the question of the level of sin imposed. We quote again from our entry in the
Encyclopedia Iranica on ZFJ:
ZFJ’s concern with minimal measures becomes a concern with mul-

tiple levels of sin, or, as PV 6.5E already noted, multiple counts of sin
per violation(s) of a prohibition, depending on how such violations are
calculated.
Thus, according to ZFJ 486–487 (15.2), if one has not removed the dead body of
a human or dog from a field and thus allowed water to reach various polluted
substances, polluting the water, the degree of sin incurred is proportional to
the degree of the pollution. Moreover, ZFJ adds another level of complexity to
the question of liability. By Avestan law, the measure is such that each finger-
sized piece of flesh that is not removed from a field is itself accounted as a sin
(V–PV 6.10), but, according to ZFJ, the pōryōtkēšān, the original Zoroastrian
teachers, have decreed that the minimum is the usual hambun-iz, “even the
smallest amount.” Here then we have a distinction between an Avestan prohi-
bition that is more lenient, and one instituted by the pōryōtkēšān which is more
stringent, a distinction familiar to us from rabbinic law. Contact of dead matter
(nasā or hixr) with water, which is more severe, incurs a margarzān-sin; severe
hixr, which is somewhat less severe than nasā, incurs a tanāpuhl-sin; lesser
degrees (xwartar) incur a yāt-sin.
This analysis on the part of ZFJ constitutes a further stage in the quantifica-
tion of Zoroastrian ritual theory: now sins are not only counted, but they are
weighed as well. This does not mean that Zoroastrianism did not recognized
degrees of sin before this: it is clear from the fact that the Avestan Vidēvdād it-
self employs a graduated system of lashes for sins of various degrees that such
quantification or weighing had begun long before—in the late second millen-
nium or early first millennium BCE (and thus similar to the biblical measures
we noted above), but in PV and ZFJ the lashes have been replaced by degrees
of sin: a tanāpuhl was now equivalent to the Avestan 200 lashes. By the time
of the composition of the 9th or 10th CE ritual manual Šāyēst nē Šāyēst, the
degrees themselves number eight or nine and appear in consecutive order of
severity, with monetary equivalents.69 And earlier, in Babylonian rabbinic cul-
ture, the question of how and under what circumstances different categories
of sin are conjoined (issur hal al issur) becomes an issue for extended debate.
But even in PV, the equation of lashes with tanāpuhls signals the emergence of
tanāpuhl as a category of “sin” rather than merely an illicit physical act.
There is another development, or at least the beginnings of one, that should
be noted. The minimal measure of hambun-iz is sufficiently indeterminate
that a glossator (who may have been the redactor70) suggested a means of de-
termining whether one had transgressed the relevant prohibition; in ZFJ 21.4
hambun-iz is equated with the amount discernable by taste, or the amount
that can be swallowed.
When a pregnant woman eats (dead matter), what then is the decision
about her child?
When it is not at the time of birth and there is no fear of harm to the
child, it is permitted to wash and keep feeding the child.
The measure of dead matter is (so that) she perceives the sense of taste
or if she swallows.
We have suggested above that quantification may be linked with the emer-
gence of a Hellenistic, scientific world-view, coupled with a more exacting tax
system and economic controls. These parallels to later Zoroastrian literature
suggest that these developments are not unique to Qumran or to the rabbis,
but emerge during the process of scholasticization. In the case of late Sasanian
Zoroastrianism, the development is linked to a belated Hellenism and a similar
fiscal reform which, like that of Ptolemy II, involved a census and an elaborate
and exacting tax system.
69 See Tavadia’s edition (n. 58 above), 27–29.

70 In ZFJ 40.11 the taste test appears without hambun-iz, suggesting that it is the redactor
who has replaced the hambun-iz in this case.
6 Quantification, Scholasticization and Hellenism
This is not the only such development in late Sasanian Zoroastrian thought. We
may point to a number of other developments, which, unlike quantification,
may be linked to Hellenistic influence more directly, and whose earlier stages
may be discerned in PV and which become more developed in ZFJ. Tracing
these developments gives us a view of intellectual developments in Late
Sasanian Zoroastrianism, and, not incidentally, a view of the wider world of
the redactors of the Babylonian Talmud.
There are four such developments—aside from quantification—to which
at least cursory attention should be paid: the creation of abstract concepts in
ritual law; the use of second-order analysis, especially in legal construction; the
application of some sort of midrashic-type exegesis to the text of some Avestan
passages; and the view of pollution as occupying three-dimensional space.
Underlying some or all of them is what Guy Stroumsa has called “the Scriptural
movement.”71 The following brief overview of these additional developments
illuminates the broader context for the move towards quantification.72
Thus, we have already noted the conceptualization of sin, but PV also em-
ploys the word gugārd, “digested,” as an abstract process, when, in PV 5.4L,73
Gōgušnasp considers “fat in the leaf” as purified when it is “digested,” which,
of course, cannot be taken literally.74 “Digested” has thus become a ritual cat-
egory. Moreover, this may refer back to the earlier debate in PV 5.1–3 between
Abarg and Mēdōmāh as to whether the dead matter (nasā) ingested by a bird
by pecking at a corpse is converted to the lesser polluting “dry dead matter”
(hixr) by the very action of ingestion (Abarg) or digestion (Mēdōmāh). It may
be that the debate hinges on whether ingestion is considered as equivalent
to digestion, since once it is ingested it is then in potentia as digested—so
Abarg, while Mēdōmāh requires the digestion as actually having taken place.
The transference (by analogy) of the word and concept from the case a bird
pecking a piece of a corpse and depositing (vomiting or defecating) it on a
tree branch, and applying it to the case of “fat in the leaf” is an example of the
71 See Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice, 28–55.

72 Elman has elaborated on some of these elsewhere. See esp. “Contrasting Trajectories”.
73 See PV, ed. Moazami, 124–25.
74 See Elman’s “The Other in the Mirror: Iranians and Jews View One Another: Questions
of Identity, Conversion and Exogamy in the Fifth-Century Iranian Empire: Part Two,” in
Bulletin of the Asia Institute 20 (2009): 25–46; see 37a.
rabbinic binyan av, similar to Greco-Roman uses of analogy.75 Quite apart from
its abstract quality, Bruce Lincoln has suggested that
Zoroastrian texts theorized digestion, not simply as a metabolic, but as a

moral process. Their analysis begins with the observation that—like ev-
erything else in historical time—food is a mixed, ambiguous entity, con-
taining elements of both good and evil. Digestion, then, is the analytic
process that separates good substances from evil, transforming the for-
mer into blood (which sustains all life, by virtue of its hot-moist nature),
and sending this blood upward to the brain, the body’s heavenly region.
In contrast, the bad substances residually present in food as a result of
the Assault76 (“poisons,” which are cold-dry in nature and, thus, antitheti-
cal to life) are treated in converse fashion.”77
Here we have the confluence of the scholastic and the theological, a blending
which indicates that, to scholars of the right mind-set, the two areas are not so
foreign.
Before concluding, we would like to widen our scope and present an early
rabbinic example of quantification which does not include an arithmetic di-
mension. In m. Hag. 1:1, where the Houses debate the minimum value of the
offering required of pilgrims, they also debate the parameters of obligation of
a minor.
All are bound to appear (at the Temple), except a deaf man, an imbecile
and a minor … Who is a minor? Whoever is unable to ride on his father’s
shoulders and go up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount—the view of
Bet Shammai. But Bet Hillel say: Whoever is unable to hold his father’s
hand and go up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount.
75 As Cicero notes; see David Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic
Rhetoric,” HUCA 22 (1949): 239–64, esp. his comments on 246–48. However, we need not
adopt Daube’s maximalist position to consider Second Temple scholasticism as contain-
ing significant elements of Graeco-Roman thought, whatever their exact antecedents; see
Levine, Judaism and Hellenism (above, n. 12), 114–16.
76 “Assault” refers to the primordial attack by Ahriman, the evil spirit, on Ohrmazd’s good
creation.
77 Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a
Postscript on Abu Ghraib (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), 92.
This reminds us of the systematic questioning of ZFJ in regard to the minutae

of ritual obligation, as set out above. In this respect Qumran lacks the system-
atic approach of either the rabbis or of the Zoroastrian dastwars. We suspect
that the reason has more to do with the Qumranites drive for stringency than
their incapacity for sustained, systematic and abstract thought. As an example,
let us briefly examine some examples of abstract thought on forbidden mar-
riages that cut across the divisions between Qumran, rabbinic and Zoroastrian
texts. A famous dispute between the Hillelites and Shammaites relates to the
question of whether a levirate marriage can take place when a co-wife is for-
bidden to the levir on incestuous grounds, as set forth in m. Yeb. 1:1 and parallel
texts. In order for this problem to arise, some sophisticated legal thought was
required: the disputants had to consider the relative weight and boundaries of
two categories of divine command, the prohibition of incest on the one hand,
and the requirement of levirate marriage in the appropriate circumstances.
Zoroastrianism also required an analogous marriage in similar circumstances,
that is, when the deceased husband had had no male children. The widow’s
choice was not restricted to the levir, but could embrace any male within or
without the family who was duly appointed by a court with the agreement of
the widow. This practice entailed a conflict between biological and legal iden-
tity, since this čagar husband was faced with the task of raising a child—with
all the attendant expense and trouble—who would be accounted as a child of
the deceased, and not his own. He would be fulfilling another man’s obligation
to engender male heirs rather than his own. Legal identity trumped biological
filiation.78
For Qumran, we need look no further than the sect’s opposition to uncle-
niece marriage, as noted above, which is condemned on the grounds that “the
precept of incest is written from the point of view of males, but the same (law)
applies to women….”79
To conclude: The creation of minimum measures is part of the larger move-
ment to the quantification of religious obligations that took place during the
Second Temple and late Sasanian periods in the wake of Greek scientific and
mathematical advances, Ptolemaic and Sasanian taxation policies, but also its
biblical and Avestan precedents, respectively. However, its application to reli-
gious obligations was restricted to Judaism and later Sasanian Zoroastrianism
78 See Maria Macuch, Das Sasanidische Rechtsbuch ‘Mātakdān ī Hāzar Dātistān’ (Teil II)
(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1981), 103–13, especially her comments on 105–10.
79 See D 5:7–11 for the entire passage, and see Aharon Shemesh, “4Q271: A Key to Sectarian
Matrimonial Law,” JJS 49 (1998): 244–63; in particular, see 250–51, n. 21.
because in these systems, the onus of fulfilling these obligations fell on the
individual by scriptural laws which were either ambiguous, were lacking exact
parameters, or, in the case of the Avestan lashes, were no longer felt as appro-
priate punishments. As to the Houses, their disputes on fundamental matters
of quantification indicate that these reports are indeed early, and that both the
Qumran sectarians and the early rabbis felt the need to deal with the issue of
quantification, as Shemesh has shown.
CHAPTER 7
The Temple Scroll as Rewritten Bible:

When Genres Bend
Steven D. Fraade
1 Introduction
When Geza Vermes first coined the term “Rewritten Bible” (for which some
prefer “rewritten Scripture/scriptures” as being less anachronistic) over fifty
years ago, he had in mind those “postbiblical” (and inner-biblical) texts which
paraphrase the scriptural narrative whether through conflation, harmoni-
zation, and/or supplementation.1 In the days before the publication of the
Temple Scroll (in Hebrew in 1977, and in English in 1983), the possibility of
including legal texts from the Second Temple period within this rubric was not
entertained. However even after the publication of the Temple Scroll, its exclu-
sion from consideration as Rewritten Bible continued. Thus, in 1986, a “state of
the field” collection of essays on “early Judaism and its modern interpreters”
includes a chapter on “The Bible Rewritten (Narratives),” with nothing to sug-
gest that there might be legal texts to be considered in this regard as well.2
1 See Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies, 2nd ed. (Leiden:
Brill, 1973), 184–85, 228–29 (1st ed., 1961), although one of the articles in that book, in which
the term is used, was originally published in 1958. For essays marking the fiftieth anniver-
sary of this term, and in conversation with Vermes prior to his death, see József Zsengellér,
ed., Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques? A Last Dialogue with Geza
Vermes, JSJSup166 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). For the preference for “Rewritten Scripture” or “re-
written scriptural texts,” with reference to this preference among other scholars, see Sidnie
White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2008), 12. For the anachronistic aspects of the term “Rewritten Bible,” see Hindy Najman,
Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism, JSJSup 77
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). On the anachronism of using “Bible” this early (and the preference
for “Scripture” or “scriptures”), see my comments in “Response to ‘Biblical Debates’: Yes and
No,” in What is Bible?, ed. Karin Finsterbusch and Armin Lange, CBET 67 (Leuven: Peeters,
2012), 151–55. On the relation of the Temple Scroll to 4QRP, see Molly Zahn, “4QReworked
Pentateuch C and the Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll: A New (Old) Proposal,” DSD 19
(2012): 133–58.
2 Daniel Harrington, “The Bible Rewritten (Narratives),” in Early Judaism and its Modern
Interpreters, ed. Robert A. Kraft and G. W. E. Nickelsburg (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 239–
47. In fact, this volume includes not a single chapter on pre-rabbinic Jewish legal writings.
The Temple Scroll As Rewritten Bible 137
Similarly, in his 1988 more expansive yet precise definition of Rewritten Bible,
Philip Alexander includes as one of his defining characteristics that it both be
based on a scriptural narrative and take the form of narrative itself.3
Eventually, however, this narrative requirement was loosened, if not elim-
inated, thereby allowing the inclusion of the Temple Scroll as the sole legal
exemplar of Rewritten Bible, especially as argued by Moshe Bernstein,4 and
followed by Sidnie White Crawford, who states (after having compared the
Temple Scroll to Jubilees):
The entire focus of the Temple Scroll is on legal matters; it contains al-
most no narrative material. My argument that the Temple Scroll belongs
in the category Rewritten Scripture thus pushes the bounds of that defini-
tion beyond that given by Geza Vermes. I think it is legitimate to do that,
however, since the author/redactor of the Temple Scroll uses the same
techniques found in narrative texts to demonstrate that the extrapenta-
teuchal legislation that he embraces was also given by God to Moses at
the time of the Sinaitic revelation.5
All of this is set within an overarching scriptural narrative arc, of which she
says, speaking of the author/redactor:
He also follows in his broad outline for the work the order of the canoni-
cal Torah, beginning with Exodus 34 and ending with Deuteronomy 23, al-
though within the body of the text he moves around from book to book.6
3 Philip S. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture:
Essays in Honor of Barnabas Lindars, ed. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) 99–121, summarized in Crawford, Rewriting Scripture,
10–11.
4 Moshe J. Bernstein, “ ‘Rewritten Bible’: A Generic Category Which Has Outlived its
Usefulness?” Text 22 (2005): 169–96, who surveys earlier scholarship on this question, and
esp. 193–95 for inclusion of the Temple Scroll. His characterization of Rewritten Bible de-
mands that it be “comprehensive or broad scope rewriting of narrative and/or legal material
with commentary woven into the fabric implicitly, but perhaps not merely, a biblical text
with some superimposed exegesis” (195; emphasis in original).
5 Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 86. See also ibid., 102: “The Temple Scroll thus presents us with
a legal representative of the category Rewritten Scripture, at the point along the spectrum
occupied by recognizably new compositions that make the same claim to authority as the
base texts they are rewriting.”
6 Ibid., 87.
138 Fraade
However, elsewhere Crawford argues that the overarching structure of the

Temple Scroll is determined by its conceptual progression “from the most holy
(the Temple and its ritual) to the less holy (ordinary life in the land).”7 It is pre-
cisely the intersection of the scriptural and conceptual arcs that is so interest-
ing in the compositional and exegetical creativity of the Temple Scroll at both
the macro and micro textual levels.
My question is whether in regarding the Temple Scroll as the sole legal ex-
emplar of the rubric Rewritten Bible (the price of admission being to argue
for its broad correspondence to the pentateuchal narrative), we constrain our
ability to recognize other aspects of its specifically legal structure and rhetoric
that would align it with aspects of other legal texts of the late Second Temple
period (or beyond), which would not usually be considered to fall within the
category, except if so expanded as to become a meaningless delineator.
Similar risks, of course, inhere in the opposite effort, that is, limiting the
category to very few examplars, and to expect each to fall squarely within any
one rubric. To give one example, in Vermes’s final edition of The Complete Dead
Sea Scrolls in English8 he includes the Temple Scroll in the division “The Rules,”
that is legal texts, placing it between the War Scroll and 4QMMT, rather than
within the division “Bible Interpretation,” where it could have kept company
with 4QReworked Pentateuch and the Genesis Apocryphon, or, for that mat-
ter, in the division “Biblically Based Apocryphal Works,” where it could have
cohabited with Jubilees.9 Any of these would, it seems to me, have made sense,
with each highlighting different literary, rhetorical, and ideological aspects of
the Temple Scroll and different affinities (or disaffinities) with other texts com-
monly included within these divisions.
7 Sidnie Crawford White, The Temple Scroll and Related Texts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 2000), 62; eadem, Rewriting Scripture, 93–94.
8 Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English: Revised Edition (London: Penguin,
2004), vii–xii.
9 Compare the Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, ed. Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, 2nd ed., 2 vols.
(Leiden: Brill, 2014), where the Temple Scroll appears in Part 3 (“Parabiblical Texts”), sec-
tion A (“Rewritten Bible”), along with the Genesis Apocryphon, Jubilees and 4QReworked
Pentateuch, among others, but not in Part 1 (“Texts Concerned with Religious Law”). By con-
trast, the Dead Sea Scrolls Handbook, ed. Devorah Dimant and Donald D. Parry (Leiden: Brill,
2014) eschews all such divisions for their arbitrariness and presents the texts in sequential
order according to the number of the composition and the Qumran Cave.
2 Arranging Laws by Topical Affinities
I shall next focus on a persistent aspect of the Temple Scroll which links it to
both other texts of Rewritten Bible and to other legal texts more broadly that
would not be normally admitted to that category, that being the arrangement
of laws according to their topical affinities with one another. While this pro-
cess of topical conglomeration is minimally evident within the multiple legal
codes of the Torah, it becomes much more evident and extensive (and explicit-
ly claimed) in a variety of texts of the late Second Temple period (and beyond).
The earliest wholesale evidence for this is to be found in the final two chap-
ters of the book of Jubilees.10 After narrating the story of the Exodus from
Egypt, Jubilees gathers laws of Passover from a variety of biblical locations,
adds some biblically unattested Passover rules, and presents them as a coher-
ent unit (49:1–23), with the heading, “Remember the commandment which
the Lord commanded you concerning the Passover …” (49:1). This is followed
by a similar grouping and expansion of Sabbath laws (50:1–13 cf. 2:25–33 in
the context of narrating Creation) on the narrative occasion of the Israelites’
arrival at the Wilderness of Sin (Exod 16:1), one stop before Mt. Sinai (as is
explicitly stated in Jub. 50:1), again beginning with a heading, “And behold the
commandment of the sabbaths I have written for you and all the judgements
of its laws (50:6).” Thus, as much as Jubilees distributes a variety of legal tradi-
tions across its narrative span, here it uses the scriptural narrative occasions of
the first two instances of collective law-giving (instructions for the observance
of the first Passover and the listing of Sabbath rules with respect to the gather-
ing of the manna), to collect an assortment of laws which are otherwise scat-
tered throughout Scripture and to integrate them seamlessly with those that
are not scriptural at all, with little if any explicit exegetical linking of the latter
to the former.11 For example (Jub. 50:7–8):
10 I assume that these chapters were part of the ancient composition of Jubilees, without
speculating at what point they might have been included. On this question more broadly
for Jubilees, see Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts as Evidence
for the Literary Growth of the Book,” RevQ 26.4 (104) (December 2014): 579–94.
11 For this tendency to extract laws from the narrative so as to regroup or re-narrativize
them, see my article, “Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative,” Yale Journal
of Law and the Humanities 17 (2005): 81–96, esp. 85–89. On the relative absence of ex-
plicit legal exegesis (midrash halakhah in rabbinic terms) in late Second Temple writ-
ings, see my article, “Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early
Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the First
International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
Associated Literature, 12–14 May, 1996, ed. Michael E. Stone and Esther G. Chazon, STDJ 28
(Leiden: Brill, 1998), 59–79.
140 Fraade
Six days you shall work, but the seventh is the sabbath of the Lord your
God. You shall not do any work in it, you, or your children or your man-
servant or your maidservant, or any of your cattle or the stranger who is
with you [following Exod 20:9–10]. And let the man who does anything
on it die. Every man who will profane this day, who will lie with his wife,
and whoever will discuss a matter that he will do on it so that he might
make on it a journey for any buying or selling, and whoever draws water
on it, which was not prepared for him on the sixth day, and whoever lifts
up anything that he will carry to take out of his tent or from his house,
let him die.12
Likewise, but now narratively detached, the Damascus Document contains a

substantial core of laws, organized as serakhim, or topically grouped collec-
tions of rules, including both biblical laws and sectarian rules for communal
organization and judicial and penal procedures. As in Jubilees, one of the lon-
gest of these serakhim contains twenty-six rules concerning prohibited activi-
ties on the Sabbath, gathered from throughout the Torah and organized under
the heading, “Concerning the Sabbath to observe it according to its law” (CD X,
14). Similarly, “This is the rule for the Judges of the Congregation” (CD X, 4) and
“This is the rule for the Guardian of the camp” (CD XIII, 7). Presumably, these
groupings of laws under topical headings facilitated their usefulness, whether
for didactic study or administrative reference, but more likely the former given
the non-comprehensive scope of its contents. If so, they could have served as
convenient digests of rules for the social settings of either nightly study of laws
or the annual renewal of the covenant in the third month, to suggest just two.13
Similarly, the internal communal rules of the yaḥad in Serekh Hayaḥad are or-
ganized under topical rubrics denoted by the word serekh in 1QS V, 1–X, 8, e.g.,
“This is the rule for the men of the Community …” (1QS V, 1), to pick just the
first such topical legal cluster.
The Second Temple writer who goes the furthest in systematically or-
ganizing the dispersed laws of the Pentateuch according to topical group-
ings is Philo of Alexandria, who, in his On the Special Laws, employs the Ten
Commandments as “headings” (with each one also serving as a cardinal virtue)
under which to organize the miscellaneous laws drawn from throughout the
12 From English translation by Orval S. Wintermute, in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old
Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 142.
13 For the former, see 1QS V, 12–15, especially the phrase ‫לדרוש משפט‬, as discussed by me
in “Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran,” JJS 44 (1993): 46–69,
esp. 56–58. For the latter, see my article, “Law, History, and Narrative in the Damascus
Document,” Meghillot 5–6 (2008): *35–*55.
Pentateuch, just as the specific laws of Exod 21–24 follow immediately upon
the Ten Commandments of Exod 20.14 However, upon completing his discus-
sion of those laws that he has included under the rubric of the tenth command-
ment, Philo constructs a collection of laws bearing on “justice” (δικαιοσύνη),
largely, but not exclusively drawn from Deut 16:18–18:22, which he was unable
previously to include. Here is how he explains this additional topical grouping
of laws, outside of the organizing structure of the Ten Commandments (Spec.
Laws 4.133–135 [LCL]):
§133 Τούτων μὲν δὴ ἅλις. οὐδεῖ δ’ ἀγνοεῖν, ὅτι ὥσπερ ἰδίᾳ ἑκάστῳ τῶν δέκα
συγγενῆ τινα τῶν ἐπὶ μέρους ἐστίν, ἃ πρὸς ἕτερον γένος οὐδεμίαν ἔχει κοινωνίαν,
οὕτως ἔνια κοινὰ πάντων συμβέβηκεν, οὐχ ἑνὶ ἢ δυσίν, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, τοῖς δὲ
δέκα λογίοις ἐφαρμόττοντα
§134 ταῦτα δ’ εἰσὶν αἱ κοινωφελεῖς ἀρεταί· καὶ γὰρ ἕκαστος ἰδίᾳ τῶν δέκα
χρησμῶν καὶ κοινῇ πάντες ἐπὶ φρόνησιν καὶ δικαιοσύνην καὶ θεοσέβειαν καὶ
τὸν ἄλλον χορὸν τῶν ἀρετῶν ἀλείφουσι καὶ προτρέπουσι, βουλαῖς μὲν ἀγαθαῖς
ὑγιαίνοντας λόγους, λόγοις δὲ σπουδαίας πράξεις συνείροντες, ἵνα τὸ ψυχῆς
ὄργανον εὐαρμόστως ὅλον δι’ ὅλων συνηχῇ πρὸς ἐμμέλειαν βίου καὶ συμφωνίαν
ἀνεπίληπτον
§135 περὶ μὲν οὖντῆς ἡγεμονίδος τῶν ἀρετῶν, εὐσεβείας καὶ ὁσιότητος, ἔτι δὲ καὶ
φρονήσεως καὶ σωφροσύνης εἴρηται πρότερον, νυν ἰδὲ περὶτῆς ἐπιτηδευούσης

ἀδελφὰ καὶ συγγενῆ ταύταις δικαιοσύνης λεκτέον.
§133 Enough then of this. But we must not fail to know that, just as each of
the ten separately has some particular laws akin to it having nothing in
common with any other, there are some things common to all which fit
in not with some particular number such as one or two but with all the
ten Great Words.
§134 These are the virtues of universal value. For each of the ten pro-
nouncements separately and all in common incite and exhort us to wis-

dom and justice and godliness and the rest of the company of virtues,
with good thoughts and intentions combining wholesome words, and
with words actions of true worth, that so the soul with every part of its
being attuned may be an instrument making harmonious music so that
life becomes a melody and a concert in which there is no faulty note.
§135 Of the queen of the virtues, piety or holiness, we have spoken earlier
and also of wisdom and temperance. Our theme must now be she whose
ways are close akin to them, that is justice.
14 See Philo, Decalogue, 19–20, 154–175; Spec. Laws 132–135.

142 Fraade
In effect, Philo argues that the laws of justice are so constitutive of the system
of virtues (and laws) as a whole, that they cannot be assigned to any single ru-
bric, but must constitute an overarching one of their own.
Interestingly, it is the very same range of laws (similarly based overall on
Deut 16–18, which Josephus refers to as the Mosaic “constitution” [πολιτεία])
that elicits from him the need to justify his gathering them and arranging them
under a single topical rubric, interrupting thereby the flow of his narrative ac-
count of Moses’s life, just prior to his swan song (Deut 32) and death (Deut 34)
(Ant. 4.196–198 [LCL]):
§196 Βούλομαι δὲ τὴν πολιτείαν πρότερον εἰπὼν τῷτε Μωυσέος ἀξιώματι τῆς
ἀρετῆς ἀναλογοῦσαν καὶ μαθεῖν παρέξωνδι ̓ αὐτῆς τοῖς ἐντευξομένοις. οἷα τὰ
καθ ̓ ἡμᾶς ἀρχῆθεν ἦν, ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων τραπέσθαι διήγησιν. Γέγραπται δὲ
πάνθ ̓ ὡς ἐκεῖνος κατέλιπεν οὐδὲν ἡμῶν ἐπὶ καλλωπισμῷ προσθέντων οὐδ ὅ̓ τι
μὴ κατελέλοιπε Μωυσῆς.
§197 νενεωτέρισται δ ̓ἡμῖντὸ κατὰ γένος ἕκαστα τάξαι· σποράδην γὰρ ὑπ ̓ἐκείνου
κατελείφθη γραφέντα καὶ ὡς ἕκαστόν τι παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πύθοιτο. Τούτου χάριν
ἀναγκαῖον ἡγησάμην προδιαστείλασθαι, μὴ καί τις ἡμῖν παρὰ τῶν ὁμοφύλων ἐν
τυχόντων τῇ γραφῇ μέμψις ὡς διημαρτηκόσι γένηται.
§198 ἔχει δὲ οὕτως ἡ διάταξις ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων τῶν ἀνηκόντων εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν.
οὓς δὲ κοινοὺς ἡμῖν καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κατέλιπε τούτους ὑπερεθέμην εἰς τὴν
περὶ ἐθῶν καὶ αἰτιῶν ἀπόδοσιν, ἣν συλλαμβανομένου τοῦ θεοῦ μετὰ ταύτην ἡμῖν
τὴν πραγματείαν συντάξασθαι πρόκειται.
§196 But here I am fain first to describe this constitution, consonant as it

was with the reputation of the virtue of Moses, and withal to enable my
readers thereby to learn what was the nature of our laws from the first,
and then to revert to the rest of the narrative. All is here written as he left
it: nothing have we added for the sake of embellishment, nothing which
has not been bequeathed by Moses.
§197 Our one innovation has been to classify the several subjects; for he
left what he wrote in a scattered condition, just as he received each sev-

eral instruction from God. I have thought it necessary to make this pre-
liminary observation, lest perchance any of my countrymen who read
this work should reproach me at all for having gone astray.
§198 Here then is the code of those laws of ours which touch our political
constitution. As for those which he has left us in common concerning

our mutual relations, these I have reserved for that treatise on “Customs
and Causes,” which God helping, it is our intention to compose after the
present work.
Apparently, God did not help, since we do not have Josephus’s projected
“Customs and Causes,” which we might reasonably assume would have been
topically grouped and ordered. What I find most interesting and striking here
is Josephus’s expressed need to preempt (and thereby draw attention to) what
he anticipates to be the criticisms of his “countrymen” for having tampered
with/improved upon revelation as recorded by Moses (from direct divine dicta-
tion) by shaping the “scattered” (σποράδην) laws into a coherent “constitution”
(much as Maimonides, a millennium later, sought to do, albeit much more ex-
tensively and with respect to talmudic law, in the introduction to his Mishneh
Torah).15 Josephus’s preemptive strike presumes that his “countrymen” would
have been in a position to compare and contrast the contents (if not the word-
ing) of what was “bequeathed by Moses” with what was to be published by
Josephus.16
3 The Temple Scroll as Arranger of Laws
It is against this backdrop, I suggest, that the pervasive practice of the Temple
Scroll in topically grouping laws should be seen. Since some of the above
analogues (approximate as they are) appear in texts commonly classified as
Rewritten Bible (Jubilees and Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities), others are not (the
Damascus Document and Philo’s On the Special Laws17), we must surmise that
15 See Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought, trans. Joel Linsider (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2014), 164–96. Compare the following passage from the
Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan A 18 (ed. Schechter, 67; trans. Goldin, 90):
‫ למה‬.‫… לרבי עקיבא קרא לו אוצר בלום‬ ‫וכנגדן היה רבי יהודה הנשיא מונה שבחן של חכמים‬
‫ מצא חטים מניח בה מצא שעורים מניח‬.‫רבי עקיבא דומה? לפועל שנטל קופתו ויצא לחוץ‬
‫ כיון שנכנס לביתו מברר חטים בפני עצמן שעורים בפני‬.‫בה כוסמין מניח בה עדשים מניח בה‬
.‫ כך עשה ר' עקיבא ועשה כל התורה טבעות טבעות‬.‫עצמן פולין בפני עצמן עדשים בפני עצמן‬
“In like manner Rabbi Judah the Prince used to list the excellences of the Sages:
… Rabbi ʿAkiḅa he called “A well-stocked storehouse.” To what might Rabbi ʿAkiḅa be lik-
ened? To a laborer who took his basket and went forth. When he found wheat, he put
some in the basket; when he found barley, he put that in; spelt, he put that in; lentils, he
put them in. Upon returning home he sorted out the wheat by itself, the barley by itself,
the beans by themselves, the lentils by themselves. This is how Rabbi ʿAkiḅa acted, and he
arranged the whole Torah in rings.”
16 Compare Philo, Moses, 2.40, where he says that someone fluent in Hebrew (Chaldaean)
and Greek would be unable to detect any differences between the Hebrew biblical origi-
nal and its Greek translation (of the Septuagint).
17 As I and others have argued, some of Philo’s writings can be usefully characterized as
Rewritten Bible, e.g., his On the Life of Moses. See my article, “Between Rewritten Bible and
144 Fraade
this is not a characteristic of legal Rewritten Bible per se, but of legal codi-
fication (in a nascent sense) across literary forms and ideologies, finding its
most extensive ancient Jewish expression ultimately in the Mishnah.18 That
the Temple Scroll does not draw attention to its version of this shared practice
by signaling it with introductory words, as do Philo and Josephus (especially
the latter who defends the practice), should not surprise us since they are in-
dividual authors who do not mask their authorial human voices, as does the
author/redactor of the Temple Scroll, who pseudepigraphically represents it
as a directly divinely communicated speech and text.19 Perhaps some such in-
troduction or justification appeared in the lost beginning of the first column
of 11QTa (11Q19), but I rather doubt it. But even so, the topical grouping of laws,
while prevalent in the Temple Scroll, does not explicitly define its structure or
rhetoric overall, as it does the Mishnah, with the Temple Scroll incorporating a
mixture of textual forms and conceits, including that of “Reworked Pentateuch,”
as we shall shortly see.20 Space allows us to consider only two cases drawn
from the “Deuteronomic Paraphrase” of the Temple Scroll.
4 The Case of the Law of the King
Like Josephus (Ant. 4.196–301) and Philo (Spec. Laws 136–238), and like
Mishnah and Tosefta Sanhedrin (especially chaps. 2 and 4 respectively), the
Temple Scroll contains a substantial unit (11QTa LI, 11–LXVI, 7) on, in Josephus’s
terms, the Mosaic “constitution,” based on Deut 16:18–18:22, but drawing much
more broadly on other scriptural verses from throughout what becomes the
Allegorical Commentary: Philo’s Interpretation of the Burning Bush,” in Rewritten Bible

after Fifty Years, 221–32.
18 This belies David Weiss Halivni’s characterization of the “Jewish predilection for justi-
fied law,” to which the Mishnah is the exception born of short-lived historical necessity:
David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified
Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). For my critique, see “Interpreting
Midrash 2: Midrash and its Literary Contexts,” Proof 7 (1987): 284–300 (with corrigenda in
8 [1988]: 159–60).
19 This is conveyed throughout (with some exceptions) by God’s speaking in the first person
singular and by the addressee being identified on two occasions as Moses: 11QTa XLIV, 5
identifies Aaron as the addressee’s brother (“Aaron your brother”); while 11QTa LI, 6–7
speaks of God’s speaking to the addressee “on this mountain” (= Mt. Sinai).
20 On the Reworked Pentateuch at Qumran, see Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 39–59
(including bibliography).
Hebrew Bible.21 This section is commonly referred to as the “Deuteronomic

Paraphrase.”22 It includes, or has inserted therein, the Law of the King of 11QTa
LVI, 12–LIX, 21, based on Deut 17:14–20, but incorporates many other verses, or
allusions to verses, especially from 1 Sam 8:4–22 and 10:17–27.23
The first ten lines (LVI, 12–21), follow fairly closely, with small (but signifi-
cant) emendations, Deut 17:14–18.24 For example, where MT Deut 17:16 has ‫ַרק‬
‫יְמה ְל ַמ ַען ַה ְרבּוֹת סוּס‬
ָ ‫ת־ה ָעם ִמ ְצ ַר‬ ִ ‫“( לֹא־יַ ְר ֶבּה־לּוֹ‬Only he must not
ָ ‫סוּסים וְ לֹא־יָ ִשׁיב ֶא‬
multiple for himself horses, and he must not cause the people to return to
Egypt to multiply horse[s]”), 11QTa LVI, 15–17 has ‫רק לוא ירבה לו סוס ולוא ישיב את‬
‫“( העם מצרים למלחמה למען הרבות לו סוס וכסף וזהב‬Only he must not multiply for
himself horse[s], and he must not cause the people to return to Egypt for war
in order to multiply for himself horse[s] or silver or gold”).While some of the
changes here appear to be for the sake of greater internal consistency (e.g., ‫סוס‬,
horse, consistently in the singular), the inclusion of ‫“( למלחמה‬for war”) seeks
to specify that the purpose (perhaps already implicit) of prohibiting return
to Egypt is to preclude warfare (and plunder), perhaps thereby allowing it for
other purposes (e.g., for trade).25 In these regards, the passage so far resembles
more closely Reworked Pentateuch than Rewritten Bible, at least of the more
expansive type of the latter and may be thought of as a variant text.
21 For a good indication of the range of verses that are incorporated into any section of
the Temple Scroll, see Michael O. Wise, A Critical Study of the Temple Scroll from Qumran
Cave 11, SAOC 49 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1990), 210–34.
22 See Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Deuteronomic Paraphrase of the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 15
(1991–92): 543–67.
23 For more detailed discussion, with comparisons between the Temple Scroll and early rab-
binic literature (Mishnah, Tosefta, Sifre Deut.), see my article, “ ‘The Torah of the King’
(Deut. 17:14–20) in the Temple Scroll and Early Rabbinic Law,” 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), 25–60.
Although I make reference therein to the paraphrastic treatments of the king pericope by
Philo (Spec. Laws 4.157–69) and Josephus (Ant. 4.223–24) they would repay revisiting in
their own rights, and in comparison to one another.
24 While some of these might reflect a different scriptural base-text, the most important
ones appear to be deliberate changes. For the two texts placed side-by-side, with differ-
ences in the Temple Scroll in italics, followed by discussion of the significance of the
changes, see Crawford, Rewritten Scripture, 97–99. I retain Crawford’s translations of
Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll in the comparisons that follow.
25 Compare Pss. Sol. 17:33 (OTP 2:667–68): “(for) he will not rely on horse and rider and bow,
nor will he collect gold and silver for war.” Thanks to Shani Tzoref for bringing this to my
attention.
146 Fraade
The most significant and far-reaching change appears in 11QTa LVI, 20–21,
which render Deut 17:18, ‫ֹּתורה‬ ָ ‫ת־מ ְשנֵ ה ַה‬
ִ ‫וְ ָהיָ ה ְכ ִש ְבֹּתו ַעל ִכ ֵסא ַמ ְמ ַל ְכֹּתו וְ ָכ ַתב ֹלו ֶא‬
ֵ ‫“( ַהזֹאת ַע‬And when he sits securely on the throne of
‫ל־ס ֶפר ִמ ִל ְפנֵ י ַהכ ֲֹהנִ ים ַה ְלוִ יִ ם‬
his kingdom, then he will write for himself a copy of this law in a book from
before the levitical priests”) as ‫והיה בשבתו על כסא ממלכתו וכתבו לו את התורה‬
‫“( הזואת על ספר מלפני … הכוהנים‬And when he sits securely on the throne of
his kingdom, then they will write for him this law in a book from before the
priests …”). Aside from stressing the more active role of the priests in prepar-
ing a book (scroll) of law for the king, by removing the word ‫“( ִמ ְשׁנֵ ה‬copy”), ‫ַהתּוֹ‬
‫“( ָרה ַהזֹּאת‬this law”) now refers not to the present text of Deuteronomy, even if
altered, but to the newly constructed, self-contained Law of the King that com-
mences in the next line of the Temple Scroll (LVII, 1), with the demonstrative
introduction, ‫“( וזואת התורה‬And this is the Torah”26). From here through LIX, 21,
where it picks up again Deut 17:20, the Temple Scroll gathers several laws relat-
ing to the monarchy, in some cases hinted at the immediate context of Deut
17:14–20, but in all cases drawing heavily (but not explicitly) from elsewhere in
Scripture. Their table of contents could read: (1) The muster of the army (LVI,
1–5). (2) The king’s guard (LVII, 5–11). (3) The royal council (LVII, 11–15). (4) The
king’s marriage (LVII, 15–19). (5) The prohibition against corruption (LVII, 19–
21). (6) The laws of war (LVIII, 3–21). (7) Curse and blessing (LIX, 2–21).27
The author/redactor’s method can be discerned through mention of just
three of these topics as examples. Deut 17:17’s prohibition of the king’s having
“many wives” is hardly sufficient to suggest a section on the laws relating to the
Queen. Yet the Temple Scroll does precisely this, drawing on and integrating
many other verses from throughout Scripture28 so as to include rules prohibit-
ing the king from marrying a gentile woman, requiring him to take a wife from
his “father’s family,” prohibiting him from having more than one wife during
her lifetime, but permitting remarriage after her death.
Similarly, while Deut. 17:16, in the reworked version provided by the Temple
Scroll (LVI, 16), prohibits the King from returning the people to Egypt for pur-
poses of war, the Temple Scroll in its self-contained Law of the King draws on
26 Cf. Deut 4:44.

27 I have taken this breakdown from Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 100; eadem, The Temple
Scroll, 59.
28 Wise (Critical Study of the Temple Scroll, 229) lists the following: 1 Sam 8:13; 1 Kgs 11:1–2;
Lev 21:13–14 (versional); Lev 18:18; and Deut 17:7. He suggests comparison with Deut 7:3;
Ezek 9:12; Neh 10:31; 13:25; and Ezek 26:5–6.
many verses from elsewhere in Scripture29 to provide a set of rules for royal
warfare: the mustering of armies of different sizes depending on the scale of
the threat from foreign troops and whether the war is defensive or offensive,
the division of the booty, and inquiring of the High Priest, who seeks the oracu-
lar guidance of the Urim and Tummim.
Thirdly, while unattested in the king pericope of Deut 17:14–20, the Temple
Scroll’s self-contained Law of the King requires the king to be subservient to
a royal council, mainly comprised of priests and Levites, whose approval he
must seek in all matters of judgment and law. The only explicit tie here to the
king pericope of Deuteronomy is the expression in the Temple Scroll (LVII, 14),
‫“( ולוא ירום לבבו מהמה‬so that his heart not be lifted above them [= the members
of the council])”, which is a relocating and re-construing of Deut 17:20, ‫ְל ִב ְל ִתּי‬
‫רוּם־ל ָבבוֹ ֵמ ֶא ָחיו‬
ְ (“so that his heart not be lifted above his brothers [= his fellow
Israelites]”). This is consistent with the Temple Scroll’s persistent elevation of
the authority of the priests (and Levites) throughout. Note that Yadin thinks
that the royal council here, with its tripartite composition, derives from the
composition of the high court of referral in the previous scriptural pericope
(Deut 17:8–13, esp. 17:9, to which I will return momentarily).30 Even so, Michael
Wise identifies two other verses, Num 1:44 and 2 Chr 19:8, as contributing to
the midrashic mix.
As we have seen, in this case, and as could be reinforced by other examples,
the Temple Scroll has created (or inserted) a highly coherent collection of laws,
here grouped together for their common application to the king. However, its
inclusion here required the opening of a space in Deut 17:18, after ‫תּוֹרה ַהזֹּאת‬ ָ ‫ ַה‬,
in a manner more in keeping with the Reworked Pentateuch, except that here
the insertion is not just of one word (as with the insertion of ‫ למלחמה‬in 11QTa
LVI, 16), but of a whole unit (three full columns) of topically grouped laws.
Thus, two distinct forms of legal interpretation—Rewritten/Reworked Bible
and the topical groupings of laws (proto-Mishnah)—are here combined in an
inter-dependent manner that renders classification more complex than simply
checking the appropriate box.
29 See Wise, Critical Study of the Temple Scroll, 229, who lists some 40 scriptural sources that
inform this section of the Law of the King.
30 Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 1:350.
148 Fraade
5 The Case of the High Court of Referral
Provisions are made in Deut 17:8–13 for a high court of referral, to which would
come cases that were too difficult (or lacked precedent) to be adjudicated by
lower, local courts, once Israel had settled in the land of Canaan. This court
bears some similarities to, as well as major differences from, and is likely exe-
getically dependent upon, three earlier wilderness narratives. In those, Moses,
unable to bear the burdens of judging all cases of internal conflict alone, estab-
lishes a court or council to hear such cases, only the most difficult or significant
of which would be referred to him for adjudication, which he would decide
via divine communication or by oracular means.31 In contrast to its scriptural
antecedents, the high court of Deut 17:8–13 is noteworthy both for its relative
autonomy and for its being located in the single ‫“( מקום‬place”) chosen by God.
It alone makes the final determination of law or resolution of conflicts with-
out explicit recourse to a higher authority. Its verdict is final and authoritative,
even though it claims no prophetic or oracular means of communication with
the divine, as was exercised by Moses. This is all the more remarkable in light
of Deuteronomy’s (and the Temple Scroll’s) frank recognition of the corrupt-
ibility of human judges.32 While we cannot know whether the scriptural text
with which the author/redactor of the Temple Scroll (11QTa LVI, 1–11) worked
was identical to that of the MT, in the absence of ancient biblical manuscript
evidence to the contrary, we must consider the reworked version of the Temple
Scroll with respect to what we have in the form of the MT, especially in the
31 See Exod 18:13–27; Num 11:10–17, 24–25; Deut 1:9–18. I have a much fuller study of the
interpretation of Deut 17:8–13, focusing on the Temple Scroll in comparison to Sifre
Deuteronomy, in Hebrew and English versions: “‘:)‫ ח־יג‬,‫כי יפלא ממך דבר׳ (דברים יז‬
‫‘ “( ”פירוש המקרא בפרשת בית הדין העליון—בין מגילת המקדש למדרש התנאים‬If a Case
is Too Baffling for You to Decide …’ [Deuteronomy 17:8–13]: Biblical Interpretation in the
Pericope on the High Court—Between the Temple Scroll and Tannaitic Interpretation”),
Meghillot 11–12 (2014–2015): 199–218; “ ‘If a Case is Too Baffling for You to Decide …’
(Deuteronomy 17: 8–13): Between Constraining and Expanding Judicial Autonomy in
the Temple Scroll and Early Rabbinic Scriptural Interpretation,” in Sibyls, Scriptures,
and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, ed. Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar,
JSJSup (Leiden: Brill, 2017). For Josephus’s paraphrase of the law of the high court, in the
context of his regrouping of laws dealing with judicial matters, see Ant. 4.218. For Philo’s
paraphrase, again in the context of his collecting of laws relating to justice, see Spec. Laws
4.190–191. I discuss both briefly in the aforementioned English article, 419 n. 41.
32 See Deut 16:18–20 (as well as Deut 1:16–17); 11QTa LI, 11–18.
‫‪The Temple Scroll As Rewritten Bible‬‬ ‫‪149‬‬
‫‪absence of relevant variants in the LXX or SP (except as noted below).33 I have‬‬

‫‪prepared a chart comparing the two in parallel columns. Light text in both‬‬
‫‪columns indicates a significant variant in wording between the Temple Scroll‬‬
‫‪and MT. Bolded text appears in one of the texts but not the other. I begin with‬‬
‫‪the Temple Scroll and correlate MT to it, rather than vice versa.34‬‬
‫)‪Line Temple Scroll col. 56 (ed. Yadin‬‬ ‫)‪Deuteronomy 17 (MT‬‬ ‫‪Verse‬‬
‫‪1‬‬ ‫ל־השּׁ ֵֹפט ֲא ֶשׁר יִ ְהיֶ ה ַבּיָּ ִמים ָה ֵהם *[א]ו̊ אל ̊ה[ש]ו̊ [פטים אשר יהיו בימים‬‫וְ ֶא ַ‬ ‫‪9‬‬
‫ההמה] ו̇ ̇ד ̇ר ̊ש ̊ת ̊ה ו̊ ̊ה ̊ג[ידו לכה את]‬ ‫וְ ָד ַר ְשׁ ָתּ וְ ִהגִּ ידוּ ְלָך ֵאת‬
‫‪2‬‬ ‫הדבר אשר עליו̊ ̊ב[אתה לדרוש והגי]‬ ‫ְדּ ַבר ַה ִמּ ְשׁ ָפּט׃‬ ‫‪9‬‬
‫דו לכה את המשפט‬
‫‪3‬‬ ‫ל־פּי ַה ָדּ ָבר ֲא ֶשׁר יַ גִּ ידוּ ְלָך…‪ /‬ועשיתה על פי התורה אשר יגידו לכה‬ ‫ית ַע ִ‬ ‫וְ ָע ִשׂ ָ‬ ‫‪10a,‬‬
‫ועל פי הדבר‬ ‫תּוֹרה‬‫ל־פּי ַה ָ‬ ‫ַע ִ‬ ‫‪11a‬‬
‫‪4‬‬ ‫אשר יואמרו לכה מספר התורה ויגידו‬ ‫ֲא ֶשׁר יוֹרוָּך‬ ‫‪11a‬‬
‫לכה באםת‬
‫‪5‬‬ ‫מן המקום אשר אבחר לשכין שמי‬ ‫ן־ה ָמּקוֹם הַ הוּא ֲא ֶשׁר יִ ְב ַחר יְ ‪-‬הוָ ה‬ ‫ִמ ַ‬ ‫‪10b‬‬
‫עליו ושמרתה לעשות‬ ‫וְ ָשׁ ַמ ְר ָתּ ַל ֲעשׂוֹת‬
‫‪6‬‬ ‫ככול אשר יורוכה ועל פי המשפט‬ ‫ל־ה ִמּ ְשׁ ָפּט‬
‫ְכּכֹל ֲא ֶשׁר יוֹרוָּך׃‪ … /‬וְ ַע ַ‬ ‫‪10b,‬‬
‫אשר יואמרו לכה‬ ‫אמרוּ ְלָך‬ ‫אשׁר־י ֹ ְ‬ ‫ֶ‬ ‫‪11b‬‬
‫‪7‬‬ ‫תעשה לא תסור מן התורה אשר יגידו‬ ‫ן־ה ָדּ ָבר ֲא ֶשׁר־יַ גִּ ידוּ‬
‫ַתּ ֲע ֶשׂה לֹא ָתסוּר ִמ ַ‬ ‫‪11b‬‬
‫לך ימין‬ ‫יָמין‬
‫ְלָך ִ‬
‫‪8‬‬ ‫ושמאול והאיש אשר לוא ישמע ויעש‬ ‫וּשׂמֹאל׃‪ /‬וְ ָה ִאישׁ ֲא ֶשׁר־יַ ֲע ֶשׂה‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫‪11b,‬‬
‫בזדון לבלתי‬ ‫ְבזָ דוֹן ְל ִב ְל ִתּי‬ ‫‪12‬‬
‫‪9‬‬ ‫שמוע אל הכוהן העומד שמה לשרת‬ ‫ל־הכּ ֵֹהן ָהע ֵֹמד‬ ‫ְשׁמ ַֹע ֶא ַ‬ ‫‪12‬‬
‫לפני או אל‬ ‫‪ֹ-‬להיָך אוֹ ֶאל־‬ ‫לְ ָשׁ ֶרת ָשׁם ֶאת־יְ ‪-‬הוָ ה ֱא ֶ‬
‫‪10‬‬ ‫השופט וימת האיש ההוא ובערתה‬ ‫וּמת ָה ִאישׁ ַההוּא‬ ‫ַהשּׁ ֵֹפט ֵ‬ ‫‪12,‬‬
‫הרע מישראל וכול‬ ‫וּב ַע ְר ָתּ ָה ָרע ִמיִּ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל‪ /:‬וְ ָכל־‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫‪13‬‬
‫‪11‬‬ ‫העם ישמעו ויראו ולוא יזידו עוד‬ ‫וְ ָה ָעם יִ ְשׁ ְמעוּ וְ יִ ָראוּ וְ לֹא יְ זִ ידוּן‬ ‫‪13‬‬
‫בישראל‬ ‫עוֹד‬
‫‪33 There are no extant Qumran scriptural texts of Deut 17:8–13. Note that the only extant‬‬
‫‪fragment of our scriptural passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls (2QDeutb [2Q11 in DJD 3:61],‬‬
‫‪covering Deut 17:12–15) is identical to MT.‬‬
‫‪34 For a similar comparison, see Gershon Brin, Issues in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Tel‬‬
‫‪Aviv: Tel Aviv University and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1994), 173–75 (Hebrew).‬‬
150 Fraade
Some changes, such as from references to God in the third person to God’s
speaking in the first person singular (lines 5, 9) are unremarkable for the
Temple Scroll. Overall, lines 1 and 7–11 of the Temple Scroll appear to “follow”
verses 9 and 11b–13 of MT. However, verses 10 and 11a appear to have been bro-
ken and rearranged. Among the seeming changes in the Temple Scroll, when
compared to MT, are significant variations in word order, substitution of words,
as well as entire interpolations.
Among the most striking of such variations are the transfer of the beginning
of v. 11 (‫תּוֹרה ֲא ֶשׁר יוֹרוָּך‬ ָ ‫ל־פּי ַה‬ ִ ‫ ) ַע‬to an earlier position, following the beginning
of v. 10 (‫ל־פּי ַה ָדּ ָבר ֲא ֶשׁר יַ גִּ ידוּ ְלָך‬
ִ ‫ית ַע‬ָ ‫)וְ ָע ִשׂ‬, and the interchanging of ‫ התורה‬in the
Temple Scroll for MT’s ‫( ַה ָדּ ָבר‬Temple Scroll lines 3, 7), and ‫ הדבר‬in the Temple
Scroll for MT’s ‫תּוֹרה‬ ָ ‫( ַה‬Temple Scroll line 3).35 However, the most remarkable
difference is the complete interpolation of ‫ מספר התורה ויגידו לכה באמת‬in line
4 of the Temple Scroll, without any equivalent in MT. Thus, where MT has in
v. 11a ‫תּוֹרה ֲא ֶשׁר יוֹרוָּך‬ ָ ‫ל־פּי ַה‬ ִ ‫“( ַע‬in accordance with the Teaching/Torah which
they will instruct you”), the Temple Scroll has in lines 3–4:
‫ מספר התורה ויגידו לכה באמת‬vacat ‫“( ועל פי הדבר אשר יואמרו לכה‬in accordance
with the verdict which they will tell you [vacat] from the book of the Teaching
[Torah] and which they will announce to you in truth”36). The Temple Scroll
here clearly stresses that the source of the ruling to be announced by the court
35 The former interchange (‫ התורה‬for MT ‫ ) ַה ָדּ ָבר‬also occurs in some witnesses to Sifre
Deuteronomy, for which see Finkelstein’s edition, 207 line 8 (according to the Venice print-
ing and MS London).
36 For a variety of translations of ‫באמת‬, see Yadin (“in sincerity”), Charlesworth (“truth-
fully”), Vermes (“in truth”), García Martínez (“accurately”), and Wise, Abegg, and Cook
(“the truth”). Yadin (The Temple Scroll, 2:251, in note to line 4) gives examples from the
Dead Sea Scrolls of forms of ‫ אמת‬that express a sectarian (exclusive) claim to (divine)
truth. The language of 1QS I, 15 is particularly apt in relation to our case: ‫ולוא לסור מחוקי‬
‫“( אמת וללכת ימין ושמאול‬and not to turn aside from his true laws [by] going either [to]
the right or [to] the left”), as noted by Kister (Tarbiz 57 [1988]: 316). For the addition of
‫“( אמת‬truth”) in the Dead Sea Scrolls to biblical idioms wherein it is absent, see 1QS I,
5; VIII, 2 (and its parallel in 4QSe [4Q259]); IX, 17 (and its parallels in 4QSd [4Q258] and
4QSe [4Q259]); 11Q5 (11QPsa [Psalm to the Creator]) XX, 10–11. Therein ‫“( אמת‬truth”) is
added to the scriptural idioms ‫“( צדקה ומשפט‬righteousness and justice”) and ‫משפט צדק‬
(“righteous justice”). Compare the above Dead Sea Scrolls texts with Gen 18:19; Prov 21:3;
Ps 33:5 for the former, and Deut 16:18; Isa 1:21 for the latter. So far as I could determine,
these biblical idioms never appear with ‫ אמת‬in all of classical rabbinic literature. Note
also the expression ‫אמתו‬/‫“( יחד אמת‬community of [his] truth”) in 1QS II, 24, 26 (partly
restored); III, 7.
is the “book of Teaching/Torah,” and that it is to be communicated “in truth,”

that is, reliably and accurately.
Like the king of the following section both in Deuteronomy and the Temple
Scroll, who is to keep beside him at all times a Teaching/Torah written on a
scroll,37 which is to govern his royal actions, so too the high court is to rule
in accordance with the “book of Teaching/Torah” and to transmit that ruling
in faithfulness to that text, possibly reflecting the influence of the king peri-
cope on that of the high court, as we saw previously in the opposite direction.38
The subordination of political office to Mosaic Torah (that is, to the text of
Deuteronomy itself) is a leitmotif of the larger unit of Deut 16:18–18:22.
One effect of the seeming transpositions and insertions in lines 3–4 is to
delay, and thereby reduce the importance of ‫“( מן המקום‬from the place”) as the
authoritative source of the ruling by preceding, and thereby upending it with
‫“( מספר התורה‬from the book of Teaching”). The authority of the court’s ruling
derives less from its location )‫)מקום‬, as important as that remains, than from
the Torah text from which it rules and communicates ‫“( באמת‬in truth”). It is
tempting to think that the space left by the scribe before ‫ מספר התורה‬serves
to accentuate that important altered detail.39 Similarly perhaps, the Temple
Scroll’s dropping of the demonstrative pronoun ‫“( ַההוּא‬this”) from ‫ן־ה ָמּקוֹם‬ ַ ‫ִמ‬
‫“( ַההוּא‬from this place”) in verse 10b of MT, renders thereby the “place” as being
somewhat less determinative.40
37 On this, see Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 1:344–45. For a detailed comparison of the “Torah of
the King” in the Temple Scroll and early rabbinic literature, see S. D. Fraade, “ ‘The Torah
of the King’ (Deut. 17:14–20) in the Temple Scroll and Early Rabbinic Law.”
38 Just as the king might be corrupted by excessive women and wealth, so too the judges can
be corrupted by bribes. See Deut 17:17 for the former and Deut 16:18–20 (as well as Deut
1:16–17) for the latter. The Temple Scroll (11QTa LI, 11–18) goes even further in applying the
death penalty to corrupt judges. See Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 1:383–85; 2:227–29; Jeffrey
Stackert, “Before and After Scripture: Narrative Chronology in the Revision of Torah
Texts,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 4 (2013): 175–81.
39 We have no way of knowing how the Temple Scroll would have rendered ‫ל־ה ָמּקוֹם‬ ַ ‫ֶא‬
(“to the place”) of Deut. 17:8 since it is not preserved. My contention is that through the
insertion of ‫ מספר התורה‬prior to ‫מן המקום‬, the Temple Scroll privileges the “book of
Teaching/Torah” as the immediate source (and, in a sense, the authority) of the ruling,
over the place in which the ruling is made. Note especially the parallel use of the locative
‫ מ־‬and ‫ מן‬with ‫ ספר התורה‬and ‫ המקום‬respectively, as denoting originating sources of
judicial authority (the “book” or the “place”).
40 I offer this suggestion somewhat tentatively since the demonstrative pronoun is lacking
in LXX, while present in SP and Syr. Deut 17:10. It should be noted that this is the only
scriptural occurrence of the phrase ‫ ַה ָמּקוֹם ַההוּא‬, except for Deut 12:3, which does not
refer to the Temple site.
152 Fraade
I am less certain how to understand the other major interpolation, that of

transforming ‫ ְדּ ַבר ַה ִמּ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in v. 9 to ‫הדבר אשר עליו ב[אתה לדרוש והגי]דו לכה את‬
‫ המשפט‬in line 2.41 The Temple Scroll may be seeking to limit the role of the
high court to deciding only cases of civil dispute referred up to it from local
courts, thereby excluding from its purview broader legislative decisions that
are not so occasioned. This is in striking contrast to the assignment of broader
legislative functions to the Sanhedrin in early rabbinic literature, which insti-
tution’s authority is similarly grounded in Deut 17:8–13.42 Whether or not, or to
what extent, it is advisable to read the Temple Scroll in light of later rabbinic
exegeses of Deut 17:8–13 is a question with which I deal in my fuller study of
this section of the Temple Scroll in relation to early rabbinic interpretation of
the same biblical passage (see above, n. 31).
Yigael Yadin, in comments to his edition of the Temple Scroll,43 interprets
the interpolation of ‫ מספר התורה ויגידו לכה באמת‬as follows: “There is virtu-
ally no doubt that these changes were designed to prohibit the fixing of any
law according to oral tradition, i.e., any law not written and interpreted in the
Pentateuch.” And again, “[T]here is a plainly polemical element, castigating
those who do not ‘declare in sincerity’ according to the Torah.” Although he
does not mention them by name, Yadin would appear to be alluding to the
Pharisees as the purveyors of “oral tradition,” against whom the Temple Scroll
is polemicizing by requiring the court’s rulings to derive directly from the writ-
ten Torah “in truth.”44 Since there is, it seems to me, nothing inherently polemi-
41 Qimron reconstructs the text differently: ‫הדבר אשר עלית[ה לדרוש והגי]דו לכה את‬
‫המשפט‬. This will not affect my argument.
42 See Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 83–87, for the rabbinization of the sorts of
rulings to be made by the high court according to Sifre Deut. §152.
43 Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 2:251.
44 This understanding of the Temple Scroll as mounting a polemic against “the Oral Torah”
(‫ )תורה שבעל פה‬of the Pharisees is endorsed by Daniel R. Schwartz, “Law and Truth:
On Qumran-Sadducean and Rabbinic Views of Law,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years
of Research, ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport (Leiden: Brill; Jerusalem: Magnes Press
and YadIzhak Ben-Zvi, 1992), 234 (referencing Joseph Baumgarten for the same view).
Following Yadin, Schwartz claims that “[I]n the Temple Scroll, the paraphrase of this pas-
sage systematically substitutes ‫ תורה‬for ‫דבר‬, thus indicating that one should follow the
judges only when their rulings are indeed Torah.” The semantic evidence is hardly so
“systematic” (see above, n. 35) and Yadin’s and Schwartz’s polemical inference from it is
thereby exaggerated. Menahem Kister similarly endorses Yadin’s polemical reading, but
with additional arguments: “Marginalia Qumranica,” Tarbiz 57 (1988): 315–16 (Hebrew:
“‫עוללות מספרות קומראן‬ˮ); idem, “Two Formulae in the Book of Jubilees,” Tarbiz 70 (2001):
298–300 (Hebrew: ”‫על שני מטבעות לשון בספר היובלים‬ˮ). For the most recent reiteration,
cal in the language of the Temple Scroll, and since we have no direct evidence
for how the Pharisees would have interpreted Deut 17:8–13, Yadin’s confident
claim can only be tested by looking at how the earliest rabbinic commentary
to Deuteronomy interprets these same verses, which I do in the aforemen-
tioned articles of mine.45 Nevertheless, the Temple Scroll’s emphasis, through
subtle but significant textual emendation, on deriving law from “the book of
the Torah,” and doing so “in truth,” suggests that for the author/redactor of the
Temple Scroll, the high court of referral was not as autonomous of revealed
truth as the biblical text (and its early rabbinic exposition) might suggest.
In this, it is consistent with the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls’ widespread em-
phasis on the revelatory “truth” of their prescribed teachings and practices
throughout.46
6 Conclusions
The broadening of the rubric Rewritten Bible (with all of its difficulties) so as
to include a legal text such as the Temple Scroll is, it seems to me, advanta-
geous. However, the fact that the Temple Scroll is the only such extensive legal
text that qualifies for inclusion is also problematic, as is any category of one.
It should not inhibit us from acknowledging that the “rewriting” of a narrative
scriptural text and the same of a legal text respond to different intellectual
needs and accomplish different rhetorical goals, although not entirely. Nor
should it blind us to the fact that a major aspect of the Temple Scroll’s Rewritten
Bible is the grouping of laws according to topical rubrics (and not according
see Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings, vol. 1, Between Bible and
Mishnah (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2010), 139–40 (Hebrew), xxxvii–xxxviii (English).
45 See above, n. 31. I do not presume that earliest rabbinic literature provides us with a
window onto the Pharisees, but that the comparison can nevertheless be mutually il-
luminating. The question of the attitude of the Pharisees to revealed “oral Torah” (as
distinct from received “ancestral tradition,” however recorded) pre-70 CE is fraught with
methodological difficulties. See Josephus, Ant. 13.297; with which compare 17.41 and 18.12;
Matt 15:1–12 (// Mark 7:1–13); Megillat Taʿanit scholion Tammuz 4/10 (ed. Noam, 78), cit-
ing Deut. 17:11. For discussion, see Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral
Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
38–61; S. D. Fraade, “Literary Composition and Oral Performance in Early Midrashim,”
Oral Tradition 14 (1999): 33–51, esp. 39–42. On the scholion to Megillat Taʿanit Tammuz
4/10, see the articles by Kister, cited above, n. 44, as well as Cana Werman, “The Torah and
the Teʿudah on the Tablets,” Tarbiz 68 (1999): 488–90 (Hebrew).
46 See above, n. 36.
154 Fraade
to the progression of a narrative plot), something for which we have seen sev-
eral analogues in late Second Temple literature (as in the later Mishnah), some
of which might fit within the rubric of Rewritten Bible (as currently defined),
whereas others of which (as whole redacted texts) clearly do not. As we have
seen, several of these texts (e.g., Jubilees, and now the Temple Scroll) are of
mixed styles and methods (e.g., Rewritten Bible, reworked Pentateuch, and
topically grouped laws), which should not be smoothed over in the desire to
fit each within in a single genus or species. In short, the Temple Scroll alerts us
that such generic nooks are only useful so long as they remain nuanced, fluid,
and porous, but also mutually sustaining. Thus, in two cases that we examined
in some detail (and presumably many others), we might ask how the (“mere”)
topical grouping of biblical laws, notwithstanding Josephus’s preemptive apol-
ogy for the practice, provides structural cover for the introduction of more far-
reaching (and tendentious) ideological “rewritings” of scriptural law, as in the
Temple Scroll’s placing of the king under the authority of a priestly council,
and its subsuming of the priestly high court to the authority of the Torah, as
transmitted in (sectarian) “truth.”
CHAPTER 8
Hellenism and Hermeneutics: Did the Qumranites

and Sadducees Use qal va-ḥomer Arguments?*
Richard Hidary
The various sects of the Second Temple period tussled over dozens of legal is-
sues even as they all looked to the biblical books as the basis of their practice.
To some extent, their controversies hinged on which books they considered
authoritative as law, as well the gapped and self-contradictory nature of bib-
lical texts, which naturally gave rise to differing interpretations. But beyond
noting the ambiguities and gaps throughout the Bible and the polysemies
generated by any act of interpretation, can we detect any patterns as to how
each sect approached the task of exegesis? What were their fundamental as-
sumptions about the nature of the text, the role of the interpreter, and the
availability of extra-textual sources in determining their diverse conclusions?
What can these insights, in turn, teach us about the identities and worldviews
of these groups?
In this study, I will address these questions by analyzing the presence or
absence of qal va-ḥomer1 arguments in Qumranic and rabbinic literature.
* I write this article in tribute to Professor Moshe Bernstein not only for his immense contribu-
tion to the fields of Bible, Targum and Dead Sea Scrolls, but also as my teacher, mentor, and
colleague. I took his course in Psalms as an undergraduate at Yeshiva University where we
also had many important intellectual and personal discussions. Prof. Bernstein then taught
me grammars for various dialects of Aramaic as a graduate student at NYU. On one of the first
days of class at NYU, he in fact returned to me the graded term paper on Psalms that I had
written for him years earlier. That’s just one typical example of the care and dedication Prof.
Bernstein shows for each of his students.
1 Literally, “lightness and heaviness.” Some rabbinic manuscripts read qol va-ḥomer. Qol is
found more often in older manuscripts and qal is more prevalent in Babylonian manuscripts.
The pronunciation qal is grammatically problematic since qal (light) is an adjective and does
not match ḥomer (heaviness), which is a noun. However, Moshe Bar-Asher, “On Corrections
and Marginal Versions in Codex Parma B (De Rossi 497) of the Mishna,” [Hebrew] in Segulla
to Ariella (ed. Moshe Bar-Asher, et al.; Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Hamishpaḥa, 1990): 129, argues
that qal can also be a nominal form and is therefore equally correct. We have chosen to use
qal in deference to popular pronunciation. See further in Yochanan Breuer, The Hebrew in
the Babylonian Talmud according to the Manuscripts of Tractate Pesahim (Jerusalem: The
156 Hidary
Considering the ubiquity of the qal va-ḥomer throughout the midrash and
Talmud, we might expect to be able to trace it back to earlier texts of Jewish
law. Furthermore, qal va-ḥomer is thought by some to adhere to universal syl-
logistic logic and so we should expect to find some variation of qal va-ḥomer
arguments used by any biblical legal exegete. Several scholars have argued
precisely this way and point to examples of qal va-ḥomer by the Qumranites
and the Sadducees and thereby assume a basic commonality between the ex-
egetical approaches of the Second Temple sects and the rabbis. I will argue, in
contrast, that the qal va-ḥomer is not a form of universal logic but rather a rhe-
torical technique, and that it was not used by the either the Dead Sea sect or
by the Sadducees. Its presence in rabbinic literature and absence in the scrolls,
in fact, highlights the fundamentally different assumptions by each group to-
wards truth, human reason, the legislative process, and divine law.2
1 Was There qal va-ḥomer at Qumran?
Moshe Bernstein and Shlomo Koyfman coauthored a fascinating article seek-

ing traces of rabbinic midrashic hermeneutics in the Dead Sea Scrolls.3 They
find in the scrolls examples of analogical reasoning that they consider similar
to rabbinic hermeneutics of midrash. Although rabbinic terminology is absent
from the scrolls, they conclude that “there exists in the legal material in the
scrolls many examples of ‘technical’ midrash, deriving from various types of
analogical reasoning and often paralleling hermeneutical tools of the later
rabbis.”4 They present one example of a potential qal va-ḥomer in the scrolls,
while other scholars have suggested two other candidates for early qal va-ḥomer
precedents. However, a closer analysis of these three examples demonstrates
that they are very different types of arguments and are not comparable to the
Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2002), 278–79; E. Weisenberg, “Observations on Method

in Talmudic Studies,” Journal of Semitic Studies 11 (1966): 18–19; and Wilhelm Bacher, ʿErkhe
midrash (Jerusalem: Carmiel, 1969), 1.118.
2 This paper partially overlaps and builds upon the findings of Richard Hidary, Rabbis and
Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017), Chapter 5, by contrasting the rabbinic and sectarian ap-
proaches to biblical exegesis as it relates to classical rhetorical reasoning.
3 Moshe Bernstein and Shlomo Koyfman, “The Interpretation of Biblical Law in the Dead Sea
Scrolls: Forms and Methods,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. Matthias Henze; Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 61–87.
4 Ibid., 86.
Hellenism And Hermeneutics 157
rabbinic qal va-ḥomer. Let us begin with Bernstein and Koyfman’s example in
the Damascus Document regarding polygamy:
‫הם ניתפשים בשתים בזנות לקחת‬

.‫ ויסוד הבריאה זכר ונקבה ברא אותם‬.‫שתי נשים בחייהם‬
‫ובאי התבה שנים שנים באו אל התבה [ ] ועל הנשיא ̇כתוב‬
‫ ודויד לא קרא בספר התורה החתום‬.‫לא ירבה לו נשים‬
They are caught in two: in fornication by marrying two wives during their
lifetimes. But the principle of creation is “male and female He created
them” (Gen 1:27) and those who entered the ark “two of each [male and
female] came into the ark” (Gen 7:9). And regarding the leader, Scripture
states, “He shall not have multiple wives” (Deut 17:17). But David did not
read the sealed Torah scroll.5
The first proof emerges from the opening paraphrase of Lev 18:18, interpret-
ing ‫ אחות‬not as sisters but as any two females.6 The second prooftext points
to the principle of monogamy embedded in nature as evidenced by creation.7
The third proof invokes the animals entering the ark in pairs. The text goes
on to quote the law in Deuteronomy that a king8 may not marry many wives.
Bernstein and Koyfman explain this line as an a fortiori argument: “it appears
clear to us that the citation of Deut 17:17, ‫( ולא ירבה לו נשים‬and he must not ac-
quire many wives for himself), argues that even the king, who might be thought
to have special privileges, is not permitted to marry more than one wife, and
therefore the passage is likely to be a good example of a qal vaḥomer.”9
5 My translation. CD ‎‎I V‎:‎20–V‎:‎2.

6 See Geza Vermes, “Sectarian Matrimonial Halakhah in the Damascus Rule,” Journal of Jewish
Studies 25 (1974), 197–202; Isaac Sassoon, The Status of Women in Jewish Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 5–38; and further bibliography at Aharon Shemesh,
Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis (Berkley:
University of California Press, 2009), 180 n. 15.
7 See Daniel Schwartz, “Law and Truth: On Qumran-Sadducean and Rabbinic Views of Law,”
in Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (ed. Deborah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport;
Leiden: Brill, 1992), 230–31; and Christine Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law? (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2015), 103–4.
8 C D replaces king with nasi, on which see Mayer Gruber, “Women in the Religious System of
Qumran,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity 5. The Judaism of Qumran: A Systematic Reading of the
Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. A. Avery-Peck and J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 180 n. 25.
9 Bernstein and Koyfman, “Interpretation,” 79.
158 Hidary
This interpretation, however, reads many assumptions into the text, which
itself does not include any language that hints to an a fortiori argument.
Furthermore, ancient Jewish sensibility would hold the king up to a higher level
of piety, not grant them indulgences. Even in the context of the Deuteronomic
law of the king, there is no prohibition on an ordinary citizen to have much
wealth or many horses; rather these laws hold the king to a more stringent
standard. Along these lines, Meyer Gruber explains: “Obviously, the author of
CD, like the authors of Rabbinic midrash, had to cope with the possibility that
persons would say, ‘What was good enough for Kind David, the sweet-singer of
Israel, ought to be good enough for me.’ ”10 The continuation of the text in fact
excuses David for his polygamous marriages on account of the Torah being
hidden away. The structure of the Damascus Document therefore should be
read as three arguments that apply to all citizens followed by a note that this
law applies all the more so to a king, despite the evidence to the contrary in
King David’s behavior. I therefore do not agree that this text provides a good
example of a qal va-ḥomer argument to derive a law in the scrolls.11
The next candidate for a qal va-ḥomer at Qumran is offered by Jacob
Milgrom who cites a law in the Halakhic Letter (4Q397 6 13:10, B71–72) that
lepers “may [not] eat [from the holy food until sunset on] the eigh[th day].”12
Leviticus 14 prescribes only a sacrifice on the eighth day, but the scroll adds
that the leper must wait until sunset, implying that he also requires ablution
in a mikveh. Milgrom suggests that the Qumranites derive this using an a for-
tiori from minor impurity, whose purification ritual requires ablution and
waiting until sunset: “If contact with sancta, the goal of the final stage of the
purification process, requires ablutions and sunset for minor impurities, all
the more should ablutions and sunset be required as the final stage for major
impurities.”13 However, this derivation is completely speculative as the scroll
provides no indication for the origin of this rule. This may have been an an-
cient mimetic practice that the sect continued. Milgrom himself, in fact, offers
a second possible derivation based on the definition of the word “he shall be
10 Gruber, “Women in the Religious System of Qumran,” 184.

11 Bernstein and Koyfman, 79 n. 47, themselves note that the only previous scholar to refer
to this example as a qal va-ḥomer was Louis Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1976), 182–83.
12 Jacob Milgrom, “The Scriptural Foundations and Deviations in the Laws of Purity of the
Temple Scroll,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University
Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. Lawrence Schiffman; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1990), 94.
13 Ibid.
purified (yithar)” (Lev 22:4) as used in the context of minor impurity. The sect
may have understood that “to be purified” means to make an ablution and wait
until sunset, just as it means that explicitly in the next verses regarding minor
impurity (v. 7).14
Furthermore, as Milgrom notes, the prevailing voice of the rabbis also re-
quires ablution on the eighth day but not that the leper wait until sunset.15
However, the Talmud does not base this law on a qal va-ḥomer; rather, the Bavli
considers it a rabbinic safeguard in case the leper was not careful regarding
impurity that would prevent him from eating kodesh since he could not eat
kodesh until offering his sacrifice (b. Hag. 24b). We can thus reason that if the
rabbis, who often use qal va-ḥomer, do not use one to derive this law, then the
Qumranites, who never use an explicit qal va-ḥomer, certainly don’t use one
here. There is, in sum, very little here to provide evidence for a Qumranic qal
va-ḥomer.
A third possible qal va-ḥomer in the scrolls, offered by Aharon Shemesh and
Cana Werman, regards intermarriage. The Halakhic Letter (4QMMT B 75–82)
reads:16
]‫ ועל הזונות הנעסה בתוך העם והמה ב[ני זרע‬4

]‫ קדש משכתוב קודש ישראל ועל בה[מתו הטהורה‬5
]‫ ועל לבוש[וכתוב שלוא‬.‫ כתוב שלוא לרבעה כלאים‬6
]‫ יהיה שעטנז ושלוא לזרוע שדו וכ[רמו כלאים‬7
]‫ [ב]גלל שהמה קדושים ובני אהרון ק[דושי קדושים‬8
]‫ [וא]תם יודעים שמקצת הכהנים וה[עם מתערבים‬9
]‫ [והם ]מתוככים ומטמאי[ם ]את זרע[ הקודש ואף‬10
‫ את [זרע]ם עם הזונות‬1 1
4 And concerning the fornications (i.e., illegal marriages) that are

taking place in the midst of the people: they are the s[ons of] holy
[seed]
5 as it is written, Israel is holy. And concerning [his clean] animal,
6 it is written that one must not let it mate with other species. And
concerning [his] clothing [it is written that they must not]
7 be of mixed stuff, and one must not sow his field and vi[neyards
with mixed species.]
14 Ibid., 95. This is not technically a gezerah shava, but simply a word definition.
15 See m. Hag. 3:3 and Milgrom, ibid., 98 n. 34 for the minority voice.
16 4Q396 f1 2iv:4–11a parallel to 4Q397 f6 13:12–15. Text and translation from Ian Werrett,
Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 201.
160 Hidary
8 For they are holy, and the sons of Aaron are m[ost holy.]
9 [And y]ou know that some of the priests and the peo[ple are min-
gling with each other]
10 [and they] unite with each other and defil[e] the [holy] seed [and
also]
11 their own [seed] with fornications.
The text introduces a sin involving prohibited sexual relations and first cites
Jer 2:3 that Israel is called holy.17 It then cites the laws of mixed kinds from Lev
19:19 that one may not mix pure and impure animals, clothing, and planting.
The text is fragmentary but it continues with an explanation, “because they
are holy,” probably referring to all Jews, and then a reference to priests. Elisha
Qimron and John Strugnell interpret this text to mean that priests may not
marry any Jews but must only marry into priestly families.18 Shemesh agrees
with this interpretation and writes that this text “is using a kind of a fortiori
argument (though not using any specific term for it) to fortify his position
against a type of intermarriage practiced by the priests.”19 The logic is that, “if
the Torah prohibited mixing animal species and the wearing of a garment of
combined species as well as sowing a field or vineyard with ‫כלאים‬, then even
more so is it forbidden for the sons of Aaron, who are most holy, to intermarry
with individuals that pollute the holy seed.”20
However, there is no a fortiori language present in the text. Furthermore,
the comparison is faulty: why should mixing two levels of holiness (Jews and
priests) be worse than mixing two species that are altogether different? Rather,
a majority of scholars have rejected Qimron’s interpretation and explain that
this text merely comes to emphasize the prohibition of intermarriage with
17 See Moshe Bernstein, “The Employment and Interpretation of Scripture in 4QMMT,”
in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History (ed. John Kampen
and Moshe Bernstein; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 45, contra Elisha Qimron and John
Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4.V. Miqṣat Maʿaśe ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 55
n. 76. On this verse as an example of inner-biblical exegesis, see Michael Fishbane, Biblical
Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 300–4.
18 Qimron and Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4.V. Miqṣat Maʿaśe ha-Torah, 55 n. 75.
19 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 163 n. 31. Parenthesis in the original.
20 Aharon Shemesh and Cana Werman, “Halakhah at Qumran: Genre and Authority,” DSD 10
(2003): 122. The authors propose that the document uses this a fortiori argument as a po-
lemic against the Pharisees; see further on sectarian polemical use of qal va-ḥomer below
(177–88). See also Aharon Shemesh, “Dimuye zivugim asurim le-kilaim ve-shaʿatnez be-
sifrut kat midbar Yehuda,” in Yovel le-ḥeqer megilot Yam Ha-melaḥ (ed. Gershon Brin and
Bilhah Nitzan; Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2001), 182.
non-Jews, a law that applies to all Jews but especially to priests.21 Jer 2:3 begins
with an analogy of Israel to “first fruits of His harvest” and that sets up the anal-
ogy in the next lines: just as one may not mix species in the realms of animals,
clothing, and planting, so too one must not mix holy and profane regarding
marriage.22 This is an example of an analogy similar to the method of homog-
enizing found in the Temple Scroll.23 Surely, though, there is no hint here of a
qal va-ḥomer argument.
We can thus far conclude that the Dead Sea Scrolls lack not only any use of
qal va-ḥomer terminology, but also contain no examples of qal va-ḥomer rea-
soning. Let us, then, next analyze what a qal va-ḥomer is, where it derives from,
and how it functions within rabbinic halakha. By doing this we will be in a
better position to explain why this method is absent from the Scrolls, whether
it might have been used by the Sadducees, and what this teaches about the
nature of the sectarian and rabbinic legal systems.
2 What is the qal va-ḥomer? Logic or Rhetoric
Scholars have struggled to define what a qal va-ḥomer is, where it came from,
and how it might relate to modes of Greek reasoning. The Greek world devel-
oped two modes of argumentation, sometimes at odds with each other, in the
forms of logic and rhetoric.24 The former seeks to demonstrate absolute truth
21 See Joseph Baumgarten, cited at Shemesh and Werman, “Halakhah at Qumran: Genre
and Authority,” 122; Lester Grabbe, “4QMMT and Second Temple Jewish Society,” in Legal
Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization
for Qumran Studies (ed. Moshe Bernstein, Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen;
Leiden: Brill, 1997), 103; Carolyn Sharp, “Phinehan Zeal and Rhetorical Strategy in
4QMMT,” RevQ 70 (1997): 217; Menahem Kister, “4QMiqṣat Maʿaśe Ha-Torah and Related
Texts: Law, Theology, Language and Calendar,” [Hebrew] Tarbiz 68 (1999): 343–47; and
Christine Hayes, “Intermarriage and Impurity in Ancient Jewish Sources,” HTR 92 (1999):
25–35.
22 See Sharp, “Phinehan Zeal,” 216; Kister, “4QMiqṣat,” 346; and Hayes, “Intermarriage and
Impurity,” 28 n. 83. The text does include a comparison between lesser and greater in that
intermarriage for a priest with a non-Jew is even worse than for an Israelite with a non-
Jew since the latter is holy and the former is holy of holies. However, this comparison is
not used to derive the law but only as a lament about the gravity of those priests’ sin.
23 Jacob Milgrom, “The Qumran Cult: Its Exegetical Principles,” in Temple Scroll Studies, (ed.
George J. Brooke; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989): 165–80.
24 See Marina McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007). Of course, the split between philosophy and rhetoric
was never as neat as presented in Plato’s dialogues considering that Plato was himself a
162 Hidary
with step-by-step proofs as defined, for example by Aristotle’s Prior Analytics

and Posterior Analytics. The latter realm of rhetorical persuasion sought to con-
vince an audience of a given position through eloquence, analogy, and artistry.
This mode of reason was developed by the Sophists and codified in Aristotle’s
On Rhetoric. Roman students in late antiquity might study both sets of skills
by first attending a school of rhetoric and then continuing on to study in a
philosophical school. Although a typical orator might employ rhetoric in order
to denigrate the abuses of rhetoric in favor of truth and logic, the boundaries
between the two realms nevertheless remained recognizable. We can therefore
ask to which realm did the qal va-ḥomer argument belong?
Adolf Schwarz argued over a century ago that the qal va-ḥomer was a type
of Aristotelian logical syllogism.25 Louis Jacobs, however, demonstrates that
master of rhetoric; see Edward Schiappa, The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical
Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Aristotle also saw a proper place for
rhetoric in the pursuit of truth as a form of persuasion that is weaker than demonstra-
tion but still appropriate for given audiences and subjects; see Brad McAdon, “Rhetoric Is
a Counterpart of Dialectic,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 34 (2001): 113–50. Nevertheless, this
basic distinction remained significant and a focus of debate ever since.
25 Adolf Schwarz, Der hermeneutische Syllogismus in der talmudischen Litteratur: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte der Logik im Morgenlande (Karlsruhe: J. Bielefeld, 1901). Schwarz recog-
nized that the qal va-ḥomer does not have the form of a complete syllogism. He therefore
posits that it is an enthymeme (ibid., 159–60 and 172), which Aristotle defines as a rhe-
torical syllogism wherein not all of the premises are stated explicitly (On Rhetoric, I.2.13
and II.22.3). However, there is little difference between the enthymeme according to this
definition and the full syllogism; one need only provide the missing premise. Therefore,
the criticism of Schwarz noted below still applies, since the typical qal va-ḥomer cannot
be faithfully translated into a formal syllogism.
Since Schwarz’s time, scholars such as Myles Burnyeat have rejected the traditional
strict understanding of an enthymeme as a deductive syllogism with one premise implied
and argue that Aristotle meant to include within the term enthymeme various types of
arguments that are plausible even if defeasible. This would include the topos of the more
and the less (On Rhetoric, I.2.21), even when based on probabilities (Prior Analytics 2.27).
Since the qal va-ḥomer falls within this description it could be called an enthymeme ac-
cording to its more inclusive definition, but that is not how Schwarz meant it. See fur-
ther at Myles Burnyeat, “Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Logic of Persuasion,” in Aristotle’s
Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays (ed. David Furley and Alexander Nehemas; Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994): 3–55; and Douglas Walton and Fabrizio Macagno,
“Enthymemes, Argumentation Schemes and Topics,” Logique and Analyse 205 (2009): 39–
56. See also Arthur Prior, “Argument A Fortiori,” Analysis 9 (1949): 49–50, for an attempt to
express a fortiori arguments as syllogisms.
qal va-ḥomer fundamentally differs from Aristotelian logic.26 The categorical

syllogism relates a genus and a species: if the species falls within the catego-
ry of the genus then it will have the same properties that are common to all
members of that genus. This is not the same as the qal va-ḥomer where two
different categories are compared as long as they have an essential common-
ality that relates the two.27 For example, m. Ḥulin 12:5 teaches: “If regarding a
light commandment (the prohibition against sending away the mother bird in
Deut 22:6–7) which is like an issar,28 the Torah says, ‘in order that you may
fare well and have a long life’ (Deut 22:7) qal va-ḥomer regarding weighty com-
mandments of the Torah.” This is clearly not a syllogism since weighty com-
mandments are not a species of light commandments; they are comparable
simply because they are both commandments.
Rather, David Daube and Saul Lieberman have concluded that qal va-ḥomer
and many of the other hermeneutical rules relate to commonplace arguments
called topoi taught in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition.29 The qal va-ḥomer
parallels what Greek writers call comparison of lesser and greater. Aristotle, for
example, writes in his On Rhetoric:
26 Louis Jacobs, Studies in Talmudic Logic and Methodology (London: Vallentine, Mitchell,
and Co., 1961), 3–8. See also Sergey Dolgopolski, What is Talmud?: The Art of Disagreement
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 285 n. 58.
27 See Arnold Kunst, “An Overlooked Type of Inference,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 10 (1942): 986–88; W. Sibley Towner, “Hermeneutical Systems of Hillel and
the Tannaim: A Fresh Look,” HUCA 53 (1983): 115; Susan Handelman, The Slayers of Moses:
The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany: SUNY, 1982),
52–57; and Avi Sion, Judaic Logic: A Formal Analysis of Biblical, Talmudic and Rabbinic
Logic (Geneva: Editions Slatkine, 1997), 60.
28 This prohibition would not require an expenditure of more than an issar, a very small
amount of money, if one did not send the bird away and instead had to buy new one.
29 Ibid., 47–82; David Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,”
HUCA 22 (1949): 239–64; and see also Philip S. Alexander, “Quid Athenis et Hierosolymis?
Rabbinic Midrash and Hermeneutics in the Graeco-Roman World,” in A Tribute to Geza
Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History (ed. Philip R. Davies and
Richard T. White; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990): 116–17. On the related topic
of Jewish exegesis in the context of Alexandrian textual analysis of Homer, see Maren
Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011); and Yakir Paz, “From Scribes to Scholars: Rabbinic Biblical Exegesis
in Light of the Homeric Commentaries” (PhD diss., 2014).
164 Hidary
From the more and the less (ektoumallon kai hētton); for example, “If not
even the gods know everything, human beings can hardly do so”; for this
is equivalent [to saying,] “If something is not the fact where it would be
more [expected, it is clear that it is not a fact where it would be less.”30
This schema is copied by Cicero31 and Quintilian,32 who similarly provides an

example of analogy from lesser to greater in a legal context: “If it is lawful to kill
a thief in the night [when one is not sure if he threatens violence], how much
more is it lawful to kill an armed robber [who definitely threatens violence]?”33
The midrash includes a similar a fortiori argument, except it deals with a thief
who does not threaten violence who may not be killed and teaches the contra-
positive: “If when a person definitely comes to steal [without threatening vio-
lence] and he [the homeowner] kills him [the thief], he [the homeowner] is
liable, all the more so [qal va-ḥomer] one about whom there is a doubt whether
he comes to steal or whether he does not come to steal [that his killer would
be liable].”34
One could argue that deriving laws using analogies is a part of natural reason-
ing and not something the rabbis learned from the Greeks. Indeed, Lieberman
only claims to explain the terminology of the rules, not the origin of the meth-
ods themselves.35 David Daube, however, goes further and argues that the rab-
bis’ very modes of reasoning and the explicit awareness of their hermeneutics
also derive from Greek thought.36 First, analogies in rabbinic literature do not
30 Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civil Discourse (trans. George A. Kennedy; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), II.23.4.
31 See Tobias Reinhardt, Cicero’s Topica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 4.23 (p. 125).
See also paragraph 22.84 (p. 161) and further elaboration at 18.68–71 (pp. 150–153). For
more on legal analogies see also Cicero, On Invention, 2.50.148–53.
32 Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 5.10.86–88 and 8.4.9–11.
33 Institutes, 5.10.88. For more examples of a fortiori reasoning in classical writings, see Lysias,
“On the Murder of Eratosthenes,” 1.31–32; idem, “On the Olive Stump,” 7.26; Isocrates,
“Against Lochites,” 20.2–3; Dinarchus, “Against Demosthenes,” 1.45; Gaius, Institutes, 2.73;
and further at Georgiana Palmer, “The Topoi of Aristotle’s ‘Rhetoric’ as Exemplified in the
Orators” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1932), 15–19.
34 Mekhilta d’R. Ishmael, Neziqin 13.
35 Burton Visotzky, “Midrash, Christian Exegesis, and Hellenistic Hermeneutics,” in Current
Trends in Study of Midrash (ed. Carol Bakhos; Leiden: Brill, 2006): 122–24, suggests various
reasons for Lieberman’s “excess of caution” on this issue.
36 To be sure, Daube does make a statement along the same lines as that of Lieberman in
his earlier essay, David Daube, “The Civil Law of the Mishnah: The Arrangement of the
Three Gates,” in The Collected Works of David Daube (ed. Calum Carmichael; Berkley:
University of California, 1992): 269. However, his later essays emphasize the Hellenistic
influence on both the terminology and the content of the midrashic hermeneutical rules;
follow the type of reasoning one might find in every day conversation but can
be rather technical. Second, the project of naming, listing, and systematizing
one’s modes of exegesis, as found in Hillel’s list of rules at t. Sanhedrin 7:11, goes
beyond natural popular reason and most likely derives from the classical rhe-
torical tradition.37 With this definition and context in mind, we can ask, when
and why were the exegetical rules introduced into the halakhic system? We
will then be in a better position to appreciate possible pushback against the
rules and the reason for their absence in the scrolls.
3 Hillel’s Introduction of the Hermeneutical Rules
Rabbinic literature does not trace qal va-ḥomer to Greek sources but rather re-
tells a foundation story for their introduction by Hillel. Tosefta Pesaḥim 4:13–14
explains the circumstances:38
Once the fourteenth [day of Nisan] fell on the Sabbath. They asked Hillel
the Elder, “Does the Passover [sacrifice] supersede the Sabbath?”
He said to them, “Do we have but one Passover [sacrifice] during the
year that supersedes the Sabbath? We have more than three hundred
Passovers during the year, and they supersede the Sabbath.”
The whole courtyard [of the temple] joined up against him.
He said to them, “The regular sacrifice [offered each morning and twi-
light] is a communal sacrifice, and the Passover is a communal sacrifice.
see idem, “Rabbinic Methods,” 254; and idem, “Alexandrian Methods of Interpretation
and the Rabbis,” in Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature (ed. Henry
Fischel; New York: Ktav, 1977): 239–64. For further analysis of foreign influence on rab-
binic modes of exegesis see Stephen Lieberman, “A Mesopotamian Background for the
So-called Aggadic ‘Measures’ of Biblical Hermeneutics,” HUCA 58 (1987): 157–225.
37 The link between the qal va-ḥomer and the Greek comparison of lesser to greater was
already noted in the early nineteenth century by Isaac Samuel Reggio, Ha-Torah ve-ha-
filosofia: ḥoverot ʾisha ʾel ʾaḥota (Vienna, 1827), 30. See Aviram Ravitsky, “Aristotelian Logic
and Talmudic Methodology: The Commentaries on the 13 Hermeneutic Principles and
their Application of Logic,” in Judaic Logic (ed. Andrew Schumann; Piscataway: Gorgias
Press, 2010): 131–32; and also the citation of Judah Haddasi at Saul Lieberman, Hellenism
in Jewish Palestine (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 55.
38 This story is found in the Tosefta, Yerushalmi and Bavli in different variations. The Tosefta
reflects an older Tannaitic version of the story that may retain some historical kernels
about Hillel’s involvement in promoting hermeneutics to ground tradition. The Talmudic
elaborations include a skeptical viewpoint to the exegetical methods because they can be
more dangerous and unwieldy than helpful. See further in the next section.
166 Hidary
Just as the regular sacrifice is a communal sacrifice that supersedes the

Sabbath, so the Passover is a communal sacrifice that supersedes the
Sabbath.
“Another proof: It [Scripture] says in connection with the regular
sacrifice, [Present to me] at its appointed time (Num 28:2), and it says in
connection with the Passover, [Keep the Passover] at its appointed time
(Num 9:2). Just as the regular sacrifice, of which it says, At its appoint-
ed time, supersedes the Sabbath, so the Passover, of which it says, At its
appointed time, supersedes the Sabbath.39
“Moreover, [it can be deduced from a] qal va-ḥomer. If the regular sac-
rifice, for which one is not subject to [the punishment of] excision, su-
persedes the Sabbath, is it not logical that the Passover, for which one is
subject to [the punishment of] excision, supersedes the Sabbath?
“In addition, I have received [a tradition] from my masters that the
Passover supersedes the Sabbath. Not only the First Passover but even
the Second Passover, and not only the communal Passover but even the
individual Passover.”
On that very day they appointed Hillel patriarch [nasi], and he taught
them the laws of the Passover.40
This chreia tells of a time when Passover fell out on Saturday night so that the
sacrifices would have to be prepared on the Sabbath itself. However, the lead-
ers of the time, the elders of Betera,41 did not know whether they were permit-
ted to violate the Sabbath in order to prepare the Passover sacrifices.42 They
39 See parallels at Mekhilta d’R. Ishmael, Pisḥa, 5 and Sifre Num. 65 and 142. This exegesis
is stated there not in the name of Hillel but in the name of R. Yoshiah. See analysis at
Alexander Guttmann, “Foundations of Rabbinic Judaism,” HUCA 23 (1950–1951): 462–63.
40 Translation from Jeffrey Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories (New York: Paulist Press, 2002),
72–73. On the relationship between this text and t. San. 7:11, see Louis Finkelstein, Sifra
on Leviticus, 5 vols. (Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1983–1992):
5.120–22.
41 They are not identified in the Tosefta but do appear in parallel sources. On the identity
of the elders of Betera, see Gedaliah Alon, Jews, Judaism and the Classical World: Studies
in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and Talmud (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
1977), 328–34; and Louis Finkelstein, Ha-Perushim ve-’anshe keneset ha-gedolah (New
York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 1–16. This group is sometimes iden-
tified as elders of Petera or sons of Betera.
42 Many have wondered how the Temple leaders could have forgotten such a law; surely
Passover would have fallen out on the Sabbath every few years under an empirical lunar
calendar. Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories, 71, writes that “the story creates a fictional scenario
to teach the audience about how one derives law in general, not to provide information
turned to Hillel who, sure enough, used three different analogies, including a
qal va-ḥomer, to the daily burnt offering in order to prove that one is permit-
ted to offer the Passover sacrifice on the Sabbath.43 Hillel, however, did not
stop there, but rather continued to adduce an oral tradition from his teachers,
Shemaya and Avtalion, confirming and even generalizing the same outcome
as the analogical derivations. In fact, ancient halakha would most likely have
prohibited preparing the Passover on the Sabbath,44 which explains why the
people present ganged up on Hillel.45
about this particular law.” However, Isaac Sassoon, Destination Torah (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav,
2001), 186–92, suggests that the Second Temple followed a fixed calendar for most of its
history until it was changed to an empirical calendar during later Hasmonean times—
perhaps as a renunciation of Greek influence. Under the fixed calendar, the eve of
Passover could have been preset never to fall on the Sabbath in order to avoid this very
problem, just as it was preset in Amoraic times when they reverted back to a fixed calen-
dar in order that the shofar and the ritual of the willow branches not fall on the Sabbath
(y. Sukkah 4:1, 54a). It is therefore possible that during Hillel’s time, Passover fell out on
Sunday for the first time since the fixed calendar was replaced with an empirical calendar.
See also Sacha Stern, Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, Second
Century BCE–Tenth Century CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 113, who argues
that a lunar empirical calendar was in use during Hasmonean times, though evidence for
this is only “sporadic.” Some Jewish groups followed a solar calendar during this same pe-
riod. However, there is no evidence as to whether those groups following a lunar calendar
in the pre-Hasmonean period used a fixed or empirical system. While the months of the
Babylonian lunar calendar were decided empirically, by the Hellenistic period, astrono-
mers already had tables that could predict the first visibility of the new moon. See George
Sarton, Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1959), 337.
43 Although the Tosefta only names the qal va-ḥomer, the Yerushalmi plausibly matches up
the other two with the rules of heqesh and gezerahshavah. The main point here is not that
Hillel used the named rules but that he turned to exegesis at all rather than tradition.
44 See Damascus Document 11:17–18: “A man may not offer anything on the altar on the
Sabbath except for the burnt offering of the Sabbath for so it is written, ‘except for
your Sabbaths’ (Lev 23:38, MT reads Sabbaths of the Lord).” See further at Joseph Angel,
“Damascus Document,” in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture
(ed. Louis Feldman, James Kugel, and Lawrence Schiffman; Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 2013): 3021; Lawrence Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qumran (Leiden:
Brill, 1975), 128–31; Harold Weiss, “The Sabbath among the Samaritans,” JSJ 25 (1994): 264;
and Bernard Revel, The Karaite Halakah and Its Relation to Sadducean, Samaritan and
Philonian Halakah (Philadelphia: Ktav, 1913), 41.
45 Compare this with the parallel story where Beth Shammai gangs up against Hillel also in
the Temple courtyard at t. Ḥagigah 2:11 = y. Ḥagigah 2:3, 78a = b. Beṣah 20a. See analysis at
Richard Hidary, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud (Providence:
168 Hidary
While historians cast doubt on various details of this story,46 we can at the
very least accept that towards the end of the Second Temple period, these ex-
egetical methods began to circulate among the Pharisees and early rabbis. It is
furthermore plausible that Hillel, an important religious leader of the Pharisaic
movement, played a central role in advancing the authority of the Pharisaic
oral law and the project of legal biblical exegesis.47 But regardless of the role
that the historical Hillel played in the development of legal midrash, norms of
interpretation surely existed in some form before him and their systematiza-
tion continued long after him.48 We must therefore analyze these sources less
for what they teach about the historical Hillel and more for the light they shed
on the rabbis who authored and transmitted them as the founding narratives
of their own exegetical project. In that spirit, we ask, what was the purpose in
introducing these exegetical rules? Why does Hillel figure so prominently in
this connection? Why does Hillel in the Passover story put so much effort into
deriving the law exegetically when he had an authoritative tradition on the
matter all along? What was the significance of these details in the minds of the
story’s narrators?
Recall that the last two centuries of the Second Temple period were a time
of great sectarian strife. While the sects disputed some philosophical points,
their primary focus of contention related to Jewish law.49 Fundamental to
[Second Temple sectarian] legal disputes was the reliance of the Pharisees
on unwritten traditions of their fathers.50 Because these oral traditions were
not bound to Scripture, they became the subject of intense attack by the
Brown University, 2010), 183–86. On the usage of ‫ חבר על‬to mean to join against, see also
Job 16:4.
46 See above, n. 42; Armand Kaminka, “Hillel’s Life and Work,” JQR 30 (1939): 78–79; and Henry
Fischel, “Story and History: Observations on Greco-Roman Rhetoric and Pharisaism,”
in Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature (ed. Henry Fiscel; New York:
Ktav, 1977): 452–53; and Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic
Judaism (New York: Ktav, 1979), 23–35.
47 On the image of Hillel in other aggadic sources as a central figure in reconstructing
oral law, see Menachem Katz, “Stories of Hillel’s Appointment as Nasi in the Talmudic
Literature: A Foundation Legend of the Jewish Scholar’s World,” [Hebrew] Sidra 26 (2011):
111–14. See also José Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic
Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 124.
48 See Solomon Zeitlin, “Hillel and the Hermeneutic Rules,” JQR 54 (1963): 161–73.
49 See Yaakov Sussman, “The History of Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary
Observations on Miqṣat Maʿaśe Ha-Torah (4QMMT),” [Hebrew] Tarbiz 59 (1990): 36; and
Hidary, Dispute, 33.
50 Joseph Baumgarten, “The Unwritten Law in the Pre-Rabbinic Period,” JSJ 3 (1972): 7–29.
Sadducees and Qumran sectarians as being unfounded.51 The Pharisees must

have felt pressure to respond and convince their adherents and the masses at
large of their own authenticity. Heinrich Graetz argues that Hillel accepted
the Sadducean challenge and introduced the hermeneutical rules in order to
ground the Pharisaic oral law within Scripture. Hillel took the mass of tradi-
tions he learned from his teachers and “he traced them back to their first prin-
ciples, and raised them out of the narrow circle of tradition and mere custom to
the height of reason … After this demonstration by Hillel, no dispute amongst
the schools could arise as to the binding power of traditional law. By the intro-
duction of seven methods, the oral law could be imbued with the same weight
and authority as that actually contained in the Scriptures.”52 Along the same
lines, Daube writes:
The greatest Pharisaic scholar of all times, Hillel, not without some dif-
ficulty, convinced his party that the main Sadducean point had to be
conceded: in principle there could be no binding law independent of
Scripture. But the way he convinced them was by showing that nothing
would be lost; and that by energetic and systematic interpretation, the
entire mass of traditional observances, sanctioned over the centuries by
the religious leaders and sages, could be derived from the Pentateuch.53
51 Azzan Yadin, Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2015), 183–86.
52 Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1891–98), 2.98. See also Jay Harris, How Do We Know This?: Midrash and the
Fragmentation of Modern Judaism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 175–
90; Zeitlin, “Hillel and the Hermeneutic Rules,” 172; Guttmann, “Foundations of Rabbinic
Judaism,” 453–73; Daube, “Texts and Interpretations,” 188–99; and J. N. Epstein, Mevo’ot
le-sifrut ha-Tannaim, Mishnah, Tosefta, u-midreshe halakha (ed. E. Z. Melamed; Jerusalem,
1947), 521. Graetz’s position here relates to a larger scholarly debate as to whether the oral
law of the Pharisees was transmitted apodictically, similar to the form of the Mishnah, or
as commentary to the Pentateuch, like midrash. See the literature cited at Harris, ibid.;
H. L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. Marcus
Bockmuehl; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 126–29; and David Weiss Halivni, Midrash,
Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1986), 18–19. Evidence for either side is scant and even those who claim
that midrash came first should agree that the end of the Second Temple period saw a
great increase in exegetical material and its systematization, as does, for example, Jacob
Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1951), 210.
53 Daube, “Texts and Interpretations,” 189. Kaminka, “Hillel’s Life and Work,” 114–15, points to
m. Avot 1:12 as another attack by Hillel against the Sadducean priests. See further below on
the centrality of the qal va-ḥomer in debates between Pharisees and Sadducees.
170 Hidary
This is the reason why Hillel first proved from Scripture in various ways that
the Passover trumps the Sabbath and only afterwards relayed the tradition he
inherited from his teachers. He wanted to show that midrashic exegesis was a
reliable method for deriving halakha and for supporting Pharisaic oral law.54
Hillel utilized rhetorical modes of reasoning common in Roman culture and
jurisprudence in order to persuade his audience as to the legitimacy of the
oral law. No longer could the Sadducees claim that only their laws had biblical
basis. In their efforts to persuade their coreligionists to accept their halakhic
traditions, the rabbis turned to the most effective and widespread persuasive
tools available, those of the classical rhetorical tradition that pervaded their
cultural environment, including the qal va-ḥomer.
4 Skeptical Reactions to the Use and Abuse of qal va-ḥomer
The rabbis’ use of rhetoric turned out to be very effective in promoting their
halakhic views and advancing their movement ahead of that of the sectarians.55
The success of the hermeneutical rules, however, became a problem in itself.
Once one allows reasoned exegesis into the system as an authoritative way to
derive laws, then one must accept whatever outcome such exegesis may gener-
ate. The same force and flexibility of the hermeneutical rules that empowered
them to establish the basis of oral tradition also threatened to undermine that
very tradition. Just as one can apply a qal va-ḥomer to prove a transmitted law,
so can one use them to disprove the very same laws. How did the rabbis re-
spond to this paradoxical challenge?
We find, on the one hand, that rabbinic literature includes well over one
thousand qallin va-ḥamurin.56 This ubiquitous use shows that the rabbis are
entrenched within the rhetorical tradition, or at least their version of it. On the
other hand, the rabbis also show a deep ambivalence and skepticism about the
application of qal va-ḥomer reasoning in many cases. They are apprehensive
about qal va-ḥomer arguments that contradict tradition and recognize that qal
54 See Guttmann, “Foundations of Rabbinic Judaism,” 465–66. This same goal drives a num-
ber of traditions about rabbis successfully deriving halakha through exegesis even after
the halakhic tradition had been forgotten or corrupted. See Sifre Num. 75; t. Zebaḥim 1:8;
and b. Temurah 16a.
55 For other factors contributing to the decline of the sects, see Hidary, Dispute, 31–36.
56 There are over five hundred in Tannaitic midrashim, many hundreds in Amoraic mi-
drashim, and another over five hundred in the Bavli, although many of these are repeating
parallels. There are fewer qallin va-ḥamurin in the Mishnah, Tosefta and Yerushalmi.
va-ḥomer reasoning can be used in mutually opposing directions, thus casting

doubt on its very reliability. For example, R. Yoḥanan demands that a judge
who opens the deliberation in a capital case must be able to argue that a rep-
tile is pure and impure in one hundred ways.57 The Talmud continues with an
illustration:
R. Yannai said: If a snake, which kills [and causes impurity], is itself pure,
then all the more so a mouse, which does not kill, should be pure. Or the
inverse: if a mouse, which does not kill, is impure, then all the more so
a snake, which does kill, should be impure. R. Pineḥas objected, “Behold
a scorpion kills, yet it is pure.” A tradition was found stating, “[The same
reasoning applies to] both a snake and a scorpion.”58
By assuming that an animal which causes impurity by killing must be more

impure than a non-lethal animal, R. Yannai is able to prove that the carcass
of a mouse is pure—a direct contradiction to Lev 11:29. Although R. Pineḥas
cites a counterexample, the Talmud quickly upholds R. Yannai’s qal va-ḥomer
by subsuming the counterexample within the original argument itself. If one
can contradict the Torah using such reasoning, then that does not mean that
the Torah is incorrect but rather that the method of reasoning is not always
reliable.
The extent to which qal va-ḥomer does not represent universal logic but
rather subjective reasoning is further evident by the numerous instances
where controversy erupts over the validity of a qal va-ḥomer. M. Makhshirin
6:8, for example, records an extended debate over the validity of a qal va-ḥomer
presented by R. Akiva and rejected by his colleagues.59 In another midrash,
Rabbi and his colleagues utilize the same aspect of a law to argue both for the
stringency and leniency of that law.60 If one is able to argue a qal va-ḥomer in
diametrically opposite directions, then it can hardly be considered a foolproof
method for deriving laws from the Torah.
Using a qal va-ḥomer, one sage goes so far as to argue the absurd thesis that
almost all marriages are prohibited:
57 Y. San. 4:1, 22a.

58 Ibid. See parallels at b. San. 17a–b and b. ʿErub. 13b.
59 See further examples at m. Sheviʿit 7:1; m. Nazir 7:4; m. ʿEduyot 6:2; m. Ḥulin 2:7; and
m. Keritot 3:9–10 (= Sifra, Ḥova, 1:11–13).
60 Sifre Num. 8, discussed at Yadin, Scripture as Logos, 84–85. See a similar phenomenon
at –21a.
172 Hidary
This is a question that R. Yose ben Tadai from Tiberius asked Rabban
Gamaliel: If my wife, to whom I am permitted, I am prohibited from her
daughter, then a married woman, to whom I am prohibited, all the more
so should I not be prohibited to her daughter?” He replied, “Go out and
provide for me [an answer regarding] a high priest concerning whom it is
stated, ‘But he shall marry a virgin from his nation’ (Lev 21:14), and I will
provide you [with an answer regarding] all the rest of Israel.” Another
version: [Rabban Gamaliel replied,] “We do not use reason to uproot a
matter from the Torah.” And Rabban Gamaliel excommunicated him.61
R. Yose ben Tadai reasons that since one is prohibited from cohabiting with
his step-daughter, even though he is permitted to her mother (his wife), then
he should all the more so be prohibited from cohabiting with any other mar-
ried woman’s daughter, considering that he is prohibited from cohabiting with
her mother. By focusing on the permissibility of cohabiting with a woman’s
mother as a factor in one’s own permissibility to the woman herself, R. Yose
ben Tadai succeeds in prohibiting all women whose parents are married. This
is obviously a ridiculous conclusion, but it poses a logical challenge to Rabban
Gamaliel. Rabban Gamaliel does not question the reasoning behind the qal
va-ḥomer but simply points out that this contradicts the Torah and therefore
must be invalid. A high priest, after all, may marry a virgin despite being pro-
hibited in all cases from marrying her mother, even if the mother is divorced or
widowed. In a second version, Rabban Gamaliel excommunicates R. Yose ben
Tadai for using such sophistic reasoning to undermine the Torah.62
The unwieldiness and untrustworthiness of the qal va-ḥomer led many
rabbis to push back against its use and limit its application in various ways.
Thus, the Yerushalmi and Bavli add voices of skepticism in their retellings of
the origin story of Hillel introducing hermeneutical rules cited above from the
Tosefta. The Yerushalmi has the elders of Betera reject each of Hillel’s three
proofs, including his qal va-ḥomer:
61 Derekh ʾEreṣ, ʿArayot, 6.

62 On sophistical qal va-ḥomer inferences, see M. Mielziner, “The Talmudic Syllogism or
the Inference of Kal Vechomer,” Hebrew Review 1 (1880): 51–53. For more on reflexively
uprooting interpretations, see Azzan Yadin, “The Chain Novel and the Problem of Self-
undermining Interpretation,” Diné Israel 25 (2008): 43–71.
The qal va-ḥomer that you stated can be refuted: What you say of the reg-
ular sacrifice, which is of the Most Holy [class of] sacrifices, you cannot
say of the Passover, which is of the Lesser Holy sacrifices.63
The Yerushalmi further adds a series of limitations on the hermeneutical rules

expressed by R. Yose be R. Bon. The Bavli retells the story in a form closer to
that of the Tosefta, however, it adds a section at the end in which it also in-
serts a rejection of the qal va-ḥomer in the voice of Bnei Betera.64 Thus both
Talmudim introduce a skeptical approach to qal va-ḥomer both in the voice of
the elders of Betera and by Amoraim/redactors themselves.65
We further find some texts that insist that a qal va-ḥomer could only be
used to uphold a tradition but not to derive a new law. See, for example, m.
Yebamot 8:3,66 where the minority position is granted legitimacy only because
it is based on a received tradition. Qal va-ḥomer reasoning alone proves insuf-
ficient. If the sage presenting the qal va-ḥomer lacks a tradition, then his rea-
soning may be rejected as in m. Nazir 7:4, where R. Akiva uses a qal va-ḥomer
to challenge a law taught by R. Eliezer in the name of R. Yehoshua. R. Eliezer
responds: “What is this Akiva? We do not reason here from a qal va-ḥomer.”
R. Yehoshua similarly rebuts R. Akiva, saying: “You have spoken well; however,
this is how they taught the tradition.”
This strict limitation may have been necessary at the height of anti-halakh-
ic polemics. For most times and places, however, the qal va-ḥomer was used
even to derive new laws.67 Nevertheless, rabbinic sources include various
limitations to its application such as that one may not deduce a law that is
more stringent than the very source of the derivation (dayo la-ba min ha-din
lihiotka-nidon).68 Another limitation is that one may not impose a punishment
63 Y. Pesaḥim 6:1, 33a. Translation from Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories, 77–79, with
modifications.
64 B. Pesaḥim 66a.
65 See further analysis at Katz, “Ha-sipurim,” 81–115; Jeffrey Rubenstein, Stories of the
Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 217–28; and David
Lifshitz, “ʿAliyato shel Hillel la-nesiʾut be-askpaqlariah satirit,” Moreshet Yisrael 5 (2008):
18–30.
66 See parallel at Sifre Deut. 253. For similar cases where an individual challenges the major-
ity opinion using a qal va-ḥomer, see m. Baba Batra 9:7, m. Makhshirin 6:8, t. Ketubot 5:1
(= Sifre Num. 117), and Sifre Num. 8.
67 See y. Pesaḥim 6:1, 33a, cited above: “One may infer a qal va-ḥomer on his own.”
68 Sifre Num. 106. See also Sifra, Baraita d’R. Yishmael and further analysis at Menahem
Kahana, Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University
Magnes Press, 2011), 1.264–65 and 3.690–92. On the principle of dayo generally, see
174 Hidary
on the basis of a qal va-ḥomer (en ʿonshin min ha-din).69 The reason for this lim-
itation seems to be that, as Samuel ha-Nagid explains, “Sometimes one is mis-
taken in his reasoning and the qal va-ḥomer is invalid even though we do not
realize it.”70 The court cannot physically punish someone on the basis of uncer-
tain, even if convincing, reasoning. Susan Handelman similarly concludes from
these restrictions that the qal va-ḥomer “is not a universal principle or an apodic-
tic premise” but rather can provide us with only “a relative conclusion based on
a hypothesis and subject to continual testing and scrutiny.”71 We see in these
examples that the rabbis themselves lacked full confidence in the qal va-ḥomer
to produce definitive valid truths. They did turn to it hundreds of times as a
persuasive tool to uphold halakha but always had to use it with caution be-
cause it belonged to the realm of rhetoric and not logic.
5 Divine Authority in Qumranite and Rabbinic Legal Thought
With this background on the nature and origins of qal va-ḥomer and how
it functions in rabbinic literature, we can now compare the rabbinic and
Qumranite approaches to legal authority to help explain why there are no ex-
amples of such reasoning at Qumran. Viewed from the outside, the Qumran
sect reflects many aspects of Hellenism in its thought and way of life, especial-
ly the sect’s similarity to various utopian philosophical communities like the
Pythagoreans.72 In their internal self-conception, however, the sect rejects all
Encyclopedia Talmudit, s.v. “dayo la-ba min ha-din lihiotka-nidon”; and Allen Conan
Wiseman, “A Contemporary Examination of the A Fortiori Argument Involving Jewish
Traditions” (PhD diss., University of Waterloo, 2010). For other limitations on qal va-
ḥomer, see m. Yadayim 3:2, b. Nazir 57a and b. Shabbat 132a.
69 Sifra, Qedoshim, perek 10, 10. See further at Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael
and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004), 83–86. This
limitation was not universally accepted; see J. N. Epstein, Mevo’ot le-sifrut ha-Tannaim,
525–27; and Elyakim Friedman, “ ‘En ʿonshin min ha-din,” Mi-perot Ereṣ Ha-ṣevi (2009):
11–12. Greek writers regularly apply a fortiori arguments to punishments, as, for example,
Isocrates, “Against Lochites,” 20.3. Significantly, b. Makkot 5b cites this limitation as a rea-
son not to accept a Sadducean legal interpretation based on a qal va-ḥomer.
70 See his introduction printed in the Vilna edition of the Bavli at the end of tractate
Berakhot. See further in Friedman, “ ‘En ʿonshin min ha-din.”
71 Handelman, Slayers of Moses, 56–57.
72 Albert Baumgarten, “Graeco-Roman Voluntary Associations and Ancient Jewish Sects,”
in Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (ed. Martin Goodman; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998):
93–111.
outside culture and strives to remain wholly devoted to their purist view of the
single correct interpretation of Scripture. The scrolls never cite Greek thinkers
and, in fact, their authors consciously strove to remove all Grecisms from their
vocabulary as they took a separatist stance against Romans and other Jews.73
We can thus begin to appreciate why the sect would not have adopted an argu-
mentative technique from Greco-Roman rhetoric, even if they had known of it.
In the sect’s view, Torah law must conform to a monistic truth that is known to
the sect’s leader and that accords with a divine cosmic plan.74 Steven Fraade
writes that although the Scrolls emphasize regular Torah study,
their rules are regularly described as having been revealed, whether to

and through the Teacher of Righteousness … or the community as a
whole…. Nowhere is it suggested that the laws themselves were uncov-
ered through the methods of scriptural exegesis…. The Qumran com-
munity claimed divine authority for their rules not by virtue of their
reasoned derivation from sacred scriptures, but rather by virtue of the
divine election, inspiration, and dedication of their priestly leaders and
holy community.75
For the legal philosophy underlying this methodology, Fraade cites Daniel
Schwartz who has demonstrated that Qumran law tends to take a stance of
legal realism, which leaves little room for debate or tolerance for opposing
views.76 Their legal writings therefore do not include multiple opinions or
73 Martin Hengel, “Qumran and Hellenism,” in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. John
Collins and Robert Kugler; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000): 46–56; and Brent Schmidt,
Utopian Communities of the Ancient World: Idealistic Experiments of Pythagoras, the
Essenes, Pachomius, and Proclus (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010).
74 Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law?, 101–5, 131–4, and 199–200.
75 Steven Fraade, “Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early
Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Michael E. Stone
and Esther Chazon; Leiden: Brill, 1998): 77–78. See similarly at Paul Mandel, “Midrashic
Exegesis and Its Precedents in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 8 (2001): 149–68.
76 Schwartz, “Law and Truth,” 229–40. See further discussion at Yaakov Elman, “Some
Remarks on 4QMMT and Rabbinic Tradition: Or, When Is a Parallel not a Parallel?,” in
Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History (ed. John Kampen and
Moshe Bernstein; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996): 124–25; Jeffrey Rubenstein, “Nominalism
and Realism in Qumranic and Rabbinic Law: A Reassessment,” DSD 6 (1999): 157–83;
Christine Hayes, “Legal Realism and the Fashioning of Sectarians in Jewish Antiquity,”
in Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History (ed. Sacha Stern; Leiden: Brill, 2011): 119–46;
Daniel Schwartz, Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History
176 Hidary
debate and do not reflect familiarity with rhetorical techniques. They apply no
hermeneutical rules of exegesis and leave little room for human interpretation
believing instead that the Teacher of Righteousness has prophetic ability to
extract the one true law from the Bible.77 Thus, the Qumranites envision a sys-
tem of law and interpretation that accepts a Platonic-like view of absolute un-
changing law that accords with nature. They therefore would have little need
or regard for a topos like qal va-ḥomer that derives from the realm of rhetoric
and depends on human reason.
The rabbis, in contrast, recognized the inevitability of multiple interpreta-
tions and subjectivity of human reason. But rather than give up on the pos-
sibility of truth, and rather than relegate truth to heavenly forms and deny a
place for persuasive speech, the rabbis take a brilliant third path. They teach
that all possible legal outcomes and all of the ways of reasoning towards them
are themselves part of the Sinaitic revelation and contain truth.78 The thema-
tization of polysemic revelation attested to across various works of rabbinic
literature proves how fundamental it is to the rabbinic worldview even over
centuries of development in two countries.79 The rabbis do not just pay lip
service to prophetic multiplicity but also apply it in practice in their pedagogy
and in their compositions.80
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 21–47; Jeffrey Rubenstein, “Nominalism and
Realism Again,” Diné Israel 30 (2015): 79*–120*; and references cited below n. 84.
77 See Fraade, “Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran.”
78 See t. Sotah 7:11–12; Pesikta Rabbati 21; y. Sanhedrin 4:1–2, 22a; b. Eruvin 13b; and discussion
at Hidary, Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric, Conclusion.
79 See Steven Fraade, “ ‘A Heart of Many Chambers’: The Theological Hermeneutics of Legal
Multivocality,” HTR 108 (2015): 127, who concludes: “[T]he endurance with which their
[the rabbis’] shared valorization (and problematization) of legal multivocality has crossed
several centuries (and two geographic locations) remarkably intact. The shared pedagogi-
cal solution (a wide-open ‘ear’ and a discerning ‘heart’) to the challenge of scholastic legal
dissensus is notably consistent, mutatis mutandis, and similarly funded by a theology and
hermeneutic of scriptural revelation. Given the orally dynamic and textually fluid culture
of both Tannaitic and Amoraic, Palestinian and Babylonian, rabbinic sages, especially at
the level of textual redaction, the endurance of this idea (and its textual praxis), manifest
as it is with variants, is all the more profound for its consistently coherent core.”
80 See further at Hidary, Dispute. To be sure, there are significant parallels between Qumranic
and rabbinic literature at the level of thematization regarding the basis of legal author-
ity in prophetic revelation. Shemesh and Werman, “Halakhah at Qumran: Genre and
Authority,” delineate two genres of scrolls: those that claim authority based on Sinaitic
revelation like the Temple Scroll and Jubilees, and those that ascribe to an inspired inter-
preter the tools to correctly interpret the Bible, such as the pesharim and the Damascus
Document. Regarding the latter category, Shemesh and Werman write: “Although it is the
This conclusion dovetails with that of Christine Hayes in her comprehensive

analysis of ancient conceptions of divine law. She demonstrates that for Greek
writers, particularly the Stoics, divine law refers to regulations that accord
with nature, are rational, true, conducive to virtue, universal for all people, un-
changing and unwritten. Human laws, in contrast, can be written in concrete
rules, can be arbitrary, do not necessarily correspond to truth, are particular
to subjects under its coercive force, are changeable and may not produce vir-
tue. Some Jewish thinkers like Philo forced the Torah into the Greek concep-
tion of divine law.81 Paul, by contrast, picked up on the similarity between
the Torah and human law and thereby denigrated Jewish law and limited its
application.82 Hayes argues that the Talmudic view denies the Greek dichoto-
my and it accepts that the divine Torah can still display characteristics of what
the Stoics consider human law: “[T]he rabbis breached conceptual boundaries
by insisting that a law could be divine and divorced from truth, divine and not
inherently rational, divine and subject to moral critique and modification….
[T]he Torah is divine because it originates in the will of the god of Israel, and
the attribution of divinity to the Torah does not confer upon it the qualities
of universal rational, truth, and stasis.”83 Since the rabbinic view of divine law
shares many aspects of Greek human law, we can understand why rhetorical
wise men of the sect who explain the Torah and discover the hidden things, this exegesis
is made possible only because the tools for this activity were provided via divine revela-
tion” (109).
Rabbinic literature also includes statements that ground the oral law using each of
these strategies. Sifra Beḥuqotai parasha 2, perek 8, 13, and y. Peʿah 2:1, 17a, declare that
all of the written and oral law were revealed to Moses at Sinai. Other sources describe
the midrashic hermeneutical rules as already embedded in revelation (Sifre Deut. 313)
and in the Torah (Gen. Rabbah 92) and it is Scripture that provides the tools by which
sages unpack its prophetic meaning(s); see Yadin, Scripture as Logos, 121. Despite these
similarities, however, the rabbis’ recognition of multiple conflicting interpretations as all
legitimate parts of God’s word points to a fundamental difference in the conception of
revelation between the two groups. This difference becomes clearly pronounced at the
level of praxis where the nitty-gritty process of human reasoning is all spelled out in every
line of midrash while the scrolls keep their internal reasoning closely guarded. The rabbis
are proud of the human participation in their dialogue with the prophetic word while the
Qumranites minimize the human contribution and portray their conclusions as mono-
lithic incontrovertible truths.
81 Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law?, 111–24.
82 Ibid., 140–64.
83 Ibid., 376–77. Hayes uses the word truth here in the Platonic sense of universal static facts,
while the rabbis think of truth value as being of divine origin and yet nevertheless flexible
and subject to interpretation; see further above.
178 Hidary
argumentation, which underlies human law, should be so central to rabbinic

legal discourse as well. We can now appreciate that Qumran did not and could
not have used qal va-ḥomer arguments because they do not work within their
epistemological legal framework.
6 Did the Sadducees Use qal va-ḥomer?
Daniel Schwartz has written a series of thought provoking studies arguing that
qal va-ḥomer arguments were popular among the Sadducees.84 He points out
that of the twenty or so explicit controversies between the Pharisees and the
Sadducees/Boethusians mentioned in rabbinic literature, approximately half
hinge on a qal va-ḥomer.85 Schwartz argues that there is likely some degree
of historical authenticity behind at least some of these traditions and that the
Sadducees used the qal va-ḥomer extensively because it is the most logical form
of reasoning and therefore it fits with their legal realism such that the law must
accord with nature or objective reality.86 Jeffrey Rubenstein has rejected the
categorization of qal va-ḥomeras “natural or logical.”87 His argument supports
the analysis above that qal va-ḥomer was considered a rhetorical persuasive
tool rather than a demonstrative proof. Below, I will address the specific texts
cited by Schwartz to show that they do not represent authentic Sadducean ar-
guments but rather are rabbinic creations.
In the case regarding the impurity of water flow, the Pharisees use some-
thing like a qal va-ḥomer to show the absurdity of the Sadducean position.88
The same is true regarding the Pharisees’ rejection of the “Galilean heretics”
84 Daniel Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’ ke-realism Ṣaddoqi,” Masechet 5 (2006): 145–56;
“On Pharisees and Sadducees in the Misnhah: From Composition Criticism to History,” in
Judaistik und neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (ed. Lutz Doering, Hans-Günther Waubke,
and Florian Wilk; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 133–45; idem, Judeans and
Jews, 41–45; and idem, “Mi-qal va-ḥomer li-gezera shava—ʿal realism ve-nominalism, tevaʿ
ve-galut,” Diné Israel (2015): 139–54. Schwartz is preceded in making this argument by
Daube, “Texts and Interpretations,” 186.
85 Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 152.
86 Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qalva-ḥomer’,” 155–56.
87 Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism Again,” 88*–97*
88 See the first case of m. Yadayim 4:7 cited at Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 150–51. and
discussed further at “Mi-qal va-ḥomer li-gezera shava,” 143 n. 12. This text does not in any
case include qal va-ḥomer language and may be more of an ad absurdum argument based
on an analogy to a somewhat similar case rather than a formal qal va-ḥomer. It is far from
clear what the Pharisaic argument is from the aqueduct; see the multiple possibilities
discussed at Elman, “Some Remarks on 4QMMT and Rabbinic Tradition: Or, When Is a
challenge on the issue of writing the name of the temporal ruler.89 These types
of cases work well with the discussion above that the Pharisees turned to ex-
egetical rules to prove their own position, and by extension, to disprove their
opposition’s viewpoints. Such cases were written by the rabbis most likely for
their own adherents and so cannot reveal much information about the value of
such arguments in Sadducean legal circles.90 In most of the cases, however, the
Sadducees present a qal va-ḥomer to disprove the rabbinic view and thereby
support their own view. Schwartz provides a number of examples, which are
worthy of individual source-critical analysis to see if they serve as evidence for
Sadducean use of qal va-ḥomer derivations. Let us begin with the instructive
example of the controversy surrounding inheritance by daughters recorded in
several parallel sources. T. Yadayim 2:20 states:
The Boethusians say: “We complain against you Pharisees. If my son’s

daughter whose right [to inherit] derives from my son whose [right to
inherit] derives from me, behold she inherits, does it not follow that my
daughter whose [right to inherit] derives [directly] from me should in-
herit from me?”
The Pharisees respond, “No, if you say regarding the son’s daughter
[that she inherits] because she shares [the inheritance] with [her fa-
ther’s] brothers, would you say the same regarding a daughter who does
not share [the inheritance] with her brothers.”91
The qal va-ḥomer here is used by the Boethusians to challenge the Pharisaic
view and is not presented as the source of the Boethusian position. Indeed,
most scholars assume that this source accurately records the Boethusian/
Sadducean legal position but not its derivation, which may simply originate
from their knowledge of Roman law.92 This approach is confirmed by a parallel
dialogue in MS Parma of Megillat Taʿanit:
Parallel not a Parallel?,” 99–128. The reasoning of the sectarians in this case is preserved
in MMT B 55–85 where there is no a fortiori argument.
89 M. Yadayim 4:8; see Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 152–53; and “Mi-qal va-ḥomer li-
gezera shava,” 143.
90 See also other potential cases in this category are cited by Schwartz, ibid., 151, from the
scholion to Megilat Taʿanit. However, neither case includes qal va-ḥomer language and it
not even clear that they include any a fortiori reasoning.
91 Translation follows MS Vienna.
92 Aharon Shemesh, “King Manasseh and the Halakhah of the Sadducees,” JJS 52 (2001): 33–
34; and Eyal Regev, The Sadducees and their Halakhah: Religion and Society in the Second
Temple Period (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2005), 109–13.
180 Hidary
On the twenty fourth [of Av] we returned to our own law.

For the Sadducees used to judge according to their law saying that a
daughter inherits with a son’s daughter. R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai told them,
“How do you know this?” They did not know how to bring any proof from
the Torah. But there was one person who was blathering against him, say-
ing, “If the son’s daughter whose [right to inherit] derives from her father
whose [right to inherit] derives from me, then a daughter whose [right to
inherit] derives [directly] from me all the more so should she not inherit
from me?”
R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai read him this verse: “That was the Anah who
discovered the hot springs in the wilderness while pasturing the asses of
his father Zibeon” (Gen 36:24).93
He replied, “You are making fun of us.”
He said to him, “Fool! Don’t make our words of Torah like your idle
talk.”
He replied, “Is this how you dismiss me?”
He [R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai] said to him, “No.” He said to him [further],
“If you say regarding a son’s daughter who has the right to share [the
inheritance] with the sons, would you say the same for a daughter who
does not have the right to share [the inheritance] with the sons? Since
she does not have the right to share with the sons, she should not inherit
from me.”
The day that they were victorious they made into a holiday.
Vered Noam estimates that this explanation for the date is early even if not the
original historical event for celebrating this day.94 According to this version,
it is clear that the Sadducean position derived independently from the qal va-
ḥomer argument, which was only made up on the spot by a bystander after the
Sadducees were stumped. The Yerushalmi version presents the qal va-ḥomer
as the source for the Sadducean position: “The Sadducees say that the son’s
daughter and the daughter inherit equally, for they expound …”95 However,
this derivation is presumably a later variation of the Tosefta and thus serves as
93 For an explanation of this proof, see Shemesh, “King Manasseh,” 35–39.
94 Vered Noam, Megillat Taʿanit: Versions, Interpretation, History with a Critical Edition
(Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2003), 223, 368, citing the parallel at b. Baba Batra 115b.
Regev, ibid., 110 n. 33, deems the Megillat Taʿanit version to be an “aggadic reworking” of
the more original Tosefta version.
95 Y. Baba Batra 8:1, 16a.
a telling example of how a view presented as a mere polemic in an early source

can be quoted in a later source as that party’s own explanation.
It is therefore doubtful that the qal va-ḥomer is the derivation of the po-
sition of the Boethusians/Sadducees and more likely that they expressed the
qal va-ḥomer as a challenge to the Pharisees using the Pharisees own system
of exegesis. Other scholars, however, have offered what I think is the most
plausible reading, that the rabbis authored this qal va-ḥomer and attributed
it to the Sadducees. The Megillat Taʿanit/Bavli extended dialogue seems to be
a later rabbinic creation considering that “a series of several scholia explana-
tions were cast in the same mould borrowed from the Babylonian Talmud” in
which “there always appears ‘one elder’ as a prattling spokesman for stupid
Sadducees to demonstrate their ignorance.”96 In other words, if the same type
scene reappears in multiple contexts, we can assume that at most one of them
is historical and the rest are creative applications of the plot pattern to other
contexts.
Tal Ilan comes to a similar assessment based on this example that qal va-
ḥomer arguments in the mouth of the Sadducees in rabbinic literature are rab-
binic insertions:
Because this is a rabbinic text, the Sadducees are portrayed as using the
logical a fortiori principle to derive this law. Logical principles of this type
are typical rabbinic instruments for interpreting scripture. There is no
independent historical data that could lead us to suppose that it was also
acceptable to the Sadducees.97
96 Joshua Efron, Studies on the Hasmonean Period (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 213.
97 Tal Ilan, Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 145. Ilan states further that R. Ishmael legislates equal
inheritance rights to women and that R. Ishmael’s opinion is recorded in the Yerushalmi
in the same pericope as the Sadducean debate referred to above, which follows another
related debate with “the sages of the gentiles.” Based on this juxtaposition, Tal Ilan writes
(ibid., 144 and 146):
“[T]he editors of the Yerushalmi made no secret of their own view regarding Rabbi
Ishmael’s opinion. When describing others who held the same opinion on women’s in-
heritance, they saddled Rabbi Ishmael with very strange bedfellows…. The Yerushalmi’s
act of lumping Rabbi Ishmael together with Sadducees and Gentiles on this issue removes
him beyond the pale of Judaism.”
However, Ilan’s reading of y. Baba Batra 8:1, 16a, problematically translates the phrase
‫ עיבור הדין הוא שתהא הבת יורשת‬as, “With ‘transfer’ the law is that a daughter inherits.”
‫עיבור הדין‬, however, is a negative assessment that there is a blockage of justice when a
daughter must inherit, that is when there are no sons. See parallel at b. Baba Batra 116a
182 Hidary
There is thus good reason to doubt the authenticity of the use of qal va-ḥomer
by the Sadducees. Rather, it is at least plausible and even most likely that
the qal va-ḥomer cited in the name of Boethusians/Sadducees is a Pharisaic/
rabbinic projection of their own reasoning onto their opponents.
Next, let us analyze another example where the Sadducees present a qal
va-ḥomer at Sifra Aḥare Mot, 2, perek 3, 11:
“[Aaron] shall bring [coals from the altar and incense] behind the cur-
tain. He shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord” (Lev 16:12–13).
He may not prepare it outside [of the holy of holies] and bring it inside.
For the Sadducees say, he should prepare it outside and bring it inside. If
one does so before flesh and blood, all the more so (qal va-ḥomer) before
the Omnipresent and Scripture states, “for in a cloud I appear over the
cover (ibid. 16:2).”
The sages said to them, Is it not already stated, “He shall put the in-
cense on the fire before the Lord.” He only places [the incense on the fire]
when he is inside.
When the high priest enters the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement, he
must create a cloud of incense. The precise moment he is to place the incense
on the coals was a subject of a significant controversy. The Pharisees, following
the exact order of events in Leviticus 16:12–13 rule that he should place the in-
cense to create the cloud only after entering the holy of holies. The Sadducees
and 141a; and see Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, “ʿIber, ʿibur ha-din u-farashat ha-ʿibur: ʿiyunim
leshoniim,” Leshonenu 78 (2016): 43–59.
For further analysis on the dialogue with the sages of gentiles in the Yerushalmi, see
Yonatan Feintuch, “Daughters’ Inheritance: Halakha, Law and Literature (In the Footsteps
of the Story of R. Yehudah Nesi’ah),” [Hebrew] Shenaton Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri 28 (2015):
203–27. For a discussion of Tannaitic voices that promote inheritance for daughters, see
Jonathan Milgram, From Mesopotamia to the Mishnah: Tannaitic Inheritance Law in its
Legal and Social Contexts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 105–18. Evidence for rabbinic
minority views that allow for daughters to inherit equally support the suggestion by Zeev
Falk, “The Right of Inheritance of a Daughter and Widow in Bible and Talmud,” [Hebrew]
Tarbiz 23 (1951): 12, who writes that “the sages of the gentiles” refers to those Jews who
adopted the gentile view of gender equality in inheritance law. This reading is bolstered
by the parallel at b. Baba Batra 100a–b that records a similar debate between Rav Papa
and Abaye to that between the sages of the gentiles and the rabbis. This approach opens
the possibility that the very attribution of these laws to Sadducees and Gentiles may be
devised by the rabbinic editors to stigmatize a minority opinion. Be that as it may, for
the purposes of this study, it is sufficient to show that the qal va-ḥomer is unlikely to be a
Sadducean proof.
object that he must first place the incense on the altar and only then enter,
reading verse 2 as a warning not to enter at all without a protective cloud. The
Sifra has the Sadducees bolster their argument based on a qal va-ḥomer that
one would serve a human by making the preparations in a separate room and
then bringing it to the receiver; certainly, the honor due to God requires the
high priest to prepare the incense outside and only then enter with it burning.
We must first, however, perform a source-critical analysis before exploring
the possible historical significance of this tradition.98 Compare the above
source with this story from t. Yoma 1:8:99
It once happened that a certain Boethusian offered incense while outside

[the holy of holies] and the cloud of the incense went and shook the en-
tire Temple. For the Boethusians used to say, “One must burn the incense
while he is still outside [the holy of holies], for it is written, ‘the cloud
should cover’ (Lev 16:2).”
The sages told them, “But does it not already say, ‘He shall place the
incense on the fire before the Lord’ (Lev 16:13)? Therefore, whoever burns
the incense must burn it inside.”
When he exited, he told his father, “All of your days you expounded but
did not perform until I stood up and performed.” He responded, “Even
though we expound we do not perform. We obey the words of the sages. I
would be surprised if you lived much longer.” It was not three days before
they put him in his grave.
The details and setting of this narrative lend it a historical ring absent from
the Sifra. Significantly, the Tosefta does not include a qal va-ḥomer but
rather quotes the Boethusians as basing themselves on an explicit verse
alone.100 Therefore, the qal va-ḥomer in the Sifra is unlikely to be an authentic
Sadducean/Boethusian statement but rather a rabbinic creation.101
98 See Shamma Friedman, “Le-aggadah historit ba-Talmud ha-Bavli,” in Saul Lieberman
Memorial Volume (ed. Shamma Friedman; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1993), 119–64.
99 Translation follow MS Vienna.
100 T. Yoma 1:8 cites Lev 16:13. The parallel at y. Yoma 1:5, 39a, does not cite a verse and b. Yoma
19b cites Lev 16:2. The Tosefta is the more original source and the Talmudic versions add
some elaborations; see Yonatan Feintuch, “The Tale of the Sadducee and the Incense in
Bavli Yoma—the Metamorphosis of a Text and Commentary,” [Hebrew] Sidra 29 (2014):
79–84.
101 See Regev, Sadducees and their Halakhah, 155, who suggests that the Sifra introduces the
qal va-ḥomer to mock the Sadducees.
184 Hidary
A last example of a possible Sadducean qal va-ḥomer appears at m.

Yadayim 4:7:
The Sadducees say, “We complain against you Pharisees, for you say that
I am liable for my ox or ass that cause damage but I am not liable for
my slave or maidservant who cause damage. If my ox and my ass regard-
ing whom I am not responsible to ensure that they observe command-
ments, yet I am responsible for their damage, all the more so my slave
and my maidservant regarding whom I am responsible to ensure that
they observe commandments, I should certainly be responsible for their
damage.”
They said to them, “No. If you say [that I am liable] regarding my ox
and my ass, which have no intelligence, would you say [that I am liable]
regarding my slave and my maidservant who have intelligence? If I make
them angry, they will go and burn another’s grain pile and I will be liable
to pay.”
The Sadducees here analogize two types of responsibility: the responsibility

of an owner to ensure that his property adheres to the commandments of the
Torah and the responsibility of an owner to pay for damage caused by his prop-
erty. The greater the former, they reason, the greater should be the latter. While
an owner must ensure that his slaves fulfill commandments, he need not stop
his animal from grazing on its own on the Sabbath. Since an owner is liable to
pay for the damages of his animal, though he is not responsible for its fulfill-
ment of commandments, he should all the more so be responsible to pay for
the damages of his slave, for whose fulfillment of commandments the owner is
responsible.102 The Pharisees successfully rebut this argument by severing the
analogy between the two cases: considering that, unlike animals, slaves have
intelligence, it would be absurd for the owner to be held responsible for his
slave’s actions.103
Eyal Regev accepts this source as an accurate description of the Sadducees’
ruling but not of their midrashic derivation.104 Schwartz himself also
102 See further at Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 153.

103 See also Daube, “Texts and Interpretations,” 196–98.
104 Regev, Sadducees and their Halakhah, 107–9, and see also Jack N. Lightstone, “Sadducees
versus Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources,” in Christianity, Judaism, and Other Greco-Roman
Cults III (ed. Jacob Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 210. Mekhilta d’R.Yishmael, Neziqin, 7 and
10 (Horowitz-Rabin, pp. 274 and 283), include qal va-ḥomer arguments comparing dam-
ages of slaves/humans and animals, similar in style and content to the qal va-ḥomer in
submits that in this case, the logic of the qal va-ḥomer is so weak that it could
not have served as the actual derivation of the Sadducean law. He goes fur-
ther and argues that the rabbis invented this qal va-ḥomer and attributed it
to the Sadducees because that group did use such an argument in various
other cases.105 Although Schwartz takes a skeptical approach here, he sees
this case as the exception and assumes that the Sadducees did author and rely
on a fortiori arguments in general. Schwartz further proposes that the rabbis
refrained from using qal va-ḥomer reasoning during their polemics with the
Sadducees and only reclaimed its use after the threat of sectarianism was gone
and Christianity rose up.106
I find this to be an impossible theory considering that rabbinic literature
shows continuous use of the qal va-ḥomer throughout the generations of the
Tannaim. Instead, I propose that what Schwarz says for the case of slave li-
ability at m. Yadayim 4:7 is not the exception but rather the typical case that
applies to the other sources he discusses as well. In fact, it is doubtful that the
Sadducees themselves historically based their laws on qal va-ḥomer reasoning
considering that the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature re-
cord very few if any examples of a fortiori arguments.107 Rather, we should con-
sider as one possible theory that the Sadducees sometimes cited qal va-ḥomer
arguments polemically, to use the Pharisees own arguments against them. This
explanation is compatible with several of the texts that Schwartz cites as ex-
amples of Sadducean qal va-ḥomer arguments: impurity of Scriptural scrolls,108
m. Yadayim 4:7. Considering that there is no distinguishing “Sadducean” character to the

qal va-ḥomer there can be no objection to the theory that it is a rabbinic creation placed
into the mouths of the Sadducees.
105 Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 153–54. The rabbis, in fact, may have attributed a weak
argument to the Sadducees as a straw man precisely in order to reject it with their bet-
ter argument. For an argument that this qal va-ḥomer is an authentic Sadducean tradi-
tion, see David Instone-Brewer, “1 Corinthians 9.9–11: A Literal Interpretation of ‘Do Not
Muzzle the Ox’,” NTS 38 (1992): 562. He argues that the qal va-ḥomer must be an authentic
Sadducean argument because the rabbis “were unlikely to invent an exegesis in which
they did not significantly outshine the Sadducees.” However, that is only his own assess-
ment and the author of the Mishnah itself likely would have considered the rabbinic re-
tort to be a decisive and irrefutable conclusion.
106 Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 155–56. See further discussion of this point at idem,
Judeans and Jews, 45; and Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism Again,” 94*–95*
107 This point is already made by Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism Again,” 93* n. 45.
108 M. Yadayim 4:6. The Pharisees rule that scrolls of Scripture, but not other books, defile
hands, while the Sadducees do not think that Scriptures defile. Although the Sadducean
challenge in the Mishnah does not use qal va-ḥomer language, Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-
ḥomer’,” 149, reads one in: “if Scriptures, which have a high status, cause impurity, then all
186 Hidary
impurity of animal bones,109 and discredited witnesses.110 There is, however,
the more so the books of Homer would do so.” However, the phrasing of the Sadducean
challenge merely points out a paradoxical incongruity in the Pharisaic law that need
not be classified as a qal va-ḥomer since there is no middle term of comparison such as
being more and less holy (see below n. 112). In any case, even if a fortiori reasoning is
implied and even if this Mishnah is an authentic citation of a Sadducean statement, the
Sadducees likely say this only to refute the Pharisees on the Pharisees’ own terms and
not as the derivation of the Sadducees’ own law. There is certainly no proof here that the
Sadducees based their own ruling on a comparison with the status of Homeric books. See
also Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism Again,” 93*–94*, who writes that the argu-
ment revolves not around the legitimacy of qal va-ḥomer but rather on the status of hu-
mans versus animals. See further on the polemical backdrop of this law at Richard Hidary,
“The Rhetoric of Rabbinic Authority: Making the Transition from Priest to Sage,” in Jewish
Rhetorics: History, Theory, Practice (ed. Michael Bernard-Donals and Janice Fernheimer;
Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 41 n. 105.
109 This law is also cited in the dialogue at m. Yadayim 4:6. See analysis of this debate at
Joseph Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the
Qumran Texts,” JJS 31 (1980): 161–63; and Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism,” 168–70.
Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 149, explains that the Sadducees deem animal bones
impure based on a qal va-ḥomer that if human bones are impure (Num 19:16 and 18) then
bones of animals, which are of lower status, must all the more so be impure. However,
this reasoning is not explicit in the Mishnah; rather, the phrasing again points out an
incongruity in comparing the two laws but there is no middle term that is typical of the
qal va-ḥomer form. Furthermore, even if one would read a fortiori reasoning into the com-
parison between human and animal bones, the entire statement is stated by R. Yohanan
ben Zakkai and (according to Baumgarten whose explanation is followed by Schwartz)
it is the Pharisees who respond to him. This is thus an intra-rabbinic/Pharisaic dialogue
that cannot serve as evidence for Sadducean legal reasoning, especially considering that
the Temple Scroll 51:4–5 states the law without any such derivation. See similarly at Yair
Furstenberg, “ ‘ We Protest Against You, Pharisees’: The Shaping of Pharisaic Worldview in
the Mishnah,” in Ha-halakha—heqsherim raʿyoniim ve-idilogiim geluyim u-smuyim (ed.
Avinoam Rozenak; Jerusalem: Makhot Leer, 2012), 290 n. 22.
110 See Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 149–50, who does not claim this to be a Sadducean
qal va-ḥomer but rather one where the Pharisaic position explicitly rejects a qal va-ḥomer.
The qal va-ḥomer regarding discredited witnesses appears in b. Makkot 5b not in early
Tannaitic strata, and therefore cannot serve as evidence for the reasoning of the Second
Temple period sects. In the interpretation of most scholars, the controversy at m. Makkot
1:6 involves only a case where the defendant was not yet killed but all would agree that the
false witness deserves capital punishment if the defendant has been killed. See Hanoch
Albeck, Six Orders of Mishnah, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1959), Neziqin, 463–64;
and Regev, Sadducees and their Halakhah, 104 n. 24. Shamma Friedman, “ ‘If They Have Not
Slain They Are Slain, but If They Have Slain They Are Not Slain’ (Makkot 5b): Tradition or
room for debate whether any of these examples actually employ qal va-ḥomer
reasoning and whether they are reliably attributed to the Sadducees.111
The many qal va-ḥomer arguments found in the New Testament can similar-
ly be accounted for as anti-Pharisaic arguments made by former Pharisees who
knew that such arguments would be effective against their interlocutors. Jesus
employs a fortiori reasoning at Luke 18:1–8, Matt 12:11–12 and 23:16–22.112 Jesus’
use of qal va-ḥomer is not surprising since he had a close association with the
Pharisees and perhaps would have identified himself as a Pharisee.113 Paul uses
a fortiori reasoning at 2 Cor 3:7–11, 9:9–10 and Rom 5:12–21.114 Paul identifies as
a Pharisee at Acts 23:6, 26:5, and Phil 3:5. More importantly, both Jesus and Paul
employ qal va-ḥomer arguments in dialogue with Pharisees thus challenging
them on their own terms.
Transition,” [Hebrew] Sidra (2005): 171–94, argues that the controversy in the Mishnah
includes also the case when the defendant was killed and the Pharisees did not hold the
false witness liable in that case. Friedman, however, agrees that the baraita in the Bavli is
a later Babylonian text and that the conversation in it between Be-Rabbi and his father is
a construction of the editors. Indeed, even if that conversation is an authentic Tannaitic
source, the qal va-ḥomer therein is presented by a rabbinic sage, not by a Sadducee. This
dialogue of one sage challenging another rabbi about the Pharisaic/rabbinic position
based on a qal va-ḥomer lends credence to the conclusion of this article that qal va-ḥomer
arguments cited in the mouths of Sadducees are also rabbinic creations as part of their
own internal dialogue.
111 See the previous three notes.
112 The focus of criticism in Matthew 23 is the religious hypocrisy of the Pharisees, a stig-
ma mentioned in multiple sources; see Richard Kalmin, Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s
Narratives and Their Historical Context (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2014),
164–74. The form of comparison in Matthew therefore may be best categorized not as a
qal va-ḥomer but rather as a paradox that points out the incongruity and double standard
of Pharisaic practice. This understanding fits well with some of the texts analyzed above
where the Sadducees express a similar attack on the Pharisees; see above nn. 108 and 109.
On the connection between Matthew 23 and m. Yadayim 4:6, see also Furstenberg, “ ‘We
Protest Against You, Pharisees’: The Shaping of Pharisaic Worldview in the Mishnah,” 301–
05; and Tzvi Novick, “Holiness in the Rabbinic Period,” in Concepts of Holiness in Judaism
(ed. Alan Mittleman; Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
113 See John Pawlikowski, “Was Jesus a Pharisee? And Does It Matter?,” in Teaching the
Historical Jesus: Issues and Exegesis (ed. Zev Garber; New York: Routledge, 2015), 245, who
agrees that Jesus was “closer to Pharisaism than to any other Jewish movement of his
time.”
114 See further at Christopher Forbes, “Paul and Rhetorical Comparison,” in Paul in the Greco-
Roman World: A Handbook (ed. J. Paul Sampley; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International,
2003): 150–60.
188 Hidary
While it is possible in some cases that the sectarians expressed qal va-ḥomer
arguments polemically because they knew the Pharisees used it, I find the most
convincing explanation for these cases to be that the rabbis invented these dia-
logues to express their anxieties about their own legal derivations. Christine
Hayes has applied this psychoanalytic reading to another sugya arguing that
challenges from minim in talmudic dialogues are in fact a displacement for
the rabbis’ own self-doubts.115 By placing such subversive arguments into the
mouths of the Sadducees, the rabbis furthermore denounce those, such as
R. Yose ben Tadai, who would use this form of reasoning against the rabbinic
establishment.116 These Sadducean debates reflect the rabbis’ self-doubts to-
wards such reasoning and their skepticism towards its ability to reach valid
conclusions.117
115 For a similar interpretation of rabbinic debates with outsiders, see Christine Hayes,
“Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of ‘Mînîm’ and Romans in b. Sanhedrin
90b–91a,” in Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine (ed. Hayim Lapin;
Bathesda: University Press of Maryland, 1998): 271–89. See also N. Janowitz, “Rabbis and
Their Opponenets: The Construction of the ‘Min’ in Rabbinic Anecdotes,” JECS 6 (1998):
44–62; Christine Hayes, “The ‘Other’ in Rabbinic Literature,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin Jaffee;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 259; and Jenny Labendz, Socratic Torah:
Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 9–11.
116 Schwartz, “Tiʿune ‘qal va-ḥomer’,” 154–55. Koraḥ similarly challenges Moses’ authority
using qal va-ḥomer arguments. See Num. Rabbah 18:3 and its parallel at y. Sanhedrin 10:1,
27d–28a. Shlomo Naeh, “ ‘Make Yourself Many Rooms’: Another Look at the Utterances
of the Sages About Controversy,” [Hebrew] in Renewing Jewish Commitment: The Work
and Thought of David Hartman (ed. Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar; Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman
Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001), 855 n. 20, suggests that “Korah and his as-
sembly” in m. Abot 5:17 may be a veiled reference to the teacher of righteousness and the
Qumran sect.
117 It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the usage and polemics surrounding gezer-
ah shava. Schwartz, “Mi-qal va-ḥomer li-gezera shava,” 140–41, categorizes qal va-ḥomer as
a realist argument and gezera shava as a derivation that works within a nominalist view-
point. See, however, Hidary, Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric, chapter 5, arguing that both
exegetical methods rely on analogies deriving from the realm of rhetoric. Therefore, the
conclusions here regarding one apply equally to the other: the Qumranites and Sadducees
utilized neither. One method that the groups do have in common is the midrashic
binyan av paralleled in the scrolls in its technique of homogenization; see Milgrom, “The
Qumran Cult: Its Exegetical Principles,” 175; Bernstein and Koyfman, “Interpretation,”
80–82 and Hayes, “Legal Realism,” 129.
7 Conclusion
We conclude that the Qumranites and Sadducees did not apply qal va-ḥomer
arguments to derive their laws from the Torah. Qal va-ḥomer is a rhetorical
topos used by the rabbis polemically to ground their oral traditions in Scripture,
and the rabbis recognized that it is merely a persuasive tool but not an abso-
lute proof. This engendered anxiety at possible and real challenges to halakha
based on qal va-ḥomer arguments. Those qal va-ḥomer arguments attributed to
Sadducees in rabbinic texts are either said by them as anti-Pharisaic polemics
or, more likely, projections of the rabbis’ own anxieties and the desire to portray
as heretics anyone who presents an anti-halakhic qal va-ḥomer. Furthermore,
we should not expect to find qal va-ḥomer usage by the sectarians because sec-
tarian/priestly law tended towards realism and claimed direct prophetic deri-
vation while qal va-ḥomer works only within a rabbinic approach that is more
open to nominalism and that explicitly allows room for textual interpretation
and human reason.
CHAPTER 9
The Puzzle of Torah and the Qumran Wisdom Texts

John I. Kampen
The reconceptualization of the intellectual and literary developments of

Second Temple Judaism required as the result of the disarray created by the
surprising cache of materials from the vicinity of Qumran continues to occupy
many of us in what we consider productive activity. Moshe Bernstein has been
at the center of this cadre of scholars and it is a privilege to have the opportu-
nity to present one’s own research in this area in a volume that recognizes his
outstanding contributions to this ongoing discussion.1 The puzzle of the wis-
dom texts and the sapiential content found in an even broader array of literary
genres was one of these surprising features that sent us back to reexamine the
fundamentals of what we know and how we think about the materials of that
nature. One of the features of these texts that has not yet received adequate ex-
amination, and certainly explanation, is the lack of reference to Torah in some
texts, most notably Instruction and Mysteries, while forming the centerpiece
of the largest extant column of 4Q525 (Beatitudes).
A more detailed examination of the appearance of this term yields signifi-
cant results. While one must be very careful about the conclusions drawn from
the lack of mention of a term or concept in fragmentary materials, the total
absence of the term from almost all of the texts considered representative of
the wisdom materials is rather remarkable.2 The significant absence in the
1 Since I had the privilege of editing two books on legal literature within the Qumran materi-
als with Moshe, a paper on “Torah” seems a fitting topic: Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives
on Qumran Law and History (ed. John Kampen and Moshe Bernstein; SBLSymS 2; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1966); Legal Texts and Legal Issues. Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the
IOQS Cambridge 1995. Studies Presented in Honor of J. Baumgarten (ed. Moshe Bernstein,
Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill, 1997).
2 I have discussed the question of the designation in Wisdom Literature (ECDSS; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2010), 9–12. This study is based upon the listing found in that volume. See also
the longer listing and discussion in A. Lange with U. Mittmann-Richert, “Annotated List of
the Texts from the Judaean Desert Classified by Content and Genre,” in The Texts from the
Judaean Desert: Indices and An Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series
(ed. Emanuel Tov; DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 115–64, see 119–20, 140. The two notable
exceptions with regard to the presence of Torah in wisdom materials are 4Q185 (Sapiential
Work) and 4Q525 (Beatitudes). See Greg Schmidt Goering, “Creation, Torah, and Revealed
The Puzzle Of Torah And The Qumran Wisdom Texts 191
considerable fragments of Instruction is particularly noteworthy, since the ex-

tensive collection with significant overlaps suggests some entré into a larger
portion of the content of that composition (or compositions?). Thus an ex-
amination of this lack of mention and its potential implications must begin
with the copies of this composition.3 Its close connection to Mysteries also is
noteworthy.4 As demonstrated by the amount of academic attention it has re-
ceived, Instruction has proven to be the most significant wisdom composition
from the Qumran corpus.
To provide an adequate context for the examination of this feature of
Instruction, the question of date of composition is important. 4Q416, the earli-
est extant copy, is dated on the basis of paleographic considerations to 50–25
BCE, with 4Q415, 417, and 418 following within twenty five years, thus a termi-
nus ad quem for the date of composition.5 This also suggests, in terms of usage,
that the inhabitants of the Qumran site produced multiple copies of this com-
position during the period which has been identified as the height of their
literary productivity. Identifying a widely shared perception that it was not
a sectarian composition, Strugnell and Harrington regarded it as a bridge
document between Proverbs and Sirach with a third century BCE date of
Wisdom in Some Second Temple Sapiential Texts (Sirach, 4QInstruction, 4Q185, and 4Q525,”
in Canonicity, Setting, Wisdom in the Deuterocanonicals: Papers of the Jubilee Meeting of
the International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books (ed. Géza G. Xeravits, József
Zsengeller, and Xavér Szabó; DCLS 22; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 121–44.
3 On the MSS of Instruction see John Strugnell and Daniel J. Harrington, S. J., Qumran Cave 4,
XXIV: Sapiential Texts, Part2 (DJD 34; Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 1–2, 501, and the introduc-
tion to each MS; Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, To Increase Learning for the Understanding Ones:
Reading and Reconstructing the Fragmentary Early Jewish Sapiential Text 4QInstruction
(STDJ 44; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 3–27; John Kampen, Wisdom Literature, (ECDSS; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2011), 38–40; Matthew J. Goff, 4QInstruction (WLAW 2; Atlanta: SBL, 2013 ), 1–7.
4 Lawrence H. Schiffman, “299–301. 4QMysteriesa–b, c?),” Qumran Cave 4: XV. Sapiential Texts,
Part 1, (DJD 20; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 31–123, esp. 31–32.
5 Strugnell and Harrington, Qumran Cave 4 (DJD 34), 76. They simply refer to it “as a formal or
bookhand … in a date transitional between the late Hasmonaean and the earliest Herodian
hands.” The other three are of a similar style but slightly later in development. This descrip-
tion results in these dates proposed by Brian Webster, “Chronological Index of the Texts from
the Judaean Desert,” in Texts from the Judaean Desert (DJD 39), 351–446. see 405. Note that
this same description results in proposed dates of 100–50 BCE by Goff, 4QInstruction, 4, 28.
Webster’s date seems to coincide more closely with the chronology proposed by Frank M.
Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran (3rd edn; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), Figure 17. He
dates 4QSama to 50–25 BCE. This is the MS which Strugnell and Harrington suggest is imme-
diately prior to 4Q416 in paleographical development.
192 Kampen
composition.6 Other scholars point to the end of the third or more likely the
beginning of the second century BCE.7 While Matthew Goff pointed to the lack
of any hints of the Maccabean crisis or other evidence of eschatological urgen-
cy as evidence for a date of composition in the early second century BCE in his
earlier work,8 he has expressed reservations about that proposal in his recent
works.9 His hesitancy appears to be based upon the reappraisal of the chronol-
ogy of the development of the site of Qumran by Jodi Magness, as well as other
proposals.10 I would suggest some caution in making that connection, while
hastening to add that he does not make a direct correlation, but rather suggests
that the later chronology opens up new possibilities. However, bringing the
evaluation of the dating of the composition of materials, particularly of a non-
sectarian nature, closer to evaluations of the archeological evidence is prob-
lematic. This problem is recognized in the recent evaluations of the evidence
for the Teacher of Righteousness and the Wicked Priest by James VanderKam,
in which his evaluation of the chronology related to these two figures becomes
less attached to the chronology of the site.11 I continue to support an early
second century date of composition making it contemporary with portions of
1 Enoch and Daniel as well as the Hebrew version of Ben Sira.
6 Strugnell and Harrington, Qumran Cave 4 (DJD 34), 31.

7 Kampen, Wisdom Literature, 40–44.
8 Matthew J. Goff, The Worldly and Heavenly Wisdom of 4QInstruction (STDJ 50; Leiden:
Brill, 2003), 229–31.
9 Matthew Goff, Discerning Wisdom: The Sapiential Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls (VTSup
116; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 65–67; idem, 4QInstruction, 27–29.
10 Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2002), 63–69; Katharinia Galor, Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Jürgen Zangenberg,
eds., Qumran: The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates
(STDJ 57; Leiden: Brill, 2006).
11 James C. VanderKam, “The Pre-History of the Qumran Community with a Reassessment
of CD 1:5–11,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture: Proceedings of the
International Conference held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem ( July 6–8, 2008) (ed. Adolfo
Roitman, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Shani Tzoref; STDJ 93; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 59–76;
idem, “The Wicked Priest Revisited,” in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism: Essays in
Honor of John J. Collins (ed. Daniel C. Harlow, Karina Martin Hogan, Matthew Goff, and
Joel S. Kaminsky; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 350–67. Questioning the continuing
preference for a second century BCE date for the origins of the sectarian movement is
Michael O. Wise, “The Origins and History of the Teacher’s Movement,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 92–122.
1 1 Enoch
Within the context of the literary production of Judeans in the early second
century BCE the failure to find reference to Torah in Instruction takes on a dif-
ferent flavor. The apparent absence of references to it in 1 Enoch has received
the most attention. While portions of the composition such as the Book of the
Watchers demonstrate evidence of the use of material in Genesis, the remain-
der of the Pentateuch is not utilized in the same manner.12 The only reference
to the covenant is found in 1 En. 93:6, Mt. Sinai in 1 En. 1:4, and a charge about
the violation of an eternal covenant in 1 En. 99:2. While the Animal Apocalypse
makes reference to the events at Sinai, both Torah and covenant are absent in
that account (1 En. 89:28–35).13 The Mosaic Torah goes without mention and
the source of law and the norms reflective of the divine will which the wicked
are accusing of violating is really revealed wisdom.14 For the most part, the
figure of Enoch is the recipient of this revealed and often esoteric wisdom, and
by implication its dispenser. There is a strong sense of law throughout 1 Enoch
related to judgment, but it is not based in an appeal to the Mosaic Torah, or
for the most part rooted in its legal provisions. While study of the the laws of
the astral bodies suggests the equivalent for humans, the specifics of what this
means for the regulation of human activity are not developed. Correct human
behavior is tied to the cosmic order and a comprehensive understanding of it
is possible only through revelation.
The ascent and then the myth of the descent as described in 1 En. 81:1–82:3
and 104:12–13 underlies the expansive view of wisdom that pervades the differ-
ent portions of this composition. In 1 En. 42:1–3 this same tradition of wisdom
seeking a home on earth also is present. It is applied to the Mosaic Torah in Ben
Sira 24 and Bar 3:9–4:4. While the literary context of 1 En 81:1–82:3 (or 82:4a)
in relationship to the various sections of 1 Enoch is contested and seems out
of place in its present location, its description of the authority of Enoch as
the source of revelation is basic to most sections of the composition and may
12 George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36;
81–108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 57–59.
13 George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Enochic Wisdom and its Relation to the Mosaic Torah,” in The
Early Enoch Literature (ed. Gabrielle Boccaccini and John J. Collins; JSJSup 121; Leiden:
Brill, 2007), 81–94, see 82–83.
14 For an analysis of these Aramaic texts and revelation see Andrew B. Perrin, The Dynamics
of Dream-Vision Revelation in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls (JAJSup 19; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
194 Kampen
reflect an editorial insertion in the final version to make precisely that point.15
In terms of the performative aspects of this text, 81:1–2 is noteworthy. In 81:1
Enoch is told to “look at the heavenly tablets, read what is written on them,
and understand each and every item.”16 Of greater significance however, this
is what Enoch proceeds to do in 81:2: “I looked at everything on the heavenly
tablets, read everything that was written, and understood everything.” In other
words, Enoch is both the source of revelation, the human intermediary who
makes this heavenly knowledge available to humans, and the model for human
response; he “looked … read … and understood,” just as had been mandated.
Enoch continues, “I read the book, all the actions of people and of all humans
that will be on the earth for the generations of the world.” It would appear that
this record of actions is not simply a listing of the good and bad people of the
world; in the context of 1 Enoch it should rather be read as the account of the
type of actions carried out by the wicked as we find them specified in the dis-
courses on the violent and rich, the sinners, and those in error in the discourses
in 1 En. 94:6–104:8 of the Epistle of Enoch, set in the context of the description
of the two ways of the righteous and sinners in 1 En. 94:1–5, also found in 91:18–
19. Throughout 1 Enoch, this is referred to as wisdom.17 Within this section the
way revealed for the righteous is referred to as the “paths of truth” (1 En. 104:13;
105:1; 108:13) in addition to the “paths of righteousness” (92:3; 99:10). Violence,
wealth, abuse of power, and incest are all listed as problematic behavior, with-
out further definition or specification. Violence and incest are already at the
center of concern in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36). Somehow it is as-
sumed that the reader knows what the expected behavior is, thereby implying
some connection between author and hearer/reader.
This relationship is spelled out most clearly in the Epistle of Enoch, even
though it must be acknowledged that perspectives based upon that section
have limitations concerning their applicability to other sections of the com-
position. Recognizing its somewhat later date of composition than the Book
of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book, it does at minimum represent
one reading of the Enoch tradition. Here we find “a second mystery, that to
15 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 334–37; George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam,

1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Books of 1 Enoch Chapters 37–82 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2012), 359–67, 530–36 (this section is written by VanderKam in response to
Nickelsburg and others).
16 Translations of 1 Enoch are from George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam,
1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012). The passage is a bit un-
usual, since how one is to carry out the imperative “understand” is difficult to ascertain.
17 1 En. 5:8; 32:6; 37:1–2; 82:2; 92:1; 93:10; 104:12.
the righteous and pious and wise my books will be given for the joy of righ-
teousness and much wisdom.”18 Wisdom is found in the revelation received
and transmitted by Enoch. Here the “wise” who accept the truth of his revela-
tion are identified with the righteous and the pious, who are contrasted with
the rich and those who oppress the weak, committing violence against them.
In the Epistle the righteous and pious are not identified as the poor or weak,
thereby highlighting the injustice of the situation; i.e., it is the righteous and
the pious who are the victims of the rich and powerful. These righteous and
pious are “the chosen who will be chosen, as witnesses of righteousness from
the everlasting plant of righteousness, to whom will be given sevenfold wisdom
and knowledge.”19 It becomes evident that the chosen and the righteous who
have received the words of Enoch have been given a certain exclusivist identity
in contrast to those who mistreat them. The problem with their opponents is
not only a question of treatment, these same adversaries “do not listen to the
wise,” they are “stiff-necked and hard of heart,” they “annul the words of the
righteous,” and perhaps most significantly they “write lying words and words
of error; they write and lead many astray.”20 Presumably they spread truth dif-
ferent from that revealed by Enoch.21 In other words, joining the group who
accepts the revelation of Enoch is necessary for the acquisition of wisdom and
for learning to live one’s life consonant with that truth. A similar claim is made
concerning the provenance of the Animal Apocalypse, where comparison is
made with Qumran materials and the Hasidim of 1 and 2 Maccabees: “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.”22 While not as clearly identifiable in the Book of the Watchers we
must remember that the composition begins: “The words of the blessing with
which Enoch blessed the righteous chosen who will be present on the day of
18 1 En. 105:12. The wise also receive mention in 1 En. 98:9; 99:10.
19 1 En. 93:10.
20 While the abuses of the rich and powerful are central to the first (94:6–96:3) and second
discourses (96:4–98:8), the charges of following and propagating false teaching are found
in the third (98:9–99:10). Citations are from 98:9, 11, 14, and 15.
21 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 428. He there suggests that these terms “probably have particular-
istic or ‘sectarian’ connotations.”
22 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 362. See also Patrick A. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal
Apocalypse of I Enoch (SBLEJL 4; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 102–16; George W. E.
Nickelsburg, “Social Aspects of Palestinian Jewish Apocalypticism,” in Apocalypticism in
the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium
on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 12–17, 1979 (ed. David Hellholm; Tübingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], 1983), 641–54.
196 Kampen
tribulation to remove all enemies; and the righteous will be saved.”23 Group
identity tied to those who accept the revelation attributed to Enoch is integral
to attaining wisdom and discerning the particulars of the way of life consonant
with that truth. There is no Torah, there are the words of Enoch and the partici-
pation with those who accept this as true.
2 Instruction
A similar failure to mention the Mosaic Torah or to point back to it for autho-
rization characterizes the material found in the extant copies of Instruction
and for the most part, with a few notable exceptions, the non-biblical wisdom
literature of the Qumran corpus. The type of moral instruction found through-
out the work bears the same practical orientation directed toward the intri-
cate details of daily life found in the book of Proverbs, which does periodically
mention the term “torah,” however for the most part is referring to instruction
or advice rather than the Mosaic Torah.24 Even this latter usage of the term is
absent from Instruction as is the personification of wisdom found in the ini-
tial chapters of the book. If the wide margin on the right hand side of what
has been considered frag. 1 of 4Q416 is interpreted correctly as representing
the beginning of this copy, and all the available evidence suggests this is the
case, then the opening rationale undergirding the advice to follow is based in
a correct understanding of the created order in both its temporal and spatial
dimensions including its eschatology. The cosmological context for the work
is set in ll. 1–9 of this first column by outlining the role of the heavenly lu-
minaries with regard to both the calendar and the created order including its
dominions and kingdoms. This suggests ideological similarities to the Book of
Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) and the Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82). Judgment
is an integral part of this order, mentioned in l. 4 and then outlined in ll. 9–13.
With the affirmation that “the epoch of tr[uth] will be realized … for he is the
God of truth,” we see the foundation of an ethic “so that the righteous can dis-
tinguish between good and evil.”25 In addition to 1 Enoch, connections with the
Treatise on the Two Spirits of the Community Rule are also apparent. It is a good
sample of the particular type of wisdom and knowledge now clearly identified
23 1 En. 1:1.

24 Prov 1:8; 3:1; 4:2; 6:20, 23; 7:2; 31:26. References to the Mosaic Torah are more likely in 28:4,
7, 9; 29:18.
25 Kampen, Wisdom Literature, 60–61. All translations of Instruction are from this volume
unless indicated otherwise.
within the literature of the Second Temple era.26 While typical, the source of
the knowledge and the process of authorization of the resulting ethic is of par-
ticular interest in this composition. A good deal of variation with regard to
these features is apparent in the compositions which show reliance upon this
more customary combination of wisdom and eschatology.
The process of the acquisition of knowledge in this composition centers on
a very particular set of features that set it apart from its known literary contem-
poraries. Two of these features are the addressee, designated as the ‫( מבין‬man
of discernment) and the ‫( רז נהיה‬mystery of existence). The frequently repeat-
ed ‫( ועתה מבין‬and now mebin) sets up the addressee as the recipient of wisdom
employing a title not used in BH or elsewhere in the Qumran fragments,27 with
a few exceptions to be noted momentarily. In a limited number of instances it
also appears in the plural form. It should not be a surprise to find the addressee
in both singular and plural, as is true in the case of ‫( בן‬son) and ‫( בנים‬sons) in
Proverbs.28 There are three aspects of the addressee’s experience as described
in Instruction that deserve our attention.
The most apparent aspect of the mebin’s experience is that wisdom is gained
through revelation, a widely shared characteristic of wisdom literature in the
Second Temple era that differentiates it from most of its biblical predecessors.
This feature identifies the basic reference point for determining the method
of the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge within the composition but does
not differentiate it from much of the other Second Temple literature engaged
in the same question.29 Of greater distinctiveness is the manner in which the
mebin is identified with the angels: ‫ובכול [א]ל[ים] הפיל גורלכה וכבודכה הרבה‬
‫( מואדה‬with all the [hea]venly [beings] he has cast your lot and your very great
glory).30 The mebin has been brought into contact with the heavenly realm. In
26 Goff, 4QInstruction, 21–22.

27 4Q416 4, 3; 4Q417 1 i, 1, 14, 18; 4Q418 81+81a, 15; 102a+b, 3; 123 ii, 5; 168, 4; 176, 3. The title ap-
pears without context in 4Q299 (Mysteries) 34, 3; 4Q417 1 ii, 10; 4Q418 117, 2; 158, 4; 227, 1;
273, 1; 4Q418a 7, 2, 3. 4Q418 17:, may be a reference to the ‫“( בן מבין‬son of discernment”). In
the plural it is found in 4Q415 11, 5; 4Q418 2, c:8; 123 ii, 4; 4Q418 221, 3.
28 In the singular it prefers ‫( בני‬my son), e.g., Prov 1:8, 10, 15; 2:1; 3:1, 11, 21. For the addressee in
the plural, see e.g., Prov 4:1; 5:7; 7:24; 8:32.
29 Grant Macaskill, Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology in Ancient Judaism and
Early Christianity (JSJSup 115; Leiden: Brill, 2007).
30 4Q418 81+81a, 4–5. See Kampen, Wisdom Literature, 51–52; Goff, 4QInstruction, 17–19; Jean-
Sébastien Rey, 4QInstruction: sagesse et eschatologie (STDJ 81; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 307–
21. The major study on the topic is by Benjamin G. Wold, Women, Men and Angels: The
Qumran Wisdom Document Musar leMevin and its Allusions to Genesis Creation Traditions
(WUNT 2/201; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
198 Kampen
this he resembles the members of the yaḥad who participate with the angels
in 1QS XI, 7–9. The ‫ אלים‬are central to the heavenly liturgy of the Songs of the
Sabbath Sacrifice and express in liturgical form the manner in which human
beings can participate with the heavenly beings in their other–worldly activity.
The mebin has been separated from the spirit of flesh and is enjoined to “keep
separate from all that he hates and abstain from all of the abominations of
the soul.”31 There is a division in humankind and the mebin is on the side that
participates with the divine.32 The spirit of flesh will be on the wrong side in
judgment when injustice will be brought to an end.33 It is this access to the
heavenly realm in both a temporal and spatial manner which makes it possible
for the mebin to be the recipient of wisdom.
Secondly, of some significance is the manner in which the appropriation of
heavenly knowledge by the mebin is addressed in this composition. That this
figure is to learn from the ‫( משכיל‬sage) is detailed in the text, even though there
is no indication that this figure is the real or implied author of Instruction.34
In 4Q417 1 i, 25, the addressee is ‫( בן משכיל‬son of a sage), even though in 1 i, 17
the address is to the ‫( בן מבין‬son of a mebin). In 4Q416 2 ii, 13–15, the mebin is
addressed as an ‫( עבד משכיל‬servant of a sage). The most suggestive reference is
to be found in 4Q418 81+81a, 17, wherein the implication of multiple maskilim
is possible and the mebin is instructed, “gain in understanding and from the
hand of every maskil grasp even more.”35 While it might seem more appropri-
ate to understand this as a references to “teachers,” whomever they might be,
the limited evidence in the text does not permit us to make that distinction on
31 4Q418 81+81a, 1–2.

32 Jörg Frey, “Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran Library: Reflections on
Their Background and History,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues. Proceedings of the Second
Meeting of the IOQS Cambridge 1995. Studies Presented in Honor of J. Baumgarten (ed.
Moshe Bernstein, Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill,
1997), 275–335; idem, “Flesh and Spirit in the Palestinian Jewish Sapiential Tradition and
in the Qumran Texts: An Inquiry into the Background of Pauline Usage,” in The Wisdom
Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought (ed. Charlotte Hempel,
Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger; BETL 159; Leuven: Leuven University Press/
Peeters, 2002), 367–404.
33 4Q416 1, 12 // 4Q418 2–2c, 4.
34 Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Addressees of 4QInstruction,” in Sapiential, Liturgical
& Poetical Texts from Qumran: Proceedings of the Third Meeting of the International
Organization for Qumran Studies, published in Memory of Maurice Baillet (ed. Daniel K.
Falk, Florentino García Martínez and Eileen M. Schuller; STDJ 35; Leiden: Brill, 2000),
62–75, see 68–69.
35 Modification of my translation to reflect the singular noun of the text.
any knowledgeable basis. There is, however, no basis in the mss. of Instruction
for the more enhanced and authoritative role attributed to the holders of this
title in some other Qumran texts.36 Within Instruction, certainly within the
extant fragments, the role of the sage as instructor of the mebin receives men-
tion and is assumed, however it is not developed in a significant manner. The
manner in which the mebin learns, i.e., receives instruction, i.e., revelation, is
developed in a different manner.
Thirdly, the educational experience of the mebin revolves around the ‫רז‬
‫נהיה‬, which I have translated as the “mystery of existence.”37 While not ideal, I
consider it a better translation since it more adequately captures the compre-
hensive sense of the term than any of the suggested alternatives, all of which
in some manner privilege the future sense of the term. From 4Q417 1 I, it is
clear that the raz nihyeh includes the past, the present, and the future.38 From
4Q416 1 we perhaps also would want to conclude that a comprehensive spa-
tial understanding is integral to the raz nihyeh, with its listing of terms that
include reference to the elements of the cosmos and the political divisions of
the world. While some readings of the references to the raz nihyeh suggest a
relatively concrete presumably written entity, attempts to identify it with the
Torah or some other composition mentioned in the Qumran texts such as the
‫ ספר הגוי‬are not convincing. When we probe the manner in which Instruction
outlines the modes of the appropriation of the wisdom of the raz nihyeh to be
utilized by the mebin it becomes apparent why this is the case.
The injunction to the mebin is an integral part of the statement describing
its comprehensive temporal orientation: “consider [the mystery of existence
and the deeds of old, for what was (‫ )נהיה‬and what will be (‫ )נהיה‬with them …
for]ever [… for what is (‫ )הויא‬and for what will be (‫ )נהיה‬with them …] in all
[…] every de[ed …] day and night meditate upon the mystery of ex]istence
and search daily and then you will know truth and perversity, wisdom [and
36 Carol A. Newsom, “The Sage in the Literature of Qumran: The Functions of the Maśkil,” in
The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (ed. John G. Gammie and Leo Perdue; Winona
Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 373–82; Charlotte Hempel, “Maskil(im) and Rabbim: From
Daniel to Qumran,” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael
A. Knibb (ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith M. Lieu; JSJSup 111; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 133–56;
Kampen, Wisdom Literature, 25–28.
38 While Goff provides a very good explanation of the comprehensive temporal scope of the
term, it is not clear to me why he then gives it a future orientation by translating it as “the
mystery that is to be” (Discerning Wisdom, 15; 4QInstruction, 144–47). In the latter work he
also provides a good summary of the options that have been presented.
200 Kampen
foll]y.”39 The comprehensive temporal viewpoint integral to the raz nihyeh is

apparent in this column, its corresponding spatial description also already
identified above. Rather than pointing to another written source I have sug-
gested that the “mystery of existence” is rather self-referential, pointing to itself
and perhaps the closely-related Mysteries texts through this citation.40 In so
doing it is not emphasizing the content of these compositions but rather the
process of the acquisition of wisdom outlined within them:
It is important to recognize that at its root this knowledge is a mystery

and it seems doubtful that the authors of any of these texts believed that
the entire mystery was contained within any one text. Mysteries of this
magnitude and significance could not adequately be explained and stud-
ied in such a manner. The word “mystery” rather suggests the exploration,
appropriation, and development of a unique, comprehensive worldview
of which the authors of these texts only provided hints and clues, leaving
the reader and/or adherent free to delve further into the revelation of the
mystery.41
We note the key terms used in this injunction: ‫( הבט‬consider),42 ‫הגה‬

(meditate),43 ‫( דרש‬search),44 ‫( בחן‬examine),45 ‫( גלה אוזנכה‬uncovered your ear
to),46 and ‫( לקח‬grasp).47 While the injunctions to “search” and “examine” are fa-
miliar to us from later Rabbinic traditions and perhaps to be expected of nov-
ices in a scribal profession, the element of revelation attendant the remainder
is instructive. However, it is not a passive act of reception the mebin is engaged
in: it “is not so much concealed from the addressees as it is revealed within the
instruction of the document. The addressee is exhorted to persevere in grasp-
ing the mystery and is to live according to it.”48 In other words the acquisition
of the mystery of existence is a pursuit that actively engages the mebin.
This engagement originates from a specified social location. We have al-
ready noted the marked division between the people of spirit and the spirit of
39 4Q417 1 I, 2–7 // 4Q418 43, 44, 45 I, 2–5.

40 The only other appearance of the title is found in 1QS XI, 3–4.
42 4Q416 2 I, 5; 4Q417 1 I, 3, 18; 4Q418 43–45 I, 14.
43 4Q418 43–45 I, 4.
44 4Q416 2 III, 9, 14.
45 4Q415 6, 4.
46 4Q416 2 III, 18; 4Q418 10a–b, 1; 4Q418 123 II, 4; 4Q418 184, 2; 4Q418 190, 2.
47 4Q418 77, 2, 4.
48 Wold, Women, Men, and Angels, 245.
the flesh in this composition. It is on the basis of searching the raz nihyeh that:
“Then you will know the difference between the [go]od and [evil according]
to [their] deeds. For the God of knowledge is the base of truth and with the
mystery of existence he spread out her foundation and her deeds[… with all
wis]dom and with all […] he fashioned …49 However later in the same column:
“Yet he did not give this insight to the spirit of flesh, for it could not distinguish
between [go]od and evil according to the judgment of his [sp]irit.”50 As noted
by Thomas, the raz nihyeh functions “as an important boundary marker be-
tween those who have access to it and those who don’t.”51 The mebin is then
enjoined to consider the mystery of existence, (thereby) to know. You have to
be among the ‫ מבינין‬not only to behave in the manner desired by God, you are
required to be among that group in order to receive the knowledge that would
make that possible.52
In this text knowledge is limited to this select group. These addressees are
“people of spirit” formed “after the pattern of the holy ones,” they participate
with the angels in the heavenly realm.53 The references to the glory of the holy
ones suggests similarities to the apocalyptic descriptions of those who will
shine in Dan 12:3 and the righteous of 1 En. 104:2–6.54 This body of persons
associated with the holy ones is also referred to as the ]‫( מטעת עו[לם‬eter[nal]
planting).55 This association of the mebinim with the holy ones serves to hold
out the activities of the angels as exemplary. Since they do not slacken in “works
of truth,” neither should those humans who have entered into their company.56
49 4Q417 1 I, 8–9.

50 4Q417 1 I, 17–18.
51 Samuel I. Thomas, The ‘Mysteries’ of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead
Sea Scrolls (SBLEJL 25; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2009), 156.
52 “Priestly Sages? The Milieus of Origin of 4QMysteries and 4QInstruction,” in Sapiential
Perspectives: Wisdom Literature in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Proceedings of the Sixth
International Symposium of the Orion Center, 20–22 May, 2001 (ed. John J. Collins, Gregory
E. Sterling, and Ruth A. Clements; STDJ 51; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 67–87, see 78–79.
53 4Q418 81+81a, 1–14; see Goff, 4QInstruction, 17–19. I am not inclined to agree with the em-
phasis Goff places on the participation with the angels being related to eternal life. Such
an emphasis is not apparent in the related liturgical composition, Songs of the Sabbath
Sacrifice.
54 4Q418 81+81a 5, 13.
55 4Q418 81+81a, 13.
56 4Q418 69 II, 11–15; Loren Stuckenbruck, “4QInstruction and the Possible Influence of
Early Enochic Traditions: An Evaluation,” in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the
Development of Sapiential Thought (ed. Charlotte Hempel, Armin Lange, and Hermann
Lichtenberger; BETL 159; Leuven: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 2002), 245–61, see
252–53.
202 Kampen
While the fragmentary material prohibits certainty, it would appear that the
line, “He opened a spring for all the holy ones and all who are called by his
name are holy” is a reference to the presence of the mebinim as the eternal
planting promised by God.57 This location is their source of wisdom and the
only context within which it is possible to pursue the raz nihyeh. Those who
are not part of this company do not understand and since they do not have
access to this other-worldly knowledge, they do not know how to live. Such a
collective context explains the pedagogical injunction, “gain in understanding
and from the hand of each of your maskilim grasp even more.”58 The process of
gaining an understanding of the elusive raz nihyeh is limited to those who join
with the other mebinin in this process of searching, examining, and uncovering
their ears. Knowledge and wisdom is not available outside of these circles, its
acquisition is contingent upon being a part of them. The performative aspect
of accessing wisdom and knowledge in Instruction rests upon being among the
holy ones, the chosen, who engage in the activity of “considering” and “gazing
upon” the raz nihyeh.
3 The Sectarian Texts
The necessity of belonging to the group in order “to understand” and “to know”
is integral to the major sectarian texts from Qumran. The extent to which
knowledge and truth are at the center of the sectarian way of life has fre-
quently been underappreciated, however received renewed attention in recent
work.59 Frequently noted is the absence of the term ‫( חכמה‬wisdom) in this
sectarian literature. I have noted the manner in which it appears in Instruction
along with other terms such as knowledge and truth, however disappears from
the sectarian texts which we consider later compositions.60 When W. D. Davies
first turned his attention to these texts, it was the significance of the word
da‘at (knowledge) that initially attracted his attention.61 Through a study of
the significance of the term in these texts, he concluded that the sect was in
57 4Q418 81+81a, 12; Stuckenbruck, “4QInstruction,” 252–53.

58 4Q418 81+81a, 17.
60 “Sectarianism and Wisdom: A Comparative Study of Instruction, 1QS, and Matthew,”
International Organization of Qumran Studies, Munich, August 7, 2013.
61 W. D. Davies, “ ‘Knowledge’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Matthew 11:25–30,” HTR 46 (1953):
113–39.
possession of peculiar knowledge, “knowledge” was closely associated with

the law, there are references to “secret knowledge,” it demonstrates an inter-
est in eschatology, and it is mediated.62 The significance of ‫( אמת‬truth) for the
Community Rule has been examined more recently by Ian Scott. He notes the
manner in which the term is utilized in the creation of a plausibility structure
for the sect. From the standpoint of 1QS, its authors “claim to be the only site
where ‫ אמת‬has been recovered in Israel.” Scott argues that the “truth” here rests
in the advocacy of a pattern of action, an orthopraxy, that is “motivated and
framed by a deeply apocalyptic story about their place in God’s plan.”63 While
he is correct to suggest that the term does not simply rest upon Torah, his argu-
ment for an orthopraxy as central to “truth” is well-informed. The manner in
which the term is used to designate the practices of the sect and the sect itself
is demonstrated by Devorah Dimant.64
Some attention to the manner in which the authorization of communal
legislation is expressed in the S texts is necessary to develop a full picture of
the treatment of wisdom and knowledge within these compositions.65 While
in his treatment of ‫ אמת‬Scott critiqued the connection with Torah, he may
have missed the subtlety of its utilization in the S texts. Molly Zahn has dem-
onstrated the manner in which the S and D texts “present themselves as au-
thoritative by virtue of their relationship to a previous text already regarded
as authoritative.”66 Both texts in their various versions center on the hidden
knowledge that is revealed, made available, only to the sect, i.e., you have to be
62 Davies, “Knowledge,” 119–29.

63 Ian W. Scott, “Sectarian Truth: The Meaning of ‫ אמת‬in the Community Rule,” in
Celebrating the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Canadian Collection (ed. Peter W. Flint, Jean Duhaime,
and Kyung S. Baek; SBLEJL 30; Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 303–43; for summation and quotes see
340–41. His translation of the term as “faithfulness” or “fidelity” would appear to undercut
his argument for understanding the term as representative of a type of orthopraxy.
64 Devorah Dimant, “The Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,” in Qumran und die
Archäologie: Texte und Kontexte (ed. Jörg Frey, Carsten Claussen, and Nadine Kessler,
WUNT 2/278; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 347–95, see 377–78.
65 Charlotte Hempel, “The Qumran Sapiential Texts and the Rule Books,” in The Wisdom
Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought (ed. Charlotte Hempel,
Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger; BETL 159; Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2002), 277–95; Reinhard G. Kratz, “Rewriting Torah in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead
Sea Scrolls,” in Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of ‘Torah’ in the Wisdom Literature of the
Second Temple Period (ed. Bernd U. Schipper and D. Andrew Teeter; JSJSup 163; Leiden:
Brill, 2013), 273–92.
66 Molly M. Zahn, “Torah for ‘The Age of Wickedness’: The Authority of the Damascus and
Serekh Texts in Light of Biblical and Rewritten Traditions,” DSD 20 (2013): 410–32, see 419
(italics in text).
204 Kampen
a member of the sect in order to fully understand the divine order, hence what
is really happening in the world around you. This permits sectarian members
to comprehend the full significance of the present situation and the conse-
quences of their full participation in the life of the sect or of opposition to
it. This authorization of their practices includes reference to the ‫תורת מושה‬,
which suggests the covenant and the legislation associated with the revelation
at Sinai, however in content includes the legislation that is outlined for the
yaḥad in the S texts or the berit of the D materials.67 This is most apparent in
the oath taken by the initiates: “Every initiate into the Council of the Yahad
is to enter the covenant in full view of all the volunteers. He shall take upon
himself a binding oath to return to the Torat Mošeh, according to all that He
commanded, with all his heart and with all his mind, to all that has been re-
vealed from it to the Sons of Zadok—priests and preservers of the covenant.”68
Earlier in the column they are to be united in the yaḥad with regard to Torah
and wealth.69 The knowledge which is the exclusive province of the sect is now
designated as Torah and is only available to those who take a binding oath of
allegiance to the sect, i.e., Torah.70
4 Ben Sira
Well-known is the conjunction of ḥokmah and Torah that makes its initial ap-
pearance in post-biblical literature in Ben Sira 24. Unfortunately, no extant
Hebrew copies of this chapter are available thereby limiting our ability to de-
termine the more precise argument in the original version. Given this identifi-
cation it comes as somewhat of a surprise to note how little the law advanced
in the Pentateuch is actually cited or used in particular instances when de-
veloping the ethic, the way of life, proposed for the sage in this composition.
Wright identified three sources used by the son of Sirach in the development of
his instruction: the sapiential tradition transmitted by the sages, observation
67 John Kampen, “ ‘Torah’ and Authority in the Major Sectarian Rules Texts from Qumran,”
in The Scrolls and Biblical Traditions: Proceedings of the Seventh Meeting of the IOQS in
Helsinki (ed. George J. Brooke, Daniel K. Falk, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, and Molly M. Zahn;
STDJ 103; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 231–54.
68 1QS V, 7–9. Translation from DSSR.
69 1QS V, 2.
70 The development of this relationship is much more complicated than indicated here and
its subtlety deserves more careful treatment than is permitted within the limitations of
the argument of this paper.
of the created order, and the Torah.71 He rightly argues that the first of these
is by far the most important, noting the manner in which it is based in an an-
cient near eastern tradition of wisdom in which “the search for meaning is
grounded in a model of moral behavior that is built into the fabric of existence,
the act-consequence relationship, in which people’s actions or character re-
sult in just consequences in their lives.”72 This combination of practical advice
and theoretical wisdom is internalized by the sage and provides the vantage
point from which this person participates in the tradition of wisdom teaching.
It has both speculative and formative aspects. The speculative nature of this
wisdom tends to find its focus in the observation of creation, such as in the
extended poem on that subject in Ben Sira 42:15–43:33.73 In addition to help-
ing humans to understand both God and the nature of the universe, hence
helping humans to live in it, creation provides examples of moral and upright
behavior as well as its consequences. The content of the Torah in the biblical
law of the Pentateuch also finds representation in the instruction of Ben Sira
in cases such as adultery and reproof, as well as narrative portions, Genesis in
particular..74 The identification of wisdom and Torah points to a much broader
repertoire than the Pentateuch.
When viewed from the perspective of the Mediterranean world in the era
of the Hellenistic empires, Seth Schwartz proposes that Torah was used in
Ben Sira as a way for the native elites to negotiate the competing powers of
the Hellenistic empire and its cultural environment.75 It is both “simplistic-
seeming, which rests on the conviction that God’s creation is well-ordered and
just,” and reflects “a hardheaded practicality about social relations that takes
for granted a very different view of the world: … in which the poor and the suf-
fering are frequently righteous, the rich and powerful are unjust, and very few
people can be trusted,”76 thereby reflecting the social tension of reciprocity
and solidarity characteristic of people of the Mediterranean during that era.
71 Benjamin G. Wright, III, “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy in the Book of Ben Sira,” in
Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of ‘Torah’ in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple
Period (ed. Bernd U. Schipper and D. Andrew Teeter; JSJSup 163; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 157–
86, see 169–78.
72 Wright, “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy,” 170.
73 Randall A. Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and Conceptual Analysis of
the Themes of Revelation, Creation, and Judgment (SBLEJL 8; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995),
136–64; Goering, “Creation, Torah, and Revealed Wisdom,” 124–28.
74 Wright, “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy,” 173–78.
75 Seth Schwartz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient
Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 54–74.
76 Seth Schwartz, Mediterranean Society, 47–48. Note also Wis 2:10.
206 Kampen
The scribe was educated to provide an understanding of Torah informed by

the Hellenistic environment that produced a viable ethic for Jewish life and
survival.77 Cultural literacy and writing were an integral part of the educa-
tional process that prepared persons for the scribal role envisioned therein.78
Schwartz characterized this role as “adaptation.”79 A dominant feature of this
program is the maintenance of social status, as it was understood by the native
intellectual class and given social sanction through biblical tradition. Torah
functions in a very complicated manner to provide both a bridge to and an
authorization for the particular way of life advocated for the scribe and by im-
plication for second century BCE Judean society, particularly its elite.
Of central importance for this essay is the argument that at the center of
the pedagogy of Ben Sira is the sage. It is in the person of the sage that the
sapiential traditions are transmitted to the student, not through any specific
text or content. The manner in which the sage understands his role is evident
in 24:30–34 where he has labored, “not for myself alone, but for all who seek
wisdom.” He elaborates on this role in 38:34c–39:11. Spelling out the route for
the attainment of wisdom by the student is developed in 6:18–37.80 The cen-
tral point is that “he understands the acquisition of wisdom to be the end re-
sult of the sage-student relationship.”81 Of interest is the manner in which the
sage also puts boundaries around what students should focus their attention
upon.82 The precise content of the boundaries are not clear; that it involves
that which has been designated by the sage would appear to be the implication
in v. 22: “Reflect upon what has been commanded, for what is hidden is not
your concern.” Progressive and incremental development within the context
of the sage is the path to wisdom.
77 Goff, Discerning Wisdom, 225–26.

78 David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 201–14.
79 Schwartz, Mediterranean Society, 76–79.
80 I find Wright’s translation of 6:37 confusing: “Reflect on the law of the Most High, and
meditate constantly on his commandments” (Wright, “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy,”
180). He is informed by Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben
Sira (AB 39; Garden City: Doubleday, 1987), 191–92. The reading of Genizah MS A which is
the only Hebrew text available for this verse reads, “‫והתבוננת ביראת עליון ובמצותו והגה‬
‫תמיד‬. A more likely translation of this text would be, “Be informed by the fear of the Most
High and his commandments, and meditate daily.” There is no reference to the “law” here,
in either the Hebrew or the Greek text. The Greek πρόσταγμα is found as the translation of
‫ תורה‬in Jer 32 (39):23; 2 Chr 19:10, but of ‫ יראה‬in Prov 14:27.
81 Wright, “Torah and Sapiential Pedagogy,” 179.
82 Ben Sira 3:17–29.
5 Torah in Second Temple Judaism
This portrayal of wisdom in Ben Sira suggests the trajectory of the develop-
ment of the importance of Torah during the Second Temple era. This trajectory
has been summarized by Collins, noting features such as the characteristics
of Ben Sira just discussed, in which we find increasing attention to Torah, but
not in a substantive manner prior to the Hasmonean era.83 The idea of Torah
grows in importance, while its substance reflective of bible legislation found
in the Pentateuch is not as significant. While noting the absence of Torah from
the Aramaic texts, usually regarded as late third or early second century BCE
compositions, this feature is not limited to them.84 While Enoch in Aramaic
fragments is an example, Instruction composed in Hebrew may also be part of
that earlier body of literature.85 It is a reasonable hypothesis to suggest that
a change in the appropriation of the significance of Torah took place during
and in the wake of the repressive policies and brutal actions of Antiochus IV
Epiphanes. In addition to identity markers such as circumcision, sabbath
observance, and kosher food, copies of Torah are confiscated and destroyed.
These issues such as sabbath observance and circumcision reapppear in the
discussion of the Hasmoneans and their interactions, particularly conquests,
of surrounding peoples such as the Idumeans.86 With Torah assuming such
a central role in the intellectual and religious life of Judea, it is no surprise
that its stipulations came to be debated by those who disagreed with certain
aspects of Hasmonean rule. Attested most remarkably in the Temple Scroll and
Jubilees, debated stances in the treatment of Jewish law that find their origins
explicitly in biblical legislation now become the province of Jewish sectarian-
ism, accompanied by debate over other sections of the Hebrew Bible such as
found in the Pesharim.87
83 John J. Collins, “The Transformation of the Torah in Second Temple Judaism,” JJS 43 (2012):
455–74.
84 Collins, “Transformation,” 456–57.
85 For caution on this point, see Michael Stone, “Response,” to Jonathan Ben-Dov, “Scientific
Writings in Aramaic and Hebrew at Qumran: Translation and Concealment,” in Aramaica
Qumranica: Proceedings of the Conference on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran at Aix-en-
Provence ( June 30–July 2, 2008) (ed. Katell Berthelot and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra; STDJ 94;
Leiden: Brill, 2010), 398–400. Note also the analysis of Daniel A. Machiela, “The Aramaic
Dead Sea Scrolls: Coherence and Context in the Library of Qumran,” in The Dead Sea
Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library (ed. Sidnie White Crawford and Cecilia
Wassen; STDJ 116; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 244–58.
86 Collins, 466–70. See also Francis Borchardt, The Torah in 1 Maccabees: A Literary Critical
Approach to the Text (DCLS 19; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014).
87 Collins, 470–74.
208 Kampen
This permits us to return to the major question of the paper, the absence
of Torah in the early non-biblical wisdom texts identified within the Qumran
corpus. The elusive raz nihyeh at the center of the pedagogical process advo-
cated in Instruction and Mysteries relies upon adherence to a body of persons
called the people of spirit. It is that adherence to a group which has its own
teachers that makes the advocated engagement with the raz nihyeh possible.
Wisdom is a mystery revealed to a limited circle of persons and not available to
those outside. This is a sociological and cosmic reality which has eschatologi-
cal consequences. A remarkably parallel reality can be found in most sections
of 1 Enoch, even though here the revelations to Enoch are at the center of this
source of wisdom. In a similar manner, entering the circles of the righteous
and pious associated with this vision is a prerequisite for gaining the required
wisdom to understand and find one’s place in the cosmos, again with eschato-
logical consequences.
This same understanding of wisdom and knowledge pervades the sectarian
literature as well, for this paper the copies of the S and D materials. Crucial por-
tions of the Community Rule have been discussed above. The designations of
‫( נגלה‬revealed) and ‫( נסתר‬hidden) were demonstrated by Lawrence Schiffman
in his first book on the Damascus Document.88 The distinction between the
two rests upon your position, whether you have bound yourself to take the
oath upon the entrance into the covenant, and if you have also committed
yourself to life as spelled out in the Torat Mošeh. You are among those who
“know righteousness,” able to “understand the deeds of God.”89
A trend identified within the earlier compositions of the Qumran corpus in-
cluding both Aramaic compositions and wisdom materials finds wisdom and
knowledge not to have a demonstrable connection to a developing tradition
related to Torah, but to be understood in a very specific manner and to be limit-
ed to a select group. 1 Enoch, Instruction, and Mysteries are all representative of
this group, while Ben Sira shows some marked similarities to that same tradi-
tion, however is explicitly identified with Torah. As Torah develops and moves
into the center of the issues identified as problematic in the growing sectarian
movements of the second century BCE, it becomes central to Jewish identity.
These traditions that understood revelation to be limited to a select group
become sectarian, establishing boundary markers which create their unique
identity within Jewish life of the second and first centuries BCE. However, they
now refer to their particular way of life as Torah, engaging directly in the de-
bates begun during the Hasmonean era. The particular nature of the revealed
88 Lawrence H. Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qumran (SJLA 16; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 22–32.
89 CD 1:1.
wisdom limited to certain circles committed to its attainment characterize

both the early representations of this tradition and its later developments.
However, it is only named Torah after the difficult and contested years of strug-
gle have made that the rallying point and center of Jewish identity.
chapter 10
An Interpretative Reading in the Isaiah Scroll of

Rabbi Meir
Armin Lange*
Probably one of the most important tannaitic authorities was Rabbi Meir.1
Some thought has been spent in scholarly literature on a Torah Scroll of Rabbi
Meir that is mentioned repeatedly in rabbinic literature (Gen. Rab. 9.5; 20.12;
94.9; Midrash Bereshit Rabbati 209:12) and its textual affiliation with the so-
called Severus scroll.2 Only little attention has been paid though to an Isaiah
* By now I have the privilege to be Moshe Bernstein’s friend and colleague for more than twen-
ty years. His passion for ancient Judaism and its interpretation of the Jewish scriptures was
as much a professional inspiration for me than his willingness to help and support his friends
on a personal level. Moshe combines the two qualities of being an exceptional scholar and an
exceptional human being. To contribute to his Festschrift is therefore a great pleasure to me.
1 For Rabbi Meir and his life, see Naomi Goldstein Cohen, “Rabbi Meir, a Descendant of
Anatolian Proselytes,” JJS 23 (1972): 51–59; A’hron Oppenheimer and Stephen G. Wald, “Meir,”
EncJud2 13:776–77; Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Rabbi Meir, The Illuminated and the Illuminating,”
in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash (ed. Carol Bakhos; JSJSup 106; Leiden: Brill, 2006),
227–44. Although more than a hundred years old, the early monograph by Adolf Blumenthal
on Rabbi Meir remains also important (Rabbi Meir: Leben und Wirken eines jüdischen Weisen
aus dem zweiten nachchristlichen Jahrhundert, nach den Quellen dargestellt [Frankfurt a.M.:
Verlag von J. Kauffmann, 1888]).
2 See Nehemias Brüll, “R. Meir,” Jahrbücher für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 1 (1874):
235–36; Abraham Epstein, “Ein von Titus nach Rom gebrachter Pentateuch-Codex und seine
Varianten,” MGWJ 34 (1885): 337–51; idem, “Biblische Textkritik bei den Rabbinen,” in Recueil
des travaux rédigés en mémoire du Jubilé scientifique de Daniel Chwolson (ed. D. Günzburg;
Berlin: Calvary, 1899), 42–56; Moses H. Segal, “The Promulgation of the Authoritative Text
of the Hebrew Bible,” JBL 72 (1953): 35–47 (45–46); Edward Y. Kutscher, The Language and
Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1 Q Isaa) (STDJ 6; Leiden: Brill, 1974), 87 (transl.
from Hebrew: Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1959); Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine:
Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.–
IV Century C.E. (2nd ed.; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, 1962),
24–25; Samuel Loewinger, “‫ יחסו אל מגילות‬:‫ספר תורה שהיה גנוז בבית כנסת סוירוס ברומא‬
’‫ישעיהו במדבר יהודה ואל ‘תורתו של רבי מאיר‬,” Beth Mikra 15 (1970): 237–62, esp. 257–63;
idem, “Prolegomenon,” in Viktor Apotwitzer, Das Schriftwort in der rabbinischen Literatur
(ed. Samuel Loewinger; New York: Ktav, 1970; reprint of the edition of Vienna 1906), vii–xlv
(xxxii–xxxviii); Jonathan P. Siegel, The Severus Scroll and 1QIsaa (SBLMasS 2; Missoula, Mont.:
An Interpretative Reading In The Isaiah Scroll 211
scroll of Rabbi Meir that Talmud Yerushalmi Taʿanit 1.1 (64a) mentions. With its
reference to Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll, y. Taʿan 1.1 connects not only a variant
reading of Isa 21:11 but also an interpretative tradition attached to that variant
reading. Given Moshe’s interest in the interpretation of the Jewish scriptures
during the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, I would like to rectify the
scholarly inattention to Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll in his honor.
Rabbi Meir was a scribe by profession and there can be no doubt that he
copied numerous other scrolls. A maybe distant memory of the scribal achieve-
ments of Rabbi Meir is preserved in an anecdote about his visit to Asia Minor.
During this visit, he is said to have written an Esther Scroll by heart because no
master copy existed in this region to copy it from (t. Meg. 2.5; y. Meg. 4.1 [74d];
b. Meg. 18b; Gen. Rab. 36.8).3 Elsewhere I have argued4 that Rabbi Meir pos-
sessed master copies of various books of the Hebrew Bible in the margins
of which he noted alternate readings. These readings were transmitted in
the form of variant lists from which various rabbinic texts quote repeatedly
(Gen. Rab. 9.5; 20.12; 94.9; Midrash Bereshit Rabbati 209:12; y. Taʿan 1.1). Among
Rabbi Meir’s master copies was not only a Torah scroll but also a copy of Isaiah.
In this article, I want to direct scholarly attention to Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll.
It is debated if one or two (marginal) readings are preserved from this Isaiah
scroll. No doubt exists about the variant reading for Isa 21:11 which is quoted
in y. Taʿan. 1.1 (64a). Some scholars5 regard the reference to a particular inter-
pretation of Isa 34:7 by Rabbi Meir in Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11 as preserving
a second reading of the sage’s Isaiah scroll. But it needs to be emphasized that
no such scroll is mentioned is in Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11. I argue therefore
below that Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11 gives a report about an interpretative
Scholars Press, 1975), 43–48; Timotheus Arndt, “Zur Tora des Rabbi Me’ir: Bemerkungen zu
Uwe Glessmer,” Mitteilungen und Beiträge der Forschungsstelle Judentum 12–13 (1997): 87–91;
John van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism (2nd
printing with corrections; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 73–76; Nathan Jastram, “The
Severus Scroll and Rabbi Meir’s Torah,” in The Text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to
Masoretes (eds. Lorena Miralles-Maciá and Elvira Martín-Contreras; Journal of Ancient
Judaism Supplements 13; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 137–45, esp. 144–45,
and my article “Rabbi Meir and the Severus Scroll,” in “Let the Wise Listen and Add to Their
Learning” (Prov 1:5): Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday (eds.
C. Cordoni and G. Langer; SJ 90; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 53–76.
3 See Gerhard Langer, “Rabbinic References to Asia Minor,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 5 (2014):
259–69, esp. 261–62.
4 Lange, “Rabbi Meir and the Severus Scroll.”
5 Thus Brüll, “R. Meir,” 236; Loewinger, “Prolegomenon,” xxxii; idem, “‫ספר תורה‬,” 258; Jastram,
“Severus Scroll and Rabbi Meir’s Torah,” 144.
212 Lange
oral tradition attributed to Rabbi Meir. Regardless of their text-critical value,

both rabbinic references to Rabbi Meir have in common that they interpret the
two passages from the book of Isaiah as referring to the Roman Empire. The
annotations about Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll are thus part of the interpretative
history of that book. Below I will discuss them both with regard to their textual
and interpretative importance. Afterwards I will draw some conclusions.
1 Isa 21:11 (y. Taʿan 1.1 [64a])
In Talmud Yerushalmi Taʿanit 1.1 (64a) the report about a variant reading of
Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll is part of an exegetical discussion about the meaning
of Isa 21:11.
Said R. Haninah son of R. Abbahu, “In the book of R. Meir they found
that it was written (‫)בספרו של רבי מאיר מצאו כתוב‬, ‘The oracle concern-
ing Dumah, [that is,] the oracle concerning Rome (‫)משא דומה משא רומי‬.
One is calling to me from Seir [Watchman, what of the night? Watchman,
what of the night?]’ ” (Isa 21:11) … Said R. Yohanan, “One is calling to me
because of Seir.” … Said R. Simeon b. Laqish, “ ‘To me.’ From whence will
there be a match for me? ‘From Seir.’ ” … Said R. Joshua b. Levi, “If some-
one should say to you, ‘Where is your God,’ say to him, ‘He is in a(the)
great city in Edom [in Rome],’ What is the scriptural basis for this view?
‘One is calling to me from Seir’ ” (Isa 21:11)6
Y. Taʿan 1.1 (64a) mentions two different readings in connection Rabbi Meir’s
scroll, i.e. the MT text of Isa 21:11 and a variant reading.
Scroll of Rabbi Meir MT
‫משא רומי‬ ‫משא דומה‬

“The oracle concerning Rome” “The oracle concerning Dumah”
6 Translation according to Jacob Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary
Translation, vol. 18: Besah and Taanit (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 147–48.
This structure reminds of the Severus Scroll variant list. This variant list enu-
merates two readings for each reference it discusses, i.e. first the text of a proto-
Masoretic scroll and then the reading of the Severus Scroll.7 Examples include
Gen 45:8.
‫וישימני לאב לפרעה פרעה היה כתוב‬
“And he placed me as a father for Pharaoh.” It is written “Pharaoh.”
Given this structural parallel, it is likely that y. Taʿan. 1.1 (64a) draws on an
earlier list detailing variant readings included in the master copies of Rabbi
Meir.
The variant in question is part of the heading of the Isaiah’s oracle against
Dumah in Isa 21:11–12. The meaning of the name Dumah is discussed in
scholarly literature. Because of the mention of Seir in Isa 21:11, until to date,
commentaries and dictionaries suggest that ‫ּדּומה‬ ָ is another designation for
Edom,8 or goes back to scribal corruption and should be emended to ‫אדֹום‬. ֱ 9
Others want to identify ‫ּדּומה‬
ָ as Dūmat el-Ğandal in the oasis of el-Ğōf in North
Arabia.10 The various readings preserved in the textual history of the book of
Isaiah demonstrate that not only modern scholars but also ancient and medi-
eval scribes and translators had difficulties understanding the name.
7 For the Severus Scroll variant list, see my article “The Severus Scroll Variant List in Light
of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation from Second
Temple Literature through Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the
Thirteenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea
Scrolls and Associated Literature Jointly Sponsored by the Hebrew University Center for the
Study of Christianity, 22–24 February, 2011 (eds. M. Kister, H. L. Newman, M. Segal, and
R. A. Clements; STDJ 113; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 179–207, and the literature quoted there.
8 See e.g. Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte
Testament (ed. H. Donner et al.; 18th ed.; Heidelberg: Springer, 2013), 245.
9 See e.g. Otto Kaiser, Der Prophet Jesaja: Kapitel 13–39 (ATD 18; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1976), 106.
10 See e.g. Hans Wildberger, Jesaja, vol. 2, Kapitel 13–27 (3rd ed.; BKAT 10.2; Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 2003), 787; Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 153.
214 Lange
Isaiah scroll of Rabbi Meir’s reading according to y. Taʿan. 1.1 (64a):

‫משא רומי‬
1QIsaa: ‫משא דומה‬
4QIsab: ‫דו]מ ̇ה‬
̇ ‫משא‬
MTL: ‫ּדּומה‬
ָ ‫ַמ ָּׂשא‬
MTKenn187: ‫משא גיא‬
MTDeRossi20, 380marg: ‫משא אדום‬
MTDeRossi319: ‫רומה‬
LXX: Τὸ ὅραμα τῆς Ιδουμαίας
Aquila: Duma (according to Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah ad loc.)
Tg. Neb.: ‫מטל כס דלוט לאשקאה ית דומה‬
V: onus Duma
P: ‫ܡܫܩܠܐ ܕܕܘܡܐ‬
The readings of LXX and MTDeRossi20, 380marg as well as MTKenn187 show that
the word ‫ּדּומה‬
ָ was difficult to understand even in antiquity. But whatever the
original reading of Isa 21:11 might have been and to whichever place ‫ּדּומה‬ָ might
have referred, Aquila, the Peshitta, Targum Jonathan, and the Vulgate leave lit-
tle doubt that the proto-Masoretic text of Isa 21:11 read ‫ דומה‬in late Antiquity.
The Qumran evidence (1QIsaa) argues the same for the Second Temple period.
The readings of LXX (τῆς Ιδουμαίας) and MTDeRossi20, 380marg, 1004 (‫ )אדום‬are
linguistic actualizations which rightly or wrongly identify ‫ דומה‬as Idumea or
Edom. A similar linguistic actualization can be found in MTKenn187 (‫ )גיא‬which
might represent a harmonization with Isa 22:1.
In the case of the name ‫ דומה‬in Isa 21:11, the interpretative and textual histo-
ries of the book of Isaiah merge thus. The translator of LXX-Isa and at least two
medieval scribes identified ‫ דומה‬as one of Israel’s arch-enemies, i.e. Edom (cf.
Isa 11:14 and 34:1–17; Num 24:18–19; Jer 49:7–22; Ezek 25:12–15; 35:1–15; Obadiah).
The inspiration for this interpretation by the translator of LXX-Isa and at least
two medieval scribes can be found in the three Hebrew letters shared by the
words ‫ דומה‬and ‫ אדום‬and in the fact that the collection of words against the na-
tions in Isaiah 20–23 lacks a word against one of Israel’s worst enemies in the
late Iron Age, Edom.
The textual witnesses of Isa 21:11 also attest to another interpretative tradi-
tion, which is based on the identification of Edom as Rome in late ancient
Jewish literature.11 A Bible codex from the fifteenth century,12 manuscript De
11 For Edom as a chiffre for Rome in Jewish literature, see e.g. Gerson D. Cohen, “Esau
as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ed.
A. Altmann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 19–48, esp. 21–24 (reprinted in
idem, Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
Rossi 319, reads instead of ‫ דומה‬the name ‫רומה‬. While it is not impossible that
even a reading found in such a late manuscript goes back to the ancestor of the
manuscript tradition on which Rabbi Meir depends,13 manuscript De Rossi 319
could be influenced by more recent factors in its variant reading. De Rossi14
himself mentions that ‫ רומה‬is attested in a fifteenth century copy of David
Kimchi’s Isaiah commentary (manuscript De Rossi 1004)15 and in a 1515 edition
of the Latter Prophets which includes Kimchi’s Isaiah commentary, too.16 It is
therefore also possible that the reading of manuscript De Rossi 319 reflects the
impact of Kimchi’s commentary.
Be that as it may, the antiquity of the reading ‫ רומה‬is confirmed by patristic
evidence. Jerome mentions in his commentaries to Obadiah and Isaiah that
Jews of his own time read ‫ רומה‬in Isa 21:11. Whatever the text-critical value of
manuscript De Rossi 319, Jerome leaves thus little doubt about the existence
of late ancient proto-Masoretic manuscripts reading ‫ רומה‬instead of ‫ דומה‬in
Isa 21:11.
1991], 243–69); Irit Aminof, “The Figures of Esau and the Kingdom of Edom in Palestinian
Midrashic-Talmudic Literature in the Tannaic and Amoraic Periods” (PhD diss.;
Melbourne University, 1981); Johann Maier, “Israel und ‘Edom’ in den Ausdeutungen zu
Dt 2,1–8,” in idem, Studien zur judischen Bibel und ihrer Geschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter
2004), 285–326 (reprint from Judentum—Ausblicke und Einsichten: Festschrift für
K. Schubert zum 70. Geburtstag [Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1993], 135–84); Friederich
Avemarie, “Esaus Hände, Jakobs Stimme: Edom als Sinnbild Roms in der frühenrab-
binischen Literatur,” in Die Heiden: Juden, Christen und das Problem des Fremden (eds.
R. Feldmeier and U. Heckel; WUNT 70; Tübingen: Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1994), 177–208;
Isaac Avishur, Moses D. Herr, and Carl S. Ehrlich, “Edom,” Enc Jud (2nd ed.) 6:151–58 esp.
157–58.
12 For a brief description of the codex, see Giovanni B. De Rossi, Variae Lectiones Veteris
Testamenti (5 vols.; Parma: Regio, 1784–1788; repr. Amsterdam: Philo, 1969), 1.cvii.
13 Thus seems to be the implication of Robert Govett, Isaiah Unfulfilled: Being an Exposition
of the Prophet with New Version and Critical Notes (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1841),
211.
14 Giovanni B. De Rossi, Scholia critica in V. T. libros seu supplementa ad varias sacri textus
lectiones (Parma: Ex region typographeo, 1793), 50.
15 See De Rossi, Variae lectiones, 4.xxxii. I have not been able to verify this reading in
Finkelstein’s edition of Kimchi’s commentary (Eliezer U. Finkelstein, ed., The Commentary
of David Kimchi on Isaiah [New York: Columbia University, 1926], 1:121). It is possible that
the ‫רומה‬-reading in Kimchi’s commentary quoted by De Rossi goes back to a scribal error
in the manuscript tradition of the commentary.
16 The edition was published in Pesaro by a member of the Soncino family and publishing
house. See De Rossi, Variae lectiones, 1.cxlviii; Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the
Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897),
886–89.
216 Lange
Hoc juxta historiam dictum sit: caeterum propter similitudinem litterae,

et ex eo quod RES et DALETH, non multum inter se discrepent, quidam
Hebraeorum pro Duma, Romam legunt, volentes prophetiam contra reg-
num Romanum dirigi, frivola persuasione, qua semper in Idumaeae nomi-
ne Romanos existimant demonstrari: Duma autem interpretatur silentium.
Besides what is said according to history: because of the word-similarity

and the fact that resh and daleth are not much different from one anoth-
er, some among the Hebrews read Rome instead of Duma because they
want the prophecy to be directed against the Roman rule, out of their
wrongful conviction by which they always consider the name of Idumea
to indicate the Romans. Duma, however, is to be translated as “silence.”
(Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, on Isa 21:11–12)17
Judaei frustra somniant contra urbem Romam, regnumque Romanum hanc

fieri prophetiam; et illud quod in Isaia scriptum est, Onus Duma, paululum
litterae apice commutato pro DELETH legi posse RES, et sonare Romam:
VAU quippe littera et pro u, et pro o, eorum lingua accipitur.
The Jews vainly dream that this prophecy is against the city of Rome and
the Roman sovereignty; and they hold that in ‘the burden of Dumah’ in
Isaiah [21:11], by a tiny alteration in the crown of a letter, Resh can be read
for Dalet, so that the word becomes “Roma”; for in their language the let-
ter Waw is used for both u and o.18 (Jerome, Commentary on Obadiah on
Ob 1:1)
It is regrettable that although the reading of Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll is re-
peatedly quoted in scholarly discussions about the rabbinic identification
of Edom as Rome,19 Jerome’s remarks about Jewish readings of Isa 21:11 are
mostly discussed in early treatments of Rabbi Meir’s Torah but enjoy less
17 For stylizing my rather literal rendition into proper English in the above translation, I am
obliged to my good friend and colleague Zlatko Pleše.
18 Translation according to William Horbury, “Old Testament Interpretation in the Writings
of the Church Fathers,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the
Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. Martin J. Mulder and Harry
Sysling; CRINT 2.1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988), 727–87, 774.
19 See e.g. Avemarie, “Esaus Hände, Jakobs Stimme,” 182; Martha Himmelfarb, “The Mother
of the Messiah in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Sefer Zerubbabel,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi
and Graeco-Roman Culture, vol. 3 (ed. Peter Schäfer; TSAJ 93; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2002), 369–89, esp. 381; Maier, “Israel und ‘Edom’ in den Ausdeutungenzu Dt 2,1–8,” 292.
attention today.20 In the Commentary on Obadiah, Jerome does not refer to

actual manuscripts but reports about a Jewish emendation of his time identi-
fying Duma in Isa 21:11 as Roma, i.e. Rome. In his Commentary on Isaiah, Jerome
argues slightly different though. He accuses “some Hebrews” that out of their
zeal against Rome they would read Roma instead of Duma confusing the simi-
lar letters dalet and resh. At least for the Commentary on Isaiah, the word legunt
seems thus to imply the reading of a written text.21
Given the cumulative evidence of Jerome’s testimony, y. Taʿan. 1.1 (64a), and
MTDeRossi319, it is likely that Rabbi Meir’s reading ‫ רומי‬goes back to an ancient
variant22 which according to Jerome was attested by a significant number of
Isaiah scrolls in (late) antiquity. Originally, Rabbi Meir’s variant might have
gone back to a scribal error, i.e. a dalet-resh confusion: ‫דומה←רומה‬.23 In the case
of Josh 15:52, the same character confusion is attested in many manuscripts
and version: many important Masoretic manuscripts speak of a town called
20 But see De-Rossi, Scholia critica, 50: “Ad hunc eundem Meirii codicem eaque vetus ti-
orum rabbinorum verba alludere videtur Hieronymus, qui lib. V in Isaiam refert quos-
dam Hebraeorum pro Dumà legisse Roma, hanc que prophetiam ad regnum Romanum
applicasse”; Brüll, “R. Meir,” 236; Epstein, “Titus,” 343; Epstein, “Biblische Textkritik,”
48; Blumenthal, Rabbi Meir, 135; Adolph Neubauer, “The Introduction of the Square
Characters in Biblical MSS., and an Account of the Earliest MSS. of the Old Testament,”
in Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica: Essays Chiefly in Biblical and Patristic Criticism, vol. 3
(eds. Samuel R. Driver, Thomas K. Cheyne, and William Sanday; Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1891), 22; Louis Ginzberg, “Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvätern VI: Der Kommentar des
Hieronymus zu Jesaja,” in Jewish Studies in Memory of George Kohut (eds. Salo W. Baron
and Alexander Marx; New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935), 279–314,
299.
21 Cf. Wildberger, Jesaja, 787.
22 Contra Kutscher, Language, 87, n. 3 (midrashic exegesis); Siegel, Severus Scroll, 45–46;
Cohen who regards it as a “piquant play on words” by Rabbi Meir (“Esau,” 245); and
Heinrich W. Guggenheimer who understands it as an interpretative variant (The Jerusalem
Talmud: Second Order Mo‘ed, Megillah, Hagigah and Mo‘ed Qatan (Mašqin) [Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2015], 16, n. 84).
23 Thus Loewinger, “Prolegomenon,” xxxii; Loewinger, “‫ספר תורה‬,” 259; Jastram, “The
Severus Scroll and Rabbi Meir’s Torah,” 144, n. 84, who regard the reading of Rabbi Meir
as the result of a scribal error. They ignore though the different orthographies of‫רומי‬
(interpretative reading, Rabbi Meir) and ‫( רומה‬scribal confusion, Jerome) which point to
the different character of the two secondary readings. Siegel, Severus Scroll, 47, proposes
an emendation by Rabbi Meir inspired by the similarity of dalet and resh. But in this
case Rabbi Meir should have read ‫ רומה‬instead of his ‫רומי‬. Ginzberg, “Haggada,” 299,
understands both Rabbi Meir’s reading and the reading quoted by Jerome as haggadic
interpretations based on the graphic similarity of resh and dalet. Segal, “Promulgation,”
45, regards either a scribal corruption from ‫ דומה←רומה←רומי‬or an interpretative reading
inspired by ‫ משעיר‬as likely.
218 Lange
‫( רומה‬e.g. MTA, L, C, LXX, Pesh., V)24 while other witnesses call the same town
‫( דומה‬MTmss, T).25
That Rabbi Meir reads ‫ רומי‬instead of ‫ רומה‬is due to the influence of Koine-
Greek as the dominant language in the eastern part of the Roman Empire
while ‫ רומה‬reflects the city’s Latin name Roma. The Greek word for Rome is
Ῥώμη which becomes Rōmi when pronounced with an itacism. Rabbi Meir
revocalizes thus ‫ רומה‬as ‫רומי‬. This revocalization and different orthographic
realization of ‫ רומה‬turns what originally might have gone back to a charac-
ter confusion without doubt into an interpretative reading. Dumah becomes
Rome. During the time of Rabbi Meir, what began as scribal corruption gained
thus an alternate meaning. In Isa 21:11, Rabbi Meir’s variant ‫ רומי‬for ‫ דומה‬is
interpretative in nature and needs to be read in the context of the rabbinic
reception history of Isa 21:11.
The historical identification of Dumah with Rome reminds of the herme-
neutics of the Qumran pesharim. They often take various personae or people
mentioned in the Jewish scriptures as code for other groups or personae of
their own time. Nevertheless, in the case of ‫ דומה‬and ‫ רומי‬this identification
goes back to a “philological” operation, exchanging dalet with resh and revo-
calizing ‫ רומה‬as ‫רומי‬. The identification of Dumah as Rome is thus not a simple
allegorical reading but enabled by literal exegesis.
2 Isa 34:7 (Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11)
The identification of Edom with the Roman Empire is also evident in the
interpretation of the ‫ ראמים‬in Isa 34:7 as the Romans by Rabbi Meir. In a typo-
logical comparison of Egypt and Edom (identified with Rome) which is based
on intertextuality, Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11 quotes Rabbi Meir with an inter-
pretation of Isa 34:7:
R. Levi said in the name of R. Ḥama bar R. Ḥanina: With the very means
by which he punished the former He will punish the latter. As He pun-
ished Egypt with blood, so, too, He will punish Edom [Rome], for it is
written I will show wonders of in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and
24 The BHS transcribes MT L here erroneously as ‫דומה‬.

25 See the discussion in Yoel Elitsur, “Duma-Ruma: The Original Version of a Biblical
Toponym and its Effect on Historical and Geographical Problems,” in Rabbi Mordechai
Breuer Festschrift: Collected Papers in Jewish Studies (ed. Moshe Bar-Asher; Jerusalem:
Academon Press, 1992), 615–20 (Hebr.); cf. idem, “Rumah in Juda,” IEJ 44 (1994): 123–28,
123–26.
fire, and pillars of smoke [over Edom] (Joel 3:3) … As with Egypt He took
each of the chiefest among them and slew them, so, too, with Edom: A
great slaughter in the land of Edom, among them to come down shall be
the Remim (‫ ;ראמים‬Isa. 34:6–7), that is, as R. Meir expounded it—among
those to come down shall be the Romans (‫)אמ׳ ר׳ מאיר וירדו רומיים עמם‬.26
Brüll, Loewinger and Jastram27 include this quotation of Rabbi Meir in Pesiqta
de-Rab Kahana 7.11 among the variant readings of the rabbi quoted in rabbinic
literature. All three miss, though, a principal difference between all other quo-
tations of Meir-variant-readings and Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11. Gen. Rab. 9.5
(Gen 1:31); 20.12 (Gen 3:21); and 94.9 (Gen 46:23) refer explicitly to a Torah scroll
of Rabbi Meir (‫“ בתורתו של ר׳ מאיר מצאו כתוב‬in the Torah of Rabbi Meir they
found written”) when quoting its variants. Similarly Midrash Bereshit Rabbati
209:12 (Gen 45:8) and y. Taʿan. 1.1 (64a) (Isa 21:11) refer explicitly to scrolls con-
nected with Rabbi Meir in which variants were found written.
Midrash Bereshit Rabbati 209.12: “and in the scroll of Rabbi Meir it is

written” ‫בספרו של ר׳ מאיר כתוב‬
y. Taʿan.1.1 (64a): “in the book of R. Meir they found that it was written”
‫בספרו של רבי מאיר מצאו כתוב‬
Such an explicit reference to a written source is missing in Pesiqta de-Rab

Kahana 7.11 which refers instead to an oral statement by Rabbi Meir. Pesiqta de-
Rab Kahana 7.11 preserves hence neither a variant reading of an Isaiah scroll of
Rabbi Meir nor an interpretative gloss that he might have inserted into such a
scroll.
Pesiqta de-Rab Kahana 7.11 attests instead to an oral interpretative tradi-
tion in which Rabbi Meir identifies the ‫“( ְר ֵא ִמים‬bulls/wild oxen”) of Isa 34:7
as ‫“( רומיים‬Romans”) based on the orthographic similarities of the two words.28
26 Translation according to William G. Braude and Israel J. Kapstein, Pĕsiḳta dĕ-Raḇ Kahăna:
R. Kahana’s Compilation of Discourses for Sabbaths and Festal Days; Translated from
Hebrew and Aramaic (2nd ed.; Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 202–
203. The quotation of R. Meir is on p. 203. The Hebrew text of the quotation of R. Meir
is quoted according to Dov Mandelboim, ed., ‫ על פי כתב יד אוק�ס‬:‫פסיקתא דרב כהאמא‬
‫( פורד ושנויי נוסחאות מכל כתבי היד ושרידי הגניזה עם פירוש ומבוא‬New York: Jewish
Theological Seminary of America, 1962), 1:134.
27 Brüll, “R. Meir,” 236; Loewinger, “Prolegomenon,” xxxii; Loewinger, “‫ספר תורה‬,” 258;
Jastram, “Severus Scroll and Rabbi Meir’s Torah,” 144.
28 Cf. Günter Stemberger, Die römische Herrschaft im Urteil der Juden (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), 114; Kutscher, Language, 87 note 3; Cohen,
“Esau,” 245.
220 Lange
As before, this identification reminds of the hermeneutics of the Pesharim.

Despite such similarities the same hermeneutical principles as in the case of
Isa 21:11 allow Rabbi Meir to achieve this identification. The interpretations of
Isa 21:11 and 34:7 by Rabbi Meir according to y. Taʿan. 1.1 (64a) and Pesiqta de-
Rab Kahana 7.11 on the one hand and the Jewish reading of Isa 21:11 as commu-
nicated by Jerome in his commentaries on Isa 21:11–12 and Ob 1:1 on the other
hand are based on orthographic or paleographic similarities. In the case Isa
21:11 the paleographic similarity of ‫ דומה‬and ‫ רומה‬allowed for the identification
of the former with Rome already in late ancient proto-Masoretic manuscripts.
Rabbi Meir supported this reading and highlighted it by revocalizing ‫ רומה‬as
‫רומי‬. In the case of Rabbi Meir’s interpretation of Isa 34:7, according to Pesiqta
de-Rab Kahana 7.11, Rabbi Meir seems to have based his interpretation on un-
derstanding aleph as a mater lectionis for ō. He vocalized ‫ ְר ֵא ִמים‬thus as ‫אמים‬
ִ ֹ ‫ר‬.
This philological operation allowed for the identification of the ‫ ראמים‬as the
Romans.
3 Conclusions
The variant reading from Rabbi Meir’s Isaiah scroll in Isa 21:11 is not very inter-
esting from a text-critical perspective. In terms of lower criticism, ‫ רומי‬is clearly
a secondary interpretative reading that developed from the reading ‫ רומה‬which
in turn developed out of ‫ דומה‬by way of intentional or unintentional dalet-resh
confusion. What is more interesting is the importance of Rabbi Meir’s reading
‫ רומי‬for the reception history of the book of Isaiah in particular and for Jewish
hermeneutics in general. The same is true for Rabbi Meir’s interpretation of
the ‫“( ראמים‬bulls”) from Isa 34:7 as ‫“( רומיים‬Romans”).
Above I mentioned the similarities between these identifications of Rabbi
Meir with the hermeneutics of the pesharim. While sometimes, the pesharim
employ philological means to reach their identifications of biblical figures and
people with personae and/or groups of their own time, pesher hermeneu-
tics are transpositional in character and can apply such identifications to the
Jewish scriptures without philological means as well.29 In the two examples
discussed above, Rabbi Meir’s interpretations are both philological and
29 For the transpositional hermeneutics of the pesharim, see A. Lange and Z. Pleše,
“Transpositional Hermeneutics: A Hermeneutical Comparison of the Derveni Papyrus,
Aristobulus of Alexandria and the Qumran Pesharim,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 3 (2012):
15–67, and the literature quoted there.
transpositional though. This is means, Rabbi Meir gained his interpretations

by way of philological and/or text-critical means, to be more precise by vocal-
izing the consonantal text of Isa 21:11 and 34:7 different.
Nevertheless, Rabbi Meir might be inspired both times by the traditional
identification of Edom with Rome in Jewish exegesis. That LXX-Isa 21:11 inter-
prets Dumah as Idumea points to an ancient exegetical tradition which un-
derstood Isa 21:11–12 as a word against Edom. In rabbinic literature, Edom is
a common chiffre for Rome, after all. In the case of Isa 34:7, the surrounding
context leaves little doubt that the whole chapter Isaiah 34 is directed against
Edom. The traditional identification of Edom with Rome could have easily pro-
voked Rabbi Meir to understand Isaiah 34 not as a word predicting the fall of
Edom but as one predicting the fall of Rome. Rabbi Meir justifies the interpre-
tation of both Isa 21:11–12 and Isaiah 34 as oracles against the Roman Empire
by way of philological means. Therefore, his approach can in both cases best
be described as philological exegesis justifying an earlier transpositional inter-
pretative tradition.
When Rabbi Meir predicts in his interpretation of Isa 21:11 and 34:7 the fall
of the Roman Empire, this prediction agrees with a report about Rabbi Meir’s
understanding of Jacob’s vision in Genesis 28. As it is well known, Jacob sees
in this vision a ladder on which angels come down from and go up to heaven
(Gen 28:10–15). Rabbi Meir understands the angels of Jacob’s vision as rep-
resentatives of individual nations and sees the coming down of the angel of
Edom as symbol for the fall of the Roman Empire (Lev. Rab. 29.1; Pesiq. Rab.
151a–b; Tanhumah va-Yeze 3).30
R. Berekhiah, R. Helbo in the name of R. Simeon b. Menassia in the name

of R. Meir: “He showed him the prince of Babylonia going up and coming
down, and the one of Media going up and coming down, and also the one
of Edom going up and coming down.
Lev. Rab. 29.131
30 Cf. Louis H. Feldman, “Rabbinic Insights of the Decline and Forthcoming Fall of the
Roman Empire,” JSJ 32 (2000): 275–97, 284.
31 Translation according to J. Neusner, A Theological Commentary to the Midrash, vol. 4:
Leviticus Rabbah (Studies in Ancient Judaism; Lanham: University Press of America,
2001), 132.
222 Lange
His interpretations of Isa 21:11 and 34:7 are thus not isolated elements in the
work of Rabbi Meir. Instead, they illustrate a strong conviction of the sage that
the Roman Empire will fall. At least in the case of Isa 21:11 and 34:7, this convic-
tion was based in philological readings of the scriptures that confirmed most
likely already existing interpretative traditions. Rabbi Meir’s hope for the fall
of the Roman Empire might have been inspired by the terrible results of the
Bar Kokhba war and its aftermath. He found justification for this hope both
in transpositional interpretative traditions of the Jewish scriptures and their
philological exegesis.
chapter 11
“Wisdom Motifs” in the Compositional Strategy of

the Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20) and Other Aramaic
Texts from Qumran*
Daniel A. Machiela
Professor Moshe Bernstein, perhaps more than anyone else, has helped schol-
ars understand the methods of ancient Jewish biblical interpretation present
in the literature from the Qumran caves, not least with regard to those texts—
or parts of texts—classified by some as rewritten Bible.1 Figuring prominently
both in Bernstein’s work and among the examples typically offered of rewrit-
ten Bible, is the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon from Cave 1 of Qumran (1Q20).2
In this article, I will address one component of the rewriting undertaken by
the Genesis Apocryphon’s author (or authors) that has drawn little attention
to date, what I have chosen at present to call “wisdom motifs.” By “wisdom
motifs” I refer to a set of interrelated ideas concentrated especially in GenAp
6.1–6 and 19.23–31, grounded in the wide ranging lexical/conceptual domains
of ‫“ חכמה‬wisdom” and ‫“ קשט‬truth”.3 Two main goals will shape the way this
* I wish to acknowledge the generous, critical feedback of several colleagues who read an ear-
lier form of this essay, each of whom, felicitously, happens to be a colleague or student of
Moshe Bernstein: Molly Zahn, Joseph Angel, Shani Tzoref, and Eileen Schuller. I am most
grateful for their insightful comments, which have led to a number of improvements in the
article’s clarity and scope.
1 For Bernstein’s position on the vexed topic of rewritten Bible, whether it should be used at
all and, if so, how it should be deployed, see his “ ‘Rewritten Bible’: A Generic Category Which
Has Outlived Its Usefulness?” Textus 22 (2005): 169–96; repr. in M. J. Bernstein, Reading and
Re-reading Scripture at Qumran (2 vols.; STDJ 107; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1:39–62.
2 Bernstein’s approach to the genre of the Genesis Apocryphon, which he does not see as a
straightforward example of rewritten Bible, may be found in his article, “The Genre(s) of the
Genesis Apocryphon,” in Aramaica Qumranica: Proceedings of the Conference on the Aramaic
Texts from Qumran in Aix-en-Provence 30 June–2 July 2008 (ed. Katell Berthelot and Daniel
Stökl Ben Ezra; STDJ 94; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 317–43; repr. in Reading and Re-reading Scripture,
1:217–38.
3 The question of whether the Genesis Apocryphon was written by a single author or multiple
authors remains open, though Bernstein has brought forward one set of data that may sup-
port the latter option: the configuration of divine names and epithets employed in the earlier
and later parts of the extant scroll. See Moshe J. Bernstein, “Divine Titles and Epithets and the
224 Machiela
study proceeds. The first is to further explicate the method of rewriting em-
ployed in the Apocryphon, which will entail close examination of the passages
mentioned above. The second is to demonstrate that by melding a distinctive
set of “wisdom motifs” with the Genesis narrative—and, more specifically,
with the figures of Noah and Abram—the Genesis Apocryphon participates in a
“wisdom” tradition attested in a larger cluster of Jewish Aramaic writings from
the Second Temple period. Taking these two points together, we see that the
author(s) of the Genesis Apocryphon sought simultaneously to address issues
germane to the interpretation of Genesis, and to bring that book into close
alignment with a worldview characteristic of other Aramaic works, such as the
Aramaic Enoch texts, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Aramaic portions of
Daniel. The second point constitutes a compelling line of evidence supporting
the notion of a distinctive cluster of Second Temple period Jewish Aramaic
literature already adumbrated by scholars such as Jozef Milik, Stanislav Segert,
Elias Bickerman, Ben-Zion Wacholder, Devorah Dimant, and Eibert Tigchelaar,
a cluster that clearly includes the Genesis Apocryphon.4 In addition to the two
Sources of the Genesis Apocryphon,” JBL 128 (2009): 291–310; repr. in Reading and Re-reading
Scripture, 1:195–216. Also, Moshe J. Bernstein, “Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity? What Sort
of Unity Were You Looking For?” Aramaic Studies 8 (2010): 107–34; repr. in Reading and Re-
reading Scripture, 1:239–65.
4 For a non-exhaustive cross-section of scholars espousing this view, albeit in different ways and
to varying degrees, see Jozef T. Milik, “Écrits préesséniens de Qumrân: d’Hénoch à Amram,”
in Qumrân. Sa piété, sathéologie et son milieu (ed. M. Delcor; Paris: Gembloux/Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 1978), 91–106 [esp. 106]; Stanislav Segert, “Die Sprachenfragen in
der Qumrāngemeinschaft,” in Qumran-Probleme: Vorträge des Leipziger Symposions über
Qumran-Probleme vom 9. bis 14. Oktober 1961 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963), 315–39; Jonas C.
Greenfield, “Aramaic and Its Dialects,” in ʿAl Kanfei Yonah: Collected Studies of Jonas Greenfield
on Semitic Philology (2 vols; Leiden: Brill/Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), 1:361–75 [esp. 367]; Ben-
Zion Wacholder, “The Ancient Judaeo-Aramaic Literature (500–164 BCE): A Classification
of Pre-Qumranic Texts,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York
University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin (ed. L. H. Schiffman; JSPSup 8; JSOT/ASOR
Monographs 2; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 257–81 [esp. 259]; Elias Bickerman, The Jews in
the Greek Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 51–65; Devorah Dimant, “Themes
and Genres in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran,” in Aramaica Qumranica: Proceedings of
the Conference on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran in Aix-en-Provence 30 June–2 July 2008
(ed. Katell Berthelot and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra; STDJ 94; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 15–45; repr. in
D. Dimant, History, Ideology, and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Collected Studies
(FAT 90; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 195–218; Eibert Tigchelaar, “Aramaic Texts from
Qumran and the Authoritativeness of Hebrew Scriptures: Preliminary Observations,” in
Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (ed. M. Popović; JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010),
155–71; Daniel A. Machiela, “The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls: Coherence and Context in the
“ Wisdom motifs ” in the Compositional Strategy 225
main points above, I will suggest that major elements of the “wisdom motifs”
in the Apocryphon and affiliated Aramaic writings derive most plausibly from
the received Hebrew wisdom tradition, especially as exemplified in the early
chapters of Proverbs and a handful of individual psalms with strong wisdom
components.
1 A Point of Departure: “Wisdom Motifs” in Genesis Apocryphon

6.1–6 and 19.23–31
The noun wisdom (‫ )חכמה‬appears five times in what remains of the Genesis
Apocryphon, being used to describe Noah, Abram, and Sarai. By contrast, the
root ‫ חכ״ם‬does not occur in connection with any of these characters in Genesis,
clearly marking wisdom as an added element in the Apocryphon. ‫ חכמה‬is con-
centrated especially in two augmentative episodes found in GenAp 6.1–6 and
19.23–31, describing Noah and Abram respectively. The first provides an apt
starting point for our analysis, since it is the fullest expression of the ideas as-
sociated with wisdom preserved in the Apocryphon.5
Genesis Apocryphon 6.1–6

‫נצי֯ ̇בת‬ ̇ ‫מעי ̇אמי לקושט‬ ̇ ‫מן עול ובכור ̇הו̇ ̇רתי יעית לקושט וכדי̇ נ̇ ̇פקת מן‬
]‫ועמי֯ ̇ק ̇די̇ ֯ש[א] ֯ל◦◦◦[ני‬ ֯ ‫מהלך בשבי֯ לי אמת עלמא‬ ̇ ‫והוית‬ ̇ ‫וקושטא כול יומי דברת‬
̇‫[מח]ש ̇ב ̇הן‬
̇ ‫למ ֯א ו֯ ̇ל‬
֯ ‫רותני מן נ֯ ̇תיב שקר די אזלן לחשוך ֯ע‬ ̇ ‫ולאז̇ ̇ה‬
̇ ‫במסלי̇ ̇א ̇ר ̇חת קושט‬
][◦◦◦ ֯‫◦לא ֯מ ֯רא וחצי אסרת בחז̇ ון קושטא וחכמתא ̇ב ̇מעיל ז֯ ̇ע ֯קא ו‬ ֯ ‫֯א‬
vacat ‫[]ל[]◦◦ כול שבילי חמס‬
][‫[א]די֯ [ן] הוית אנה נוח גבר ו֯ ̇א ֯ח ֯דת בקושטא ו̇ ̇א ̇ת ̇ק ̇פ ̇ת ̇ב ֯ח ֯כ ֯מ ֯ת ̇א ̇א‬
֯ ‫̇ב‬
1. from an infant, and through the uterus of she who bore me I burst forth
for truth, and when I emerged from my mother’s womb I was planted for
truth.
Library of Qumran” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library (ed.
S. White Crawford and C. Wassen; STDJ 116; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 244–58.
5 The Aramaic text used for the Genesis Apocryphon is that of my forthcoming edition in
Daniel A. Machiela with James C. VanderKam et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls. Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Greek Texts with English Translations. Volume 8A: The Genesis Apocryphon and Related
Documents (ed. J. H. Charlesworth et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck/Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 2017). Translations are my own.
226 Machiela
2. All of my days I conducted myself truthfully, and I was continually walk-

ing in the paths of everlasting truth. And [the] Holy One was with me,
to … [me]
3. in the paths of the ways of truth and to warn me against the highway of
deceit, which leads to everlasting darkness, and to [cons]ider whether
4. I would … the Lord. I girded my loins in the vision of truth and wisdom,
in the robe of supplication, and …
5. … all paths of violence.6
6. T[h]e[n] I, Noah, became a grown man. I held fast to truth, and grabbed
strong hold of wisdom …
Near the beginning of this column, we find Noah partway through a self-de-
scription of his special character at birth. In the first two lines he tells us that he
emerged from his mother’s womb as a manifestation of “truth” or “righteous-
ness” (‫ ;קושט‬cf. Gen 6:9, 7:1),7 followed by a vivid description of his lifelong
conduct, focused on the metaphorical imagery of walking a path. Noah says
that he “was walking in the paths of everlasting truth” (‫אמת עלמה‬, ‫ אמת‬being
an obvious Hebraism), and “in the pathways of the roads of truth” (‫)קושט‬. This
is juxtaposed with “the highway of deceit (‫)נ֯ ̇תיב שקר‬, which goes to everlast-
ing darkness,” against which the Holy One had warned Noah, and, a few lines
later, “all pathways of violence” (‫)כול שבילי חמס‬.8 Although these lines do not
preserve an explicit contrast of darkness with light, such a contrast is clear-
ly assumed by the imagery, and we may recall that in the preceding column
(5.12–13) Noah was closely identified with light by Enoch, who declared of the
infant Noah that “his eyes shone like the su[n” (‫כשמ[שא‬ ֯ ‫ )ודנחא עינוהי‬and that
“this child is a light” (‫)נור‬. Returning to column 6, after a few uncertain words
in lines 3–4, Noah says that he girded his loins “in the vision of truth and wis-
dom (‫)קושטא וחכמתא‬, in a robe of supplication,” followed again by a mention
of “all the paths of violence.” Taking up a new, though closely-related stream
6 On this translation see the helpful comments of Christian Stadel, “The Syntagma of kl
‘all’ with Indeterminate Plural Nouns in Imperial Aramaic and Western Middle Aramaic,”
Aramaic Studies 11 (2013): 27–45 [esp. 37].
7 For a helpful analysis of the lexeme ‫קשט‬, which is heavily freighted with significance and
meaning in the texts discussed below, see Armin Lange, “ ‘So I Girded My Loins in the Vision
of Righteousness and Wisdom, in the Robe of Supplication’ (1QapGen ar VI.4). ‫ קשט‬in the
Book of the Words of Noah and Second Temple Jewish Aramaic Literature,” Aramaic Studies
8 (2010): 13–45.
8 The same expression is used by Enoch in GenAp 5.19 to describe the wickedness related to
Noah’s generation. Here Enoch is foretelling Noah’s divinely-appointed status for Noah’s
grandfather, Methuselah, in a way that closely parallels Noah’s later statements in the follow-
ing column.
of thought in line 6, Noah builds on the foregoing account by saying: “I, Noah,
became a grown man. I held fast to truth (‫ )קושטא‬and strengthened myself
with wisdom (‫)חכמתא‬.”
In these few lines, then, we find a dense web of positive terms describing
Noah, most prominently ‫“ קושט‬truth” (six times), but also twice ‫ חכמה‬and once
the Hebrew word ‫אמת‬. These are balanced against the negative terms ‫שקר‬
“deceit,” ‫“ חשוך‬darkness,” and ‫“ חמס‬violence,” which supply the inverted image
of Noah’s conduct. All of this is wrapped up in the metaphor of two starkly
divergent paths down which one might walk. While the notion of personal
agency is not addressed forthrightly in this passage, the fact that Noah says he
was “warned against” following the highway of deceit in GenAp 6.3 (‫רותני‬̇ ‫ולאז̇ ̇ה‬
̇
‫ )מן נתיב שקר‬seems to suggest that Noah did have some choice in which path
he would follow.9
Considering the Genesis Apocryphon as an example of rewriting the Hebrew
text of Genesis, we might ask whether there is any discernable exegetical im-
pulse at work behind this description of Noah. It has long been noted that the
early parts of the Genesis Apocryphon, focusing on Enoch, Lamech, and Noah
are by necessity much more expansive vis-à-vis the received Hebrew text than
the following Abram section, to be discussed below.10 Nevertheless, much of
the material associated with Noah in the Genesis Apocryphon can be under-
stood as a reaction to, or elaboration upon, Hebrew Genesis. As Bernstein has
9 The itpeʿal conjugation of the root ‫ זה״ר‬is used twice in what remains of the Testament
of Qahat (4Q542), in a context and with a meaning closely resembling the aphʿel usage
here in the Genesis Apocryphon. In the midst of a strong ethical discourse aimed at his
children, Qahat first says, “And now, my children, take warning (‫ )אזדהרו‬by the inheri-
tance that has been passed on to you, and that your ancestors gave to you …” (1 i.4). Later,
in 1 ii.12, Qahat references his writings as a written witness, “that you might take warning
from them” ( ̇‫)תזדהרון בהו̇ ן‬. In both cases, Qahat’s teaching (repeatedly called an “inheri-
tance”, ‫ )ירותת‬is closely aligned with the sorts of positive traits that are associated with
Noah in the Apocryphon, on which see further below. Just as the Holy One gave warning
to Noah in the midst of his wicked situation, so, too, do the ancestral teachings of Qahat
give warning to his children in the tenuous, foreign situation in which they find them-
selves. In fact, we may trace Qahat’s teaching all the way back to Enoch if we read this
text in the light of GenAp 19.24, where Abram’s wisdom teaching is linked explicitly to
Enoch. The question of Noah’s choice in following the paths of truth or the ways of deceit
may be fruitfully informed by a comparative analysis with Amram’s vision in the Visions
of Amram (4Q543–547). Reading 4Q544 1.11–12 and 4Q547 1–2.11–13 together, it seems
plausible that Amram is presented with a choice of which angelic being he is to follow,
dependent upon the verb ‫ ̇ב ̇ע ̇ה‬in 4Q547 1–2.12 and what one reconstructs following (and
preceding) that word. Whatever the case, the dualistic depiction of light and darkness in
Amram’s vision bears a striking conceptual resemblance to Noah’s discourse in GenAp 6.
10 On this point see, especially, Bernstein, “The Genre(s) of the Genesis Apocryphon.”
228 Machiela
already shown, it is evident that the description of Noah in GenAp 6.1–6 ex-
pands on the dichotomy in Gen 6:5–9 between the wickedness of humankind,
whose “every inclination was only evil, all of the time” (6:5), and Noah, who is
described as having found “favor in the sight of the Lord” (‫;ונח מצא חן בעיני ה׳‬
Gen 6:8) and as being “a righteous man, blameless in his generation,” who
“walked with God” (‫להים התהלך נח‬-‫ ;איש צדיק תמים היה בדורותיו את הא‬Gen 6:9).11
While this much seems clear, the question remains why the author(s) chose
this content specifically when crafting the expansion found in the Apocryphon.
After all, there are numerous ways in which the verses from Hebrew Genesis
could have been embroidered, as can be seen by a perusal of their later recep-
tion in Judaism and Christianity.
It is plausible that the verb ‫ התהלך‬in Gen 6:9 encouraged the imagery of
two paths in the Apocryphon, especially given the choice of a pa‌ʾel participle
of ‫ הל״ך‬in GenAp 6.2. Moreover, Bernstein, following the earlier comments of
Morgenstern, suggested that Isa 11:5 lay behind Noah’s statement of girding his
loins in the vision of truth and wisdom.12 This may be correct, but it remains
the case that, whereas Isaiah speaks of ‫“ צדק‬righteousness” and ‫“ אמונה‬faith-
fulness,” the Apocryphon has instead ‫ קושטא‬and ‫חכמתא‬. While ‫ צדק‬and ‫קושט‬
could be taken as direct linguistic substitutes, ‫ אמונה‬and ‫ חכמה‬cannot, bring-
ing us back to the question of the specific content of the Apocryphon’s expan-
sion. Some of the remaining elements of this expansion I will hold in abeyance
for the moment, since I hope their choice will become clearer as we examine
other passages in the Aramaic literature from Qumran.
Moving now to Abram, near the end of GenAp column 19 we find the patri-
arch in a thorny situation sketched only minimally in Genesis, but expanded
considerably in the Apocryphon.
1QapGen 19.24–26
‫צען֯ על‬
̇ ]‫פר ̇ע[ו‬ ֯ ‫לת ̇א ֯ג ̇ב ̇רין מן רברבי מצרין֯ ◦◦[]ו֯ ̇הי ◦◦◦ ̇ב‬ ̇ ‫◦ל◦◦ לי֯ ו̇ ̇ת‬ ̇ ◦◦◦◦◦ 2 4͏
‫יהבין‬
̇ ‫מלי ועל ̇חכמתי והווא‬
‫ושט ̇א ו̇ קרית קודמיהון‬ ̇ ‫להו̇ ן ̇ס ̇פ ̇רא ו̇ ̇ח ̇כ ̇מ ̇תא ו̇ ̇ק‬
֯ ̇‫שגיאן וש]אלו‬
֯ ‫ ̇ל[י מתנתן‬2 5
‫לס ֯פ ֯ר מלי̇ ֯חנ̇ ו̇ ך‬֯
‫אע ̇ה צח להון ֯כו֯ ל ̇ס ֯פ ֯ר מלי‬
̇ ‫אבי̇ ן למקם עד די‬ ֯ ‫בה ו̇ לא ֯הו֯ ו֯ א‬
֯ ‫[]ב ֯בטנא ̇די̇ ֯א ̇תרבה‬ ֯ 2 6
11 Moshe J. Bernstein, “From the Watchers to the Flood: Story and Exegesis in the Early
Columns of the Genesis Apocryphon,” in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts
at Qumran (ed. E. G. Chazon et al.; STDJ 58; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 39–63 [esp. 52–53]; repr.
in Reading and Re-reading Scripture, 1:151–74.
12 Bernstein, “From the Watchers to the Flood,” 52, n. 35.
24. …, and three men from the nobles of Egypt … by Phara[oh] Zoan
because of my words and because of my wisdom, and they were
giving
25. m[e many gifts … And] they [reques]ted for themselves scribal
knowledge, and wisdom, and truth, so I read before them the book
of the words of Enoch
26. [……]in the womb in which he had grown. And they were not wish-
ing to arise until I would pour forth clearly (?) for them the entire
book of the words of
In Genesis 12:14–15 we read that, upon entering Egypt, the Egyptians saw Sarai,
recognized her beauty, and praised her to the Pharoah, with the result that
Pharaoh took her as his wife. While the Apocryphon fills a number of perceived
gaps in these verses, I wish to focus especially on the question of how the
Egyptians came to see Sarai, a question not addressed in Gen 12:14. The answer
found in GenAp 19.23–31 is that three of the Pharoah’s officials, led by a man
named Herqanosh, were dispatched to Abram’s dwelling to consult him. This
meeting included a great banquet, and, although the text is now missing, we
may safely assume that GenAp 19.28–31 described Pharaoh’s officials catching
a glimpse of Sarai during their visit, despite her having carefully avoided the
eyes of outside men for five years (see GenAp 19.23). That fateful sighting sent
the officials running back to Pharaoh with a voluble report of Sarai’s beauty,
which culminated, notably, in the exclamation that “alongside all this beauty
she possesses much wisdom (‫)חכמא שגיא‬.” The most significant part of this
episode for our purposes is the reason provided for the officials visiting Abram
in the first place. In GenAp 19.24, Abram reports, in a somewhat broken con-
text, that the men came “because of my words and because of my wisdom”
(‫)על מלי ועל חכמתי‬.13 Abram then goes on to specify that Herqanosh and his
fellow officials requested “scribal skill, wisdom, and truth (‫להו̇ ן̇ ̇ס ̇פ ̇ר ̇א‬
֯ ̇‫וש]אלו‬
֯
̇ ‫)ו̇ ̇ח ̇כ ̇מ ̇תא ו̇ ̇ק‬.”14 None of these attributes are associated with Abram in
‫ושט ̇א‬
Genesis, though they do overlap noticeably with Noah’s self-description in
13 Note that ‫“ חכמתי‬my wisdom” was misread in most of the available editions as ‫“ אנתתי‬my
wife”. For a fuller discussion of the word and previous readings see Daniel A. Machiela,
The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation with Introduction and
Special Treatment of Columns 13–17 (STDJ 79; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 72.
14 On the transcription of this line, which differs from earlier editions of the scroll, see also
Daniel K. Falk, The Parabiblical Texts: Strategies for Extending the Scriptures among the
Dead Sea Scrolls (LSTS [JSPS] 63; CQS 8; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 87.
230 Machiela
GenAp 6, where the words ‫ קושט‬and ‫ חכמה‬are found repeatedly.15 As will be

seen further below, it is significant that Noah and Abram are also portrayed as
typologically related in 1 Enoch, with both being styled as a “planting of truth”
that stands in contradistinction to surrounding wickedness.16 Connecting the
two figures even more closely in the Apocryphon is Abram’s following response
to the officials’ request: “so I read out before them the book of the words of
Enoch.”17 In this truly remarkable scene, we find the most learned of Egyptians,
eager to attain the wisdom, truth, and scribal knowledge that they presumably
lacked, sitting at the feet of Abram, imbibing the recorded teaching of Enoch.18
The text is quite fragmentary from this point forward, and we are not given
any further specifics about what Abram read or taught. Nevertheless, the men-
tion of a book of Enoch gives some definite shape, and a decidedly Enochic
flavor, to the preceding three traits of ‫ספרא‬, ‫חכמתא‬, and ‫קושטא‬. It also forges a
strong link between two patriarchs that in Genesis have little explicit associa-
tion: Enoch and Abram. Reckoning by the three things desired by the Egyptian
officials and what we know of the Enochic corpus, one thinks most readily of
4Q212 and 4Q204 from among the Qumran copies, which comprise parts of the
Book of Watchers, the Epistle of Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Weeks. The word
15 The broader argument for a connection between these two patriarchs has already been
made by Nickelsburg, Falk, Eshel, and (in a somewhat different way) Bernstein, each of
whom points to threads tying together the Noah and Abram stories in the Apocryphon,
and not derived from Hebrew Genesis. For the most recent treatment, along with discus-
sion of the other relevant studies, see Bernstein, “Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity?”
See also, Dorothy M. Peters, Noah Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Conversations and
Controversies of Antiquity (SBLEJL 26; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 117–21.
16 Compare 1 En. 10:3, 16 with 1 En. 93:5. On this general point and the specifics of the analogy
see George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 1–36;
81–108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2001), 444–45; Loren T. Stuckenbruck,
1 Enoch 91–108 (CEJL; Berlin: DeGruyter, 2007), 100–102.
17 Of course, the suggestion that a mention of Enoch provides a link to Noah may not be im-
mediately obvious. I assume a very close correlation between Enoch and Noah here based
on both the explicit connection made between these patriarchs in the early columns of
the Apocryphon, and the significant amount of Noah material in 1 Enoch and the Book
of Giants, focused especially on the flood of Noah’s generation as a direct outworking of
the wickedness during and after Enoch’s time. In all of these texts, Enoch and Noah are
inextricably linked.
18 Others have already noted the striking similarity between this presentation of Abram and
that of other ancient Jewish writers, such as Pseudo-Eupolemus, Artapanus, and Josephus.
See, for example, Ben-Zion Wacholder, “Pseudo-Eupolemus’ Two Greek Fragments on the
Life of Abram,” HUCA 34 (1963): 83–113 [esp. 102–103]; Falk, The Parabiblical Texts, 87–88.
‫ ספרא‬probably also alludes to the mathematical and astronomical knowledge

characterizing the Book of Watchers and Astronomical Book.19
As with the exegetical expansion on Noah’s character in GenAp 6, the basic
impetus for this added component of the Abram story is easy to recognize.
Emerging from the silence of Hebrew Genesis—a silence that is, incidentally,
even more profound in Jubilees—the story portrays Abram as a renowned
sage in the Enochic lineage of revealed wisdom, posits the Enochic (or proto-
Israelite) origins of Egyptian knowledge and wisdom, and sets the stage for
Sarai’s abduction, all in one deft move. However, as with the Noah expansion,
we may ask: Why this sort of expansion, in particular? Why focus on the wis-
dom, truth, and scribal learning possessed by Abram, funded by Enochic rev-
elation? In an attempt to explain the specific content of the Noah and Abram
expansions, I turn now to some of the other Aramaic writings stored near
Qumran.
2 Related “Wisdom Motifs” in Other Jewish Aramaic Works:

Noah’s Wisdom Discourse
The “wisdom motifs” discussed thus far in relation to Noah, Abram, and Sarai
in the Genesis Apocryphon appear with surprising frequency in other Qumran
Aramaic literary texts, often eliciting direct conceptual and lexical comparison.
In what follows, I will focus on just two specific themes from the Apocryphon in
order to demonstrate this correspondence: 1) The imagery of two paths in the
Noah expansion, one associated with truth and wisdom and the other with de-
ceit and violence; and 2) the triplet of extra-biblical traits ascribed to Abram:
‫ספרא‬, ‫חכמתא‬, and ‫קושטא‬.
The Book of Dreams and the Epistle in Ethiopic 1 Enoch mention frequently
paths and ways, some of which are preserved in the Aramaic Enochic mate-
rial from Qumran. In 4Q212 1ii, which partially corresponds to the Geʿez ver-
sion of 1 En. 91–92 (an introduction to the Epistle), we read of “[the] ways of
truth” (‫ ;ארחת קשט[א‬1ii.18; cf. ‫ מסלי̇ ̇א ̇ר ̇חת קושט‬in GenAp 6.3), walking in paths
of truth (‫ ;בשבילי] קושטא למהך בהון‬1ii.19–20), and of Enoch as “wise” (‫וח]כים‬ ̇
‫ ;אנושא‬1ii.21). The fragments of 4Q212 containing the Apocalypse of Weeks pre-
serve the couplet ‫ שקר‬and ‫( חמס‬1 iii.25; 1 En. 93:4), functioning as a merism to
19 This association is strengthened by the texts mentioned in the preceding footnote. There
Abram is connected with both astronomical knowledge and Enoch, demonstrating a
wider Jewish familiarity with this motif.
232 Machiela
reference the wickedness of Noah’s lifetime in the second week.20 This pair-
ing mirrors the words of Noah in GenAp 6.3–5 (‫… כול שבילי חמס‬ ‫)נ֯ ̇תיב שקר‬.21
In week seven the merism recurs, with the destruction of “the foundations of
violence, and the doing of falsehood” (‫ ;אשי חמסא ועבד שקרא‬1iv.14).22 In week
nine Enoch foretells a return to “the way of eternal truth” (‫;לארח קשט עלמא‬
1iv.22). In fact, the entire Epistle is saturated with the word ‫“ קשט‬truth” and
punctuated by allied terms such as ‫“ חכמה‬wisdom” and ‫“ מדע‬knowledge”
(4Q212 1iv.13).23 In the broader setting of the discourse, these terms help to
articulate a stark contrast between truth and wickedness that is best captured
in Ethiopic 1 En. 94:1–5:24
20 See also the probable verbal form of ‫ שקר‬to describe antediluvian wickedness in the Book
of Giants (4Q533 4.1), alongside the use of ‫ חמס‬to describe the activities of the watchers
and giants in that same work (4Q531 19.2; 4Q203 5.2). Cf. the comments of Stuckenbruck,
1 Enoch 91–108, 93–94. The same expression occurs in one of the Aramaic works associated
with Levi, 4Q541 9 i.
21 Another detail tying together the Enochic corpus and GenAp 6 is the distinctive imagery
of a “planting of truth” often used in connection with either Noah and his progeny, or the
sprouting of truth in an analogous context of deceit and violence (e.g., at the time of the
eschatological judgment). In the Book of Watchers (1 En. 10:16; see 4Q204 1v.4), the estab-
lishment of the “planting of truth” (‫ )נצבת קושטא‬follows the judgment of the flood (see
also 1 En. 10:3). In the Apocalypse of Weeks, Enoch speaks of the “planting of steadfastness
[and truth” (‫ ;נצבת יצבתא [וקושטא‬4Q212 1iii.19–20 = 1 En. 93:2), shown to him in a vision,
and “[the] p[lant of] etern[al] truth” (‫[מ]א‬ ֯ ‫על‬
֯ ‫קשט‬
֯ ]‫ ;נ֯ [צבת‬4Q212 1iv.12–13 = 1 En. 93:10),
associated with the seventh week. Similar imagery is used by Noah in the Book of Dreams
(1 En. 84:6). All of this corresponds closely with Noah’s self-description in GenAp 6.1, “I was
planted for truth” (‫נצי֯ ̇בת‬
̇ ‫)לקושט‬, and the “planting of truth” (‫ )נצבת וקו̇ שט‬in GenAp 14.13
referring to Noah’s son Shem. On this topic (along with its potential Isaianic background)
see Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 215–18, 353, 441–48; Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 65–66, 76–79;
Peters, Noah Traditions, 37, 40–41, 109; Patrick A. Tiller, “The “Eternal Planting” in the Dead
Sea Scrolls,” DSD 4 (1997): 312–35.
22 “A second [week will arise], in which deceit and violence will spring up[” (]‫יקום שבוע‬
[‫יצמח‬
֯ ‫)תנין די בה שקרא וחמסא‬.This is just one of several details suggesting an anal-
ogy between weeks two and seven, as discussed, e.g., by Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 443–44;
Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 123.
23 Nickelsburg (1 Enoch 1, 441) opines that ““Righteousness” (sedq, ‫ )קשטא‬is perhaps the key
concept in the Apocalypse,” and elsewhere (443) highlights “the noun ‫קשטא‬, which is so
dear to this author”. It is clear that it is just as dear to the author(s) of the Apocryphon in
speaking of Noah and his offspring.
24 A helpful analysis is found in Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 243–56, from which the
English translation is supplied.
1 And now I say to you, my sons, love righteousness and walk in it. For the
ways of righteousness are worthy to be accepted, but the ways of iniquity

will be destroyed quickly and vanish … 3 And now I say to you, O righ-
teous ones, do not walk in the ways of wickedness or in the ways of death,
and do not come near to them lest you be destroyed. 4 But seek after and
choose for yourselves righteousness and an acceptable life, and walk in
the ways of peace so that you may live and flourish.
While the Aramaic of 4Q212 is very fragmentary at this point, the phrase ‫ארחת‬
‫שט[א‬֯ ‫[“ ̇ק‬the] ways of truth” in 4Q212 1 v.25 (= 1 En. 94:1) shows that the repeat-
ed use of the Geʿez noun sedq “righteousness” in this passage corresponds to
Aramaic ‫קשט‬. The high occurrence of overlapping terms in GenAp 6 and 4Q212
is striking and significant, with both using the expression ‫“ ארחת קושט‬ways
of truth”, along with the terms ‫חכמה‬, ‫שקר‬, and ‫חמס‬. All of this is packaged in
a remarkably similar, dualistic way, and applied analogously to the righteous
figures of Enoch and Noah.
Another composition sharing “wisdom motifs” with GenAp 6 and the
Enochic texts just discussed is the Aramaic Levi Document. In 4Q213 4 we
find Levi speaking in the first-person voice, as is so commonly the case in the
Aramaic Qumran texts (including the Noah portion of the Apocryphon). As
with Enoch in the Epistle, the literary context is a poetic address by Levi to
his sons. Scholars such as Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel, Drawnel, and Dimant
have described this section (often called the “Wisdom Poem”), and even the
entirety of the Aramaic Levi Document, as a wisdom text.25 They and others,
such as Falk and Peters, have discussed the close parallels between passages
preserved in 4Q213 and the Genesis Apocryphon.26 In 4Q213 4 Levi tells his chil-
dren that “you will lea[v]e the [w]ays of truth. From all the ways of …” (‫א]רחת‬ ֯
‫ ;קש א תשבק[ו]ן֯ ֯מכל ֯שבילי‬4.5), and that “you will be neglectful, and will walk in
‫ט‬
darkness” ([‫בחשוך‬
̇ ‫]תמחלון ותהכון‬֯ ; 4.6). This last point is driven home with the
statements that “da[rk]ness will come upon you” ( ̇‫[שו]כה תתא עליכן‬ ֯ ‫ ; ֯ח‬4.7) and
“you will be brought low” (‫ ;תהוון לשפלין‬4.8). Alongside this foreboding image,
other fragments of 4Q213 are replete with words such as ‫קשט‬, ‫צדקה‬, ‫ספר‬,‫מוסר‬,
25 Jonas C. Greenfield, Michael E. Stone, and Esther Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document
(SVTP 19; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 201–15; Henryk Drawnel, An Aramaic Wisdom Text from
Qumran: A New Interpretation of the Levi Document (JSJSup 86; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 218–
25; Dimant, “Themes and Genres in the Aramaic Texts,” 27–29. See also the comments of
Robert A. Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic Levi to
Testament of Levi (SBLEJL 9; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 118–30.
26 Falk, The Parabiblical Texts, 87–88; Peters, Noah Traditions, 52–59, 98–101.
234 Machiela
and especially ‫חכמה‬. In fragment 1 alone, we find the root ‫ חכ״ם‬used a startling
nine times in thirty very fragmentary lines, and our picture of all of this is filled
out even further if we add the overlapping material from the Cambridge Cairo
Geniza copy.27 Turning to 4Q213a, a similar theme emerges. In frg.1.12–14 we
find the words ‫]ארחת קשט‬ ֯ in one line juxtaposed with ‫“ ב]אישא וזנתא‬evil and
fornication” in the next, which is again followed by ‫“ ח]כמה ומנדע וגבורה‬wis-
dom, knowledge, and strength”. As in 4Q212, these passages bear a remarkable
correspondence to the portrayal of Noah in the Genesis Apocryphon, not only
in using the overriding metaphor of two opposing paths, but also in specific
terminology such as darkness, truth, and wisdom.
Having established some of the vocabulary and concepts constituting “wis-
dom motifs” in these early Jewish Aramaic texts, I will now move more quickly
through some additional representatives of this stream of thought. This survey
is not meant to be exhaustive, but does address those texts where the wisdom
motifs outlined above are felt most keenly. Although fragmentary, the first-
person discourse of Amram partially preserved in 4Q548 depicts a strong di-
chotomy between light and darkness that is in keeping with his vision of two
angelic rulers, one associated with darkness, and the other with light (see also
4Q544 2). The noteworthy contribution of 4Q548 is that it fuses the language of
ways or paths (‫ ;ארחת‬1ii–2.2) and walking (‫ ;יהכון‬1ii–2.14) with the conceptual
dualism of light and darkness known from the vision. The imagery of light and
dark is more pronounced in this text than those discussed thus far, but by now
it will come as no surprise that the words ‫“ חכי]ם‬wise”, ‫“ קשיט‬true”, ‫“ מנדע‬knowl-
edge”, and ‫“ שקר‬deceit” show up in this part of Amram’s oration. The result is
an account that, though very fragmentary, must have resembled in salient ways
those associated with Enoch, Noah, and Levi discussed thus far.
4Q246 ii.4–9—the so-called “son of God” text, perhaps to be associated with
the figure of Daniel—draws on the two paths metaphor in describing a future
eschatological kingdom, stating that “all of its ways are in truth” (‫וכל ארחתה‬
‫)בקשוט‬.28 This wording and its eschatological setting call to mind the Epistle
of Enoch, discussed above, and especially 1 En. 93:14 (4Q212 1iv.22). 4Q534 1i,
considered by many to describe Noah, depicts the central character as becom-
ing intelligent (‫)יערם‬, and knowing “the pa[ths of wise o]nes” (]‫שב[ילי חכ‬ ̇ ‫וידע‬
‫ ; ̇מי̇ ן‬1 i.6), followed in the next line by a notification that “his wisdom shall go
forth to all the peoples” (‫)וחוכמתה לכול ̇עממיא תהך‬. Qahat, in 4Q542, delivers
an ethically-charged wisdom discourse to his children, in which we hear that
27 For the relevant Geniza texts, see the editions of Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel, or of
Drawnel.
28 A similar idiom may appear in 4Q243 7.2 (‫)]או̇ רחת ק[ושטא‬.
they are to “hold fast to truth, and walk in uprightness” (‫ואחדין בקושטא ואזלין‬
‫ ;בישירותא‬1 i.9). Aside from the imagery of walking or going, which is admit-
tedly quite general, we find here a striking verbal parallel with Noah’s state-
ment in GenAp 6.6, that “I held fast to truth (‫ )ו֯ ̇א ֯ח ֯דת בקושטא‬and strengthened
myself in wisdom.” The expression of “holding fast to truth” (‫ בקושטא‬+ ‫)אח״ד‬
is distinctive, and provides a clear link between these two texts. In 4Q537 5,
the main character—most likely Jacob—is told that he or his descendants are
going “to] act foolishly, to stray, and to walk in the ways of error” (5.2).
Finally, though it is not preserved in the Aramaic (or Hebrew) Tobit copies
from Qumran, Tobit’s wisdom discourse in Tob 4 as preserved in the Greek
bears a clear resemblance to the texts surveyed thus far, this despite Tobit’s
special focus on wealth and almsgiving. Tob 4:5 shares a precise parallel in
wording with 4Q537, with Tobit instructing Tobias not to “walk in the ways of
wrongdoing” (ταῖς ὁδοῖς τῆς ἀδικίας), followed by the counsel that almsgiving
keeps one from “going into the dark” (εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὸ σκότος; 4:10). The positive
side of this ethical equation is expressed in Tob 1:3–9, a passage that also bears
a clear literary resemblance to Noah’s discourse in GenAp 6.1–6.29 In Tob 1:3,
Tobit states that “I, Tobit, walked in the ways of truth, and in righteousness
all the days of my life.”30 A hypothetical approximation of the Aramaic of this
passage (from the long Greek text) is ‫ואנה טובי בארחת קושטא הוית אזל ובקושטא‬
‫כל יומי חיי‬, which bears a strong resemblance to Noah’s statement in GenAp 6.2:
‫מהלך בשבי֯ לי אמת עלמא‬ ̇ ‫והוית‬̇ ‫וקושטא כול יומי דברת‬.
To focus and summarize the discussion thus far, the texts surveyed above
show that the embellished description of Noah in GenAp 6 is but one example
of a cluster of ideas and vocabulary also attested in multiple other Aramaic
texts, most notably the Aramaic Enoch and Levi texts, but also others such
as the Testament of Qahat and Tobit. This cluster takes two strongly opposed
paths as its main conceptual scaffold. One path is associated with truth, wis-
dom, and related attributes such as knowledge and instruction, while the other
is marked by darkness, deceit, and violence.31 In each text, these traits are made
29 On the broader correspondence between these two texts, see Daniel A. Machiela and
Andrew B. Perrin, “Tobit and the Genesis Apocryphon: Toward a Family Portrait,” JBL 133
(2014): 111–32 [esp. 118–26].
30 The longer Greek (G II ) text, which elsewhere corresponds most closely to the Qumran
Aramaic copies, reads: ἐγὼ Τωβεὶθ ὁδοῖς ἀληθείας ἐπορευόμην καὶ ἐνδικαιοσύναις πάσας
τὰς ἡμέρας τῆς ζωῆς μου. The text is that of Robert Hanhart in the Göttingen Septuagint
edition (Septuaginta. Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Gottingensis
Editum. Vol. VIII, 5 Tobit [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983]).
31 I have chosen not to engage in any depth the topic of how the Aramaic wisdom tradi-
tion, under discussion in this article, may relate to the Hebrew sectarian literature from
236 Machiela
manifest in the deeds or teachings of a venerable figure from Israel’s past, with
special attention often paid to the founding role of Enoch. Though I wish to
stress the points of contact and agreement between texts in the cluster, we
should fully expect that each text puts the “wisdom motifs” discussed here to
work in its own ways, in keeping with its unique set of emphases and goals. The
unique deployment and manifestation of the “wisdom motifs” in each text is
well-illustrated in the Genesis Apocryphon. In utilizing the dualistic metaphor
of two paths and its constituents, the author of the Genesis Apocryphon is ob-
viously interpreting several details of Gen 6:5–9 through rewriting and expan-
sion, but that is only part of the story. Equally interesting is that the content
of the rewriting and expansion depends unambiguously upon a wider literary
Qumran. Nevertheless, there is much that could be said, and more work to be done, on
that relationship. Most pertinent with respect to the present discussion are: a.) heavy
use of the metaphor of “the way” in describing the origins and maintenance of the sect,
especially in the rule texts; and b.) the dualistic outlook often attributed to the sect, re-
flected most starkly in the Treatise on the Two Spirits (= 1QS iii.13–iv.26). Regarding a.),
it is obvious that the metaphor of walking in a way or path in the sectarian literature,
often coordinated with the conceptual realms of righteousness and wickedness, bears
a striking resemblance to the metaphor as found in Aramaic texts such as the Epistle
of Enoch, Genesis Apocryphon, and Aramaic Levi Document. Any thorough comparison
of these traditions would require accounting for similar metaphors in the earlier writ-
ings of the Hebrew Bible, distinguishing what (if anything) might constitute a distinc-
tive borrowing from the Aramaic texts in the sectarian ones. On use of the metaphor in
sectarian literature see Christian Stadel’s entry on ‫ ָה ַלְך‬in the Theologisches Wörterbuch
zu den Qumrantexten: Band I (ed. H.-J. Fabry and U. Dahmen; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
2011), 782–89 [esp. his section II.b–c] with the bibliography provided there. As for b.),
the basic dualistic outlook of the Aramaic texts bears a very clear resemblance to por-
tions of the sectarian literature, recognized especially in the occasional comparison of
the Visions of Amram (which uses the terms “children of light” and “children of darkness”)
and the Treatise on the Two Spirits. However, any comparison is now complicated by rela-
tively recent challenges to the place of the Treatise in the conceptual world of the sect
(whether at Qumran or beyond) and the extent to which dualism is indebted to wisdom
traditions (what Matthew Goff has called “sapiential dualism”), not to mention the issues
surrounding use of the term “dualism” in the first place. For an orientation to these im-
portant issues, along with relevant bibliography, see, e.g., Mladen Popović, “Anthropology,
Pneumatology, and Demonology in Early Judaism: The Two Spirits Treatise (1QS III, 13–IV,
26) and Other Texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in “And God Breathed into Man the Breath
of Life”—Dust of the Ground and Breath of Life (Gen 2.7): The Development of Dualistic
Anthropology in Early Judaism and Christianity, and Their Umwelts (ed. J. T. A. G. M. van
Ruiten and G. H. van Kooten; TBN; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming); Matthew Goff, “Looking
for Sapiential Dualism at Qumran,” in Dualism in Qumran (ed. G. G. Xeravitz; LSTS 76;
London: T & T Clark, 2010), 20–38.
tradition, with the result that Noah is linked closely to other figures such as
Enoch, Levi, Qahat, Amram, and Tobit, all of whom stand in a grand tradition
of wisdom and truth.
3 Related “Wisdom Motifs” in Other Jewish Aramaic Works:

Abram’s Wisdom Teaching in Egypt
Returning to the Genesis Apocryphon, a second launching point for under-

standing the scroll’s “wisdom motifs” is found in the terms used to describe
Abram’s teaching in 19.24–25. As with Noah’s two paths in col. 6, the expansion
here points us to other Qumran Aramaic texts. The most conspicuous link is
between the three attributes sought by the Egyptian courtiers in the Genesis
Apocryphon and the wisdom poem of Levi in 4Q213. Recall that in GenAp 19.25
the Egyptian nobles come to Abram seeking “scribal skill, wisdom, and truth”
(‫ )ספרא וחכמתא וקושטא‬with Abram having attributed the visit to his “words”
and “wisdom” (‫ )על מלי ועל חכמתי‬in the preceding line. At 4Q213 1i.9, a new
section (following a vacat) begins with Levi addressing his children, “And
now, scribal knowledge, instruction, and wisdom …” (‫)וכען ספר ומוסר וחכמה‬.32
While Levi’s list does not include ‫קושטא‬, as Abram’s does, ‫ קושטא‬is mentioned
just two lines before Levi’s three attributes, and clearly helps to set the frame
for his discourse. In fact, if we take into account the later Cambridge Cairo
Geniza copy of Aramaic Levi, we see that the short section preceding the pause
at 4Q213 1i.9 contains three, tightly-packed occurrences of the word ‫קושטא‬.33
This includes the injunction, “Let the principle of all your deeds be truth” (‫ראש‬
‫)עובדיכון יהוי קושטא‬, proving the importance of the wide-ranging concept of
‫ קושטא‬for the discourse. Instead of ‫קושטא‬, Levi’s list includes ‫“ מוסר‬instruc-
tion,” a word that never occurs in the Genesis Apocryphon. Drawnel suggests
that, in the Aramaic Levi Document, ‫“ מוסר‬refers to the totality of the sapien-
tial knowledge that the Levitical teachers are supposed to transmit to their
pupils or ‘sons’,” while stressing the word’s close association with wisdom and
scribal craft.34 While it is difficult to know the precise semantic nuances of the
wisdom-related nouns in these texts, it is worth noting that the verb ‫“ אל״ף‬to
teach” or “to learn” also figures prominently in Levi’s discourse, a word that
32 Repeated in 4Q213 2.5. See also 4Q214a 2–3ii.5. Falk (The Parabiblical Texts, 87–88) has
already noted this correspondence between the Apocryphon and Aramaic Levi.
33 For the text see Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document, 102–106;
Drawnel, An Aramaic Wisdom Text, 155–59.
34 Ibid., 332.
238 Machiela
also does not occur in what is preserved of the Apocryphon.35 These variations
in vocabulary may denote a difference in emphasis or topical orientation be-
tween the Apocryphon and Aramaic Levi Document, though the fragmentary
state of both texts makes this difficult to confirm. Despite the fact that we lose
the text of 4Q213 for part of a line after the three-word list of 1i.9, enough of the
following account is preserved to give us a good overall sense of this portion of
Levi’s speech. Importantly, the noun wisdom is used five times in the follow-
ing ten lines, none of which contains more than six preserved words. Three of
these occurrences of wisdom accompany the verb ‫אל״ף‬.
What is more, Levi explicitly places ‫ספר‬, ‫מוסר‬, and ‫ חכמה‬within the frame of
teaching foreigners, grounded in the example of Levi’s brother, Joseph. Using
the Cambridge Geniza copy together with 4Q213 1i.11–19,we find the three wis-
dom traits repeated and applied to Joseph: “Observe, my children, my brother
Joseph, [who] taught scribal knowledge, instruction, and wisdom, for glory
and for majesty; and kings[ …”36 This bit of information about Joseph is not
found in Genesis, and begs for comparison with the portrayal of Abram in
GenAp 19. Both Abram and Joseph travel to Egypt, attract the attention of the
king’s court, are accorded high honor, and teach the Egyptians. Abram teaches
“scribal knowledge, wisdom, and truth” from the book of Enoch, while Joseph
teaches “scribal knowledge, instruction, and wisdom.”
From the example of Joseph, Levi draws a more general lesson for his
children:
A man who studies wisdom, all [h]is days are l[ong], and his reputation
grows great. To every la[nd] and country to which he may go, he has a
brother and a friend therein … since because of it (i.e., wisdom) all will
be giving him honor, for all wish to learn from his wisdom. His admirers
are many, and those seeking his peace are great. They place him on seats
of honor, so as to hear his words of wisdom.
Again, the resemblances between the scenario envisioned here and the Abram
story in the Apocryphon are extraordinary. On the one hand, we may easily see
35 The other Aramaic text where the verb ‫ אל״ף‬figures prominently is the Book of Watchers.
36 The text breaks off at this point, having ended slightly earlier in the Cambridge Cairo
Geniza copy, and being fragmentary in 4Q213 1i. Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel (The
Aramaic Levi Document, 102–103), influenced by the Aramaic Ahiqar, reconstruct the end
of the phrase to read “and kings [he advised].” (]‫)ולמלכין [יעט הוא‬. Drawnel (An Aramaic
Wisdom Text, 159–61), following Puech, has instead “and to kings [on their thrones he was
joined]” (‫)ולמלכין [על כורסיהון מתחד הוא‬, which strives to account for T. Levi 13:9.
the situation of Abram in the Apocryphon as a real-world example of Levi’s pic-

ture of the righteous Israelite sage abroad, a sage who is sought out for his wis-
dom and accorded honor by the land’s inhabitants. On the other hand, we find
a more specific correspondence in the sage’s “words of wisdom” (‫חכ ֯מ ֯ת ֯ה‬ ֯ ‫)מלי‬
providing the grounds for being accorded honor by foreigners, which corre-
sponds to Abram’s report that the Egyptian officials sought him out “because
of my words and my wisdom” (‫)על מלי ועל חכמתי‬. Finally, we might add that the
reading of books (‫ )ספריא‬is mentioned in another fragment of 4Q213 with close
verbal connections to Levi’s wisdom discourse (2.9), and placed by Greenfield,
Stone and Eshel and Drawnel near its end. Of course, we already know that
Abram fulfills his duty to impart wisdom by reading from the Book of Enoch.
Another fragmentary work possibly focused on Levi, 4Q541 (4Qapoc Levib?),
contains “wisdom motifs” that suggest it was cut from the same cloth as the
texts discussed above. In 7.4 we read of “books of wisd[om]” being opened
(‫חכמ[תא‬
̇ ‫)אדין יתפתחו֯ [ן] ספרי‬, and of the central character in 9i.2 that “he
will transmit[ to the]m his[wi]sdom” (‫ח]כמתה‬ ֯ [ ֯‫)ו֯ י֯ ֯מ ֯ס ֯ר[ להו]ן‬. This is followed
by a metaphorical contrast of light and darkness in 9i3–4, culminating with
the now-familiar merism ‫“ שקר וחמס‬deceit and violence” (9 i 7) to describe
the depraved context in which the wisdom figure finds himself. As we have
already seen, this is precisely the scenario sketched for Noah in the Genesis
Apocryphon, and for several “weeks” in the Apocalypse of Weeks.
The Aramaic stories of the book of Daniel contain several passages that
merit inclusion in our discussion, suggesting a measure of lexical and con-
ceptual overlap with other Qumran Aramaic texts. Daniel 2:19–23 is a wisdom
poem uttered in prayerful thanks after a divine revelation given to Daniel in
a “vision of the night.”37 Daniel’s invocation of the weighty concept of the ‫רז‬
in 2:19 (only partly captured by the translation “mystery”) already provides a
strong point of contact with the Genesis Apocryphon, Aramaic Enoch texts,
Birth of Noah, and Visions of Amram, since all of these use the same word to
convey (parts of) heavenly knowledge and the Lord’s plan for the cosmos, re-
vealed through apocalyptic visions.38 In the poem, Daniel goes on to exclaim
37 Here we find another point of contact between a number of the Qumran Aramaic texts,
many of which include scenes of apocalyptic revelation followed by the seer uttering a
prayer of blessing and thanksgiving. See Daniel A. Machiela, “Prayer in the Aramaic Dead
Sea Scrolls: A Catalogue and Overview,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and
Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
(ed. J. Penner, K. M. Penner, and C. Wassen; STDJ 98; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 273–93.
38 See, e.g., GenAp 5.20–25, 6.12; 4Q201 1iv.5; 4Q203 9.3; 4Q204 5ii.26; 4Q534 1i.8; 4Q545 4.16.
On the concept of ‫ רז‬see Samuel I. Thomas, The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy,
240 Machiela
that “wisdom and power” (‫ ;חכמתא וגבורתא‬cf. 4Q213a 1.14) are the domain of
God, and that these are made partly manifest in God’s ability to determine
the fates of kings. This is followed closely by the declaration that God “gives
wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who attain insight” (‫יהב חכמתא‬
‫)לחכימין ומנדעא לידעי בינה‬. Having also recognized God’s mastery of darkness
and light (‫חשוכא‬, ‫)נהורא‬, the prayer concludes with Daniel’s more personal
acknowledgement that God “gave wisdom and power to me” (‫חכמתא וגבור־‬
‫)תא יהבת לי‬, which in turn provides the grounds for Daniel passing on his re-
vealed wisdom to Nebuchadnezzar (cf. 2:47). At the culmination of another
episode recounting divine revelation transferred to Nebuchadnezzar through
Daniel (Dan 4:34), the king declares that “I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, and exalt,
and glorify the King of Heaven, for all of his deeds are true and his ways are
just, and because he is able to bring low those who walk arrogantly.” (‫וכען אנה‬
‫נבוכדנצר משבח ומרומם ומהדר למלך שמיא די כל מעבדוהי קשט וארחתה דין ודי מהלכין‬
‫)בגוה יכל להשפלה‬. Finally, the descriptions of Daniel by the queen mother and
Belshazzar in Dan 5 (MT) call to mind the descriptions of Abram and Joseph
in the Genesis Apocryphon and Aramaic Levi Document. In 5:11, the queen
mother says of Daniel that “illumination, insight, and wisdom like the wisdom
of the gods is found in him” (‫)נהירו ושכלתנו וחכמה כחכמת אלהין השתכחת בה‬.
Belshazzar repeats this trio of characteristics in 5:14 with only slight adjust-
ment, the proof of which is secured in the ensuing account of Daniel properly
interpreting the mysterious writing on the wall. In each of these passages we
can detect lexical connections with the “wisdom motifs” in other Aramaic texts:
‫חכמתא‬, ‫גבורתא‬, ‫מנדעא‬, and ‫ רז‬in Dan 2;39 ‫ קשט‬alongside ‫ ארחת‬and the root
‫ הל״ך‬in Dan 4; and the triplet ‫נהירו‬, ‫שכלתנו‬, and ‫ חכמה‬in Dan 5. Although some
might dismiss the lexical connections between Daniel and the Aramaic texts
surveyed above as tenuous, what gives the comparison greater significance, to
my mind, is the broad conceptual affinity shared by all of these works. As in the
Genesis Apocryphon, Aramaic Enoch, and Aramaic Levi Document, the Aramaic
Daniel stories highlight the fact that wisdom, truth, and insight come only from
the Lord of Heaven, handed down to humans through apocalyptic revelation
or its codified written form. What is more, these divine gifts are granted only
to the righteous Israelite sage or his forebears, who is then able to dispense the
and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLEJL 26; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2009).
39 ‫“ בינה‬insight” in Dan 2:21 connects to another facet of the “wisdom motifs” in the Aramaic
texts from Qumran, though it has not been discussed above. In texts such as the Genesis
Apocryphon, the Book of Watchers, and 4Q541 the hitpeʿal conjugation of ‫ בו״ן‬is used re-
peatedly to speak of proper understanding in visionary contexts.
resulting knowledge to others. In Daniel, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the

Aramaic Levi Document, revealed wisdom is passed on to foreign kings. In the
Book of Watchers and Book of Giants there seems to be a partial analogy in
Enoch conveying divine knowledge to the Watchers and/or giants.
As a final example from the Aramaic Qumran texts, 4Q204 1vi.9 (= 1 En.
14:1) preserves the highly germane opening to Enoch’s rebuke of the Watchers
in the Book of Watchers: [‫קושט‬
̇ ‫“ ספר מלי‬The book of the words of trut[h …”
This incipit is coordinated with the expression “[word]s of knowledge”
(‫ )[מל]י֯ מנדע‬in 4Q204 1vi1.2, and calls to mind Abram’s reading “the book of
the words of Enoch” before the Egyptian officials. In fact, we may perceive a
comparable scene between Enoch “speaking before” (‫ ;ומללת קודמיהון‬4Q204
1vi.7 = 1 En. 13:10) the Watchers his vision of “truth” (‫ )קושטא‬and rebuke, and
Abram “calling out/reading before” (‫ ;וקרית קודמיהון‬GenAp 19.25) the Egyptians
Enoch’s words.
4 The Big Picture: “Wisdom Motifs” in the Aramaic Texts from

Qumran and their Use in the Genesis Apocryphon
In this article I have endeavored to show that GenAp 6.1–6 and 19.23–31 are best
seen as particular instantiations of a distinctive wisdom tradition more widely
attested in the Jewish Aramaic literature of the Second Temple period. This
tradition permeates an estimable segment of the Aramaic literature from the
Qumran caves, expressed variously through a distinguishing set of concepts
and vocabulary. In fact, it comprises a robust system of thought closely inter-
twined with other motifs characteristic of this literature, such as the liberal use
of apocalyptic dream-visions and the recurring employment of court tales.40
Constituent of the tradition was a totalizing notion that there is a divinely-
patterned, “right” way of knowing and acting that holds sway over everything
40 I assume for the texts under study here a close relation between, and indeed the signifi-
cant obfuscation of, the traditional categories of “wisdom” and “apocalyptic” character-
istics. This is in keeping with a scholarly trend identifying “wisdom” and “apocalyptic” as
intellectual streams that cannot easily be distinguished in at least some literature of the
Second Temple period. The most vibrant locus for the exploration of this topic in recent
decades has been the Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Group of the Society of Biblical Literature, founded in 1994 as a “Consultation”. For some
of the results of the Group, including the influential essay of George W. E. Nickelsburg,
“Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism: Some Points for Discussion,” see Conflicted
Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism (ed. B. G. Wright III and L. Wills; Symposium
35; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005).
242 Machiela
from interpreting dreams to marriage practices, from writing to proper burial.41

There was one, licit way to attain knowledge of these heavenly ways, and that
was by divine disclosure to a worthy recipient, and of these there were very
few. For this reason, venerable figures like Enoch, Noah, Abram, Levi, and
Daniel were so very important: they were the righteous conduits through
which this wisdom was properly revealed to humans, more specifically to
Israel(or proto-Israel) and only thence to other nations such as Egypt and
Babylon.42 This focus on divine revelation accounts for the keen interest in
dream-visions—often symbolic, and thus requiring proper interpretation—
and the “mysteries” (‫ )רזין‬in the Aramaic literature. The network of terms and
concepts supporting the divinely-ordained, licit way of knowing and acting
included ‫“ קושט‬truth”, ‫“ חכמה‬wisdom”, ‫“ מנדע‬knowledge”, ‫(“ גבורה‬intellectual)
strength”, ‫“ ספר‬scribal skill”, ‫“ מוסר‬instruction”, and ‫“ נהור‬light”. It was but a
short step to present this as part of a dualistic, worldview-defining contrast
between two ways or paths (e.g., ‫“ ארח‬way”, ‫“ שביל‬path”, ‫“ הל״ך‬to walk”), with
the wrong path described by the terms ‫“ שקר‬deceit”, ‫“ חמס‬violence”, ‫“ באיש‬bad”,
and ‫“ חשוך‬dark”.
Moving back to the Genesis Apocryphon, we may now ask how this bigger
picture impacts our understanding of the expansive retellings at GenAp 6.1–6
and 19.23–31. There is no denying that the rewritten stories address interpre-
tive issues specific to the Hebrew text of Genesis, as Bernstein and others have
shown. However, at the same time we can appreciate how the author(s) deftly
pull Hebrew Genesis into alignment with the broader worldview of the Aramaic
literary tradition, to which the author(s) undoubtedly belonged. Noah and
Abram are portrayed as embodiments of the revealed wisdom tradition also
expressed in works like the Epistle of Enoch, the Aramaic Levi Document, and
Daniel. Thus, while readers and hearers of the Apocryphon would presumably
have appreciated the resolution of various interpretive issues in the Hebrew
text of Genesis, they also would come to the knowledge of Noah and Abram
as important players in a grand divine plan first revealed to Enoch and passed
on to his righteous descendants, in which the Lord of Heaven laid down a true,
41 Lange (“ ‘So I Girded My Loins in the Vision of Righteousness and Wisdom, in the Robe of
Supplication,’ ” 37) partially captures this in his characterization of “‫ קושט‬as a basic qual-
ity inherent in the universe.”
42 The grave error of the Watchers in the Enoch texts was their improper disclosure of the
heavenly mysteries; in addition to the knowledge itself, the bearer(s) of the message obvi-
ously mattered a great deal. This very point has been made recently in a helpful article by
Michael E. Stone, “Enoch and The Fall of the Angels: Teaching and Status,” DSD 22 (2015):
342–57.
wise pattern for human knowing and acting, a pattern that defined how the
hearers should know and act in their own time and place. In Noah’s case, the
Aramaic wisdom tradition frames what is meant by ‫איש צדיק תמים היה בדורותיו‬
in Gen 6:9. Consequently, we should not see the word ‫ קושט‬in GenAp 6.1–6 as
a straightforward translation of ‫צדיק‬, but rather as a heavily-freighted concept
tying Noah to a wider, deeper stream of revealed wisdom. The same is true for
Abram: from reading the Hebrew Genesis we would never deduce a strong line
of intellectual and ethical continuity from Enoch to Noah to Abram, but it is
precisely these links that are forged in the rewritten account of the Genesis
Apocryphon.43
5 Whence the “Wisdom Motifs” in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran?
In conclusion, I would like to suggest some possible sources of inspiration

for the specific “wisdom motifs” and broader revealed wisdom tradition dis-
cussed above. In doing so, it seems best to remain circumspect in any attempt
to isolate specific influences, since there is always a temptation to focus on one
source to the exclusion of others, or to posit lines of influence that are surely
overly simplistic given the many gaps in our knowledge. Consequently, I un-
derstand the texts referenced in the ensuing discussion as reflective of a basic
conceptual framework and vocabulary, and not necessarily as having a direct
influence on the authors of the Aramaic texts (though direct influence surely
remains possible).44 I also begin from the self-evident fact that the Aramaic
literature preserved around Qumran was deeply, though not exclusively, in-
debted in vocabulary and patterns of thought to the earlier Hebrew writings of
Israel, many of which were later canonized in the Hebrew Bible.
43 Though I have chosen not to deal with the question in any depth here, it may be observed
that the Aramaic wisdom tradition exerted an influence on subsequent literature, much
of it written in Hebrew. This would include Dan 1:17, which may in fact be a Hebrew trans-
lation from Aramaic, and Jub. 4:17. The latter, in my opinion, postdates the bulk of our
Aramaic literature, anthologizing and domesticating some parts of the Aramaic tradition
within a more mosaically-focused, Hebrew framework (on this point I find unconvincing
the arguments of Kugel, followed by Bernstein, who considers the Genesis Apocryphon to
draw on Jubilees). Another obvious inheritor of parts of the Aramaic wisdom tradition is
the Hebrew sectarian (likely Essene) literature from Qumran.
44 The Qumran copies of books that would later comprise the biblical canon have taught
us that we must keep open the possibility that the author knew something slightly (and,
occasionally, significantly) different than the traditions fixed in our major versions, and
that knowledge of these traditions could have been written, oral, or both.
244 Machiela
Keeping these caveats in mind, there is a distinctive strand of “wisdom”

thought in the Hebrew Bible that bears a striking resemblance to the “wis-
dom motifs” in the Aramaic texts from Qumran, represented especially by the
early chapters of Proverbs and a handful of compositions from the book of
Psalms. Most of the latter have been included under the category of “wisdom
psalms” since the form-critical work of Hermann Gunkel.45 In what follows, I
focus only on one major motif of these texts: the dualistic presentation of two
types of person, one righteous and aligned with the ways of God, and the other
wicked, at odds with both the righteous and God. These two types are repeat-
edly portrayed as walking on paths or ways, indicative of one’s ethical quality
vis-à-vis God’s established order and commandments. The two ways are also
identified with light and dark, and several of the other vocabulary items cen-
tral to the “wisdom motifs” of the Aramaic Qumran texts.
A number of psalms build on the basic metaphor of two types of person
identified with two paths, a few representative examples being Pss 1, 37, and
119. Framed as an extended ethical injunction, the acrostic Ps 37 enjoins hear-
ers to stand apart from the “doers of evil” (37:1) and “the wicked … the enemies
of the Lord” (37:20), choosing instead to “do good” (37:3) and identify with the
righteous ones (37:16–17). At several junctures this is coordinated with the no-
tion of walking either a good, righteous path (‫ )דרך‬or a wicked one (37:5–7,
14, 23, 34; cf. 37:31).46 In 37:6, the way of the one who relies on God is identi-
fied with light, “And your righteousness will emerge as a light, and your jus-
tice as the midday” (‫)והוציא כאור צדקך ומשפטך כצהרים‬. Finally, in 37:30–31 the
righteous person (‫ )צדיק‬is described as one who meditates on wisdom (‫יהגה‬
‫)חכמה‬, speaks justice (‫)לשונו תדבר משפט‬, and carries the teaching of God in
his heart (‫להיו בלבו‬-‫)תורת א‬. Psalm 1 provides an even starker distinction be-
tween the righteous and the wicked, opening in 1:1 with the images of walking
(‫ )הל״ך‬and avoiding “the path of sinners” (‫)דרך חטאים‬. The metaphor returns in
the psalm’s final verse (1:6), which contrasts the “path of the righteous” (‫דרך‬
‫ )צדיקים‬with the “path of the wicked” (‫)דרך רשעים‬, along with their divergent
45 A helpful survey of the category “wisdom psalms,” along with the controversies attending
it, is provided in the recent study by Simon C. Cheung, Wisdom Intoned: A Reappraisal
of the Genre ‘Wisdom Psalms’ (LHB/OT 613; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 2–16.
Suffice it to say, this has been a heavily disputed categorization.
46 While it is true that the Hebrew noun ‫ ֶד ֶרְך‬can refer metaphorically to one’s “manner” or
“conduct”, this simply proves the cogency of the path/walking metaphor, and does not
take away the implication of a path or way being in view, readily available to those hear-
ing or reusing the idea. The same metaphorical ambiguity applies to the relevant words
(primarily ‫ )ארח‬in the Aramaic texts discussed in this article.
fates. Psalm 119 is suffused with the metaphor of walking a path, frequently
using the noun ‫ ארח‬in addition to ‫דרך‬. This includes positive injunctions (“I will
pay careful attention to your ways” [‫ ;]ואביטה ארחתיך‬119:15), but also twice the
negative “every way of deceit” (‫ ;כל ארח שקר‬119:104, 128), which is to be treated
with contempt. A connection with knowledge and teaching is made more ex-
plicit in Ps 25:4, “Your paths, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your ways”
(‫)דרכיך ה‍׳ הודיעני ארחותיך למדני‬, while in Ps 27:11–12 a similar image is con-
trasted with the now-familiar merism ‫חמס‬/‫שקר‬, “Teach me, O Lord, your path,
and lead me in the straight way … for witnesses of deceit have risen against me,
and he who breathes violence” (‫… כי קמו בי עדי‬ ‫הורני ה׳ דרכך ונחני בארח מישור‬
‫)שקר ויפח חמס‬. It is worth noting that this is one of only two attestations of this
merism in the Hebrew Bible.47
A very similar set of metaphors underlies Prov 1–9, though these chapters
are marked by some additional elements.48 The most well-known is the dis-
tinctive portrayal of the two ways as linked closely to two women, one em-
bodying wisdom (‫ ;חכמה‬1:20–33; 3:13–18; 4:5–9; 8:1–9:12) while the other is
“strange” or “foreign” (‫ ;זרה‬2:16–19; 5:3–14; 7:5–27; 9:13–18). In keeping with this
imagery, the word and concept of ‫ חכמה‬is much more central in Proverbs than
in Psalms, constituting the chief motif of these chapters, while being sup-
ported by a cache of related terms such as ‫“ מוסר‬instruction”, ‫“ דעת‬knowledge”,
‫“ בינה‬understanding”, ‫“ שכל‬insight”, ‫“ צדק‬righteousness”, ‫“ משפט‬justice”, ‫מישרים‬
“equity”, and ‫“ יראת ה׳‬fear of the Lord”. Together, these terms gesture towards
an expansive idea apparently too profound to be captured by any one word
alone.49 The metaphor of walking paths is very common in these chapters, and
is in several places fused together with the two women (cf. 5:4–6; 7:25, 27).
Good examples of the path metaphor’s use are found in 2:20, “So that you may
walk on a good path, and keep to righteous ways” (‫למען תלך בדרך טובים וארחות‬
‫)צדיקים תשמר‬, and 4:14, “Onto the way of evildoers do not enter, and do not ad-
vance onto the path of the wicked” (‫)בארח רשעים אל תבא ואל תאשר בדרך רעים‬.
Less often the paths are explicitly connected with light and darkness, as in 2:13,
“Those abandoning the ways of uprightness, to walk in the paths of darkness”
(‫)העזבים ארחות ישר ללכת בדרכי חשך‬, and 4:18, “The way of the righteous shines
like a light, getting ever brighter until the day is established” (‫וארח צדיקים כאור‬
‫)נגה הולך ואור עד נכון היום‬.
47 The other is at Mic 6:12, using the reverse order of ‫ חמס‬and ‫שקר‬.
48 On the general outlook of these chapters see the helpful study of Raymond C. Van
Leeuwen, “Liminality and Worldview in Proverbs 1–9,” Semeia 50 (1990): 111–44.
49 See especially Prov 1:1–7, in which these terms are concentrated.
246 Machiela
The metaphors and language of Proverbs 1–9 and the psalms discussed
above—a group of texts intended to be representative rather than exhaustive—
are a likely source for the skeletal framework upon which the edifice of a vi-
brant new wisdom tradition was built in the Aramaic literature preserved at
Qumran, with the former lending the latter conceptual vision, core metaphors,
and vocabulary. It is significant, in this light, that a considerable number of the
Qumran Aramaic texts are either wholly or partly cast as teaching handed on
from fathers to children (including the testamentary literature), much as we
find in Proverbs. This generic similarity pertains especially to portions of the
literature attributed to Jacob, Benjamin, Levi, Qahat, and Amram, but also the
Epistle of Enoch and Tobit 4. To be sure, the Aramaic tradition is at the same
time something new, adding elements found nowhere in Proverbs or Psalms,
and re-signifying some existing elements. For example, ‫“ ספר‬scribal skill,”
which figures prominently in the Aramaic tradition and seems to have encom-
passed a range of intellectual and professional skills, is virtually non-existent
in the wisdom vocabulary of Proverbs and Psalms.50 The robust concept of
‫“ קשט‬truth”, which partially overlaps with the well-attested ‫“ צדק‬right, righ-
teous” in texts like Proverbs 1–9 and Psalm 119, also takes on a life of its own,
becoming a main staple of the Aramaic revealed wisdom tradition.51 As men-
tioned above, the metaphors of the biblical tradition have been repurposed
for a new, narrative literary context in which wisdom and truth are handed
along from fathers to children, presented both in concentrated blocks of pro-
verbial discourse (e.g., Epistle of Enoch, Aramaic Levi Document, Testament of
Qahat, and Tobit 4) and in more diffuse ways (e.g., Genesis Apocryphon, Book
of Watchers, Visions of Amram, Daniel, Birth of Noah, and the Son of God Text).
Another very important component of this new literary context is the central
mode of revelation through dream-visions, which contributes to the decid-
edly eschatological hue of some “wisdom motifs” in the Aramaic literature.52
Of course, we must also allow for other influences, both “biblical” and “non-
biblical”. In the latter category we ought to carefully consider the widely dis-
seminated Ahiqar narrative and proverbs, which may well have been a source
50 On this word and its Mesopotamian background, see Drawnel, An Aramaic Wisdom Text,
328–33. The root does occur in Ps 119:13, perhaps with some of the connotations of the
term as later used in the Aramaic texts.
51 Though note the saying in Prov 22:21, ‫להודיעך קשט אמרי אמת‬.
52 On the nature and function of dream-visions in the Aramaic literature, see now Andrew B.
Perrin, The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Revelation in the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls (JAJSup
19; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
of inspiration for some generic features of the Qumran Aramaic literature.53

For example, Ahiqar narrates his story in the first person, and includes as part
of his discourse a long section of proverbial wisdom teaching. Nouns promi-
nent in the Qumran Aramaic wisdom tradition also appear with similar mean-
ings in Ahiqar, notably the word ‫“ ספר‬scribal skill”.
Moshe Bernstein continues to be an expert guide in showing us how the
authors of texts like the Genesis Apocryphon interpreted, rewrote, and oth-
erwise reused their received scriptural heritage. In this article, dedicated to
Moshe with deep respect and appreciation, I have worked to further illumine
and contextualize two remarkably creative sites of rewriting Genesis in GenAp
6.1–6 and 19.23–31. In the process, I hope to have raised awareness of a vibrant,
distinctive “wisdom” tradition in Second Temple period Jewish Aramaic litera-
ture, a tradition in which the Genesis Apocryphon participated, and to which
it contributed.
53 For the Aramaic text and relevant bibliography see Die alt- und reichsaramäischen
Inschriften/The Old and Imperial Inscriptions. Band 2: Texte und Bibliographie (ed.
D. Schwiderski; FoSub 2; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 83–90.
chapter 12
On the Paucity of Biblical Exemplars in Sectarian

Texts
Tzvi Novick
In a recent article, the esteemed honoree of this Festschrift observed that

the patriarchs as characters appear to have aroused little interest among the
Qumran sectarians.
[T]here is almost no attempt to characterize them or develop their per-

sonalities beyond the biblical descriptions. To the contrary, they are flat-
tened, with the result that they are no longer seen as people…. They are
significant for what they represent, but their rich biblical stories play al-
most no role in the literature of Qumran.1
This conclusion seems to me unassailable. The only texts among the scrolls
that evince genuine interest in the patriarchs’ personalities—first and fore-
most the Genesis Apocryphon, notably in Aramaic—are not sectarian. The aim
of this brief essay is to expand on and explain Bernstein’s finding: to defend
the claim that the Qumran sect had remarkably little interest in any biblical
character qua character, and to identify the features of the sect’s ideology that
suppressed the development of such an interest.
Different considerations might lead an individual or group to devote atten-
tion to biblical characters. In the case of Philo, the chief motivation is ethical:
The individuals depicted in the Pentateuch offer insight into the soul’s progress
toward perfection, and the stumbling blocks along this path. They represent,
in other words, positive and negative exemplars. Ben Sira shares this inter-
est, as when he implicitly reads the story of Nabal for its insight into friend-
ship, and that of Cain for a lesson about the value of marriage.2 The litany of
1 Moshe J. Bernstein, “Where are the Patriarchs in the Literature from Qumran?” in Rewriting
and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls
(ed. D. Dimant and R. G. Kratz; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 71–72.
2 On Ben Sira’s use of the Nabal story see Jeremy Corley, Ben Sira’s Teaching on Friendship
(Providence: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 52. Note that in Sir 6:9, ms C has ‫תחשוך‬
rather than ‫תחשוף‬, as in ms A and in the Vorlage of the Greek. While Shulamit Elizur (“Two
On the Paucity of Biblical Exemplars in Sectarian Texts 249
great men near the end of Ben Sira’s book introduces a second motive: praise
of Israel’s ancestors, which redounds in turn to Israel’s praise. This motive
emerges from the opening line (Sir 44:1), in which Ben Sira sets out to praise
“men of faithfulness (‫)אנשי חסד‬, our fathers in their generations.”3 The “men of
faithfulness” are noteworthy, or especially noteworthy insofar as they are “our
fathers.” Sirach’s interest in the biblical personalities is thus as much national
as ethical. But the national and ethical perspectives are hardly separable in
Sirach, or in many other Second Temple texts, and in the analysis below I will
make no effort to distinguish between them. Using the category of exemplarity
loosely, to encompass all uses of biblical figures that manifest explicit interest
in their deeds and personalities, in contrast with, for example, a reference to
the “Torah of Moses” that has nothing to say about Moses per se, or a mention
of an incident in Abraham’s life that is chiefly concerned with the chronology
of the incident rather than with Abraham’s behavior therein, we may frame
the animating question thus: What role does exemplarity discourse play in the
formation of the sectarian self?4
A number of sectarian texts from Qumran, especially from the wisdom
genre to which Ben Sira and in a more abstract sense also Philo belong, em-
phasize in general terms the importance of attending to “the deeds of the
generations” (‫ )מעשי דור ודור‬or “things of old” (‫)קדמוניות‬.5 We get some insight
into what such attention might involve by considering passages that take up
specific individuals. Thus, for example, in the historical review at the begin-
ning of the Damascus Document (CD ii 14–iii 4), the speaker urges his audience
New Leaves of the Hebrew Version of Ben Sira,” DSD 17 [2010]: 22) is probably correct that
‫ תחשוך‬is a corrupted form, it is striking that 1 Sam 25:39, to which Sir 6:9 alludes, in fact
contains a form of the root ‫חש"ך‬. The role of the Cain story in Sir 36:29–31 has not, to my
knowledge, been fully appreciated. In these verses, Sirach speaks of the “acquisition of a wife”
(msB: ‫ )קנה אשה‬as “the first acquisition” (‫)ראשית קנין‬, and of one’s wife as “fortified city”
(‫)עיר מבצר‬. One who is without a wife is a “wanderer” (‫ )נע ונד‬moving “from city to city”
(‫)מעיר אל עיר‬. While Prov 27:8 supplies some of the language, the more significant allusion
is, I venture, to Gen 4:12–17, where Cain is condemned to be a “wanderer” (‫)נע ונד‬, but then
settles in Nod, “knows” his previously unmentioned wife, and builds a “city” (‫)עיר‬.
3 The Hebrew is from ms B. The Masada manuscript preserves the ‫ א‬of ‫ אנשי‬and the word
‫חסד‬.
4 For multiple examples of “Torah of Moses” passages see James E. Bowley, “Moses in the Dead
Sea Scrolls: Living in the Shadow of God’s Anointed,” in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and
Interpretation (ed. P. W. Flint; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 159–81. For the Abraham
chronology example see Bernstein, “Where are the Patriarchs,” 53–54.
5 See the references and discussion in Menahem Kister, “Studies in 4QMiqṣat Maʿaśe Ha-Torah
and Related Texts: Law, Theology, Language and Calendar,” Tarbiz 68 (1998–99): 322 n. 16.
250 Novick
(“and now, sons,” a conventional wisdom vocative, as in Prov 5:7, 7:24, 8:32) to
consider the different fates of, on the one hand, the antediluvian giants, who
perished in their willfulness, and, on the other hand, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, who renounced their own will and were counted God’s friends. Another,
more subtle contrast comes in the head priest’s exhortation in the War Scroll
(1QM xvii 2–3), delivered after the sons of light have suffered casualties.
‫ואתמה זכורו משפט [נדב ו]אביהוא בני אהרון אשר התקדש אל במשפטם לעיני‬
‫[כול העם ואת אלעזר] ואיתמר החזיק לו לברית[ כהונת ]עולמים‬
And you, remember the judgment of [Nadab and] Abihu, the sons of
Aaron, through whose judgment God was sanctified to the eyes of [all
the people, and Eleazar] and Itamar he held fast to himself for a covenant
of eternal [priesthood].6
The exhortation is constructed upon Moses’ words of consolation delivered to

Aaron after the deaths of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10:3): “This is what the Lord
said: Through those near me I sanctify myself, and gain glory before all the
people.”7 The War Scroll implicitly applies this consolation to the Sons of Light
just killed, who thus become, like Nadab and Abihu, deserving of punishment
(objects of “judgment”), but also vehicles for the sanctification of God.8 At the
same time, the high priest boosts the confidence of the survivors by implicitly
comparing them to Eleazar and Itamar, who took the places of their brothers
Nadab and Abihu as vehicles for the priestly covenant.9
The injunction to “remember” recurs in a different exhortatory context, in
the epilogue of 4QMMT, in the context of reflections on the arc of national
history—blessings and curses and end of days—as described in the book of
6 All quotations from the Dead Sea scrolls come from Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls:
The Hebrew Writings (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2010–13), with omission of most editing
signs. The translations are mine.
7 The War Scroll replaces the preposition ‫“ בפני‬before” with ‫“ לעיני‬to the eyes of,” and construes
the instrumental phrase ‫“ בקרבי‬through those near me” to refer to the judgment of those
near God.
8 On the force of the comparison to Nadab and Abihu see Brian Schultz, Conquering the World:
The War Scroll (1QM) Reconsidered (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 123. On the probable use of Lev 10:3
in the context of martial exhortation see also Jdt 8:27. This passage supports the possibility
that Nadab and Abihu are not being deployed as wholly negative figures.
9 The words ‫ ברית[ כהונת ]עולמים‬are lifted (with one change) from Num 25:13, with reference
to Phineas’ son Eleazar, but Exod 40:15, where the phrase ‫“ כהנת עולם‬eternal priesthood”
occurs with reference to Aaron’s own sons, is also probably in the background.
Deuteronomy.10 The speaker uses biblical kings to pin down Deuteronomy’s

schema: blessings came during the reign of Solomon, and curses from Jeroboam
to Zedekiah. Most likely, the implicit assumption, which 4QMMT would share
with the books of Kings and Chronicles, is that the fate of the nation lies in the
hands of the king. This assumption would explain the pivot to the next part of
the epilogue, wherein the speaker uses the kings as exemplars.
‫זכור את מלכי ישרא[ל] והתבנן במעשיהמה שמי מהם שהיא ירא[ ממשפטי התו]רה‬
‫היה מצול מצרות והם מבקשי תורה [נשו]אי עון זכור [את] דויד שהיא איש חסדים‬
‫[ו]אף היא [נ]צל מצרות רבות ונסלוח לו‬
Remember the kings of Israe[l] and consider their deeds, for whoever
among them that feared [the judgments of the To]rah was saved from
straits, and they are seekers of Torah, [forgiven] for transgression.
Remember David, who was a man of faithfulness, and he too was saved
from many straits, and was forgiven.
The category of “straits” (‫ )צרות‬or “many straits” (‫ )צרות רבות‬is drawn from the
same verses in Deuteronomy (Deut 4:30; 31:17; 31:21) on which the epilogue as
a whole depends. The speaker urges the reader to remember, and evidently
imitate, both the good kings in general, and specifically David. A reference to
the forgiving of David occurs in the aforementioned historical preface in the
Damascus Document (CD v 2–6), but incidentally, in defense of his apparent
violation of the rule against polygamy. While it is possible that the reference is
also incidental in 4QMMT, and that the main interest in David lies in the fact
that he, like other righteous kings, was saved on account of his piety, the very
fact that he is singled out suggests that the speaker means to distinguish him
as forgiven, and implicitly to offer David as a model for the text’s addressee,
whose conduct the speaker hopes to reform. Against this interpretation, we
may note that the grouping of David with the other kings of Israel, without
any categorical distinction between them, occurs elsewhere at Qumran, in an-
other speech from the War Scroll (1QM xi 1–3). In this speech, not an exhorta-
tion but a prayer, the priest remarks that David was victorious “many times”
(‫ )פעמים רבות‬when he fought against the Philistines in God’s name, “and you
also saved us many times” (‫“ )פעמים רבות‬by the hands of our kings” (‫)ביד מלכינו‬.11
10 On the epilogue see generally Hanne von Weissenberg, 4QMMT: Reevaluating the Text,
the Function, and the Meaning of the Epilogue (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
11 The phrase ‫ פעמים רבות‬also occurs in Ps 106:43, and in the context of the same claim:
God saved Israel many times despite their sins. On the pairing of David and the kings
252 Novick
A link between the exemplars in 4QMMT and Ben Sira’s litany of great men
is possible. While Ben Sira’s avowed aim is to praise pious men, he makes an
exception for kings, to condemn Solomon, Rehoboam, and most aggressively
Jeroboam for their sins (Sir 47:23–25), and to contend (Sir 49:4–5) that, aside
from David, Hezekiah, and Josiah, all of the kings of Judah were wicked. In his
profile of David, Ben Sira makes reference to David’s forgiveness (Sir 47:11).12
And as 4QMMT characterizes David as a “man of faithfulness” (‫)איש חסדים‬, so
Ben Sira, in the line quoted above, speaks of his subject as “men of faithfulness”
(‫)אנשי חסד‬.
There is one other individual identified in the Dead Sea scrolls as a “man of
faithfulness” (‫)איש חסדים‬, namely Moses, in 4Q377 1 ii 12.13 This text is striking
for its extravagant praise of Moses, who is also identified as God’s anointed
(‫ ;משיחו‬4Q377 1 ii 5) and as “a man of God” (‫ ;איש האלוהים‬4Q377 1 ii 10).14 There
is nothing distinctively sectarian about 4Q377, and the use of the more or less
the same moniker in 4QMMT, 4Q377, and Ben Sira supports the suggestion
that 4QMMT participates in a biblical exemplarity discourse that we find out-
side the sectarian context. The terminological evidence for a specific link to
Ben Sira is slender: the phrase in Ben Sira is not precisely the same as that in
4QMMT and 4Q377, and there is a biblical basis both for use of the phrase
(in the form attested in Ben Sira) as a general category and for its specific ap-
plication (in other forms) to David and Moses.15 But the general resemblance
between the use of biblical exemplars in, on the one hand, 4QMMT, as well
see also 2 Macc 2:13 (“and those [compositions?] of David, and letters of kings about holy
things”), especially on the interpretation of “those of David” advanced in Eva Mroczek,
“The Hegemony of the Biblical in the Study of Second Temple Literature,” JAJ 6 (2015):
26–29.
12 Chronicles looks at David from a similar perspective. See Gary K. Knoppers, “Images of
David in Early Judaism: David as Repentant Sinner in Chronicles,” Bib 76 (1995): 449–70.
13 Earlier in the same text, in 4Q377 1 i 8, he is ‫איש החשידים‬, perhaps “a man among the
faithful ones.”
14 Outside of Moses, the term “man of God” is used in the Dead Sea scrolls only once, in
4Q384 24 a+b 4, where the reference is to the author of a psalm, and thus, notably, per-
haps to David. On this passage, and on the typological link between Moses and David in
late biblical texts, see Alex Jassen, Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the
Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 111–13, 119–21.
15 For the general category see Isa 57:1 (‫ )אנשי חסד‬and Prov 17:11 (‫)איש חסד‬. See also Prov
20:6 (‫)איש חסדו‬. The application to Moses may be based on Deut 33:8, where the bless-
ing of Levi refers to ‫איש חסידך‬. See Ariel Feldman, “The Sinai Revelation According to
4Q377 (Apocryphal Pentateuch B),” DSD 18 (2011): 168 n. 48. Inspiration from the applica-
tion to David may have come from Isa 55:3 and/or 2 Chr 6:42. See Moshe J. Bernstein, “The
Employment and Interpretation of Scripture in 4QMMT: Preliminary Observations,” in
as CD and 1QM, and, on the other hand, Ben Sira, as well as other roughly
contemporaneous texts entirely extraneous to the sect and its precursors, is
unmistakable.16
While the above passages thus attest to the willingness of sectarian authors
to employ biblical figures as exemplars, especially in exhortatory contexts,
such cases are relatively rare. They are also relatively superficial. The phrase
“many times” (‫ )פעמים רבות‬in the War Scroll prayer echoes the phrase “many
straits” (‫ )צרות רבות‬in the MMT epilogue, and both alike attest to the level of
generality at work even in references to specific individuals. With the partial
exception of David, no effort is made to enter into the personality or motives
of the biblical figures in a way that might allow them to serve as heroes or vil-
lains, or as exemplars of anything other than the principle that God punishes
wickedness and rewards good.
The same lack of engagement is evident in the dissociation of biblical
phrases from the characters with whom they are in origin bound up, so that
they cease to carry allusive force. Consider, for example, the collocation ‫צדקה‬
‫“ ומשפט‬righteousness and justice,” whose reception history in Second Temple
literature has been traced by Menahem Kister.17 The collocation originates in
Gen 18:19, wherein God reflects that Abraham will “instruct his children and his
household after him that they may keep the path of the Lord, to do righteous-
ness and justice.” The book of Jubilees thus imagines Abraham, in his last testa-
ment, instructing his offspring to do righteousness and justice, and Isaac does
the same (Jub 20:2–10; 36:3–4). Likewise, in the Testament of Qohath (4Q542),
an Aramaic work discovered at Qumran, Qohath importunes his children thus:
] ‫… ירות[תא‬ ‫אחדו בממר דיעקוב אבוכון ואתקפו בדיני אברהם ובצדקת לוי ודילי‬
‫די שבקו לכון אבהתכון קושטא וצדקתא וישירותא ותמימותא ודכ[ותא וק]ודשא‬
‫וכה[ו]נתא‬
Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History (ed. John Kampen and
Moshe Bernstein; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 35.
16 Notably, in 1 Macc 2:57, Mattathias, in his review of biblical heroes in his deathbed exhor-
tation, assigns to most heroes a virtue—to Abraham and to Daniel’s friends, belief (pistos);
to Phineas and Elijah, zeal; to Daniel, “simplicity” (Gk. haplotētiautou, i.e., ‫—)תומו‬and
when he comes to David, he speaks of “his mercy” (Gk. eleeiautou, almost certainly re-
flecting Heb. ‫)חסדו‬: “David, by his mercy, inherited the throne of kingship forever.” See
also Jdt 8:27, cited in n. 8 above. On the relationship between CD II–III and the various
exemplar lists in Hellenistic Jewish works see Andrew T. Glicksman, Wisdom of Solomon
10: A Hellenistic Jewish Reinterpretation of Early Israelite History Through a Sapiential Lens
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 196–209, esp. 206–7.
17 Menahem Kister, “Commentary to 4Q298,” JQR 85 (1994): 245–49.
254 Novick
Hold fast to the word of Jacob your father, and grasp tightly the judgments
of Abraham and the righteousness of Levi and of me … the inheri[tance]
that your fathers left you: truth and righteousness and honesty and per-
fection and pur[ity and ho]liness and prie[s]thood.18
Kister notes that the collocation “righteousness and truth” is very prominent
in sectarian texts, indeed, that it represents a “central formula in the self-
definition of the Qumran sect.”19 What is striking, however, is that the sectarian
texts never, to my knowledge, associate the collocation with Abraham or with
any other forebear. The collocation thus seems no longer to evoke Abraham as
an exemplar. The allusion has, as it were, been “scrubbed” from the collocation.20
Marginalization of biblical exemplarity discourse occurs also, to a lesser ex-
tent, in the apocalyptic circles that preceded the Qumran sect. Thus, for exam-
ple, in comparison with the Aramaic Visions of Amram (4Q543–549), Jubilees
has little use for Amram as an exemplar of marital fidelity and filial loyalty, and
instead employs the narrative mainly to solve a chronological problem.21 But
Jubilees is, of course, dense with narratives and testaments that showcase the
righteousness of the patriarchs and the wickedness of various foils. Biblical
exemplarity discourse also becomes muted in the Temple Scroll, which rewrites
Deuteronomy so that Moses’ testamentary voice is displaced by God’s com-
manding voice.22
It is important to qualify the above claims with two observations. First, texts
in which biblical exemplars loom large—the Genesis Apocryphon, for example,
and Jubilees—were preserved by the Qumran sect, and in some cases clearly
18 The translation is mine. The text is from Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, ed., The Dead
Sea Scrolls Reader, Part 3: Parabiblical Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 566, with some typo-
graphical simplifications.
19 Kister, “Commentary to 4Q298,” 245.
20 For identification of “righteousness and justice” (under the moniker “piety/kindness”
[‫ )]חסד‬with Abraham in the rabbinic corpus, see, e.g., b. Ket. 8a: “Our brothers, bestowers
of kindness (‫)גומלי חסדים‬, sons of bestowers of kindness, who hold fast to the covenant
of Abraham our father!”.
21 See James C. VanderKam, “Jubilees 46:6–47:1 and 4QVisions of Amram,” DSD 17 (2010): 158;
Cana Werman, “The Book of Jubilees and its Aramaic Sources,” Meghillot 8–9 (2010): 157.
VanderKam suggests that the difference is bound up with genre: Jubilees is not a testa-
ment (although it includes many).
22 On the relationship between Jubilees and the Temple Scroll to the Qumran sect see es-
pecially Devorah Dimant, “Criteria for Identification of Qumran Sectarian Texts,” in The
Qumran Scrolls and Their World (ed. Menahem Kister; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2009),
82–85.
represented objects of study. Second, the relatively marginal role of biblical

exemplarity discourse in sectarian texts is at least to some extent a function of
our classificatory tools: we are most confident that a text is sectarian when it is
about the sect, hence, almost necessarily, not about the biblical past. Despite
these qualifications, the absence we have marked appears to be real, and note-
worthy. To what may we attribute the relatively minimal role of biblical ex-
emplarity discourse in sectarian texts (and to some extent, among the sect’s
forbears)?
One factor is the importance of law for the sect. While a “realist” concep-
tion of the law, of the sort favored by the Qumranites, is more compatible
with exemplarity discourse than the “nominalist” one that came to dominate
among the rabbis, legal normativity is in general rather less compatible with
robust exemplarity discourse than are many non-legal (e.g., virtue-centered)
normativities.23 Another, more important factor is the apocalyptic character
of the Qumran sect. The apocalyptic framework diminishes the significance of
the distant past in favor of, on the one hand, the primordial past, and, on the
other hand, the present or recent past. The displacement of the distant past
by the recent past becomes more pronounced in the sectarian context, which
marginalizes the shared national heritage in favor of the sect’s own history, and
the biblical narrative’s heroes and villains in favor of those specific to the sect.24
Analogously, at the level of literary production, pesher, which aims to find the
sect’s history in Scripture, emerges at the expense of rewritten Scripture. The
equivalent of pesher in the legal field is the Qumranites’ conception of con-
tinuous revelation of the law, where laws are “revealed” to later generations
23 The foundational article on the contrast between the Qumranites’ realism and the rab-
bis’ nominalism is Daniel R. Schwartz, “Law and Truth: On Qumran-Sadducean and
Rabbinic Views of the Laws,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (ed. Devorah
Dimant and Uriel Rappaport; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 229–40. On law and exemplarity in rab-
binic literature see Tzvi Novick, “Etiquette and Exemplarity in Judaism,” in Character: New
Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology (ed. Christian Miller et al.; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 522–37.
24 For the maskil as “one that embodies the values of the sect in a particularly pronounced
fashion,” see Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and
Community at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 173. Likewise, whereas in pre-sectarian apoca-
lypses, a biblical figure is employed as the vehicle of revelation, in the sectarian context
it is the Teacher of Righteousness who exposes the logic of history. See Devorah Dimant,
“Apocalyptic and the Qumran Library” (forthcoming).
256 Novick
that were “concealed” from earlier ones.25 The latter conception, too, insofar as
it makes the sect more knowledgeable about the law than were the heroes of
the biblical past, diminishes their exemplary power.26
25 On the parallel between pesher exegesis and the revelation of concealed laws see Devorah
Dimant, “Temps, Torah et Prophétie à Qoumrân,” in Le Temps et les Temps dans les
literatures juives et chrétiennes au tournant de notreère (ed. Christian Grappe and Jean-
Claude Ingelaere; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 147–67.
26 Cf. Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Patriarchs and Halakhah in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in
Rewriting and Interpreting, 251–62. Schiffman observes that only in pre-sectarian texts
like Jubilees do we find sustained attempts to establish that the patriarchs observed
the law.
chapter 13
The Mikhbar in the Temple Scroll

Lawrence H. Schiffman
The difficulties of reconstructing the early columns of the Temple Scroll (11QTa)
are formidable. Among those passages never satisfactorily reconstructed or
explained is 11QTa 3:15–17, dealing with the mikhbar, a kind of grating that is
part of the altar. Previous restorations were insufficient for reaching an under-
standing of this text. Nonetheless, building upon the outstanding scholarship
of Yigael Yadin1 and Elisha Qimron,2 together with my former students Andrew
Gross of Catholic University and Michael Rand of Cambridge University, I re-
constructed this text as follows:3
‫) [יהיו נחו]שת טהור והמכבר א[שר] מלמעלה‬15( ]‫וכול מזבח העול[ה וכול כליו‬
‫) [על מזב]ח‬17( ]… ‫) וכנו יהיו נחושת מ[רוק כמראות] לראות פ[נים‬16( ‫לו והכיור‬
]‫נחושת ברור [ מחושק בכ]סף ומס[גרת נחושת‬
And the entire altar of the burnt offerin[g and all its vessels] (15) [must
be of] pure [bro]nze. And the grating th[at] is above i[t, and the laver]
(16) [and its stand shall be ma]de of b[urnished] bronze [like the mir-
rors], in order to see f[aces …] (17) [upon the alta]r (which is) [polished]
bro[nze,4 overlaid with silv]er and a [copper] fra[me].5
1 Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (rev. ed. 3 vols. and suppl.; Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration
Society and the Shrine of the Book, 1983).
2 Elisha Qimron, The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions (Beersheva
and Jerusalem: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Israel Exploration Society, 1996);
idem, Megillot Midbar Yehudah: ha-Ḥiburim ha-ʿIvriyim [The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew
Writings] volume 1, Between Bible and Mishnah (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2010), 142.
3 Lawrence H. Schiffman, Andrew D. Gross and Michael C. Rand et al., Temple Scroll and Related
Documents, vol. 7 of The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English
Translations (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2011), 18, 270. This restoration has since been revised. Underlined words are
preserved in 11Q21 frg. 1 1–3 in Florentino García Martínez, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, and Adam
S. van der Woude, eds., Qumran Cave 11.II: 11Q2–18, 11Q20–31 (DJD 23; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998),
411–12.
4 Literally, “purified,” as noted below.
5 Abraham J. Berkovitz assisted with the translation.
258 Schiffman
The present paper seeks to deal in detail with this passage and to understand it
within the framework of ancient exegesis regarding the mikhbar.6
Before entering into further discussion, we want to clarify one aspect of our
translation, namely, our use of the word “bronze” to translate Hebrew neḥoshet,
rather than “copper.” By the time the Pentateuchal Tabernacle Texts were re-
redacted in the Temple Scroll, metallurgical knowledge had advanced through-
out the ancient Near East such that bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, had
spread far and wide.7 Studies indicate that ancient bronze was compounded
with different amounts of tin, depending on the required hardness and the
availability of the metals.8 Given the softness of copper and the much greater
durability of bronze, it is very clear that the sources with which we work use
Hebrew neḥoshet to designate bronze, not copper.9 In fact, there were a wide
variety of bronzes, several of which are mentioned in our Temple Scroll text.10
This is because both for metallurgical and aesthetic reasons various types of
bronze were in use.
Another preliminary matter concerns the overall question of the altar or
altars that were located in the inner courtyard in front of the Temple building
according to the Temple Scroll. While this is a matter way too complex to be
discussed in the context of a paper on another subject, a few points must be
made: in Yadin’s plan of the inner court of the Temple Scroll,11 he shows one
altar in the courtyard, what we generally term the altar of burnt offering. At
the same time, in his discussion, he takes the view that the scroll expected
two separate outer altars (besides the incense altar inside the Temple itself), a
6 M. Mid. 3:1–4 that describes the altar of the pre-Herodian Temple does not describe a
bronze covering nor does it discuss the mikhbar at all.
7 Phillip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2001), 164–67; Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Metal Sources and Metallurgy in
the Biblical World,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (1993): 252–59; Juan M.
Tebes, “ ‘A Land Whose Stones are Iron, and Out of Whose Hills You Can Dig Copper’: The
Exploitation and Circulation of Copper in the Iron Age Negev and Edom,” DavarLogos 6
(2007): 69–91.
8 Cf. Fred V. Winnett, “Bronze,” IDB 1.467; Eric J. van der Steen, “Bronze,” NIDB 1.504–5.
9 Brass, despite the King James translation, did not exist at that time. It is an alloy of cop-
per and zinc. It may have been a synonym for bronze when the King James Bible was
translated.
10 See the list in Dov Ginzburg, “Exploitation and Uses of Metals in Ancient Israel According
to Biblical Sources and Commentaries,” Earth Sciences History 8 (1989): 47 who still calls it
“copper.”
11 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.206, Fig. 5.
The Mikhbar in the Temple Scroll 259
bronze altar discussed in column 3 and an altar of stones in column 12.12 The
notion that column 12 only concerns a stone altar is disproven by the correct
reading of the manuscript by E. Qimron.13 Column 12 mentions both an altar of
stones and an altar of bronze. What remains to be determined is whether what
is under discussion is two separate altars in front of the Temple building or,
rather, one altar of stone covered with bronze. Since the fundamental problem
faced by anyone trying to build a Temple based on biblical commands would
be whether the altar should be of earth, stone, or a wooden frame covered
with bronze, our author might be harmonizing these approaches by suggest-
ing a stone altar covered with bronze. Nonetheless, we cannot know for certain
what our author expected, even while we study one particular detail pertain-
ing to the bronze covered altar in column 3.
The key to understanding this passage will be to understand its biblical
background. In Exod 27:4, during a discussion of the construction of the bronze
(outer) altar, the Torah commands the making of a grating, termed a mikhbar,14
that is described as a bronze netting (reshet).15 The four corners of the grating
are to have four rings. Further, verse 5 tells us that the grating should be placed
below the edge (karkov)16 of the altar and should reach halfway down.17 The
purpose of the rings was to hold the poles with which the bronze altar was car-
ried. Exod 38:4 provides a list of all of the vessels of the bronze altar and then
proceeds to say that the mikhbar was indeed constructed out of bronze netting
and that it was located below the edge, extending halfway down the altar, ex-
actly as commanded in 27:4. Exod 38:5 describes the making of the four rings
12 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.239–42.

13 Qimron, Temple Scroll, 21.
14 This word alone is preserved in 4QpaleoGen–Exodl, frg. 40 (E. C. Ulrich, The Biblical
Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants [VTSup 134; Leiden: Brill, 2010], 90).
None of the other biblical passages that we discuss here is preserved in Qumran biblical
manuscripts.
15 Heger prefers to translate, “network.” See Paul Heger, The Three Biblical Altar Laws:
Developments in the Sacrificial Cult in Practice and Theology: Political and Economic
Background (BZAW 279; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), 14.
16 This is the translation of the Vulgate according to which the netting hung down from the
top to the middle of the altar, from the rim down (Heger, Three Biblical Altar Laws, 198).
17 On the karkov, see Heger, Three Biblical Altar Laws, 188–90 for a detailed survey of talmu-
dic interpretations. That the net reaches halfway down from the top of the altar is indeed
the talmudic interpretation. However, Cassuto sees it as covering the lower part of the
altar (Heger, 191–2). For further discussion of Cassuto’s theory about the altar and the
mikhbar, see Heger, 191–5. He successfully shows that this ingenious interpretation can-
not be sustained. For targumic interpretations, see Heger, 195.
260 Schiffman
on the four corners of the grating intended to hold the poles, and the construc-
tion of the poles is described in verse 6.18
In Exodus 35, Moses tells the people of Israel to collect the funds for building
the Tabernacle and its appurtenances. Listed in 35:16 is the altar of the burnt
offering, which is the same as the bronze altar discussed above. Along with it
are mentioned: its bronze grating, its poles, and all its vessels, the laver (kiyyor)
and its base. Exod 38:30 informs us that the bronze altar, its bronze grating and
all the vessels of the altar were constructed, and Exod 39:39 repeats the exact
list of 35:16.
The Septuagint translates the term mikhbar in Exod 27:4 with ἐσχάρα,
“hearth, brazier.” This hearth is to be made of bronze. We should note that this
Greek term is used extensively for a “sacrificial hearth” in descriptions of Greek
religious practice, especially for an altar used for burnt offerings.19 Yet in Exod
38:24 and 39:9, the Septuagint translated παράθεμα, “an appendage.”20 These
two terms in this context appear to refer to the same thing.21 The Septuagint
states that the four rings are made “for the hearth,” as opposed to the Masoretic
text where the rings are made on the netting.22
Josephus deals with the mikhbar in Ant. 3.149.23 He describes the bronze
altar, the frame of which was made of wood. This frame in turn was covered
with bronze plates. Especially interesting is his comment that the altar was dec-
orated with gold, in light of the similar feature of this altar in the Temple Scroll
where there was silver decoration. Josephus follows the view of the Septuagint
that understood the mikhbar with the Greek word ἐσχάρα, a term that as we
saw should be translated “hearth” or “brazier.”24 One gets the impression
18 This passage is preserved in 4Q365 Frg. 12a–b col. ii (DJD 13.279).
19 H. G. Liddell and R. Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. by H. S. Jones with R. McKenzie
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 699a.
20 Liddell and Scott, 1300b.
21 Heger, Three Biblical Altar Laws, 196. Cf. David W. Gooding, The Account of the Tabernacle:
Translation and Textual Problems of the Greek Exodus (Texts and Studies: Contributions to
Biblical and Patristic Literature 6; Cambridge: University Press, 1959), 35, 54–5.
22 Heger, Three Biblical Altar Laws, 187–8.
23 Philo only describes an altar of stones (Spec. Laws 1.274) and never deals with the bronze
altar.
24 Louis H. Feldman, Judean Antiquities 1–4 (Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary
3; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 271, translates as if this Greek word means “grating,” thus harmo-
nizing the Septuagint’s understanding of the mikhbar with the one talmudic view that
has been accepted as the literal meaning of the word. H. St. J. Thackeray (Josephus, Ant.
3.149) follows the Greek and translates “brazier,” while discussing the problem in his note
e (385).
from Josephus that he understood the purpose of the grating on the side of the
upper part of the altar, Hebrew reshet, to be to protect the wooden inside frame
of the altar from being burnt by whatever fell off, since he says that the ground
received whatever fell off the altar.25
The Targumim also can contribute to the understanding of this passage.26
Targum Onkelos translates mikhbar in Exod 27:4 as a grating (Aramaic sera-
da = “net, sieve”27), made of a netting (= Hebrew reshet). More importantly,
it translates karkov as the sovev, the gangway for priests to walk around the
altar, and understands the mikhbar as located below the sovev and covering
half of the sides of the altar. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translated mikhbar with
qanqil, a latticed screen or barrier, derived from Greek καγκέλλον.28 In explain-
ing 27:5, the Palestinian Targumim added one other very important detail: they
explained that the purpose of the grating/netting on the sides of the altar is to
catch any bone or burning coal that falls off the altar before it hits the ground,
so that it can be replaced on the altar. In order for this interpretation to make
sense, one must assume that the grating on the sides of the altar is arranged
horizontally so that it can catch what falls off the altar. As is the case with
Onkelos, the Palestinian Targum tradition also locates the mikhbar below the
gangway (sovev), reaching to the midpoint of the altar. This leaves us wonder-
ing whether according to targumic interpretation the top or bottom half of the
sides of the altar are covered.
Because of the Torah’s requirement that the grating extend from the top of
the altar down to a midpoint, later Jewish commentators wrestled with the text
of the Targumim to eliminate the difficulty posed by the statement that the
mikhbar was under the sovev, which was normally understood to be a gangway
that went around the bottom of the altar. This led them to postulate that this
bronze altar had a kind of walkway at the top close to the edge, designed to
make it possible for priests to walk around the altar without risk of falling off.
These commentators understood the grating to extend down from this upper
walkway to the middle of the sides of the altar. This made possible agreement
25 For this extremely difficult passage, see Thackeray, 385; Feldman, 271; and, Josephus,
Qadmoniyot ha-Yehudim (trans. and ed. A. Schalit; Jerusalem; Tel Aviv: Mossad Bialik,
1978), 1.88–89. It is apparent that Josephus did not accept the notion of some talmudic
rabbis and Aramaic translations that the karkov was a gangway on which priests could
circumambulate the altar.
26 Cf. Heger, Three Biblical Altar Laws, 186.
27 Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period
(Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990), 338a.
28 Sokoloff, Dictionary, 498a.
262 Schiffman
with the basic rabbinic assumption that the netting extended from the top of
the altar halfway down. Further, it allowed for the talmudic view that the net-
ting marked the halfway point for those offerings for which blood had to be
sprinkled on the top or bottom halves of the altar sides.29
Having examined this fundamental material pertaining to the grating of the
bronze (outer) altar, we will now take a look at the very specific wording of
our passage. The first clause (lines 14–15), regarding the requirement that the
altar be built of bronze, is not formulated in the words of a biblical quotation.
Rather, it states a requirement that is clear from Exod 27:1–2 where the build-
ing of the altar is commanded and Exod 38:1, a report of how the altar was actu-
ally built.30 In these passages we are told that the altar for burnt offerings is to
be covered with bronze after having been built out of acacia wood. Our author
has essentially moved this detail up from its position as a secondary fact and
turned it into a primary command as to the nature of the altar.
Our passage also specifies that all the vessels of the altar must be of bronze.
These vessels are specified in Exod 27:3 and 38:3 where we are also told that
they must be made of bronze. The vessels are: “pails for removing its ashes, as
well as its scrapers, basins, flesh hooks, and fire pans” (Exod 27:3, NJPS).31 The
term “pure bronze” (neḥoshet ṭahor) does not appear in the Bible and is prob-
ably based on zahav ṭahor, “pure gold.”32
Our text then proceeds to the mikhbar itself. We should first deal with the
word. The word mikhbar is one of a number of Hebrew nouns built on a puta-
tive biblical-period verb KBR that must have meant “intertwine” or “net,” or
something similar. Indeed, this root appears as a verb, meaning to sift (with
a sieve or other implement) in Mishnaic Hebrew33 and continues in verbal
usage in the Middle Ages.34 It is perfectly possible that the verb existed in bibli-
cal times and simply did not appear in the Bible. On the other hand, the verb in
the meaning “sift” might be a denominative verb derived from a noun meaning
“sieve,” itself originally derived from a verb that describes the process of mak-
ing a sieve or other netted device. Several biblical period nouns are derived
29 Heger, Three Biblical Altar Laws, 185–91.

30 Cf. 2 Chr 4:1 where the building of Solomon’s Temple is mentioned. There is no parallel in
1 Kings as there is no mention there of a bronze altar.
31 Although the language is not exact, the same items are specified in Exod 38:3.
32 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.8. Cf. the use of zahav ṭahor in Exod 25:11; 28:14; 30:3; 37:2; 39:15; all
in the Tabernacle texts in Exodus.
33 M. Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature
(New York: Judaica Press, 1992), 609b.
34 Eliezer Ben Yehuda, Milon ha-Lashon ha-ʿIvrit. 8 vols. (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1959),
2.2248a–b.
from this root. Kavir is something netted, a quilt or fly-net to protect against
insects; kevarah is a sieve; makber is a netted cloth or coverlet; mikhbar, our
term, is a grating or lattice work.
The grating is said in line 14 to be “above it.” Since we generally understand
the Temple Scroll to be based on exegesis of the Torah, this can refer to one of
two things. Either the view of the scroll is that the entire top of the altar is cov-
ered by the netting that then extends, as the Torah requires, half way down the
altar. Alternatively, “above it,” in an unusual usage of Hebrew lemaʿalah, would
mean “on the top part of its sides.” This second view is most likely in light of
Exod 38:4 that seems to cancel out the first interpretation, indicating that the
grating starts below the edge (karkov) of the altar.
That the laver and its base must be made of bronze is commanded in Exod
30:18. Its construction out of bronze is mentioned in Exod 35:16, 38:8 and
39:39.35 The scroll, however, provides that this must be a special type of bronze,
maruq (line 16). This type of bronze was used for the making of the vessels of
the Solomonic temple by Huram (= Hiram)36 according to 2 Chronicles 4:16.37
This term clearly refers to polished bronze that is shiny, and fits well with the
continuation of the sentence in the Temple Scroll. As restored, the Temple Scroll
passage goes on to say that the bronze must be as shiny as mirrors, so shiny that
anyone who looks into these vessels would be able to see his or her face.38 The
seeing of one’s face is not reflective of a Temple practice. Rather it is intended
as a description of the quality of the metal.
The Hebrew term for mirror, singular marʾah, plural marʾot, appears only
once in the biblical Tabernacle Texts. Exod 38:8 indicates that the laver and its
base were made out of a specific supply of bronze, namely that which came,
in the translation of NJPS, “from the mirrors of the women who perform tasks
(a note states: Meaning of Hebrew uncertain) at the entrance of the Tent of
Meeting.” Accordingly, the Temple Scroll mandates that the laver and its base
be made in exactly the same way as the Torah informs us it was made in Exodus
38, namely of very shiny burnished bronze.
The syntax now becomes very difficult. It seems, however, that from the
words “upon the altar” to the end of the passage that we are discussing, we
35 Cf. 1 Kings 7:38 and 2 Chr 6:13.

36 For the use of “father” as his honorific, see 2 Chr 2:12.
37 On the use of neḥoshet as a masculine noun, see Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.8. This phrase is
also used in 1QM 5:4, where a feminine adjective modifies the noun. See Y. Yadin, The
Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (trans. B. and C. Rabin;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 280 (commentary).
38 This seems to be the view of Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.9.
264 Schiffman
have returned to a description of the mikhbar, the grating that is the object
of this study. We cannot tell if it is on top of the altar or only on the sides, as
understood by the rabbis. It is to be placed upon the bronze altar and we hear
that the nature of the bronze is again a special quality, described as neḥoshet
barur, “purified bronze.”39 One presumes that the metal used for the cover of
the altar would be an even finer quality of metal than the burnished bronze of
the laver and its base.
At the conclusion of our passage, there comes a difficult section, the words
“overlaid with silv]er and a [bronze] fra[me].” It is difficult exactly to deter-
mine to what these words refer, to the altar, to the grating, or to the laver and
its base. Just reading the sentence, it seems most likely to apply to the altar.
Several biblical passages refer to a misgeret, a “rim” (NJPS), that went around
the table for the showbread, inside of the actual Tabernacle (Exod 25:25, 27;
37:12, 14; cf. 1 Kgs 7:28). One can assume, therefore, that a similar rim was to
go around the bronze altar in the Temple plan of the Temple Scroll. If so, we
would be able to understand the term meḥushaq, referring to silver, in a way
similar to the manner in which it describes the poles that held up the curtains
of the desert Tabernacle. The term would describe these poles as being either
“banded” (NJPS) or inlaid with silver. If so, it would be speaking of a bronze
altar with a rim around the top, and with its bronze covering inlaid with silver.
All of this is perfectly possible, but cannot be definitely confirmed. Indeed, it
is possible that this rim, termed misgeret in the scroll, may be identical to the
biblical karkov that we discussed above.
Our study has assembled biblical materials pertaining to the mikhbar that
served as a basis for the Temple Scroll’s prescriptions regarding it. We also
brought together a substantial amount of Second Temple and talmudic in-
terpretation that helps to place the Temple Scroll’s material in column 3 in
perspective. We have successfully interpreted much of the Temple Scroll’s de-
scription of the bronze grating that surrounded the altar of bronze and cov-
ered the upper half of its sides. Yet this study has left us again convinced that
much of the Temple Scroll is and will remain an enigma, given its present state
of preservation and our knowledge of the law and exegesis of Second Temple
Jews. Nonetheless, we hope that this study, along with further research regard-
ing the altar or altars of the Temple Scroll, will successfully contribute to our
efforts to understand its temple plan and its system of biblical interpretation.
39 Cf. DCH 5.669.

chapter 14
Harmonization and Rewriting of Daniel 6 from the

Bible to Qumran
Michael Segal
The book of Daniel is of particular interest for those interested in the fields of
textual criticism, the literary development of biblical literature, early biblical
interpretation, and the Dead Sea scrolls, since the date that scholars assign for
the composition of the biblical book, the middle of the second century bce,
is extremely close chronologically to the textual evidence that we have for this
work in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This includes both 8–9 biblical scrolls1 and a num-
ber of compositions that are related to Daniel, whether as a rewriting of pas-
sages from the book, or even as a possible source for the biblical composition.2
Among the latter, the most prominent example is 4Q242, the Aramaic Prayer
of Nabonidus, which appears to reflect an earlier literary stage than the story
in Daniel 4, where it has been transformed into a tale about Daniel and
Nebuchadnezzar. Examples of the former, in which the Qumran compositions
reflect reuse of a form of the biblical book of Daniel, can be found in 4Q246,
the Aramaic Apocalypse of Daniel (or Son of God text), and in a quotation from
Daniel in 4Q174 (originally entitled Florilegium by Allegro, and subsequently
Eschatological Midrash by Steudel), which differs from all the textual witnesses
* It is a pleasure to dedicate this study as a tribute to Moshe Bernstein, a teacher, mentor, and
friend. This article was originally presented as a lecture in the framework of a special joint
session of the Qumran and Aramaic Studies sections, convened in Moshe’s honor, at the SBL
2015 Atlanta meeting.
1 For a discussion of the textual affiliations of these Qumran biblical scrolls, see Eugene C.
Ulrich, “Daniel” in idem et al. (eds.), Qumran Cave 4.XI: Psalms to Chronicles (DJD 16; Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000), 239–89; Michael Segal, “The Text of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls”,
Meghillot 11–12 (2015): 171–98 (Heb.), at 174–82; and the (separate) entries by Armin Lange
and myself, in “18.2 Daniel. Ancient Hebrew-Aramaic Texts,” in Textual History of the Bible
(online edition; Leiden: Brill; to appear in print, vol. 1C, 2017), including the secondary litera-
ture quoted there.
2 For an overview of the biblical and parabiblical Danielic scrolls from Qumran, see Peter W.
Flint, “The Daniel Tradition at Qumran,” in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception
(VTSup 83/2; eds. J. J. Collins and P. W. Flint; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 329–67.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/9789004355729_016

266 Segal
of the book at our disposal.3 We are therefore privy to the scribal-exegetical

treatment of Daniel, from its pre-canonical sources through a period of time
in which its contours were still in flux.
The case of Daniel is even more fascinating, due to the complex textual
history of the book as attested in a comparison of three of its primary wit-
nesses: (1) the Masoretic text (MT); (2) the Old Greek version (OG); and (3) the
Greek translation attributed to Theodotion (Theod), which is essentially a
mixed version combining the previous two. In addition to the minor textual
variation between them, these three witnesses preserve far-reaching differ-
ences, in particular in the stories of Daniel 4–6, where OG differs significantly
from MT/Theod. These divergences are significant enough to view them as
different literary editions of the book, or at least of the first half of the book.
Furthermore, while MT preserves six stories, both Greek translations contain
three Additions to the narrative section of the book, including two indepen-
dent stories (Susanna, Bel and the Dragon), and a long poetic edition to Daniel
3 (Song of Azariah and the Three Youths). In the Additions too, one can iden-
tify major differences between these two Greek versions, which also probably
reflects different literary editions of each of these compositions.
The two Greek translations are each of a different nature from one another:
OG is a freer translation characterized by Greek syntax, while Theodotion is
much more literal, characterized by Semitic syntax, and almost certainly a
revision towards a Hebrew/Aramaic text similar to MT. The vast majority of
manuscripts of Greek Daniel contain Theod, a situation that was the result of
a conscious effort by early Church Fathers to eliminate OG, which presented a
version of Daniel that was significantly different from MT, particularly in chap-
ters 4–6.4 This complex web of literary relationships is perhaps the most intri-
cate specimen of textual evidence for literary development of biblical books.
Scholars have suggested that the large-scale differences between MT and
OG Daniel 4–6 are evidence for alternate literary editions of these stories, and
in previous studies I have attempted to demonstrate the interpretive impuls-
es that led to these major differences.5 In the current study, I would like to
3 For an analysis of 4Q246, see my “Who is the ‘Son of God’ in 4Q246? An Overlooked Case
of Early Biblical Interpretation,” in DSD 21 (2014): 289–312, and the secondary literature dis-
cussed there. Regarding the quotation in 4Q174, see Segal, “Text of Daniel,” 186–96.
4 For a fuller description of these three editions and the manuscript evidence for the Greek ver-
sions, see my Dreams, Riddles, and Visions: Textual, Contextual, and Intertextual Approaches
to the Book of Daniel (BZAW 455; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 3–6.
5 Dreams, Riddles, and Visions, 94–131 (Chapter 4: “The Textual and Literary Development of
Daniel 4”); “Daniel 5 in Aramaic and Greek and the Textual History of Daniel 4–6,” in IOSOT
Harmonization and Rewriting of Daniel 6 267
combine the study of the textual witnesses in Aramaic and Greek on the one
hand, and the para-Daniel literature from Qumran on the other, in order to
highlight common hermeneutical processes that can be found in both corpora.
For the purpose of this article, I will focus on the textual and interpretive his-
tory of Daniel 6, addressing specifically the phenomenon of harmonization
between this story and others in Daniel and beyond.6 First, I will address some
differences between the Aramaic and Greek versions of this chapter, and then
I will attempt to connect the hermeneutical background of these readings to a
small fragment from a Qumran scroll.
1 Harmonization/Assimilation in MT/OG Daniel 6
The first example of harmonization in the textual witnesses of chapter 6 is

relatively straightforward, reflecting the assimilation of similar stories within
the book of Daniel.7 Scholars have noted a long list of literary parallels be-
tween chapters 3 and 6, which describe the refusal of Daniel or his three fellow
Judeans to violate their religious convictions.8 While these parallels are sig-
nificant enough to suggest a literary relationship between the stories, one can
identify further secondary harmonizations in the text of MT Daniel 6, under
the influence of chapter 3:
Stellenbosch 2016 Congress Volume (VTSup; eds. L. C. Jonker, C. Maier, and G. Kotzé; Leiden:
Brill, 2017); “The Old Greek Version and Masoretic Text of Daniel 6,” in Die Septuaginta: Orte
und Intentionen (eds. S. Kreuzer, M. Meiser and M. Sigismund; WUNT 361; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2016), 404–28.
6 The discussion here therefore complements Segal, “Old Greek Version.”
7 Regarding the phenomenon of assimilation between biblical narratives, see Yair Zakovitch,
“Assimilation in Biblical Narratives,” in Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (ed. J. H. Tigay;
Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia, 1985), 175–96.
8 The parallels between these two stories have been discussed previously by A. Lenglet, “La
Structure littéraire de Daniel 2–7,” Biblica 53 (1972): 169–90, at 182–85; Louis F. Hartman
and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (AB 23; New York, 1978), 159, 196–97; John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia;
Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 192, 272; Shmuel HaCohen and Yehudah Kil, Sefer Daniel (Daat
Mikra; Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1994), 155*–57* (Heb.); Jonathan Grossman, “The
Fiery Furnace and the Lions’ Den (Daniel 3–6),” Megadim 41 (2005): 51–64 (Heb.); Carol A.
Newsom, with B. W. Breed, Daniel: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
2014), 190. I have previously discussed the parallels between Daniel 3 and 6, and the resulting
harmonization, in Segal, “Old Greek Text,” 419–22; therefore, only the secondary, harmonistic
readings are noted here.
268 Segal
(a) The formulation of the accusations against the Judeans is nearly identical
in MT of both chapters:9
3:12—‫(גֻ בריא אלך) לא ׂשמּו עליך מלכא טעם‬

(these men) pay no heed to you, O king
6:14—‫…) לא ׂשם עליך מלכא טעם‬ ‫(דניאל‬

(Daniel …) pays no heed to you, O king
This expression is lacking in OG 6:14, and the MT reading most probably re-
flects assimilation with the story in chapter 3.
(b) The formulation that the protagonists were rescued without any bodily
harm or injury is found in both MT 3:25: ‫א־א ַיתי ְבּהוֹן‬ ִ ‫“ וַ ֲח ָבל ָל‬and they are
not hurt” and 6:24: ‫א־ה ְשׁ ְתּ ַכח ֵבּהּ‬ ֲ ‫“ וְ ָכ‬no kind of harm was found
ִ ‫ל־ח ָבל ָל‬
on him”. Here too, the crucial phrase is absent in OG 6:23 (parallel to MT
6:24). The very similar language in MT is most probably the result of har-
monization with chapter 3.
(c) MT 3:28 and 6:23 both indicate that the protagonists were saved through
the mediation of a divinely sent angel:
3:28: … ‫דֹוהי‬
ִ ‫י־שׁ ַלח ַמ ְל ֲא ֵכהּ וְ ֵשׁיזִ ב ְל ַע ְב‬
ְ ‫ישְׁך וַ ֲע ֵבד נְ גֹו ִדּ‬
ַ ‫י־שׁ ְד ַרְך ֵמ‬
ַ ‫ל ֲההֹון ִדּ‬-
ָ ‫בּ ִריְך ֱא‬ …
ְ
Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who sent His
angel to save His servants (cf. also 3:25)
6:23: … ‫אַריָ וָ ָתא‬

ְ ‫וּסגַ ר ֻפּם‬
ֲ ‫ל ִהי ְשׁ ַלח ַמ ְל ֲא ֵכהּ‬-
ָ ‫ֱא‬
My God sent His angel, who shut the mouths of the lions …
OG Dan 6 preserves a different version of events, attributing the salvation to

God Himself, and not an angel. First, in the description of the event itself, the
narrator notes:
9 The English translation of MT follows the NJPS translation with minor deviations. OG Daniel
is quoted according to Olivier Munnich (ed.), Susanna, Daniel, Bel et Draco (Septuaginta:
Vetus Testamentum Graecum XVI/2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1999); rev. 2nd
ed. of Joseph Ziegler (ed.), Susanna, Daniel, Bel et Draco (Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum
Graecum XVI/2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1954), with the English translation
taken from the NETS edition.
6:18 … τότε ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Δανιηλ πρόνοιαν ποιούμενος αὐτοῦ ἀπέκλεισε τὰ

στόματα τῶν λεόντων …
the God of Daniel took providential care of him and shut the mouths of
the lions …
Similarly, when Daniel reports to the king how he survived the ordeal with the
lions, he credits God’s assistance, without any mention of angelic intercession:
OG 6:22 (|| MT 6:23) … καὶ σέσωκέ με ὁ θεὸς ἀπὸ τῶν λεόντων …

… and God has saved me from the lions …”
Here too, I suggest that this specific detail of the story in Dan 6, as reflected in
OG, was adjusted in MT so as to harmonize it with Dan 3.
These three details demonstrate that OG Dan 6 at times presents a more
original version of the story, which has been altered in the MT edition due to
harmonization or assimilation with the parallel story in chapter 3.10 However,
as I have argued elsewhere, this should not lead to the conclusion that OG is
more original in all details; sometimes MT is earlier, at other times OG, and
in some instances neither textual witness reflects the original version of the
story.11
2 “The Law of Media and Persia”
The following example presents a more complex situation, in which OG and

MT offer significant textual differences with respect to a prominent theme in
Dan 6. I suggest that neither of the two witnesses presents the earliest version
of the story regarding this issue, but at the same time, the differences between
them perhaps allow us to trace the literary and textual development of this
10 Lawrence M. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King: Ancient Jewish Court Legends
(HDR 26; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 142–44, has also noted parallels between
chapters 3 and 6, suggesting that these similarities “resulted from the editing of Daniel
6 with Daniel 3 as a model.” While I agree with Wills regarding the direction of influence
between the chapters, the process described here is a less radical literary process than
that proposed by Wills.
11 See above, n. 5.
270 Segal
motifs, and thus to reconstruct both the original literary kernel of the story and
its subsequent iterations.12
One of the seemingly fundamental aspects of this story is “the law of Media
and Persia which cannot be abrogated,” which offers an explanation as to
why Darius, who was sympathetic to Daniel, could not save him when it was
revealed that he had violated the newly enacted 30-day prohibition against
petition and prayer. Since the law was irrevocable, even the king himself was
bound to enforce the punishment to which he has previously agreed.13 The
expression appears (with variation) three times in MT Dan 6. (i) First in the
proposal to the king to enact the prohibition, the fellow officers urge the king:
ָ ‫ ְכּ ַען ַמ ְל ָכּא ְתּ ִקים ֱא ָס ָרא וְ ִת ְר ֻשׁם ְכּ ָת ָבא ִדּי לָ א ְלהַ ְשׁ ָניָה ְכּ ָד‬MT 6:9
‫ת־מ ַדי וּפָ ַרס ִדּי־לָ א‬
‫ֶת ְע ֵדּא׃‬
So issue the ban, O king, and put it in writing so that it be unalterable as

a law of the Medes and Persians that may not be abrogated.”
(ii) Subsequently, after they catch Daniel in the act of praying, they once again
approach the king and confirm the prohibition, and its irrevocable status:
‫ל־א ָסר ַמ ְל ָכּא ֲה ָלא ֱא ָסר ְר ַשׁ ְמ ָתּ ִדּי ָכל־‬ ֱ ‫ם־מ ְל ָכּא ַע‬ ַ ‫ ֵבּ‬MT 6:13
ַ ‫אדיִ ן ְק ִרבוּ וְ ָא ְמ ִרין ֳק ָד‬
‫יִת ְר ֵמא ְלגוֹב ַא ְריָ וָ ָתא‬
ְ ‫ד־יוֹמין ְתּ ָל ִתין ָל ֵהן ִמנָּ ְך ַמ ְל ָכּא‬
ִ ‫ל־א ָלהּ וֶ ֱאנָ שׁ ַע‬ֱ ‫ן־כּ‬ ָ ‫י־יִב ֵעא ִמ‬ְ ‫ֱאנָ שׁ ִדּ‬
‫ת־מ ַדי וּפָ ַרס ִדּי־לָ א ֶת ְע ֵדּא׃‬ ָ ‫יבא ִמ ְלּ ָתא ְכּ ָד‬ ָ ‫ָענֵ ה ַמ ְל ָכּא וְ ָא ַמר יַ ִצּ‬
They then approached the king and reminded him of the royal ban: “Did
you not put in writing a ban that whoever addresses a petition to any god
or man besides you, O king, during the next thirty days, shall be thrown
12 In “Old Greek Text,” 423–28, I analyzed the motif of the extent of the opposition to Daniel,
and suggested a similar process of development.
13 Critical commentators have questioned whether this accurately reflects the Persian legal
system, since there is almost no additional evidence of its practice, other than Esther (to
be discussed below) and a short passage from Diodorus Siculus 17:30. See, e.g., James A.
Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1927), 270; Hartman and Di Lella, Daniel, 199; John E. Goldingay, Daniel (WBC
30; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989), 128; Newsom, Daniel, 196; and the summary and eval-
uation of the evidence (including further secondary literature) in Collins, Daniel, 267–68.
As will be argued here, the motif in Dan 6 cannot be used as historical evidence for this
juridical principle, since it itself is based upon Esth 1:19; 8:8.
into a lions’ den?” The king said in reply, “The order stands firm, as a law
of the Medes and Persians that may not be abrogated.”
(iii) Finally, after Darius confirms this enactment and Daniel’s rivals reveal to
the king that he had already violated the ban, they reiterate to the king that he
must follow through with the punishment since according to the law of Media
and Persia any prohibition enacted by the king is unchangeable, even for the
monarch himself.
ָ ‫ל־מ ְל ָכּא וְ ָא ְמ ִרין ְל ַמ ְל ָכּא ַדּע ַמ ְל ָכּא ִדּ‬

‫י־דת ְל ָמ ַדי‬ ַ ‫ ֵבּ‬MT 6:16
ַ ‫אדיִ ן גֻּ ְב ַריָּ א ִא ֵלְּך ַה ְרגִּ שׁוּ ַע‬
‫י־מלְ כָּ א יְ הָ ֵקים לָ א לְ הַ ְשׁ ָניָה׃‬
ַ ‫וּקיָם ִדּ‬ ְ ‫וּפָ ַרס ִדּי־כָ ל־א ֱָסר‬
Then those men came thronging in to the king and said to the king,
“Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians that any ban
that the king issues under sanction of oath is unalterable.”
However, in each of these three verses, OG presents a different form of the text,
without mentioning “the law of Media and Persia.”
(i) OG 6:8–9 (|| MT 6:9–10):
OG v. 8: καὶ ἠξίωσαν τὸν βασιλέα ἵνα στήσῃ τὸν ὁρισμὸν καὶ μὴ ἀλλοιώσῃ
αὐτόν, διότι ᾔδεισαν ὅτι Δανιηλ προσεύχεται καὶ δεῖ ται τρὶς τῆς ἡμέρας, ἵνα
ἡττηθῇ διὰ τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ ῥιφῇ εἰς τὸν λάκκον τῶν λεόντων. 9 καὶ οὕτως ὁ
βασιλεὺς Δαρεῖος ἔστησε καὶ ἐκύρωσεν.
8 And they requested the king so that he would establish and not change
the interdict (as they knew Daniel prayed and entreated three times a
day) so that he might be vanquished at the hands of the king and thrown
into the lions’ pit. 9 And thus King Darius established and confirmed it.
Similar to MT, the Greek text also includes the notion that the law will be
enacted, and then cannot be changed, but there is no mention of the law of
Media and Persia. Rather, this is the result of the king’s own agreement to this
specific act of legislation. It does not appear to be based upon any general rule
of government, but necessitated the king’s acceptance of this condition in his
confirmation of the prohibition.
(ii) Similarly, at the next stage, when they remind him of the irrevocable
status of the law, there too, OG does not mention the “law of Media and Persia”
as its source:
272 Segal
OG 6:12: τότε οὗτοι οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐνέτυχον τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ εἶ παν Δαρεῖε βασιλεῦ,
οὐχ ὁρισμὸν ὡρίσω ἵνα πᾶς ἄνθρωπος μὴ εὔξηται εὐχὴν μηδὲ ἀξιώ σῃἀξίωμα
παρὰ παντὸς θεοῦ ἕως ἡμερῶν τριάκοντα ἀλλὰ παρὰσοῦ, βασιλεῦ· εἰ δὲμή,
ῥιφήσεται εἰς τὸν λάκκον τῶν λεόντων; ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς
Ἀκριβὴς ὁ λόγος, καὶ μενεῖ ὁ ὁρισμός.
Then these men met with the king and said, “O King Darius, did you not
make an interdict that no person will pray a prayer nor request a request
from any god for thirty days, except from you, O king, otherwise the per-
son will be cast into the lions’ pit?” Then, the king answered and said to
them, “The word is accurate, and the interdict will remain.”
The binding status of the law remains, but this is because the king himself
has confirmed it. There is no mention of the “law of Media and Persia” parallel
to MT.
(iii) Finally, parallel to the third instance in MT, where the Daniel’s rivals
insist that the king implement the punishment in light of the unchanging na-
ture of the law of Media and Persia, OG presents a completely different text:
OG 6:15: καὶ οὐκἠδύνατο ἐξελέσθαι αὐτὸν ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν.
And he was unable to deliver him from them.
This repeated difference between MT and OG is striking, but does not, however,
tell the whole story. The motif of the “law of Media and Persia” does appear in
OG, but in a different formulation, and in a verse that has no parallel to MT.
OG 6:12a καὶ εἶ πον αὐτῷ ῾Ορκίζομέν σε τοῖς Μήδων καὶ Περσῶν δόγμασιν, ἵνα
μὴ ἀλλοιώσῃς τὸ πρόσταγμα μηδὲ θαυμάσῃς πρόσωπον καὶ ἵνα μὴ ἐλαττώσῃς
τι τῶν εἰ ρημένων καὶ κολάσῃς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὃς οὐκ ἐνέμεινε τῷ ὁρισμῷ τούτῳ.
καὶ εἶ πεν Οὕτως ποιήσω καθὼς λέγετε, καὶ ἕστηκέ μοι τοῦτο.
And they said to him, “We adjure you to swear by the decrees of the
Medes and Persians that you not change the matter nor that you respect
the person nor that you reduce anything of the things said and you pun-
ish the person who did not abide by the this interdict.” And he said, “Thus
I will do as you say, and this has been established for me.”
This verse adds an extra stage to the narrative, after the king had already es-
tablished the prohibition and its irrevocability in vv. 8–9, and reaffirmed its
legal force in v. 12. In the flow of the narrative, this verse does not contribute to
the development of the story, and one can easily skip this verse and continue
smoothly to OG v. 13: “And they said, “Lo, we have found Daniel, your Friend,
praying and entreating the face of his God thrice a day.” The theme of the law
of Media and Persia does not reappear in their subsequent dialogue with the
king.
Furthermore, the formulation of OG v. 12a itself also suggests a slightly dif-
ferent picture than MT. Darius does not establish a law of Persia and Media,
which is by definition immutable, but is implored to swear by the decrees
(δόγμασιν) of Media and Persia that he will not change the law and its pun-
ishment. A further curious aspect of v. 12a is the use of the nominal δόγμα,
which is rather rare in the Septuagint, occurring here and in five verses in 3
and 4 Maccabees (3 Macc 1:3; 4 Macc 4:23–24, 26; 10:2), both non-translated
Greek compositions. At the same time, the word is actually rather common in
Theodotion to Daniel, representing both ‫ דת‬and ‫( טעם‬Dan 2:13; 3:10, 12, 96; 4:6;
6:9–11, 13–14, 16, 27), including the three passages in our chapter in reference to
‫דת מדי ופרס‬. For the sake of completeness, OG does employ the verb δογματίζω
twice in Daniel (2:13, 15; it is a relatively rare verb in LXX), but never the noun.
Taking this complex textual situation into account—the motif appears 3
times in MT while absent in the parallel verses in OG; its presence in OG in
one verse without parallel in MT; and the formulation of the extra verse in OG
(12a) using vocabulary characteristic of Theodotion—leads me to suggest the
following three stages of development:14
(a) The original story did not include the motif of “the laws of Media and
Persia,” as reflected in OG without v. 12a, but rather referred to the king’s own
commitment not to change the law.
(b) The motif was added in the MT version of the story at those points where
there was reference to the king’s commitment. If correct, the motivation for
this addition seems clear enough—the assimilation of the story in Daniel 6
with the book of Esther, in which a similar theme is found twice.15 In Esther
14 Collins, Daniel, 267, noted the difference between OG and MT in the three parallel verses,
but argued in support of MT in light of the parallels to Esther 1:19; 8:8. However, this does
not take into account the process of assimilation between narratives identified here.
15 Admittedly, there is a methodological conundrum inherent to the claim here, since those
verses are not paralleled in the Alpha-text (AT) of Esther. One could theoretically claim
that AT here reflects an earlier version, and both MT and LXX Esther, which include this
motif, reflect a secondary version which was influenced by Dan 6 (the opposite direction
274 Segal
1:19, one finds the explicit expression “laws of Persia and Media” in reference to
the banishment of Vashti, which could not be overturned.
Esth 1:19: ‫בור ֲא ֶשׁר לֹא־‬ ֹ ֲ‫ס־וּמ ַדי וְ לֹא יַע‬

ָ ‫ר־מ ְלכוּת ִמ ְלּ ָפנָ יו וְ יִ ָכּ ֵתב ְבּ ָד ֵתי פָ ַר‬
ַ ‫…‏יֵ ֵצא ְד ַב‬
… ‫ָתבֹוא וַ ְשׁ ִתּי ִל ְפנֵ י ַה ֶמּ ֶלְך ֲא ַח ְשׁוֵ רֹושׁ‬
… let a royal edict be issued by you, and let it be written into the laws of
Persia and Media, so that it cannot be abrogated, that Vashti shall never
enter the presence of King Ahasuerus.
A similar idea seems to be expressed in Esther 8:8, although without the ex-
plicit formulation of “the law of Persia and Media,” in order to explain why the
king could not countermand the edict promoted by Haman:
Esth 8:8: … ‫ם־ה ֶמּ ֶלְך וְ נַ ְחתֹּום ְבּ ַט ַבּ ַעת ַה ֶמּ ֶלְך ֵאין ְל ָה ִשׁיב‬

ַ ‫י־כ ָתב ֲא ֶשׁר־נִ ְכ ָתּב ְבּ ֵשׁ‬
ְ ‫… ִכּ‬
for an edict that has been written in the king’s name and sealed with the
king’s signet may not be revoked
This is similar to the phenomenon discussed above in reference to Daniel 3,

but here the assimilation takes place across biblical books.16
(c) Finally, v. 12a was added in OG in an attempt to harmonize that version to
the contours of the MT story, perhaps by a scribe who had access to this liter-
ary edition through the medium of Theodotion’s revision of OG towards MT).
I have elsewhere suggested a similar three stage process (proto-OG; MT; OG) for
another motif in Daniel 6, and the current analysis bolsters that suggestion.17
3 Harmonization of Daniel 3 and 6 in a Qumran Fragment
Three scrolls, 4Q243–245, have been published in DJD 22 by John Collins and
Peter Flint as 4Qpseudo-Daniela–c ar.18 These scrolls are highly fragmentary,
of influence from what is proposed here). This is related to the much larger issue of the
relationship of AT Esther to both MT and LXX, which is beyond the scope of this paper.
16 Esther and Daniel are mutually influential in midrashic interpretation, and this finds
expression elsewhere in the textual witnesses of Daniel as well; see Dreams, Riddles, and
Visions, 63, n. 23.
17 See above, n. 12.
18 John Collins and Peter Flint, “243–245. 4Qpseudo-Daniela–c ar,” in Parabiblical Texts,
Part 3 (eds. G. Brooke et al.; DJD 22; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 95–164. See also the history
of publication prior to DJD 22, as described on p. 95.
and it is difficult to say too much with certainty about them. It seems likely
that 4Q243–244 contain the same composition, and despite the paucity of ma-
terial, there appears to be an overlap between them in terms of content and
genre.19 Both manuscripts can be dated paleographically to the first half of the
first century CE.20 Forty fragments have been preserved from 4Q243, and 14
from 4Q244. Each of the scrolls mentions Daniel by name (4 times in 4Q243;
1 time in 4Q244). Both 4Q243 and 244 preserve snippets of Daniel stories, in
addition to material of apocalyptic nature which does not find direct parallels
in the canonical versions Daniel, seemingly starting with Enoch (mentioned
in 4Q243, frag. 9, line 1) and the Flood, and reaching the eschatological age.
Collins and Flint suggest that the narrative frame for this review of history is
a speech of Daniel before King Belshazzar, based upon 4Q243, fragment 2, in
which both are mentioned.21 However, interpreting that tale in particular as
the frame seems to me to be over-reading the extant evidence. First, there is
no explicit connection in any single fragment between Daniel 5 and the apoca-
lyptic section. More significantly, the emphasis on Daniel 5 based upon one
fragment downplays the presence of other Daniel stories alluded to in other
fragments of these scrolls. In particular, two small fragments of 4Q243 appear
to allude to the story of Daniel 6 in some form. The presence of material from
Daniel 6 in addition to Daniel 5, makes it more likely that this composition
contained some (or all of) the Daniel stories, in addition to the apocalyptic
sections.
Among the fragments that reflect Dan 6, I note the following admittedly
sparse evidence, from two very small fragments in 4Q243.
4Q243, frag. 4:22
[‫יתרמ ֯ה ל‬
̇ ‫מ]ל[כ]א‬
̇ -- [ 1
1 [ O K]i[n]g, he shall be cast into[
The expression in fragment 4, line 1, is most likely a reference to the throwing

into the lion’s den of anyone who petitions or prays to someone other than
19 See esp. 4Q243, frag. 13 and 4Q244, frag. 12 (Collins and Flint, “4Qpseudo-Daniel,” 95, 106–
107, 129–130, 133–151).
20 Collins and Flint, “4Qpseudo-Daniel,” 97–98, 123.
21 Collins and Flint, “4Qpseudo-Daniel,” 99, 133; Lorenzo DiTommasso, “4QPseudo-Daniela–b
(4Q243–4Q244) and the Book of Daniel,” DSD 12 (2005): 101–33, at 106–13; Bennie H.
Reynolds III, Between Symbolism and Realism: The Use of Symbolic and Non-Symbolic
Language in Ancient Jewish Apocalypses 333–63 B.C.E. (JAJSup 8; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2011), 327–30.
22 Collins and Flint, “4Qpseudo-Daniel,” 100.
276 Segal
Darius, as found in Daniel 6. The language fits precisely with that of Daniel
6:8,13:23
Dan 6:8b—‫ד־יוֹמין ְתּ ָל ִתין ָל ֵהן ִמנָּ ְך ַמ ְלכָּ א‬

ִ ‫ ָלהּ וֶ ֱאנָ שׁ ַע‬-‫ל־א‬
ֱ ‫ן־כּ‬
ָ ‫י־יִב ֵעא ָבעוּ ִמ‬
ְ ‫ל־דּ‬ ִ ‫ָכ‬
‫“ יִ ְת ְר ֵמא ְלגֹב ַא ְריָ וָ ָתא‬whoever shall address a petition to any god or man,
besides you, O king, during the next thirty days shall be thrown into a
lions’ den”
Dan 6:13aβ—‫ד־יֹומין‬ ִ ‫ ָלהּ וֶ ֱאנָ שׁ ַע‬-‫ל־א‬ ֱ ‫ן־כּ‬ָ ‫י־יִב ֵעה ִמ‬
ְ ‫ל־אנָ שׁ ִדּ‬
ֱ ‫ֲה ָלא ֱא ָסר ְר ַשׁ ְמ ָתּ ִדּי ָכ‬
‫ותא‬ ְ ‫“ ְתּ ָל ִתין ָל ֵהן ִמנָּ ְך ַמלְ כָּ א יִ ְת ְר ֵמא ְלגֹוב‬Did you not put in writing a ban
ָ ָ‫אַרי‬
that whoever addresses a petition to any god or man besides you, O king,
during the next thirty days, shall be thrown into a lions’ den?”
Fragment 8 is also of interest for the discussion here:24
‫כר]סא‬
̇ [ 1
‫מן י]שראל גברין‬ [ 2
‫]די לא לשניה‬ [ 3
1 [ thr]one
2 [ from I]srael, men
3 [ ]which is not to be changed
Line 3 of this fragment, ‫“ די לא לשניה‬which is not to be changed,” is almost cer-

tainly reflective of the language of Dan 6:9, 16,25 discussed above. Unfortunately,
due to the fragmentary state of preservation, it is impossible to know whether
or not this reflects the law of Persia and Media as in MT and the final form in
OG, or simply the king’s commitment not to change the law as in my recon-
structed earlier literary stage.
A further reference to the Daniel stories is perhaps present in fragment 8,
line 2: ‫[מן י]שראל גברין‬, “[from I]srael, men.” The word ‫ ישראל‬is almost certain;
while the preposition ‫ מן‬is reconstructed, it is a reasonable choice to indicate
the syntactic relationship between the two following words—namely that the
men in question are Israelites. Within the context of Daniel 6 itself, it is not clear
to which Israelite men this might refer, since throughout the chapter Daniel is
23 It is also similar in language to Dan 3:6,11, although the formulation is closer to the verses
from Daniel 6. Therefore, it is most likely that it refers to the decree dated to the time of
Darius.
24 Collins and Flint, “4Qpseudo-Daniel,” 102–103.
25 Collins and Flint, “4Qpseudo-Daniel,” 103.
contrasted with the Babylonians, and is seemingly on his own in his religious
behavior. The word ‫ גברין‬occurs repeatedly, however, in Dan 3, in reference to
the Babylonians who maliciously accused Shedrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego
(3:8, 20), but more significantly to the three Judean exiles themselves:
MT 3:12:26
‫ישְׁך וַ ֲע ֵבד נְ גוֹ‬

ַ ‫ל־ע ִב ַידת ְמ ִדינַ ת ָבּ ֶבל ַשׁ ְד ַרְך ֵמ‬
ֲ ‫יָתהוֹן ַע‬ְ ‫ית‬ ָ ִ‫י־מנּ‬
ַ ‫הוּדאיִ ן ִדּ‬
ָ ְ‫יתי גּ ְֻב ִרין י‬
ַ ‫ִא‬
… ‫א־שׂמוּ ֲע ָליְך ֲע ָלְך ַמ ְל ָכּא ְט ֵעם‬
ָ ‫גֻּ ְב ַריָּ א ִא ֵלְּך ָל‬
There are certain Jews/Judeans whom you appointed to administer the

province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego; those men pay
no heed to you, O king …
While they are not referred to as Israelites in chapter 3 or 6, but rather as “Jews/
Judeans,” they and Daniel are introduced in 1:3 as Israelite children: ‫אמר ַה ֶמּ ֶלְך‬ ֶ ֹ ‫וַ יּ‬
‫ן־ה ַפּ ְר ְתּ ִמים‬
ַ ‫וּמ‬
ִ ‫לוּכה‬
ָ ‫וּמזֶּ ַרע ַה ְמּ‬
ִ ‫יסיו ְל ָה ִביא ִמ ְבּנֵ י יִ ְשׂ ָר ֵאל‬ ְ ‫“ ְל‬Then the king
ָ ‫אַשׁ ְפּנַ ז ַרב ָס ִר‬
ordered Ashpenaz, his chief officer, to bring some Israelites, and those of royal
descent and of the nobility.” They are then subsequently described as Judahites
(1:6). The phrase ‫ [מן י]שראל גברין‬in the fragment would thus be an apt descrip-
tion for Daniel and his companions, combining the language of Daniel 1 and 3.
If this identification is correct, then it raises the question of the relationship
between lines 2 and 3 of this fragment. As we have seen, line 3 clearly alludes
to chapter 6, while line 2 is a seeming reference to chapter 3. What is the ex-
egetical impulse behind this combination? As already noted above, chapters 3
and 6 share many narrative details, and biblical tradents further harmonized
them during the process of transmission. I suggest that this small fragment
presents a similar harmonization to an additional anomaly in these chapters.
Anyone who reads the stories in Daniel 1–6 is struck by an imbalance in the
cast of main characters throughout. In chapters 1 and 2, both Daniel and his
friends are part of the story, although Daniel clearly has the lead role. In chap-
ter 3, though, Daniel disappears, and his three comrades are the exclusive pro-
tagonists. However, from Daniel 4 and on they disappear, and Daniel is front
and center, without any supporting characters. Critical scholars have gener-
ally explained this literary discrepancy as the result of the literary process by
which the Danielic stories were composed, collected, and combined together
secondarily.27
26 See also 3:24,25.

27 See, e.g., Collins, Daniel, 35.
278 Segal
However, traditional Jewish interpreters viewed the stories in Daniel

through a synchronic lens, as part of a unified composition. They therefore
needed to address this literary inconsistency through hermeneutical methods.
This is precisely the approach of the various Rabbis quoted in b. Sanh. 93a:28
Whither did the Rabbis [= Hannaniah, Mishael, Azariah] go?—Rab said:

They died through an evil eye; Samuel said: They drowned in the spittle;
R. Johanan said: They went up to Palestine, married and begat sons and
daughters. [This is] as [the dispute] of Tannaim. R. Eliezer said: They died
through an evil eye. R. Joshua said: They drowned in the spittle. The Sages
said: They went up to Palestine, married and begat sons and daughters,
as it is written, “Hear now, O Joshua the High Priest and thy fellows that
sit before thee: for they are men wondered at” (Zech 3:8). Now for which
men was a wonder wrought?—Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.
Whither had Daniel gone?—Rab said: To dig a great spring at Tiberias;
Samuel said: To procure animal fodder; R. Johanan said: To obtain pigs
from Alexandria of Egypt….
All of these interpreters take the absence of the characters at face value, as an
indication that they were in fact not present. Each of these interpreters offers
a novel account to explain what the missing characters were doing instead of
taking part of the stories recorded in Daniel.
Perhaps the composition preserved in 4Q243 offers another approach—the
“missing” characters were not in fact elsewhere, but instead were present in
each of the stories, even if they are not mentioned explicitly. Therefore, the
other Israelite men, Daniel’s three companions, were present in Daniel 6 as
well, despite their absence from the canonical account. If this is the back-
ground of these fragmentary lines in 4Q243, then we have another instance of
harmonization between Daniel 3 and 6, similar to those discussed in the first
section above.
28 The English translation here follows the Soncino edition, ad loc. The rabbinic treatment
(including additional sources) of this exegetical issue has recently been analyzed exten-
sively by Rivka Raviv, “On Missing Characters in the Book of Daniel—Rabbinic Traditions
in Palestine and Babylonia,” Oqimta 3 (2015): 27–60 (Heb.). She states categorically, “In
pre-rabbinic biblical interpretation, there is no echo of these questions” (p. 29; translation
mine). However, it is my contention that this Qumran fragment provides evidence for just
such an interpretive concern in a pre-rabbinic work.
In this study, I attempted to show that the same hermeneutical method

which was applied in the textual development of Daniel, and which is attested
in biblical textual witnesses, continued in a para-Danielic composition from
Qumran. This investigation allowed us to trace the dynamic of rewriting from
the later compositional stages of Daniel along a similar trajectory in a work
which rewrote Daniel, albeit from the perspective of one specific phenome-
non. This short article demonstrates that these exegetical processes cut across
our standard generic categories, and that our definitive divisions of texts and
manuscripts into “biblical” witnesses and “parabiblical” compositions creates
artificial borders between works that are more fundamentally interconnected
than we sometimes conceive.
chapter 15
The Textual Base of the Biblical Quotations in

Second Temple Compositions*
Emanuel Tov
In the pre-Christian centuries, we witness different approaches to the text of

Scripture. Most scribes took the liberty to change the text, while some trans-
mitted the text before them without making changes.
The first part of this study refers to the different branches of the biblical texts
themselves, while the second part focuses on the Second Temple compositions
based on them. Most of these compositions rewrite the biblical text, such as
Jubilees, the Temple Scroll and the so-called Apocrypha of Moses, Joshua and
Jeremiah from Qumran, while others quote from the biblical text or allude to
it. It is well known that the textual base of these compositions differs from case
to case. Some contain non-Masoretic readings, especially from the LXX and the
SP group, some are based on Qumran texts, while the textual base of others is
not known from anyone text with which we are familiar. It remains an open
question whether MT served at all as the base for any compositions written in
antiquity, except for rabbinic literature. Just as we witness textual variety in
the biblical sources, we are faced with textual variety at the base of the Second
Temple compositions.
In the study of the Second Temple compositions most of the evidence per-
tains to the Torah, but some significant data pertain to the other books, and in
any event, in each biblical book we meet different textual patterns. As far as I
know, the questions analyzed in this study have not been asked with regard to
the combined compositions written in the Second Temple period,1 and there-
fore the results are tentative.
* This paper is dedicated to Moshe Bernstein, a scholar of great erudition and a dear friend.
An earlier form of the paper was read at the symposium “Writing and Textuality” held at the
Humboldt University in Berlin, August 25–26, 2014. The author is grateful to its host, Berndt
Schipper, as well as to Andrew Teeter of Harvard University for his judicious and penetrating
critique at the meeting.
1 This claim was also raised by Armin Lange, “From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Masoretic
Text: The Hebrew Biblical Texts between Textual Plurality and Uniformity” (forthcoming).
The Textual Base of the Biblical Quotations 281
1 Textual Unity and Diversity in the Biblical Books
In order to decide which textual source is quoted in a Second Temple composi-

tion we first need to describe briefly the known biblical sources that may have
been available to the authors of those compositions. In each biblical book a
different textual pattern prevails. In some books there existed variation among
biblical texts, while in other cases a unified tradition has been preserved. For
example, if we claim that a specific quotation from Ruth reflects MT, that state-
ment does not carry much weight since no other textual traditions are known
for that book. The LXX is close to MT, and no deviating Hebrew manuscripts
are known from the Judean Desert.
We therefore must focus first on the known textual branches of the bibli-
cal text. It has never been defined what exactly constitutes a textual branch,
and obviously scholars will hold different views on this matter. I consider as
a separate textual branch a text or a group of texts that has a distinct place in
the stemma of a specific biblical book. In order to find out on which textual
branches the Second Temple compositions are based, we must first list them.
In modern textual criticism we no longer say that there are three branches in
the Torah, MT, SP, and the LXX, and that there are only two in the other books,
MT and the LXX. We now realize that there are many branches in the Torah,
and that in the other books there are sometimes two, rarely three branches,
but sometimes only a single textual tradition, when the LXX and MT do not dif-
fer in any major way and no significant variations are known from the Judean
Desert scrolls.
Different distribution patterns of texts thus emerge from the classification of
the textual witnesses, ranging from a unified transmission to manifold textual
branches. A rather unified tradition is visible in Judges,2 Job,3 Ruth, Qohelet,
Lange himself enriched the investigation of the biblical quotations with many studies, and
he also compiled a helpful monograph listing references to the quotations: Armin Lange
and Matthias Weigold, Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Second Temple Jewish Literature
(JAJSup 5; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011).
2 Biblia Hebraica Quinta, vol. 7, Judges (ed. Natalio Fernández Marcos; Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 2011), 5, 12. In these pages, Fernández Marcos notes that the range of dif-
ferences between the sources is minimal and, except for 77 instances, he always prefers the
witness of MT. See my review in Sefarad 72 (2012): 483–89.
3 This assumption is based on the further assumption that the greatly deviating Greek version
of Job reflects the translator’s exegesis and not a deviating Hebrew text.
282 Tov
Lamentations,4 Psalms,5 and probably also Isaiah,6 since their main sources,
MT,7 the LXX and the Qumran fragments, are very close to one another. This
situation shows that in the period for which we have textual evidence, the con-
tent and details of these books probably did not change much. It is not impos-
sible that in an earlier period additional textual branches may have circulated
in ancient Israel, but we consider this possibility unlikely since the text of some
of these branches would have seeped through to later text forms. Possibly, tra-
dition has preserved, in these books, something like the original formulation
even though that entity remains abstract.
In other books, the evidence branches out into two, three and rarely more
different traditions resulting from changes inserted in the text by different
persons. To a great extent the number of the known textual branches is coin-
cidental because of the vicissitudes of the textual transmission and of the pres-
ervation of ancient scrolls. Such textual branches are usually characterized by
relatively large differences or by consistently occurring small differences. In a
two-pronged textual tradition, MT+ and the Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX usually
present different branches. For example, in the Greek book of Kings we notice
extensive exegetical and textual activity pertaining to its chronological frame-
work and the content of 1 Kings. In my view, the Greek translation of that book
was made from a rewritten form of the proto-MT or a similar text.8 In Jeremiah,
Qumran evidence supports the assumption of two textual branches: 4QJera, c
represents MT, and 4QJerb, d represents LXX.9 Additional two-pronged textual
4 See Rolf Schäfer in BHQ, vol. 18, Lamentations (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004),
17–20.
5 It is important to note that all textual witnesses, including the LXX, reflect the change of
the Tetragrammaton to e-lohim in the so-called Elohistic Psalter, Psalms 42–72 (book 2) and
Psalms 73–83 (89) (book 3). This change must have been made in a very early copy of the
Psalter, while the unaltered copies, that constituted the base of all subsequent copies, have
not been preserved.
6 In this book, there is possibly only one textual tradition, that of MT (including 1QIsab, and
many Cave 4 scrolls), shared with the LXX. That version does not seem to reflect a diver-
gent textual tradition, since the great majority of its deviations from MT are translational-
exegetical. 1QIsaa reflects a free orthographic-morphological variant of this tradition, and so
does 4QIsac.
7 This symbol denotes the MT group (MT, Targumim, Vulgate, and usually also the Peshitta).
See my Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3rd ed., revised and expanded; Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2012), 29 (henceforth: TCHB).
8 For example, the LXX portrays Solomon in a better light than MT. For a detailed analysis, see
my Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran (Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 121;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 283–305.
9 See my analysis in Greek-Hebrew Bible, 363–84.
traditions are found in Ezekiel, Proverbs, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and

Chronicles.10 In Canticles, the combined evidence of MT+ and LXX differs
sharply from that of 4QCanta, b. The textual branches are distinguished on
the basis of content differences, and accordingly the classification does not
include orthographic and linguistic variations. For that reason, 2QJer, 1QIsaa
and the so-called Severus Scroll among others are not mentioned as separate
branches.
A more complex textual transmission is known for Joshua and Samuel. In
Joshua, we meet three traditions: MT+, the LXX and 4QJosha, while in Samuel
there may be more: MT, LXX and 4QSama, but probably also 4QSamb and
4QSamc. However, by far the most elaborate textual picture is evidenced in
the Torah, on which we focus next because of its importance for the present
investigation.
The textual development of the five books of the Torah differed from that of
the other books, but this fact has escaped the attention of scholars11 with the
exception of an important study by Kahle on the basis of the limited evidence
that was available to him in 1915.12 We go into some detail with regard to the
Torah since most of the relevant evidence (ten or more branches) for this study
pertains to the Torah. The texts are presented in a novel fashion13 as two major
groups of texts are represented together by 10–12 branches. In the current state
of knowledge (2015), the MT group may be considered as reflecting the oldest
10 For all these, see TCHB, 283–326.

11 For example, this topic is not dealt with by George J. Brooke, “Torah in the Qumran
Scrolls,” in: Bibel in jüdischer und christlicher Tradition, Festschrift für Johann Maier zum
60. Geburtstag (ed. Helmut Merklein et al.; Bonn: Anton Hain, 1993), 97–120; Sidnie W.
Crawford, “The Qumran Pentateuch Scrolls: Their Literary Growth and Textual Tradition”
in The Qumran Legal Texts between the Hebrew Bible and Its Interpretation (ed. K. De
Troyer and A. Lange, Peeters: Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA, 2011), 3–16.
12 Paul Kahle, “Untersuchungenzur Geschichte des Pentateuchtextes,” TSK 88 (1915): 399–
439; repr. in idem, Opera Minora (Leiden: Brill, 1956), 3–37. This study is quoted according
to the page numbers of the latter publication. When Kahle wrote his study in 1915, he was
familiar with fewer than half of the Torah texts known today, but even within the triad of
witnesses of MT, LXX, and SP, he sensed that they reflected a special reality different from
that of the other Scripture books. Some of the major conclusions of that study may not be
acceptable today, but Kahle opened up the area of the Torah for wide investigation and
he had important insights into the nature of SP and the LXX. The time has now arrived for
an analysis of the Torah texts based on a reinvestigation of the texts known to Kahle along
with additional ones.
13 See the conclusions, below.
284 Tov
tradition of the Torah text, or the “trunk,” from which the other textual groups
branched off, while the status of items 9–12 is unclear.
I. The MT group (1)

1. Proto-Masoretic texts
a. Proto-Masoretic biblical texts (texts copied between 50 BCE
and 115 CE), differing in no more than 2% of their words from
the medieval text. The more substantial texts are from the
Judean Desert: 4QGenb (although ascribed to Qumran, this
text probably derived from one of the Judean Desert sites),14
MurExod, MasLevb, MasEzek, MurXII, MasPsa. In fact, the
Judean Desert sites do not contain any text other than proto-
Masoretic texts.
2. MT-like texts
a. MT-like Biblical texts (copied between 20 and 115 CE) differ-
ing from the medieval MT in more than 2%, usually up to
10%. Well-preserved samples are:4QGeng, 4QpaleoGen-Exodl,
4QExodc, 1QIsab, 4QJera, 4QJerc, 4QPsc, 2QRutha.
II. Most other sources (2–8?)

1. These sources derived from MT, probably as one large LXX-SP
branch, from which again further branches and twigs branched off.
These texts represent one large Palestinian group, while no Egyp-
tian tradition has been recognized.15 While the witnesses of this
textual branch undoubtedly reflect several primary readings, even
sections, as compared with MT (see below), on the whole this is a
secondary, popular and vulgar text. We can only guess at the back-
ground of the creation of these popular texts that have no parallel
in the other Scripture books.16
14 See James R. Davila, “2. 4QGenb,” in Qumran Cave 4.VII: Genesis to Numbers (ed. E. Ulrich
and F. M. Cross; DJD XII; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994 [repr. 1999]), 31.
15 The LXX reflects Egyptian features in its Greek garb, but no Egyptian features of its un-
derlying Hebrew text have been identified. See Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the
Septuagint in Biblical Research (Third Edition, Completely Revised and Enlarged; Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 201–206.
16 I think that historical changes in the history of the Jewish people may have played an
important role: while the older text had a Babylonian background, a new text was created
in Palestine.
2. The first textual tradition that branched off from the LXX-SP group
was the Vorlage of the LXX (2), reflecting early as well as late ele-
ments. The reconstructed Hebrew source of the LXX reflects a free
approach to the text, like that of its reconstructed ancestor the
common LXX-SP group text. This freedom is reflected in a large
number of contextual small harmonizations, the largest group
among the textual witnesses,17 more than the SP group, which until
recently was considered to be the most harmonizing text.18 This
feature is the most prominent among the textual features of the
Hebrew source of the LXX.
3. At a later stage the SP group (3–4) branched off from the common
LXX-SP source. At the base of SP was a single text composed by an
individual, and not a group of texts, since the exegesis reflected
in this text seems to reflect the thinking of an individual. The SP
group consists of three layers, in historical sequence, a single pre-
Samaritan text 4QNumb (3),19 the other pre-Samaritan texts (4),
and the medieval texts continuing the pre-Samaritan texts (4a).
The pre-Samaritan nature of this group is recognizable in a
number of pre-SP texts that are best described as pre-SP twigs
sprouting from the SP branch (4a): 4QpaleoExodm, 4QExod-Levf,
17 A large number of such harmonizations are also found in the pre-Samaritan texts
4QExod-Levf, 4QNumb, 4QRPb, but since these texts are fragmentary, we have to be care-
ful in our assessments.
18 See my studies “Textual Harmonizations in the Ancient Texts of Deuteronomy,” in Hebrew
Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran, 271–82; “Textual Harmonization in the Stories of the
Patriarchs,” in Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the
Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. D. Dimant and R. G. Kratz; BZAW 439; Berlin: De Gruyter,
2013), 19–50. Revised version: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, Septuagint:
Collected Writings, Volume 3 (VTSup 167; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 166–88; “The Harmonizing
Character of the Septuagint of Genesis 1–11,” in Die Septuaginta: Text, Wirkung, Rezeption.
4. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal
19.–22. Juli 2012 (ed. W. Kraus and S. Kreuzer; WUNT 325, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014),
315–32; Revised version: Textual Criticism … Collected Writings, Volume 3 (2015), 470–89.
The LXX of the Torah is judged here according to its well-defined harmonizing pluses. In
other details, the LXX has no specific features except for the chronologies in Genesis 5 and
11, the different sequence of the verses in Genesis 31, and the greatly deviating version of
Exodus 35–40.
19 4QNumb probably typologically presents the oldest representative of the SP-LXX group,
representing the common base with the LXX more than the other texts. That scroll is
therefore considered a separate branch of the pre-Samaritan texts.
286 Tov
and possibly also 4QLevd.20 These three scrolls never lack an edito-
rial addition of SP, but reversely in one instance 4QNumb (combi-
nation of Numbers 27 and 36) contains editorial interventions not
found in SP. Group 4 is pre-Samaritan as it foreshadows the medi-
eval SP text.
4. Two additional texts (group 5) are very close to SP, viz., 4QRPa
(4Q158) and 4QRPb (4Q364), but they differ substantially from SP
since that group almost never inserts elements not found elsewhere
in MT. On the other hand, group 5 inserts exegetical elements that
are not found elsewhere in MT/SP. The latter group thus reflects a
further development of the SP branch.21
5. The next cluster of texts to branch off from the SP group is a cluster
of individual exegetical texts (6–7?), not in the nature of a group,
since each of them contained an idiosyncratic text. Since they were
similar in nature, these texts should best be described as separate
twigs. Three exegetical Torah scrolls bearing the somewhat mislead-
ing name of a non-biblical composition, 4QRPc–e, display a very free
approach to the biblical text. They contain a running biblical text
intertwined with small and large exegetical additions such as an
expanded Song of Miriam in 4QRPc 6a ii and 6c, not paralleled in
any other source. The exact number of branches or twigs cannot be
calculated, but in the meantime we reckon with 4QRPc (4Q365) (6),
and 4QRPd,e (4Q366–67) (7).
6. Liturgical texts based on SP-LXX (8). In this context, we mention
four sources (all representing one branch) that do not contain pure
biblical texts. These are liturgical texts, two of which were published
as biblical texts (4QDeutj,k1). Most of these sources reflect a very
free and harmonizing approach to the text: two different textual
20 4QDeutn is not a pre-Samaritan text; see Elizabeth Owen, “4QDeutn: A Pre-Samaritan
Text?” DSD 4 (1997): 162–78.
21 Publication: John M. Allegro with Arnold A. Anderson, “158. Biblical Paraphrase. Genesis,
Exodus,” in eadem, Qumrân Cave 4.I (DJD 5; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 1–6; Emanuel
Tov and Sidnie White Crawford (= S. A. White), “4QReworked Pentateuchb–e and
4QTemple?” in Qumran Cave 4.VIII, Parabiblical Texts, Part 1 (ed. H. W. Attridge et al., in
consultation with J. C. VanderKam; DJD XIII; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 187–351, 459–63,
and plates XIII–XXXXVI. These two texts, together with the other texts of 4QRP, thus do
not reflect non-biblical compositions as was thought previously. See my study “From
4QReworked Pentateuch to 4QPentateuch (?),” in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient
Judaism (ed. Mladen Popovic; JSJSup 141; Leiden, 2010), 73–91.
branches of tefillin and mezuzot from the Judean Desert,22 Papy-

rus Nash of the Decalogue from Egypt, and two liturgical Qumran
texts that contain the same pericopes as the tefillin (4QDeutj, k1).23
In these texts, harmonization, including the addition of small peri-
copes, is the main textual-editorial feature.24 These texts prob-
ably carried authority as liturgical texts, but not as biblical texts.
4QDeutj, k1 display more agreements with SP-LXX than with MT.
III. Four additional sources (9–12?)

Four independent (“non-aligned”) scrolls differing from the other texts
in small details are not exclusively close to any of the mentioned texts:
4Q[Gen-]Exodb, 11QpaleoLeva25, 4QDeutc,h. It is mainly a sign of our ig-
norance that we do not know where to place these texts in the stemma.
They do not depend on MT, but they do not differ much from that text.
Due to several uncertainties, no precise number can be listed for the textual
branches in the Torah, but it is probably around 10, and much larger than the
1–3 branches in the other books.
2 The Textual Basis of Hebrew-Aramaic Second Temple Compositions
We now turn to the central theme of this study referring to the Second
Temple literature such as known from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha
and Pseudepigrapha. We limit ourselves to compositions that were originally
22 4QPhyl A–K, B–G, J, XQPhyl 3, and 4QMez A (probably all reflecting the same textual tra-
dition); 4QPhyl N (Deuteronomy 32). For XQPhyl 3, see Yigael Yadin, Tefillin from Qumran
(X Q Phyl 1–4) (Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book,
1969), 27–29, 40–41. These tefillin differ from the MT-type tefillin and mezuzot represented
by 4QPhyl C, D, E, F, R, S. See my study “Excerpted and Abbreviated Biblical Texts from
Qumran,” in Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran, 27–41.
23 4QDeutj contains sections from Deuteronomy 5, 8, 10, 11, 32 and Exodus 12, 13; 4QDeutk1
contains sections from Deuteronomy 5, 11, 32.
24 The liturgical character of 4QDeutj is supported by its small size. See Tov, Hebrew Bible,
Greek Bible, and Qumran, 37. Note further that both 4QDeutj and 4QDeutn start with Deut
5:1 and continue until the beginning of chapter 6. Both texts also contain a fragment that
covers 8:5–10. See Esther Eshel, “4QDeutn—A Text That Has Undergone Harmonistic
Editing,” HUCA 62 (1991): 117–54 (151).
25 See my study “The Textual Character of the Leviticus Scroll from Qumran Cave 11,” Shnaton
3 (1978): 238–44 (Hebrew with English summary).
288 Tov
written in Hebrew and Aramaic, although a few are accessed through transla-
tions. Compositions written in Greek are not excluded a priori, but I have not
yet found such works that are relevant to the topic as formulated here. For
example, the book of Judith, composed in Greek,26 quotes from the LXX, and
not MT or the SP.27
Our special interest is in the forms of biblical text that were used by ancient
authors. If different biblical texts can be identified, can we also draw certain
conclusions on the milieu or milieus where some of the Second Temple com-
positions were written?
Generations of scholars have remarked on the textual basis of the Second
Temple Jewish literature, as contained in the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and
the Qumran scrolls. Usually scholars limited themselves to a few scattered
readings (named “variant readings”) differing from MT, often supported by
non-Masoretic biblical texts. However, these readings may or may not have
been characteristic of the Vorlage of the composition, and on the whole very
few systematic investigations of the textual background of the literary com-
positions have been carried out. True, such an investigation is very complex,
and it is often unclear whether sound conclusions may be reached at all. For
example, in a composition like Hodayot it is very difficult to draw the border
between assumed variants on the one hand and content exegesis by that au-
thor on the other. Even more difficult to analyze are translated sources such
as the book of Jubilees, until recently known mainly in its Ethiopic version. In
this book variant biblical quotations need to be reconstructed from Ethiopic to
Greek and then to Hebrew. All conclusions are therefore tentative.
Because of the difficulties in determining the textual background of Second
Temple compositions, some scholars refrain from discussing the text-critical
background of quotations, or pay very little attention to them.28 In other
cases, scholars asserted that the textual background of the biblical quotations
26 Thus several scholars, including Schmitz and Engel: Barbara Schmitz and Helmut Engel,
Judit (Herders Theologischer Kommentarzum Alten Testament; Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 2014), 8–10.
27 See Exod 15:3 quoted in Jud. 9:9 and 16:2; Num 23:19 quoted in Jud. 8:16, both against MT.
28 Pancratius C. Beentjes, Jesus Sirach en Tenach, Ph.D. Dissertation. Amsterdam 1981; Geza
Vermes, “Biblical Proof Texts in Qumran Literature,” JSS 34 (1989): 493–508; John Elwolde,
“Distinguishing the Linguistic and the Exegetical: The Biblical Book of Numbers in the
Damascus Document,” DSD 7 (2000): 1–25; Armin Lange, “The Covenant with the Levites
(Jer. 33:21) in the Proto-Masoretic Text of Jeremiah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in
“Go Out and Study the Land” ( Judges 18:2): Archaeological, Historical and Textual Studies in
Honor of Hanan Eshel (ed. Aren Maeir et al.; JSJSup 148; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 95–116; Elisa
Uusimäki, “Use of Scripture in 4QBeatitudes: A Torah-Adjustment to Proverbs 1–9,” DSD 20
(2013): 71–97; David Katzin, “The Use of Scripture in 4Q175,” DSD 20 (2013): 200–36.
cannot be identified. Thus Wenthe with regard to the War Scroll,29 Høgenhaven
with regard to 4Q17930 and Metso with relation to S.31 Likewise, with regard to
CD and the copies of D from cave 4, both Schwarz and Campbell determined
“… that there is no clear-cut dividing line between citation and allusion in the
Admonition.”32 In Enoch we apparently lack the tools to determine the textual
basis of its scriptural allusions and quotations in the Ethiopic text (based on
Greek, in turn based on Hebrew).33 Likewise, in 4Q380–381 (4QNon-canonical
Psalms A and B) it is difficult to pinpoint the exact textual base of the many
scriptural allusions in these texts.34 By the same token, no specific biblical text
or text group is reflected in most Qumran commentaries,35 both sectarian and
non-sectarian.36
Furthermore, scholars have been hunting for variants, that is, deviations
from MT in the various sources, as if the default position is that Second Temple
compositions are based on MT. However, there is no default position regarding
their textual base, and it now appears that these compositions are more closely
related to the LXX and/or the SP, and not MT. Other compositions display a
more complex textual picture. However, before the Qumran scrolls were found,
29 Dean O. Wenthe, “The Use of the Hebrew Scriptures in 1QM,” DSD 5 (1998): 290–319.
30 Jesper Høgenhaven, “Biblical Quotations and Allusions in 4QApocryphal Lamentations
(4Q179),” in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries (ed.
E. D. Herbert and E. Tov; London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press in association with
The Scriptorium: Center for Christian Antiquities, 2002), 113–20.
31 Sarianna Metso, “Biblical Quotations in the Community Rule,” in The Bible as Book, 81–92.
32 Ottilie J. R. Schwarz, Der erste Teil des Damaskusschrift und das Alte Testament (Lichtland:
Diest, 1965); Jonathan G. Campbell, The Use of Scripture in the Damascus Document 1–8,
19–20 (BZAW 228; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995). The quotation is from Campbell, p. 176.
33 Personal communication, Michael A. Knibb (2014). See also Knibb’s monograph
Translating the Bible: The Ethiopic Version of the Old Testament (The Schweich lectures of
the British Academy; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
34 The editio princeps by Eileen Schuller in Qumran Cave 4.VI: Poetical and Liturgical Texts,
Part 1 (Esther Eshel et al., in consultation with James C. VanderKam and Monica Brady;
DJD XI; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) hardly refers to text-critical issues, nor does the analysis
of Mika Pajunen, The Land to the Elect and Justice to All: Reading Psalms in the Dead Sea
Scrolls in Light of 4Q381 (JAJSup 14; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 284–92.
The texts themselves do not provide clues to the text-critical background of the biblical
quotations.
35 4QCommGen B (4Q253), 4QCommGen C (4Q254), 4QCommGen D (4Q254a), 4QTanh
(4Q176), 4QCommMal (4Q253a).
36 This point is made by Armin Lange, Handbuch, 158–68 and in my study “Textual
Developments in the Torah,” in 3D: Discourse, Dialogue, and Debate in the Bible: For Frank
Polak (ed. Athalya Brenner-Idan; Hebrew Bible Monographs, 63; Amsterdam Studies in
Bible and Religion; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), 236–46.
290 Tov
scholars did not identify compositions that quote mainly from MT to the
exclusion of other sources, and this conclusion still holds today with the exclu-
sion of rabbinic literature, deriving from a later period.
We now proceed to an analysis of the textual basis of Second Temple com-
positions for which some or many data are available. When reviewing these
compositions, in most cases no relevant data are available because the corpus
of their biblical quotations is too small, or because the evidence is unclear, or
because the scroll is too fragmentary. For example, for three compositions, at
times well preserved, the so-called Apocrypha of Joshua and Jeremiah as well
as Pseudo-Ezekiel,37 including relatively long fragments, the textual base can-
not be identified. Our discussion focuses on Scripture quotations, explicit or
not, and allusions that are long and explicit enough for the recognition of their
textual background. In my investigations, I found several compositions based
on a proto-SP text and/or LXX, some on biblical texts of undetermined nature,
some on Qumran biblical texts, and one possibly based on MT. Of course, in
comparison with the corpus of Second Temple compositions, I refer to very
few texts only. For most compositions no data were available, and in other
cases it is probable that insufficient research has been performed.
2.1 Compositions Based on Proto-SP Texts and/or the Vorlage of the LXX
To the best of my knowledge, there are no instances of Hebrew-Aramaic
Second Temple compositions that are clearly based on either the LXX or a
proto-Samaritan text. However, there are texts that are based on a combina-
tion of these two traditions that have much in common.
Before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, closeness between certain compo-
sitions and the SP has been noticed, but in reality, these compositions were
close to the source of the SP, namely one of the pre-Samaritan texts such as
known from Qumran. In modern research, this term is used for a small group
of biblical manuscripts from Qumran that are very close to the medieval text
of the SP.38 They lack the latter’s thin sectarian layer, and it is assumed that in
37 For the Apocryphon of Joshua, see my study “The Rewritten Book of Joshua as Found at
Qumran and Masada,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible
in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the
Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, May 12–14 1996
(ed. M. E. Stone and E. G. Chazon; STDJ 28; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 233–56. Revised version:
Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran (2008), 71–91. For the Jeremiah and Ezekiel texts,
see Devorah Dimant, Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts
(DJD XXX; Oxford: Clarendon, 2001).
38 See my study “The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Proximity of the
Pre-Samaritan Qumran Scrolls to the SP,” in Keter Shem Tov: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls
antiquity the Samaritans chose one of these texts as the basis for their new,
sectarian text. Because of the fragmentary state of preservation of the pre-
Samaritan texts, the SP is taken as attesting to the former.
2.1.1 Jubilees
The large (literary) deviations from MT in Jubilees are disregarded in the
textual analysis because they are an integral part of the content rewriting of
that composition. Among the smaller variants, we focus on the readings that
are supported by the MT, SP, LXX, or one of the Qumran scrolls,39 disregard-
ing the unique readings of Jubilees since they cannot be disentangled easily
from the content of the rewriting. The analysis is guided by the remarks of
Charles (1902) on the “Textual affinities of the text of the book of Jubilees.”40
He found this text to be close to the SP and the LXX to the exclusion of MT.
Subsequently, in a very detailed analysis,41 based on a count of agreements,
VanderKam showed that Jubilees is especially close to the LXX and SP, texts
that were “at home in Palestine.”42 For VanderKam, the SP and LXX are ex-
ponents of the Palestinian family, but regardless of any such textual theory,
it is a fact that Jubilees is closer to the SP and LXX than to the other texts.43
in Memory of Alan Crown (ed. S. Tzoref and I. Young; Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures
and Its Contexts 20; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013), 59–88. Revised version: Textual
Criticism … Collected Writings, Volume 3 (2015), 387–410.
39 The textual analysis of Jubilees is based on the Ethiopic and Latin texts, as the few Hebrew
Qumran fragments provide too little material for analysis. In places in which the text can
be examined we easily identify elements that are identical to the text common to MT,
LXX, and SP as well as brief changes in the formulation.
40 R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis (London: 1902; repr. Jerusalem:
Makor, 1972), xxxiii–xxxix.
41 James C. VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees (HSM 14;
Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977); idem, “Jubilees and Hebrew Texts of Genesis–Exodus,”
Textus 14 (1988): 71–85. The data were provided by VanderKam in 1977, but his summariz-
ing statements in 1988 were clearer.
42 VanderKam, Jubilees, 137. This conclusion was repeated in his study “Jubilees and Hebrew
Texts,” 73. At a later stage, he also took disagreements into consideration, realizing that
“… if there was a Palestinian family of texts of which the LXX and Sam are two representa-
tives and Jubilees a third, then it must have been a very loose conglomeration of divergent
texts” (“Jubilees and Hebrew Texts,” 84). See also VanderKam’s analysis “The Wording of
Biblical Citations in Some Rewritten Scriptural Works,” in The Bible as Book, 41–56 (49–51).
43 On the other hand, Benjamin Ziemer, “Die aktuelle Diskussion zur Redaktionsgeschichte
des Pentateuch und die empirische Evidenz nach Qumran,” ZAW 125 (2013): 383–99 (390,
n. 33), claims that Jubilees like other biblical authors, had not just one Vorlage but was
part of a living oral-written transmission process. In this regard he quotes as support
292 Tov
Among other things, it is remarkable that in the significant differences in the

genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11, Jubilees reflects SP for several antediluvian
patriarchs and the LXX for the addition of a second patriarch Kenan (named
Kenan II by scholars) among the postdiluvian patriarchs.44
2.1.2 Pseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatum Judaicarum (LAB)

Harrington provides examples of the proximity of LAB to the Vorlage of the
LXX (named Palestinian by Harrington)45 in the Torah, sometimes shared with
SP, and in the post-Pentateuchal books often with the LXX and sometimes with
the Lucianic tradition of the LXX.46
2.1.3 4QComm Gen A (4Q252)

In the rewritten Bible text of 4Q252,47 the close relation to Scripture is clearly
visible in long stretches of text, while it also removes “superfluous” elements
from the context.48 In view of the frequent stylistic abbreviations in 4Q252, its
shorter text cannot be taken as support for an assumed short Vorlage.
4Q252 represents a small number of variants supported by the other wit-
nesses. For example, 4QComm Gen A (4Q252) I 2 ‫“( ידור‬shall dwell”) for MT
‫“( ידון‬shall abide [?]”) in Gen 6:3 and ibid. V 3 ‫ = הדגלים‬SP ‫ דגליו‬for MT ‫ רגליו‬in
David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 13–36.
44 See Ronald S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 72–74.
45 Daniel Harrington, “The Biblical Text of Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum,”
CBQ 33 (1971): 1–17.
46 However, this study does not provide full statistics. For an analysis, see VanderKam, “The
Wording,” 48–49.
47 4Q252, an unusual text from the point of view of its structure, is closest in its adherence
to the biblical text after the pesharim. See Moshe J. Bernstein, “4Q252: From Re-Written
Bible to Biblical Commentary,” JJS 45 (1994): 1–27; idem, “4Q252: Method and Context,
Genre and Sources,” JQR 85 (1994–1995): 61–79; Timothy H. Lim, “Notes on 4Q252 fr. 1,
cols. i–ii,” JJS 44 (1993): 121–126. In the first columns, 4Q252 presents a rewritten text very
closely adhering to the biblical text with a fuller orthography, without altering it, but add-
ing exegetical remarks, mainly relating to chronology. Then it moves slowly away from
that pattern to a more free relation to the biblical text, and at that point it also uses the
term pesher.
48 For example, ‫ וישלח את היונה מאתו‬MT 8:8 ]‫ וישלח את היונה‬I 14; ‫הקלו המים מעל פני‬
‫ האדמה‬MT 8:8 ] ‫ הקלו המים‬I 14. This procedure is followed even in the removal of one of
two synonymous words in a poetical passage. ‫ כחי וראשית אוני‬MT 49:3 ] ‫ ורישית אוני‬IV 4.
Gen 49:10.49 These deviations were reviewed in detail by Brooke,50 who tried
to fit them into the framework of earlier-expressed textual theories. Brooke
sees a degree of closeness between 4Q252 and the LXX, especially in secondary
readings.51 I accept that view, and apply this vision also to the SP, which was
not covered by Brooke. Although 4Q252 also contains independent readings, it
seems that the allegiance of this text lies more with the LXX and SP than MT.
2.1.4 Genesis Apocryphon

The textual pattern of the biblical citations in the text of the Genesis
Apocryphon, as analyzed by VanderKam, is rather clear.52 It agrees much more
with either SP or the LXX (or a combination of them) than with MT, although
Ziemer also stresses the differences.53 For VanderKam the combination of SP,
LXX, Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon signifies the “Palestinian text type,”
distinct from the “Babylonian text type” of MT, but the analysis itself does not
depend on this textual theory.
2.1.5 11QTemplea
In an earlier study,54 I summarized the textual relations between the sources
as follows:
11QTa = LXX55 and SP ≠ MT : 22 (many cases of common harmonizations)

11QTa = LXX ≠ MT ≠ SP : 26
49 See George J. Brooke, “252. 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” in Qumran Cave 4.XVII:
Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (George J. Brooke et al., in consultation with James C. VanderKam;
DJD 22; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 197, 205.
50 George J. Brooke, “Some Remarks on 4Q252 and the Text of Genesis,” Textus 19 (1998):
1–25.
51 Ibid., 25.
52 James C. VanderKam, “The Textual Affinities of the Biblical Citations in the Genesis
Apocryphon,” JBL 97 (1978): 45–55.
53 Benjamin Ziemer, Abram–Abraham: Kompositionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungenzu
Genesis 14, 15 und 17 (BZAW 350; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), 39–41.
54 “The Temple Scroll and Old Testament Textual Criticism,” ErIsr 16 (Heb.; 1982), 100–11
(109–10). BHQ in Deuteronomy (Carmel McCarthy, 2007) treats 11QTa as a full biblical
witness since it quotes from its text (e.g. Deut 17:5, 12, 16). The following analysis of the
biblical text quoted in the Temple Scroll does not refer to textual issues: John Elwolde,
“Distinguishing the Linguistic and the Exegetical: The Case of Numbers in the Bible and
11QTa,” in The Scrolls and the Scriptures: Qumran Fifty Years After (ed. Stanley E. Porter and
Craig A. Evans; JSPSup 26; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 129–41.
55 For an investigation of the text-critical background of the Torah it is very significant that
seven of the readings that 11QTa has in common with the LXX and SP and six additional
ones are in the nature of harmonizations. See Tov, “Temple Scroll,” 104–7 for the evidence.
294 Tov
11QTa = SP ≠ LXX : 2
11QTa = SP MT 6 (not reflected in a translation such as the LXX)
These data show a close connection between 11QTa and the LXX and SP rather
than MT, even though the scroll also disagrees with these texts.56 The proxim-
ity pertains especially to secondary readings, and the closeness with the LXX
was stressed by Schiffman57 and Riska.58
To the aforementioned texts we should also add the many agreements with
SP and the LXX incorporated in the texts to be mentioned in group 2.
2.2 Compositions Based on Biblical Texts of Undetermined Nature?

In the web of relations between the textual witnesses, some texts can be char-
acterized as close to MT, SP or the LXX, while others do not fit any textual
label. The textual background of some texts cannot be determined because
sufficient data are lacking, while other texts may be based on “independent”
or “non-aligned” texts, such as 4QJosha, 4QSama, 11QpaleoLeva and 4QDeutc,h.59
However, no clear instances of such Second Temple compositions have been
preserved. 4QTestimonia (4Q175) is composed of a combination of three bibli-
cal quotations of different textual nature and an extra-biblical composition.60
Each of the three biblical sections reflects a different textual pattern.61
56 See Tov, “Temple Scroll,” 110.

57 Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Septuagint and the Temple Scroll: Shared ‘Halakhic’
Variants,” in Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings: Papers Presented to the International
Symposium on the Septuagint and Its Relations to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Writings
(Manchester, 1990) (ed. George J. Brooke and Barnabas Lindars; SBLSCS 33; Atlanta, GA:
Scholars Press, 1992), 277–97 = idem, The Courtyards of the House of the Lord: Studies on
the Temple Scroll (STDJ 75; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 85–98. Schiffman stresses the common
basis of some of the readings of 11QTa and the LXX, stressing their common origin, point-
ing in these cases to common halakhic exegesis. For example, the addition of ‫ בכה‬in
LIII 4 (= Deut 12:22, agreeing also with SP) and in LII 4 (= Deut 15:22) is meant to stress
that the “pure” and “impure” refer to the worshipers, not to animals. A similar view is re-
flected in the study of Michael O. Wise, A Critical Study of the Temple Scroll from Qumran
Cave 11 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 49; Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago, 1990), 41–44.
58 Magnus Riska, The Temple Scroll and the Biblical Text Traditions: A Study of Columns
2–13:9 (Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 81; Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical
Society, 2001), 156–66.
59 For a description of such texts, see Tov, TCHB, 109–10.
60 4Q379, frg. 22 ii 7–15 (4QApocryphon of Joshuab, previously named 4QPsalms of Joshua).
61 Exod 20:21 (a pre-Samaritan text combining MT Deut 5:28–29 and 18:18–19, as in SP),
Num 24:15–17 (a text of undetermined character), and Deut 33:8–11 (a text that is very
However, the juxtaposition of these different Scripture verses shows that the
author of 4Q175 used three different biblical scrolls without paying attention to
their textual character, and not that he used a single text of mixed character. By
the same token, the textual character of the source of Chronicles62 in its rela-
tion to Genesis has not been clarified, but it is not necessarily a text of mixed
character.63 Many, possibly most of the quotations by the Chronicler from the
genealogical lists in Genesis align with MT, while several readings match with
SP, and others are not known from these sources.
2.3 Compositions Based on MT?

I found no clear evidence that a Second Temple composition is based on MT.
It must have been an unwritten assumption in scholarship that all Second
Temple compositions were based on MT, so that only the exceptions from this
unproven assumption were recorded. However, there are no clear indications
that any of the Qumran scrolls, Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha is unmistakably
based on MT to the exclusion of other sources. If one would remove the idio-
syncratic readings from the Temple Scroll, we are still not left with MT. If we
would remove the Qumran spellings from the pesharim, we are also not left
with MT. The only texts that are clearly based on MT are the later rabbinic
writings. Although seemingly some Qumran compositions and quotations are
based on MT, this assumption cannot be substantiated when there is no op-
position between MT and the other sources.
close to the non-aligned scroll 4QDeuth). For a detailed analysis, see Emanuel Tov, “The
Contribution of the Qumran Scrolls to the Understanding of the LXX,” in Septuagint,
Scrolls and Cognate Writings, 11–47 (31–35); Julie A. Duncan, “New Readings for the
‘Blessing of Moses’ from Qumran,” JBL 114 (1995): 273–90; Stefan Beyerle, “Evidence of a
Polymorphic Text: Towards the Text-history of Deuteronomy 33,” DSD 5 (1998): 215–32.
Beyerle terms this text non-aligned (232); Lange, Handbuch, 163–64.
62 Following Japhet, I place the book of Chronicles at the end of the fourth century BCE: Sara
Japhet, I and II Chronicles, A Commentary (Old Testament Library; London: Westminster/
John Knox, 1993), 28.
63 For this early period it is difficult to make solid statements, because it is hard to know
with which text the MT should be contrasted. Possibly the ancestors of the LXX and the
pre-Samaritan texts had not yet been created. On the other hand, in 1948 Gillis Gerleman,
Synoptic Studies in the Old Testament (Lund: Gleerup, 1948), 10–12, was very outspoken in
his view that the Chronicler is based on the “vulgar” text of the SP as he found a number
of agreements between the two in personal names. At the same time, no exact tabula-
tions of the textual affinities of the Chronicler are available for Genesis. Ralph W. Klein,
1 Chronicles: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Fortress: 2006), 26–31; 53–100, who
included many textual remarks in his commentary on Chronicles, did not summarize the
textual evidence.
296 Tov
In my view, only one composition quotes the text of MT to the exclusion of

other texts, but the evidence is not extensive:
2.3.1 Ben Sira

Lange demonstrated that the Hebrew text of Ben Sira quoted Jeremiah in a few
“recensional” readings according to the long version of MT, and not the short
version of 4QJerb,d and the LXX.64 Thus, Ben Sira agrees with Jer-MT against
Jer-LXX in small details in Jer 1:10 (= Sir 49:7); 18:6 (= Sir 36[33]:13); 27:12 (= Sir
51:26). The evidence pertains only to the quotations from Jeremiah in Ben-Sira.
In other instances for which seemingly an MT base was quoted, there is no
substantial opposition with other textual witnesses:
2.3.2 1QM
Lange suggested that the War Scroll from cave 1 displays the MT of Jeremiah.65
At the same time, Carmignac showed a few deviations from MT in the quo-
tations from Hebrew Scripture, but the evidence is very limited.66 However,
there is no strong evidence in favor of MT against other sources,67 or of other
sources against MT, and therefore Wenthe claimed that no certainty can be
had regarding the Vorlage of 1QM.68
2.3.3 1QHa
Wernberg-Møller defended the view that 1QHa used MT,69 but this view cannot
be substantiated. In his analysis of the textual background of 1QHa, Wernberg-
64 Armin Lange, “The Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Ben Sira,” in Text
History of the Hebrew Bible: International Symposium November 4th–5th 2011, forthcoming.
The author kindly allowed me to read this study prior to its publication.
65 Armin Lange, “The Text of Jeremiah in the War Scroll from Qumran,” in The Hebrew Bible in
Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Nora Dávid et al.; FRLANT 239; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2012), 95–116.
66 Jean Carmignac, “Les citations de l’Ancien Testament dans ‘La Guerre des Fils de la
Lumière contre Les Fils des Ténèbres’,” RB 63 (1956): 234–60, 375–90 (383).
67 Lange found five agreements between 1QM and MT against the LXX, all in very minor
details, and none in the recensional differences between MT and the LXX.
68 See n. 30.
69 Preben Wernberg-Møller, “The Contribution of the Hodayot to Biblical Textual Criticism,”
Textus 4 (1964): 133–75. I quote from his conclusions: “We can say with certainty that the
text of the Bible quoted by the author(s) was, generally speaking, substantially that of
the textus receptus…. The differences from MT which we may glean from 1QH, are not im-
pressive if looked at one by one” (136). “We have in 1QH an apparently bewildering num-
ber of cases where the form in which a Biblical tag is quoted agrees now with this, and
Møller listed the cases in that scroll that are identical with MT70 and those that
are similar to it.71 He concluded that 1QHa is based on MT,72 in very few cases
against the LXX,73 but the evidence is very weak. Wernberg-Møller himself os-
cillated between the assumption that 1QHa was based on MT and the view that
the text-critical value of 1QHa cannot be determined.74 Similar doubts were
expressed by Elwolde.75 On the other hand, Lange accepted the view that 1QHa
is based on MT.76 He showed that very few quotations from Jeremiah are based
on MT to the exclusion of the LXX,77 but not in recensional readings involving
the longer/shorter text of Jeremiah.
now with that version, against MT” (137). “The author(s) of the Hymns knew a text which
was substantially the same as the Massoretic, but it was not identical with it in every
detail” (138).
70 Wernberg-Møller, 145–46.
71 Wernberg-Møller, 146–56. Note that this group is larger than the first group. The next cat-
egory (pp. 156–66) lists quotations of biblical passages in which the poet plays freely with
the biblical text, and in which the deviations from MT (equaling the text of the versions)
have no textual value. Even less textual value attaches to the next category (166–73) that
exemplifies paraphrases of biblical phrases.
72 Wernberg-Møller, 173–175.
73 The evidence for this group is weak, except for possibly 1QHa I 23 (Isa 38:15); III 25
(Isa 14:4]) against the LXX and 1QIsaa; III 32 (Isa 57:20).
74 Other examples of agreement with non-Masoretic sources as listed by Wernberg-Møller
on p. 147 are not convincing. The study of Jean Carmignac, “Les citations de l’Ancien
Testament,” does not advance the discussion. Carmignac provides long lists of quotations,
but only in French and without text-critical analysis. The study of Menahem Mansoor,
“The Thanksgiving Hymns and the Massoretic Text (II),” RevQ 3 (1961): 387–94, discusses
a few passages only.
75 John Elwolde, “The Hodayot’s Use of the Psalter: Text-Critical Contributions (Book 2:
Pss 42–72),” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context: Integrating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the
Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures, Vols. I–II (VTSup 140/I–II; Leiden/Boston:
Brill, 2011), I:80–99; idem, “The Hodayot’s Use of the Psalter: Text-critical Contributions
(Book 3: Pss 73–89),” DSD 17 (2010): 159–79.
76 Armin Lange, “The Textual History of the Book of Jeremiah in Light of Its Allusions and
Implicit Quotations in the Qumran Hodayot,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls
and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th
Birthday (ed. Jeremy Penner et al.; STDJ 98; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 251–84.
77 Note especially Jer 18:22 as quoted in 1QHa 10:31; Jer 51:55 as quoted in 1QHa 10:29; possibly
also Jer 20:9 as quoted in 1QHa 16:31.
298 Tov
2..3.4 CD, D
Tigchelaar suggested that the quotations of CD and D more or less follow MT.78
However, the evidence is not strong and does not involve instances of an op-
position with other sources.
2.3.5 MMT
Brooke suggested that “all the quotations are very close to what may be la-
beled the proto-MT,” but there is no opposition in these quotations with other
witnesses.79
2.4 Compositions Based on Qumran Texts

Some compositions written at Qumran and elsewhere are based on biblical
manuscripts produced at Qumran and elsewhere (some of the Qumran manu-
scripts have been imported to Qumran).
2.4.1 4QDeuth
This non-descript Deuteronomy scroll was clearly the base for the third para-
graph (Deut 33:8–11) in 4QTestimonia (see n. 62).
2.4.2 4QTanh (4Q176)

4QTanhumim was probably based on a Qumran scroll like 1QIsaa, though not
1QIsaa itself, although Flint assumes a direct connection, especially in frgs.
8–11.80 According to my count the two agree four times in small details, and ten
times in spelling.81 However, the two also disagree, according to my counting
78 Eibert Tigchelaar, “The Cave 4 Damascus Document Manuscripts and the Text of the
Bible,” in The Bible as Book, 93–111.
79 George J. Brooke, “The Explicit Presentation of Scripture in 4QMMT,” in Legal Texts
and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the International Organization for Qumran Studies 1995
(ed. Moshe J. Bernstein et al.; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 67–88 (80).
80 Peter W. Flint, “The Interpretation of Scriptural Isaiah in the Qumran Scrolls: Quotations,
Citations, Allusions, and the Form of the Scriptural Source Text,” in A Teacher for All
Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, Vols. 1–2 (ed. Eric F. Mason et al.;
JSJSup 153/1; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 1:388–406 (403).
81 According to Flint, 4Q176 agrees in eight of its fourteen “alternative” readings with 1QIsaa.
My tabulations are different, but indeed among the variants of this scroll four remark-
able readings stand out. In line 8 the two agree in a plus of the tetragrammaton against
MT 54:6, in line 10 they agree in the reading ‫ ובחסדי‬against MT 54:8 ‫ובחסד‬, in line 11
they agree in a plus of ‫( עד‬1QIsaa ‫)עוד‬, and in line 12 they resemble each other in the
form ‫( תתמוטטנה‬1QIsaa: ‫ )תתמוטינה‬against MT 54:10 ‫תמוטנה‬. See further Hermann
Lichtenberger in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew, Aramaic, and
ten times in small details and six times in spelling, and therefore, I do not think
that the large Isaiah scroll was the Vorlage of 4Q176, but a scroll like it, as the
two share some readings and the free approach to Scripture as well as the same
orthographic and morphological system. Also elsewhere occasional agree-
ments with 1QIsaa have been spotted in quotations in Qumran documents.82
2.4.3 Pesharim
The pesharim were based on written texts, but their Vorlagen have not been
identified. For example, although the pesharim on Isaiah resemble 1QIsaa in
their orthographic and morphological systems, none of the six Isaiah pesharim
was copied from that scroll.83 The major problem in the evaluation of the tex-
tual background of the pesharim is whether their many deviations from MT
should be assigned to their Vorlagen or to the exegesis of the pesher.
A maximalist approach to the relevance of the pesharim takes most de-
viations from MT as reflections of variant readings found in actual scrolls.
This approach underlies the list of presumed variant readings for 1QpHab
by Brownlee,84 that for all the pesharim by Lim,85and the approach of all the
text-critical Scripture editions.86 On the other hand, according to a minimalist
approach, many deviations from MT in the pesharim were due to contextual
Greek Texts with English Translations, Vol. 6B, Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and Related
Documents (Tübingen/Louisville: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 332 (Isa 49:13, 16); 338–40 (Isa 54:6,
8, 9).
82 For example, Isa 6:10 ‫ השמן‬MT LXX ] 1QIsaa ‫( השמ‬sic) = 1QHa XV 6, XXI 6; 57:15 ‫להחיות‬
MT] 1QIsaa = ‫ לחיות‬1QHa XVI 37; 66:2 ‫ ונכה‬MT] 1QIsaa = ‫ = ונכאי‬1QHa XXIII 16 and 1QM XI
10. See Lange, Handbuch, 288.
83 For details, see the following edition where the deviations from 1QIsaa are listed: Maurya
P. Horgan in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek Texts with English Translations, Volume. 6B, Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and
Related Documents (Tübingen/Louisville: Mohr Siebeck/ Westminster John Knox, 2002),
35–112.
84 William H. Brownlee, The Text of Habakkuk in the Ancient Commentary from Qumran
(JBL Monograph Series XI; Philadelphia, 1959), 113–18.
85 Timothy H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Texts (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1997), chapter IV; idem, “Biblical Quotations in the Pesharim and the Text of
the Bible–Methodological Considerations,” in The Bible as Book, 71–9.
86 BHS and BHQ for 1QpHab, HUB for the pesharim on Isaiah, and the Biblia Qumranica
for the Minor Prophets. The editors of these texts considered the evidence convincing
enough to be recorded in an apparatus. For example, in Habakkuk 1–2, BHQ records many
variants, e.g. 1:8 ‫ וקול‬for MT ‫ וקלו‬and 1:12 ‫ למוכיחו‬for MT ‫להוכיח‬.
300 Tov
exegesis.87 In the latter case, the underlying biblical text could have been close
to MT, pending on the amount of exegesis ascribed to the pesher commenta-
tor. I myself follow the first, maximalist, approach. Although some exegesis is
contained in the biblical text quoted in the pesharim, including a few cases of
sectarian exegesis,88 most deviations from MT in the lemmas probably reflect
variants found in the biblical manuscripts used by the commentator.89
When these variants are taken as reflections of earlier sources, the pesharim
do not reflect a close relation with MT, the LXX or a Qumran scroll. In fact,
they differ much from MT, in the calculation of Lim usually relating to 10–17
percent of the words of MT in the various pesharim,90 including orthographic
and morphological differences. At the same time, it is not easy to affix a textual
label to these texts. They differ as much from MT as 1QIsaa, that is usually taken
87 E.g., Georg Molin, “Der Habakkukkomentar von ʿEnFesha in der alttestamentlichen
Wissenschaft,” TZ 8 (1952): 340–57; George J. Brooke, “The Biblical Texts in the Qumran
Commentaries: Scribal Errors or Exegetical Variants?” in: Early Jewish and Christian
Exegesis: Studies in Memory of William Hugh Brownlee (ed. Craig A. Evans and William
F. Stinespring; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), 85–100, both with references to earlier
studies. Brooke focused on exclusive readings in the pesharim not supported by MT, an-
cient Hebrew manuscripts, or the ancient versions. He demonstrated that the biblical text
quoted in the pesharim introduced some changes in syntactical and grammatical details,
e.g. in person, as well as in the omission of parts of verses, and in one case of ten verses,
viz., in 4QpIsab 2 lacking 5:14–24. Brooke also includes among the changed readings cases
of metathesis and other playful changes of letters, such as for Nah 3:6 ‫ כראי‬in 4QpNah
‫( כאורה‬4Q169 3 iii 2).
88 The most clear-cut examples are 1QpHab VIII 3 (Hab 2:5) ‫( הון‬MT: ‫ ;)היין‬1QpHab XI
3 (Hab 2:15) ‫( מועדיהם‬MT: ‫)מעוריהם‬. For an analysis, see William H. Brownlee, The
Text of Habakkuk in the Ancient Commentary from Qumran (JBL Monograph Series XI;
Philadelphia, 1959), 113–18.
89 Lidija Novakovic apud James H. Charlesworth, The Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos
or Consensus? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), 129–58, lists all the variants
that according to her are reflected in the “pesharim, other commentaries, and related
documents.” See also I. Goldberg, “Variant Readings in the Pesher Habakkuk,” Textus 17
(1994) ‫( ט–כד‬Heb.) who focuses on the variants only; George J. Brooke, “Isaiah in the
Pesharim and Other Qumran Texts,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of
an Interpretive Tradition (ed. Craig C. Broyles and Craig A. Evans; VTSup 70, 1–2; Leiden:
Brill, 1997), 609–632; idem, “The Qumran Pesharim and the Text of Isaiah in the Cave 4
Manuscripts,” in Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Texts: Essays in Memory of Michael P. Weitzman
(ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Gillian Greenberg; JSOTSup 333; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2001), 304–20. In this study Brooke follows a different line from his study
quoted in n. 85.
90 Lim, Holy Scripture, 69–94.
as relating to some 10% of its words,91 and actually they very much resemble
that and similar Qumran scrolls.92 In fact, the resemblance of the pesharim
and the sectarian biblical manuscripts like 1QIsaa in their free approach and
their orthographic and morphological systems is so great, that these sectar-
ian pesharim were probably based on the biblical manuscripts like 1QIsaa that
have been found at Qumran.93
2.4.4 By Extension: Chronicles (Compared with the Texts of Samuel)

In his rewriting of Samuel, the Chronicler often did not use MT or the Hebrew
Vorlage of the LXX, but a text like 4QSama, one of the Samuel manuscripts
from Qumran.94 However, no clear conclusions have been reached and with
the fragmentary status of the Qumran manuscripts, it is difficult to conclude
what the Chronicler’s basis in Samuel is. Japhet rightly concludes: “How far
these reflect isolated incidental readings, or a defined textual ‘edition’, is still a
91 See the calculations of Lim, Holy Scripture, 92.

92 Some scholars described the Bible text that was at the base of the pesharim as “vulgar”:
J. van der Ploeg, “Le rouleau d’Habacuc de la grotte de ʿAin Fesha,” BibOr 8 (1951): 2–11,
esp. 4; Karl Elliger, Studien zum Habakuk-Kommentar vom Toten Meer (BHT 15, Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1953), 48; Paul Kahle in a review of Elliger in TLZ 79 (1954): 478–9; Stanislav
Segert, “Zur Habakuk-Rolle aus dem Funde vom Toten Meer VI,” ArOr23 (1955): 575–619
(608). These scholars probably go too far when describing the biblical quotations in
the pesharim as reflecting a distinct textual recension deviating from the other textual
sources. A similar conclusion was reached by Matthieu Collin, mainly on the basis of
an analysis of 1QpMic, which was characterized by him as reflecting a third recension
of the biblical book, alongside the MT and LXX: “Recherches sur l’histoire textuelle du
prophète Michée,” VT 21 (1971): 281–97. This characterization was rejected by Lawrence A.
Sinclair, “Hebrew Texts of the Qumran Micah Pesher and Textual Traditions of the Minor
Prophets,” RevQ 11 (1983): 253–63.
93 The system of these biblical manuscripts is described in my TCHB, 100–105 as the Qumran
Scribal Practice.
94 See Frank M. Cross, “The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the
Judaean Desert,” HTR 57 (1964): 281–99 (292–99); idem, “The Evolution of a Theory of
Local Texts,” in Qumran and the History of th eBiblical Text (ed. F. M. Cross and S. Talmon;
Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1975), 306–20 (311); idem, The Ancient
Library of Qumran (3rd ed.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 139; Werner E.
Lemke, “The Synoptic Problem in the Chronicler’s History,” HTR 58 (1965): 349–63; Eugene
C. Ulrich, The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus (HSM 19; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press,
1978), 151–64 (4QSama); P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, II Samuel (AB 8, 9; Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1980, 1984), II.131, 268, 506–517; Klein, 1 Chronicles, 28–30; Z. Talshir, “The
Relationship between Sam-MT, 4QSama, and Chr and the Case of 2 Sam 24,” in In the
Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes: Studies in the Biblical Text in Honour of Anneli Aejmelaeus
(ed. Kristin De Troyer et al.; BETL 72; Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 273–98.
302 Tov
matter of controversy.”95 In any event, the Chronicler is closer to 4QSama than

to MT. This view is based on a number of readings, but a thorough study of all
aspects of the closeness between the text of Chronicles and the Qumran scroll
is still needed.
3 Conclusions
a. While for most Second Temple compositions no conclusions can be

drawn regarding their biblical background, in some cases we succeeded
in doing so, albeit tentatively. I found several compositions (Jubilees,
Pseudo-Philo, Genesis Apocryphon, 4Q252, 11QTemplea) that were based
on a combination of a pre-Samaritan text and the LXX, known to be
closely linked before these two texts were developed in different direc-
tions. Some Qumran compositions were based on known biblical Qum-
ran scrolls (4QDeuth in 4QTestimonia, 4Q176, several pesharim, and by
extension, a text like 4QSama as a base for Chronicles). Other composi-
tions may be based on textually independent texts (the quotations from
Genesis in Chronicles). No compositions were found that unmistakably
depend on MT, with the possible exception of the Ben Sira quotations
from Jeremiah.
b. There is no solid evidence for the use of MT in Second Temple composi-
tions or quotations. This fact may be significant with regard to the milieu
in which Second Temple compositions were produced. The argument is
tentative, since in many cases no conclusions can be drawn on the textual
background of a composition.
c. If my view on the limited use or non-use of MT in Second Temple compo-
sitions is correct, it should be contrasted with its use elsewhere. MT was
used as the source for the writing of tefillin, rabbinic literature and as a
base for the Targumim and Vulgate.
d. On the other hand, there is clear evidence that the Second Temple com-
positions, whose biblical quotations may be identified, were based on
pre-Samaritan manuscripts and the Vorlage of the LXX that together form
one textual branch, sometimes named “Palestinian” and/or “vulgar.” This
assumption, together with other data, merits a special study presenting
two major groups of texts in the Torah represented by many branches.96
95 Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 29.

96 In the meantime, see my studies “Textual Developments,” and “The Shared Tradition of
the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch” in Die Septuaginta: Orte und Intentionen
(eds. S. Kreuzer et al.: WUNT 361; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 277–93.
chapter 16
From Genesis to Exodus in the Book of Jubilees*

James C. VanderKam
The Torah of Moses falls into five books according to the longstanding divi-
sions of the text. The beginning of the Pentateuch—the first one and one-half
books—largely assumes a narrative form as it relates a story that takes creation
as its starting point and ends with Israel at Mount Sinai where the nation re-
ceives instructions for its life in covenantal relationship with the Lord. Genesis,
of course, traces the story from the beginning to the death of Joseph in Egypt,
while Exodus opens with a paragraph (1:1–7) that sets the stage for the next
segment of the story. It alludes to the sons of Jacob who entered Egypt and the
fact that all that generation, including Joseph, died. The oppression in Egypt
follows.
A simple question about the separation between Genesis and Exodus is why
it exists, since the story they tell is, in a sense, continuous. There is no ancient
information explaining why the story was broken up into two books and at
this point (why not, for example, after Jacob’s death?), so the modern reader
is reduced to speculation. One possibility is that the amount of material that
could be placed on a single scroll was limited so that scribal concerns at some
point may have dictated the division (although some manuscripts probably
contained both books; see below). Placing the break after Genesis 50 and be-
fore Exodus 1 also makes sense from the perspective of content because there
is a sizable chronological gap (how large it is is debatable) separating the death
of Joseph and the beginning of the oppression. In addition, the cast of charac-
ters changes from the sons of Israel in a family sense in Genesis to the sons of
Israel in a national sense in Exodus.
In this paper I want to look at the earliest evidence for the division we find
in our Hebrew texts between Genesis and Exodus, examine how the gap is
bridged in the Bible, and look at the ways in which the transition was handled
* It is a pleasure to offer this study in honor of my good friend Moshe Bernstein who has been
such a model scholar. He has shown in his studies of Genesis at Qumran that the last part
of the book seems to have been of less interest than earlier ones. In recent Jubilees studies,
however, the end of the book has attracted attention and for that reason is the subject of this
essay.
304 VanderKam
in early retellings of the story—especially the one in the Book of Jubilees. Do

they betray any sense of a book division or some sort of break at this point and,
perhaps more importantly, how do they present the transition as they pass
from the story in Genesis to the one in Exodus?
1 Early Manuscript Evidence for a Book Division into Genesis and

Exodus
As far back as our manuscript evidence goes, scribes entered a physical divid-
er between what we call Genesis and what we call Exodus. The most ancient
documentation for the practice appears in 4QpaleoGen–Exodl (4Q11), the frag-
ments from which were edited by Patrick Skehan, Eugene Ulrich, and Judith
Sanderson.1 The date they assign to the script is the first century BCE, perhaps
the first half of it.2 Fragment 1 of 4Q11 the editors identify as containing the
end of Genesis and the first verses of Exodus. They describe the fragment in
this way:
The first fragment preserves a right margin with holes from stitching, two
letters followed by almost four blank but ruled lines, and then the begin-
ning of the Book of Exodus (Exod 1:1–5). The holes show that this was not
the first column of the original scroll, despite the fact that the text is from
the beginning of Exodus. The four ruled lines show that this was not the
top margin of the column (contrast the unruled bottom margin of frg.
10 ii and frg. 35). Lines 2, 3, and 4 have presumably been left completely
blank.3
The two letters they read at the right margin of line 1 are ‫ ;במ‬they suggest
these are the first two letters in the last word of Genesis—‫במצרים‬.4 This evi-
dence from a first-century copy shows that a physical space separated the text
at the end of Genesis from the first verses of Exodus. The amount of space
1 “4QpaleoGenesis–Exodusl,” in Qumran Cave 4 IV Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical

Manuscripts (ed. P. Skehan, E. Ulrich, and J. Sanderson; DJD 9; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992),
17–50, with pls. I–VI.
2 Ibid., 21.
3 Ibid., 17–18.
4 They (ibid., 18) do not rule out the possibility that the two letters are ‫ בן‬in ‫מאהבן‬, words that
occur earlier in Gen 50:26. In that case, much of the first line would have been inscribed.
From Genesis to Exodus in the Book of Jubilees 305
left uninscribed is not large, but it is a space nevertheless. There is reason

for thinking that in two other cases a similar situation prevailed. In 4QExodb
(4Q13), the beginning of the Book of Exodus is preserved. It follows a blank
(or partly blank) but ruled line that would have been located about half way
down the column. For this reason, the editor, Frank M. Cross, suggested the
scroll had also contained Genesis.5 Spaces of several lines are attested as well
between books of the Twelve Prophets in other manuscripts from the Judean
wilderness.6
Skehan, Ulrich, and Sanderson as well as Tov have drawn attention to the in-
structions in Rabbinic texts regarding how to mark the division between books.
For example near the end of b. B. Bat. 13b one reads: “Between each book of the
Pentateuch is to be left a space of four lines, so too between one prophet and
the next. In the case of the minor prophets, the space need be only three lines.
If the scribe completes one book at the bottom of a column, he should in any
event start the next at the top of the next column.”7 The amount of space in
4Q11 (if the two letters at the beginning of the first line in frg. 1 are from ‫)במצרים‬
comes very close to that stipulated in the Talmudic passage for a book in the
Torah, since only one word would appear on the first line, with the rest of it
and the next three left blank
Although the Judean Desert copies furnish the earliest manuscript evidence
for a visual division between Genesis and Exodus, the Book of Exodus itself
contains an initial unit that suggests a kind of pause, a short pericope that
expresses both continuity and a break with the end of Genesis. In fact, the first
seven verses in Exodus could be called a prologue that relates to but is sepa-
rate from the previous material and sets up the new narrative about to begin.
C. Houtman describes Exod 1:1–7 in these terms:
The context of 1:7 indicates that the writer intended the passage to be a
prologue, an introduction. In a few short words he gives the information
that is needed to be able to understand the narrative of the fate of the
5 “4QExodb,” in Qumran Cave 4 VII Genesis to Numbers (ed. E. Ulrich, F. M. Cross, et al.; DJD 12;
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 79–80 (see pl. XIV). Too little of 4QGen–Exoda (4Q1; ibid., 8)
survives to be sure, but in it the Exodus text begins midway down a column. It is not known,
however, whether there were blank lines between the two books,
6 For a summary of the evidence, see E. Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the
Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004 [Atlanta: SBL, 2009]), 165–66.
7 Translation of J. Neusner, The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary, vol. 15
Tractate Baba Batra (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005), 51.
306 VanderKam
Israelites which starts with 1:8. The introduction 1:1–7 can also be regard-
ed as [a] link between Genesis and Exodus; in a few sentences the pas-
sage leads the reader from the history of Jacob and his sons to the history
of the people of Israel as a whole. The names of the sons of Jacob, which
figure prominently in Genesis, are briefly mentioned at the beginning of
Exodus, but after that are virtually dropped in Exodus.8
Source critics often assign Exod 1:1–5, 7 to the Priestly writer, while v. 6 they
attribute to J.9 The dates of those sources are much controverted in modern
scholarship, but if the assignments to sources are accurate, it was P in par-
ticular who was concerned to separate and yet connect Genesis–Exodus as
they now appear in the Bible. Both 1:1–5, 7 and v. 6 make separate mention of
Joseph, a fact that reflects his prominence in the last chapters of Genesis.
2 Retellings of the Stories from the End of Genesis and the Beginning
of Exodus
Later retellings of the stories generally do not mark a break or interlude of

any kind between the ones in Genesis and those in Exodus, even though at
the times when at least some of them were composed there were in existence
manuscripts that contained blank spaces to denote a division. There is nothing
surprising about fashioning a continuous narrative from Genesis and Exodus
because the story is, despite a chronological leap from Gen 50:23 to Exod 1:8, a
continuous one that extends well beyond the end of Exodus.
The evidence for bridging the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus
without a pause or interlude of any sort begins to surface already in the Bible
itself. Some examples are:
a. Deuteronomy 26:5–9: In this unit that has played so large a role in the his-
tory of pentateuchal criticism, the Israelite farmer relates: “A wandering
Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as
an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and
8 Exodus (vol. 1; HCOT; Kampen: Kok, 1993), 220.

9 See, for example, the discussion in B. Childs, The Book of Exodus (OTL; Louisville: Westminster,
1974), 1–3. As he comments, the phrase “These are the names …” with which Exodus begins
functions in a way similar to the Priestly “These are the generations of …” in Genesis.
populous” (v. 5).10 The short summary notes a change in population that
developed over time but otherwise there is no indication of a break in
the story.
b. Joshua 24:2–13: As he addresses the people, the great leader refers to
Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. About Jacob he says that he “ …
and his children went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and
I plagued Egypt …” (4–5). The recounting centers about characters who
follow one after another without an interval—only a vav separates the
figures in Genesis from those in Exodus.
Outside the Bible, surveys, whatever their purposes, tend to follow the same
pattern. Here are a few examples.
a. 1 Enoch 89:13–19: In the Animal Apocalypse, Enoch sees events from the
end of Genesis in 89:13–14, after which in v. 15, with no change in the form
of the narrative, he begins telling the story of the Egyptian oppression
and of Moses. More significantly for this text, there is no change in the
animal imagery—sheep are the symbol for both the sons of Jacob and for
the Israelites. The writer denotes breaks between other eras by altering
his symbols (e.g., at 89:11–12, where the change occurs either after Abra-
ham or after Isaac, depending on the version followed), but he does not
do so at this point.
b. Sirach 44–45: In 44:22–23a Ben Sira makes reference to Isaac, Jacob, and
his twelve sons, while in v. 23b he takes up the birth of Moses whose
career he then describes in the next verses (45:1–5). The transition reads
in this way: “he acknowledged him [Jacob] with his blessings,/ and gave
him his inheritance;/ he divided his portions,/ and distributed them
among twelve tribes./ From his descendants the Lord/ brought forth a
godly man, who found favor in the sight of all/ and was beloved by God
and people,/ Moses, …” (44:23–45:1).
c. Wisdom 10: In the survey the writer treats Joseph in 10:13–14 and the
nation of Israel and Moses in the next verses. The transition from Joseph
to Israel/Moses is no more demarcated than the passage between any
other characters—they are all items in a continuous list.
d. Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities 8–9: In 8:1–14 the writer lists those
who entered Egypt with Jacob and says that they spent 215 years there.
The next verse (9:1) reads: “And after Joseph’s passing away, the sons of
10 Citations of the Bible are from the NRSV.

308 VanderKam
Israel multiplied and increased greatly. And another king who did not
know Joseph arose in Egypt, …”11 The bridge between Genesis and Exodus
occurs within one sentence.12
e. Josephus may be an exception in his more detailed retelling of his peo-
ple’s past. In Ant. 2.198–200 he refers to the death of Joseph and those
of his brothers who died after living happily in Egypt. Their bodies, he
writes, were transported to Canaan and buried there, while Joseph’s re-
interment took place only later when the Hebrews brought his remains
with them in their Exodus from Egypt. At the end of 2.200 he writes: “How
it fared with each of them [the Hebrews] and by what efforts they con-
quered Canaan I shall recount, after first relating the reason for which
they left Egypt” (Thackeray, LCL). So he inserts a small pause in his narra-
tive to explain what he will relate next, and he does this after he has fin-
ished the story in Genesis and is about to take up the one in Exodus (his
only borrowing from Exodus to this point is the reference to the deaths
of Joseph’s brothers and the transport of Joseph’s bones in the Exodus,
though this latter point could have come from Gen 50:24–25).
Jubilees belongs in the tradition traced above of retelling the scriptural story
and not calling attention to a division between the narratives in Genesis and
those in Exodus. In 46:3 the writer reaches the death of Joseph (an event re-
counted in Genesis 50) and mentions the major periods in the 110 years of his
life. In 46:4 he cites Exod 1:6 (the deaths of Joseph, his brothers, and all that
generation) before moving into the story about a war between Canaan and
Egypt and the effect it had on efforts to bury the sons of Jacob in the Cave of
Machpelah near Hebron. 46:8 resumes the information in 46:4: tells of bury-
ing the bones of Joseph’s brothers, how international events again prevented
movement between Egypt and Canaan, and about the rise of a new king over
Egypt. The story is uninterrupted and uses the basic givens of Genesis 50 and
Exodus 1 in a single narrative line.
11 Translation of D. Harrington, OTP 2.315; the italics in this translation mark citations from
the Bible.
12 See, however, the comment of H. Jacobson (A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo’s Liber
Antiquitatum Biblicarum [2 vols.; AGJU 31; Leiden: Brill, 1996], 1.400) that the expression
rendered “And after Joseph’s passing away” “is commonly used to mark a significant break
and the beginning of a new era” (he refers to the beginnings of the books of Joshua and
Judges).
3 A Change in Message?
The short survey above shows that while scribes, for their own reasons, are
known to have placed a physical division between Genesis and Exodus on
their scrolls, writers whose concern was recounting the stories saw less need
to introduce such a notation into their texts (Josephus may be an exception to
the rule). However, a more important question is whether, in their retellings,
later writers who recounted the story from Joseph to the Egyptian oppression
introduced any significant changes in the design or overall message left by the
end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. All of the examples treated above
shape the material or characters at the end of Genesis and the beginning of
Exodus into their new contexts, but the Book of Jubilees will serve as a good test
case for whether a writer, one who follows Genesis–Exodus very closely, re-
shapes and/or redirects the message left by their interface. Indeed, it has been
claimed that the author considerably alters the impression left by Genesis–
Exodus as he retells this stage in the scriptural past.
Betsy Halpern-Amaru has formulated an intriguing case to this effect.13 She
notes that Exod 1:1–8, which she labels “a compound synopsis,” directs the at-
tention of the reader toward the enslavement of the Israelites which it associ-
ates with the growth of Jacob’s small band of seventy family members into a
populous people and the rise of a king who did not know Joseph. The Genesis
story ends with the latter days of Joseph who acts as a patriarch. He buries his
father, graciously ensures peace with his brothers who had so badly mistreated
him, and sees his descendants to the third generation. Also like a patriarch, he
makes arrangements for the final disposition of his bones when God would
some day visit his people. The interlude in Exod 1:1–7 then quickly rehearses
the last major events in Genesis, notes the death of Joseph’s generation, and
13 “Burying the Fathers: Exegetical Strategies and Source Traditions in Jubilees 46,” in
Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran (ed. E. Chazon, D. Dimant,
and R. Clements; STDJ 58; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 135–52. I want to add that, although
I disagree with her thesis on the issue under discussion, I regard Halpern-Amaru as a
most perceptive and sophisticated reader of Jubilees who has contributed so much to
its elucidation. For another evaluation of her proposals regarding the Genesis/Exodus
transition in Jubilees, see J. van Ruiten, “Between Jacob’s Death and Moses’ Birth: The
Intertextual Relationship Between Genesis 50:15—Exodus 1:14 and Jubilees 46:1–16,” in
Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino
García Martínez (ed. A. Hilhorst, É. Puech, and E. Tigchelaar; JSJSup 122; Leiden: Brill,
2007), 467–89. Van Ruiten prefers to explain the differences underscored by Halpern-
Amaru as arising from problems in the biblical text rather than tendentious concerns of
the author.
310 VanderKam
moves into the new story. Joseph is clearly the outstanding character in Genesis
and in the transition to Exodus.
As Halpern-Amaru shows, the situation is rather different in Jubilees. She
points to several significant ways in which, on her view, the writer of the book
has refashioned the story to serve another agenda.
a. Periodization: The first change she finds has to do with the location of the
division that separates the patriarchal and national stories.
The starting point for the Jubilees reconstruction is the establishment of a

periodization that closes the patriarchal era, not with the death of Joseph,
but rather with the death of Jacob. The author of Jubilees retains the bibli-
cal notice of the growth of the Israelite population as the primary marker
for the shift to a new epoch, but detaches that notice from its association
with the deaths of Joseph, his brothers, and the emigrant generation in
Exodus 1 and moves it to immediately after the death of Jacob.14
She finds a “primary marker” between the eras in both texts, but the popula-
tion growth in Jubilees occurs already in the final seventy years of Joseph’s life
that almost exactly correspond with the years after Jacob arrived in Egypt (see
Jub. 46:1–3).15 Halpern-Amaru is aware that Genesis itself invited the idea that
Jacob’s family grew into a populous people during his (and Joseph’s) lifetime.16
The narrator reports: “Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the region of
Goshen; and they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied
exceedingly” (Gen 47:27; Jacob’s death notice comes two chapters later). She
might have added that Joseph, too, refers to this state of affairs when assuring
his brothers of his good will: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God
intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing
today” (50:20).17 It is true that another kind of focus on population growth
14 “Burying the Fathers,” 136.

15 Joseph ruled Egypt for eighty years. According to Gen 41:46 (Jub. 40:11) he was thirty years
of age when he began his reign, and he lived 110 years (Gen 50:22, 26; Jub. 46:3). He would
have been thirty-nine years when Jacob arrived (after the seven years of plenty and the
first two years of the famine) so that seventy-one years remained in his life.
16 “Burying the Fathers,” 137 n. 5.
17 Because of these passages in Genesis, there is no need to claim that the population theme
was taken from Exod 1:7 as van Ruiten suggests (“Between Jacob’s Death to Moses’ Birth,”
473–75). He thinks Jubilees rearranges Exod 1:6–7 by putting the increase before Joseph’s
death, but that proposal also ignores the evidence from Genesis. One implication is that
his chart aligning Jub. 46:3–8 with the passages from Exodus they supposedly rewrite
figures in Exodus 1 (see Jub. 46:14, 15), but the two passages just cited show that
highly impressive reproduction does not mark a definite caesura between two
eras even in Genesis–Exodus. In Jubilees the theme does not separate eras but
points to continuity from the end of Genesis to the beginning of Exodus.
b. Family Story to National Story: In a way consistent with his different

periodization, Halpern-Amaru argues, the writer of Jubilees replaces a
family story about harmony between Joseph and his brothers after their
father’s death (Gen 50:15–21) with a national story about inner-Israelite
relations—a golden period that occurred during the lifetime of Joseph
(and after Jacob’s death). The passage in question—46:1–2—interlaces
the description of the ideal situation with notices about the large num-
bers of Israelites:
After the death of Jacob, the children of Israel became numerous in the
land of Egypt. They became a populous nation, and all of them were of
the same mind so that each one loved the other and each one helped the
other. They became numerous and increased very much—even for ten
weeks of years [= 70 years]. There was no satan or any evil one throughout
all of Joseph’s lifetime that he lived after his father Jacob because all the
Egyptians were honoring the children of Israel for all of Joseph’s lifetime.18
As Halpern-Amaru notes, the author is exploiting the ambiguity in the phrase

“the sons of Israel” at places near the end of Genesis. In Genesis, the eleven
physical sons of Israel live at peace with their brother Joseph, while in Jubilees
the national “children of Israel” love and help one another.19 By adding that the
Egyptians held the Israelites in high esteem the writer of Jubilees sets the stage
for the later change in attitude. Growth in the Israelite population was nothing
new; something else caused the reversal of the Egyptian stance toward them.
He pictures an ongoing process from the end of Genesis that was suddenly op-
posed at the beginning of Exodus.
(475–77) pairs the wrong verses. The author is rewriting the end of Genesis and takes only
the reference to the new Egyptian king and the deaths of Joseph’s brothers from Exodus 1.
18 Translations of Jubilees are from VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (2 vols.; CSCO 510–11,
Scriptores Aethiopici 87–88; Leuven: Peeters, 1989), vol. 2—as that translation has been
modified, mostly in minor ways, for my commentary on Jubilees in the Hermeneia series.
19 On the passage, see A. Livneh, “ ‘Love Your Fellow as Yourself’: The Interpretation of
Leviticus 19:17–18 in the Book of Jubilees,” DSD 18 (2011): 195–97.
312 VanderKam
c. Demoting Joseph: Another noticeable difference that separates the inter-

face of Genesis/Exodus from the rewritten version in Jubilees is, accord-
ing to Halpern-Amaru, a change in the status of Joseph. She recognizes
that the writer of Jubilees speaks extensively of Joseph’s political role, but
he makes modifications elsewhere.
Attribution of that kind of significance to Joseph [i.e., the ways in which

the Egyptians were honoring the Israelites all Joseph’s life, 46:2] is not
troublesome to the author. The problem for him is significance in the
realm of spiritual authority; specifically, any suggestion that, of all Jacob’s
sons, a spiritually privileged Joseph stands in closest proximity to the leg-
acy of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Every inference of such a quality adher-
ing to Joseph is deleted in the Jubilees reworking of the closing chapters
of Genesis. The elaborate deathbed testaments in the narrative of Jacob’s
death (Genesis 48–50) are reduced to a simple testament scene involving
all of Jacob’s sons (45:14). There is no privileging of Joseph; to the con-
trary, of the sons, it is Levi who stands out, for Jacob “gave all his books
and the books of his fathers to his son Levi so that he could preserve them
and renew them for his sons until today” (Jub. 45:16).20
If the alteration she finds here is in fact present, it would be a major one. For
this reason it will be helpful to examine the passages about the parts played
by Joseph in Genesis–Exodus in comparison with his roles in Jubilees to see
whether her thesis holds. The relevant texts suggest that weighty qualifications
to her statement are in order.
a. In the blessings of Jacob’s sons in Genesis 49, the Joseph section is, with
that of Judah, the lengthiest (49:22–26). The author of Jubilees does not
reproduce the individual blessings and swiftly summarizes this part of
Genesis 49 with the words: “Israel blessed his sons before he died. He
told them everything that would happen to them in the land of Egypt;
and he informed them (about) what would happen to them at the end
of time. He blessed them and gave Joseph two shares in the land” (45:13).
So Joseph does not stand out in a list of blessings on all twelve brothers,
but Jubilees does single him out for the blessing of two shares (as in Gen
48:21–22). Since he obtains the preferential inheritance within the family,
Joseph is more prominent than the others, although Genesis 49 is other-
wise referenced in just a few words.
20 “Burying the Fathers,” 138–39. For her thesis about Levi, see below.
b. The burial of Jacob: In Gen 49:29–33 Jacob gives instructions about his
burial and then dies. In 50:1–3 Joseph mourns for him and arranges for
his embalming, while in 50:4–14 he receives permission to bury his father
in the cave of Machpelah as the patriarch himself had ordered, leads a
large expedition (including his brothers) to the site, and returns to Egypt.
In this stretch of text Joseph is the dominant character in the family;
his brothers appear in it but none of them is named. The only reference
in Jubilees to any of the events in Gen 49:29–50:14 comes in 45:15: “He
[Jacob] slept with his fathers and was buried near his father Abraham in
the double cave [= Machpelah] in the land of Canaan—in the grave that
he had dug for himself in the double cave in the land of Hebron.” Neither
Joseph nor his brothers figure in the verse. The writer opts for a passive
construction (“was buried”) without specifying by whom. Yet, at an ear-
lier point, when Jacob was still contemplating whether he would go down
to Egypt, the Lord assured him that his body would be interred in the
land and that Joseph would be involved in his burial (Gen 46:3–4). The
author of Jubilees reproduces this prediction (44:5–6) that makes Joseph
more prominent than his brothers and thus allows him to carry out the
patriarchal role of burying his father.
c. In Gen 50:15–21 there is the familiar scene in which the brothers approach
Joseph about the wrong they had done to him and cite instructions Jacob
had given them (perhaps invented) to ask for his forgiveness. Joseph
proves magnanimous and theologically astute as he forgives them and
promises to provide for them. Jubilees lacks any reference to this encoun-
ter and, as noted above, inserts a section regarding the population explo-
sion and ideal relations between the Israelites who were admired by the
Egyptians. In the section about the happy circumstances for the Israelites
Joseph is the only person mentioned by name. Those conditions last as
long as he lives so that he is highly significant here—and hardly in just a
political sense.21
d. In Gen 50:22–26, the end of the book, Joseph tells his brothers of his immi-
nent death. As he does, he predicts that the Lord would visit them and
bring them up from Egypt to the land of promise. At that time, he said,
21 Van Ruiten (“Between Jacob’s Death and Moses’ Birth,” 471–72) prefers to explain the ab-
sence of this passage from Jubilees as caused by the author’s emphasis on family unity
and by its tension with texts that indicate an earlier reconciliation between Joseph and
his brothers (e.g., Gen 45:4–15; Jub. 43:14–20). The points are valid, but it is also true that
Joseph figures prominently in the section in Jubilees.
314 VanderKam
they were to transport his bones from Egypt.22 He then died, underwent
the process of embalming as Jacob had, and was buried in Egypt. Jubilees
reflects this family scene. It records Joseph’s death at age 110 (46:3; his
death is also mentioned in vv. 6, 8) and adds: “Before he died he ordered
the Israelites to take his bones along at the time when they would leave
the land of Egypt. He made them swear about his bones …” (46:5–6a).
Nothing is said about his being embalmed or buried or about the Lord
visiting them. Halpern-Amaru comments: “The words attributed to him
in Jubilees imply nothing that would suggest a mediating role between
the patriarchal past and the Israelite future; all that would imply a trans-
mission of covenant has been deleted. Only a certain prescience remains
in Joseph’s prediction of future political events in Egypt (Jub. 46:6).”23 She
notes that the version in Jubilees “avoids the overt presence of the broth-
ers together with Joseph in a setting that too closely resembles the death-
bed scene of a patriarch addressing his sons.”24 While much of what she
says about this accurately reflects the situation in Jubilees, she also thinks
the inclusion of Exod 1:6 at Jub. 46:4 (death of Joseph, the brothers, and
that generation) and the words of 46:8 (all the brothers died after he did)
put the deaths of all twelve brothers and their generation “on an equal
footing.” But surely the text is not placing them on an equal footing as
Joseph is the only one to be designated by name and is always first in the
listings.
e. Both Genesis (Exod 1:6) and Jubilees (46:4) then include the note that
Joseph, his brothers, and all that generation died. Where Exodus refers
to a new king who did not know Joseph (1:8), Jubilees notes only the rise
of a new king (46:7). Whatever more the passage implies, it removes the
impression that Joseph had vanished from the royal memory.
All five of the units show Joseph as a more important character, often in the
family, than Halpern-Amaru allows; they also indicate that he exercises a num-
ber of patriarchal roles. It does not appear as if he is demoted.
4. Promoting Levi: It was noted above that Halpern-Amaru calls attention
to Jub. 45:16 where Jacob gives Levi the ancestral books, but she finds a deep-
er levitical imprint on the story than just this key passage. A large change in
22 According to Gen 50:25 (//Jub. 46:5–6a), though he was speaking to his brothers, Joseph
made the Israelites swear about the handling of his bones, perhaps because they, not his
brothers, would be the ones carrying them from Egypt.
23 “Burying the Fathers,” 140.
24 Ibid.
Jubilees vis-à-vis Genesis-Exodus is the war story inserted to explain when and
why Joseph’s brothers were buried in the family tomb in Canaan but Joseph’s
bones were treated differently.25 In this account Joseph plays no part other
than to be aware of the changing international situation at an early stage and
to realize that he had to make plans for disposal of his bones. As a result, the
sequence of events that will lead to the enslavement in Egypt actually begins
during Joseph’s life according to Jubilees. The story places the rise of a new
monarch in Egypt at an earlier time than the one implied in Exodus. Halpern-
Amaru thinks even this event occurs during Joseph’s life and believes that for
the writer neither Joseph’s death nor the rise of a new king is “of immediate
consequence to Israelite history.”26 But is this accurate?
When relative to Joseph’s death the new king arosethe text does not say, but
his major military efforts took place twenty-one years after he died. That mili-
tary exercise led after a time to the change in the Egyptian attitude toward the
Israelites. Halpern-Amaru explains her understanding about what happens in
Jubilees as follows:
Thus Jubilees employs the interface of the Israelite burial of the fathers in
Canaan with the Egyptian defeat by the king of Canaan to provide a rea-
sonable basis for suspicion of Israelite loyalties. The account of the cir-
cumstances that justified those suspicions—not only had the Israelites
undertaken a burial expedition to Canaan in a time of war, but some of
their party had remained behind there—completes the Jubilees recon-
struction of the biblical transition narrative. The reconstruction bridges
the eras of the Israelite prosperity and subsequent enslavement in Egypt.
On top of that bridge, Jubilees places Amram, the grandson of Levi and
the father of Moses, who does not return to Egypt, but together with
some other Israelites, remains in Canaan. There, for forty-one years (Jub.
46:9, 47:1), he resides, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Jubilees, “on the
mountain of Hebron.”27
The brief reference to Amram—hardly atop a bridge between eras as she

would have it—appears in the angel’s words to Moses in 46:10: “Many returned
to Egypt but a few of them remained on the mountain of Hebron. Your father
25 On this story and parallels to it, especially the one in 4QVisions of Amram, see also van
Ruiten, “From Jacob’s Death to Moses’ Birth,” 479–85; VanderKam, “Jubilees 46:6–47:1 and
4QVisions of Amram,” DSD 17 (2010): 141–58.
26 Ibid., 142.
27 Ibid., 144.
316 VanderKam
Amram remained with them.” Jubilees 47:1 adds that forty-one years later “your
father came from the land of Canaan.” Halpern-Amaru believes that by means
of the note about Amram (and mentioning him by name in a national context)
the book “assigns to him the precise role that its exegesis had so deliberately
taken away from the biblical Joseph.”28 She adds: “Amram’s residence on the
mountain of Hebron provides a Levite, rather than Joseph-informed, connec-
tion between eras.”29 That is, in this case and the instance in which Jacob gives
his and his fathers’ books to Levi (45:16; for more on this, see below), the author
of Jubilees has Levite references where Genesis places Joseph. She presents
reasons for thinking he took material selectively from the Visions of Amram
(where the war story also occurs) and adapted it to his purposes in rewriting
this part of the biblical story. Incidentally, Jub. 45:16 (books given to Levi) and
the two references to Amram, just one of which uses his name and neither of
which calls him a Levite, are the only passages that mention either one of them
in this part of Jubilees.
Some criticisms of her conclusions were offered above in connection with
each of the points Halpern-Amaru has advanced, but a few more general ob-
jections should be registered—ones that lead to another way of looking at the
passages she discusses. For one, she neglects to reckon with the fact that at
this point in its rewriting of Genesis-Exodus the book severely abbreviates the
scriptural text. Thus if something in Genesis is missing, it may mean little more
than that, as he moves swiftly to the end of his story, the author did not feel a
need to reproduce it.30 Omissions are not necessarily tendentious.
Second, as noted several times above, it is not so clear that he downgrades
Joseph’s role in the family or deprives him of patriarchal status. Joseph is still
the one associated with the burial of Jacob, though the scene itself is barely
mentioned in the book. Joseph still receives an extra blessing, ideal conditions
prevail throughout his long rule of Egypt (thus the change for the worse did
not occur during his lifetime), he dictates what is to be done with his body, and
his death is mentioned several times and always first in lists of the ones who
passed away (the brothers, that generation).
A third objection relates to her statements about Levi and the Levite role
in Jubilees. Halpern-Amaru is right to highlight the importance of his receiv-
ing the ancestral books. As commentators on the book regularly note, Jacob’s
transmission of the ancestral books to Levi is the capstone of an important
theme. The work places a strong emphasis on writing, and in a series of
28 Ibid., 144–45.

29 Ibid., 145.
30 Cf. van Ruiten, “Between Jacob’s Death and Moses’ Birth,” 471 n. 10.
instances a father teaches the skill to his son.31 Enoch was the first author
(the angels taught him how to write, 4:17–18), Noah composed books that he
passed along to his son Shem (10:13–14) and transmitted teachings from his
ancestors Enoch and Methuselah, Kainan’s father taught him how to write
(8:3–4), Terah taught Abram who read his fathers’ Hebrew books (12:25–27;
included are the words of Enoch and Noah, 21:10; cf. also 20:4; 41:28), Jacob
learned to write (19:14; 32:24–26; 39:6), and he finally gave his books to Levi.
One of Levi’s descendants, Moses, is the putative copyist of the Book of Jubilees
(Amram taught him to read, 47:9) that he took by dictation from an Angel of
the Presence who was reading from the heavenly tablets (Jub. 1:27–2:1). Hence,
to say Levi received the ancestral books for himself and his sons is no small
matter, and the point must be given due weight.
That Levi and Levite connections are elevated in such a way that he/they
replace Joseph seems, nevertheless, an over-reading of some mostly rather
modest notices. Amram is mentioned in Jub. 46:10 as part of a group and as
the father of Moses; nothing is said about his levitical genealogy; the same
happens in 47:9. Levi himself in Jubilees after ch. 32 is almost the same non-
character he is in Genesis. Though in the Bible he becomes the ancestor of the
priests and Levites, he is hardly a hero. Jubilees elevates him to the priesthood
during his lifetime (appointment by his father [32:3] was preceded by several
cases of divine recognition [30:17–20; 31:13–17; 32:1]). But after he becomes the
priest in ch. 32, he does little in Jubilees. He remains behind with the aged Isaac
(and three brothers) during a war (34:3), he fights alongside his brothers in the
conflict with Esau and his sons (38:6), and he appears in lists with his brothers
(33:22; 34:20; 44:14). The logic of the narrative entails that he must have been
involved in selling Joseph and lying to Jacob about it, and in the trips to Egypt
and the negotiations with Jacob and with Joseph he should have been present
but is mentioned neither in Genesis nor in Jubilees. This is not surprising in
Genesis perhaps but it is in Jubilees. More importantly, the books he receives
in Jub. 45:16 are ones transmitted through the priestly line; thus Joseph would
have been ineligible to receive them in the thought world of the author. In the
end, there is not much of an emphasis on Levi/Levites as Jubilees rewrites the
passage from Genesis to Exodus. Joseph occupies a more prominent place than
31 For a recent study of the topic, see A. Teeter, “Wisdom, Torah, and Rewritten Scripture:
Jubilees and 11QPsa in Comparative Perspective,” in Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of
‘Torah’ in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple Period (ed. B. U. Schipper and Teeter;
JSJSup 163; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 237–40. Teeter considers the emphasis on writing and pa-
rental teaching to be a wisdom feature in the book.
318 VanderKam
Levi does, and he retains several traits of a patriarch (e.g., burying his father,
making provision for his own burial).32
Fourth, what the author does accomplish by omitting much and shaping the
materials at his disposal is not to re-divide biblical history and replace Joseph
with Levi/Levite material but to create a smooth, seamless segue from the sto-
ries about Jacob and his biological sons, especially Joseph, to the ones about
the national children of Israel. In his rapid retelling of the events, he cuts the
story down to essentials, establishes the success of Joseph and the wonder-
ful relations between his numerous people and the Egyptians throughout his
lifetime, and offers a fuller explanation for why matters changed so drastically
that Joseph’s bones had to stay in Egypt and the oppression began. For him
there was no break between Genesis and Exodus as his use of the population
theme shows. Joseph remains the leading character. The writer weaves the war
story into the instructions Joseph gave about his bones (he is still the prime
actor since he is the only one who does this and provides in patriarchal fashion
for their re-burial). To say that Joseph has authority only on the public stage,
not in the family, does not fully reflect the evidence. The patriarchal promises
are not repeated in connection with Joseph, but one of them was already ful-
filled in his lifetime (many offspring) and the other he presupposed when he
made provision for his burial in Canaan.33
To return to the question raised at the beginning of the essay, through the
changes he makes—and he does indeed make alterations—the author of
Jubilees erases any gap between Genesis and Exodus34 and, of course, includes
them in one composition. He emphasizes continuity (population growth,
smaller time lapse35) and bypasses the Bible’s resumptive pause (Exod 1:1–7)
between the two books. In this the writer was part of a widely attested tradi-
tion that treats the story as ongoing, although he tells it in far more detail than
most did.
32 In various places van Ruiten (“Between Jacob’s Death to Moses’ Birth,” e.g., 480 n. 26, 489)
casts doubts on her claims about a demotion of Joseph and elevation of Levi/Amram in
his place.
33 It is true that the Ephraim-Manasseh story is transformed or transposed from Genesis 48
and re-applied to the situation where Isaac blesses Jacob’s two sons Levi and Judah (Jub.
31:13–20) so that seeing the next generations is not said of Joseph. On this, see VanderKam,
“Jubilees’ Exegetical Creation of Levi the Priest,” RevQ 17/65–68 (1996): 369–71.
34 Cf. van Ruiten, “Between Jacob’s Death and Moses’ Birth,” 489.
35 Whatever the length of time between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses may be
in Genesis–Exodus (no specific dates are given, although approximations are possible
from the data in Exod 6:16–20; 7:7), in Jubilees Joseph dies in the year of the world 2242
(46:8), the new king takes over by 2263 (46:9), and Moses is born eighty-seven years later
(2330 [47:1]).
chapter 17
Deuteronomy in the Temple Scroll and Its Use in the

Textual Criticism of Deuteronomy*
Sidnie White Crawford
The Temple Scroll has been studied from many different angles since its initial
publication by Yigael Yadin in 1977.1 A quick perusal of its bibliography yields
articles on the laws of the Temple Scroll, its theology, the architecture of its
Temple plan, its relationship to Jubilees, MMT and the Damascus Document,
and its method in the reuse of scripture, to cite just a few examples.2 There
have not, however, been many studies of the Temple Scroll from a text-critical
point of view.3 In this article I will explore the question of whether or not the
text of the Temple Scroll can be useful when pursuing the textual criticism
of the book of Deuteronomy.4 In other words, I will not be investigating how
the Temple Scroll uses Deuteronomy for its own purposes, but whether or not
the Temple Scroll can be used as evidence in recovering the “earliest inferable
* It gives me great pleasure to dedicate this article to Moshe Bernstein, longtime colleague and
friend in all things Qumran.
1 Yigael Yadin, Megillat ha-Mikdash (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977)
[Hebrew]; The Temple Scroll (3 vols. and supplement; rev. Eng. ed.; Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, 1983).
2 See, e.g., the voluminous bibliography in Lawrence H. Schiffman, The Courtyards of the House
of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll (STDJ 75; Leiden: Brill, 2008).
3 The most thorough treatment is still the early study of Emanuel Tov, “The ‘Temple Scroll’ and
Old Testament Textual Criticism,” in Eretz Israel, Harry M. Orlinsky Volume (vol. 16; Jerusalem:
Israel Exploration Society, 1982), 100–11, 255* [Hebr. with Eng. summary]. Tov recognized that
the Temple Scroll reflected readings in agreement with the Septuagint and the Samaritan
Pentateuch (255*). See also Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Septuagint and the Temple Scroll:
Shared Halakhic Variants,” in Courtyards, 85–94; idem, “The Deuteronomic Paraphrase of the
Temple Scroll,” in Courtyards, 443–70.
4 George Brooke has suggested forcefully that “the rewritten scriptural texts need to become
much more explicitly part of the arsenal of the text critic, playing their full part in the de-
scription of the fluid transmission of the texts of the various scriptural books in the late
Second Temple period.” George J. Brooke, “The Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms: Issues
for Understanding the Text of the Bible,” in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the
Judaean Desert Discoveries (ed. E. Herbert and E. Tov; London/New Castle; The British Library
& Oak Knoll Press, 2002), 31–40, at 38.
320 Crawford
text” of Deuteronomy.5 This “earliest inferable text” is the goal of the Hebrew
Bible: A Critical Edition project, for which I am responsible for the edition of
Deuteronomy. Since this earliest inferable text is the goal of that project and
this study, in cases where I use the term “preferable reading” in comparing vari-
ants I mean the reading that leads to that earliest inferable text. In the case of
the phrase “secondary reading,” I mean that the variant in question arose after
the earlier preserved reading.
It is universally agreed that the book of Deuteronomy served as a source for
the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll. The Temple Scroll utilizes passages
from Deuteronomy throughout its text; the first extant column, column 2, uses
Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 7 as its source texts. This use of Deuteronomy
continues throughout the work. At its end, beginning in column 51, the com-
poser/redactor begins reproducing the text of Deuteronomy almost verbatim,
with very few interpolations from other biblical books.6 Thus this section of
the Temple Scroll has been aptly called the “Deuteronomic Paraphrase.”7 A
text-critical study of the Temple Scroll for the book of Deuteronomy logically
begins here.
For the purposes of this study I decided to select a limited section of
the Deuteronomic Paraphrase, a section that reproduces a running text of
Deuteronomy with no major interpolations from other biblical books or
from the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll. I have chosen columns
60:10 through 61:15 (according to Qimron’s critical edition), which reproduce
Deut 18:5–14, 20–22, 19:15–21 and 20:1–3.8 In what follows, the text preserved
5 The phrase comes from Ronald Hendel: “[the] critical aim [is] to approximate the corrected
archetype of each biblical book” where “archetype” refers to “the latest common ancestor or
the earliest inferable state of the text.” Ronald Hendel, “The Oxford Hebrew Bible: Its Aims
and a Response to Criticisms,” HEBAI 2 (2013): 63–99, at 64.
6 The exception to this is the large interpolation called “The Law of the King” in cols. 57–59.
7 Schiffman, “Deuteronomic Paraphrase,” 443–70. Schiffman (445) defines the Paraphrase as
“the sections of the Temple Scroll which follow the order of Deuteronomy and in which the
Deuteronomic text serves as the basic text for the legal exposition of the scroll. Further, we
refer to a block of text in which several sections of Deuteronomy appear in the same order as
they do in the canonical book.”
8 Elisha Qimron, The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions (Beer
Sheva/Jerusalem: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press and Israel Exploration Society:
1996). Qimron’s edition in these columns differs only slightly from Yadin’s original edition. The
edition found in James H. Charlesworth, The Temple Scroll and Related Documents (The Dead
Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Texts with English Translations, vol. 7; Tübingen/
Louisville: Mohr Siebeck and Westminster John Knox, 2011) is identical to Qimron’s in these
columns.
Deuteronomy in the Temple Scroll 321
in the Temple Scroll has been compared to the Masoretic Text according to
BHQ (= MT), the Samaritan Pentateuch according to the Tal/Florentin edition
(= SP), the Septuagint in the Göttingen edition (= G), and the Judean Desert
Deuteronomy manuscripts where extant.9 Purely orthographic variants and
clear morphological differences, such as long form vs. short form suffixes, have
not been included in the discussion. The reading from the Temple Scroll is
given first, with versions that agree with its reading; this is followed by a large
bracket. After the bracket the variant readings are given, separated by semi-
cola. The list of variants is followed by a text-critical discussion.10
1 Temple Scroll, Columns 60:10–61:15
1.1 Deut 18:5–14, 20–22; 19:15–21, 20:1–3
Column 60:10–21 = Deut 18:5–14

18:5 ‫ בו ] במה‬M SP G
18:5 ‫להיך בחר ] בחרתי‬-‫הוה א‬-‫ י‬M SP; ἐξελέξατο κύριος G
18:5 ‫ > ] לפני‬M; ‫להיך‬-‫הוה א‬-‫ לפני י‬SP G
18:5 ‫ לשרת ] ולשרת‬M G; ‫ לשרתו‬SP
18:5 ‫ ולברך‬SP G ] > M
18:5 ‫הוה ] בשמי‬-‫ בשם י‬M; ‫ בשמו‬SP G
18:5 ‫ ובניו ] וכול בניו‬M SP G
18:5 vacat = ‫ ס‬M; > SP
18:6 ‫ שעריכה‬M SP ] τῶν πόλεων ὑμῶν G

18:6 ‫ מכול ישראל‬M SP ] ἐκ πάντων τῶν υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ G
18:6 ‫ שמה‬M SP ] > G
18:6 > G ‫] ובא‬M SP
18:6 ‫ בכול‬M SP ] καθότι G
18:6 ‫הוה ] אבחר לשכן שמי‬-‫ יבחר י‬M G; ‫הוה‬-‫ בחר י‬SP
9 Carmel McCarthy, Deuteronomy (BHQ 5; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007).

Avraham Tal and Moshe Florentin, The Pentateuch: The Samaritan Version and the
Masoretic Version (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2010). John W. Wevers, Septuaginta:
Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Deuteronomium (vol. III, 2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1977, 2006). Eugene Ulrich, The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and
Textual Variants (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
10 Occasionally in the text-critical discussion I will make a distinction between the text of
the Temple Scroll as reconstructed by Qimron and the actual manuscript 11QTa.
‫‪322‬‬ ‫‪Crawford‬‬
‫‪ ] > M SP‬ככול אחיו הלויים ‪18:7‬‬

‫‪ M SP; λειτουργήσει G‬ושרת ] ישרת ‪18:7‬‬
‫‪ M SP G 4QDeutf‬בשם י‪-‬הוה א‪-‬להיו ] > ‪18:7‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬ככל אחיו הלוים ] > ‪18:7‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬לפני י‪-‬הוה ] לפני ‪18:7‬‬
‫‪ SP G‬יאכל ] (יאכלון) ‪ M 4QDeutf‬יואכלו ‪18:8‬‬

‫‪ 4QDeutf‬ממכרי]ו ;‪ SP‬ממכרו ;‪ M‬ממכריו ] ‪ G‬ממכר ‪18:8‬‬
‫‪ M; > SP‬ס = ‪18:8 vacat‬‬
‫‪ M SP‬בא אתה ] )‪ G (εἰσέλθῃς; pres. subj.‬תבוא ‪18:9‬‬

‫‪ M G SP 4QDeutf‬י‪-‬הוה א‪-‬להיך ] אנוכי ‪18:9‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬מעונן ] ומעונן ‪18:10‬‬

‫‪ SP‬מנחש ] ‪ M G‬ומנחש ‪18:10‬‬
‫‪ SP G‬מכסף ] ‪ M‬ומכסף ‪18:10‬‬
‫‪ M‬וחבר ] ‪ SP G‬חובר ‪18:11‬‬

‫‪ M‬ושאל ] ‪ SP G‬שואל ‪18:11‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬וידעני ] וידעונים ‪18:11‬‬
‫‪ SP G‬תועבת י‪-‬הוה א‪-‬להיך ;‪ M‬תועבת י‪-‬הוה ] תועבה המה לפני ‪18:12‬‬

‫‪ M SP G‬י‪-‬הוה א‪-‬להיך ] אנוכי ‪18:12‬‬
‫‪ M‬מוריש אותם ] ‪ SP‬מורישם ‪18:12‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬מפניך ] מלפניכה ‪18:12‬‬
‫‪ M; > SP‬ס = ‪18: 13 vacat‬‬
‫‪Col. 61:1–5 = Deut 18:20–22‬‬

‫‪ M SP‬את אשר ] אשר ‪18:20‬‬
‫‪ M SP‬ומת ] )‪ G (ἀποθανεῖται‬והומת ‪18:20‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬אשר ] ואשר ‪18:22‬‬

‫‪ SP‬לא ] ‪1 M G‬ולוא ‪18:22‬‬
‫‪ M G SP‬דברו י‪-‬הוה ] דברתי ‪18:22‬‬
‫‪2 M SP ] ὁ προφήτης ἐκεῖνος G‬הנביא ‪18:22‬‬
‫‪ M SP‬תגור ] )‪ G (ἀφέξεσθε‬תגורו ‪18:22‬‬
‫‪18:22 vacat ] > M SP‬‬
‫‪Deuteronomy in the Temple Scroll‬‬ ‫‪323‬‬
‫‪Col. 61: 6–15 = Deut 19:15–20:3‬‬

‫לכול חטא בכל חטא ;‪ M‬ולכל חטאת בכל חטא אשר יחטא ] ‪ G‬ולכול חטא אשר יחטא ‪19:15‬‬
‫‪ SP.‬אשר יחטא‬
‫‪ M SP‬שני ] שנים ‪19:15‬‬
‫‪19:15 > M SP ] πᾶν G‬‬
‫‪[ 4QDeutk2‬כיא] ;‪ SP G‬וכי ;‪ M‬כי ] אם ‪19:16‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬לפני י‪-‬הוה ] לפני ‪19:17‬‬

‫‪2 M SP‬לפני ] ‪ G‬ולפני ‪19:17‬‬
‫‪ ] > M SP G‬והלויים ‪19:17‬‬
‫‪ M SP‬והשופטים ] ‪ G‬ולפני השופטים ‪19:17‬‬
‫‪ SP‬יהיה ] ‪ M G‬יהיו ‪19:17‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬היטב ] > ‪19:18‬‬

‫‪ M SP‬העד ] )‪ (hiph.) G (ἐμαρτύρησεν‬העיד ‪19:18‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬ועשיתם ] ועשיתה ‪19:19‬‬

‫‪ M SP ] ἐξ ὑμῶν αὐτῶν G‬מקרבכה ‪19:19‬‬
‫‪ M SP ] ἀκούσαντες φοβηθήσονται G‬ישמעו ויראו ‪19:20‬‬

‫‪ M‬יספו לעשות עוד ] ‪ SP G‬יוסיפו עוד לעשות ‪19:20‬‬
‫‪ M SP 4QDeutf ] ἐν ὑμῖν G‬בקרבכה ‪19:20‬‬
‫‪ M‬ולא ] ‪ SP G 4QDeutf‬לוא ‪19:21‬‬

‫‪ G ] > M S‬עליו ‪19:21‬‬
‫‪ M, SP‬ס = ‪19:21 vacat‬‬
‫‪ M SP ] Ἐὰν δὲ G‬כי ‪20:1‬‬

‫‪ M‬עם ] ‪ SP G 4QDeutf‬ועם ‪20:1‬‬
‫‪ M SP G‬י‪-‬הוה א‪-‬להיך ] אנוכי ‪20:1‬‬
‫‪ M SP ] ὅταν ἐγγίσῃς G‬כקרובכמה ‪20:2‬‬

‫‪ M SP‬אל המלחמה ] למלחמה ‪20:2‬‬
‫‪ M SP; λαλήσει G‬ודבר ] וידבר ‪20:2‬‬
324 Crawford
Note that col. 61:5 ends with Deut 18:22, followed by a vacat.11 Line 6 begins
with Deut 19:15, omitting 19:1–4. This continues the sequence on crimes de-
serving capital punishment; false prophets are followed by false witnesses.
This reordering of the sequence of the source text is typical of the composer/
redactor of the Temple Scroll.
2 Text-Critical Discussion
2.1 Change to the 1st Person Singular

The first set of variants on which to remark is the change from the third person
singular when referencing God in Deuteronomy to the first person singular in
the Temple Scroll, at 18:5 (3×), 18:6,12 18:7, 18:9, 18:12,13 18:22, 19:17 and 20:1 (note
that this change does not occur at 18:13). This set of variants, unique to the
Temple Scroll, maintains the fictional setting of the scroll that God is speak-
ing in the first person to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The change is the work of the
composer/redactor and does not point to a difference in his source text.
2.2 Minor Variants

By “minor” I am referring to small (one letter or word) variants such as the
presence or absence of the conjunction. This type of variant is ubiquitous in
handwritten manuscripts, and it is often impossible to determine the prefer-
able reading.
At 18:6 (2×), 19:20 and 20:2 G preserves unique readings; these are not true
variants, but are the result of translation technique by the LXX translator.14
Throughout Deuteronomy an oscillation between the second masculine
singular and the second masculine plural suffix occurs; that is, sometimes the
11 These vacats, deliberate paragraph markers, sometimes but not always agree with the
paragraph markings of MT and/or SP. Col. 60:12, 15 and 21 have vacats following 18:5, 8 and
13 that agree with ‫ ס‬markings in MT (not shared with SP). Col. 61:12 has a small vacat after
19:21, shared with MT and SP. The vacat noted above, after 18:22, is not shared with MT
or SP.
12 18:6 is an instance of the important Deuteronomic variant ‫( יבחר‬MG)/‫( בחר‬SP) in the
formula “the place which the Lord your God will choose/has chosen.” TS, by its use of the
imperfect verb ‫אבחר‬, shows that it is in agreement with MT, G against SP.
13 At 18:12 the composer/redactor has had to change the entire phrase in order to achieve a
smooth reading in the first person, from (‫להיך‬-‫ א‬SP G) ‫הוה‬-‫ תועבת י‬in MT to ‫תועבה המה‬
‫לפני‬. It is impossible to tell whether or not TS shared the formulaic expansion of SP G.
14 John W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy (SCS 39; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1995), 296, 318–20.
addressees of Moses’ discourse are addressed as a collective “you” and some-

times as a plural “you.” In these cases it is difficult to determine which read-
ing is preferable, although G does demonstrate a tendency to level through
the second masculine plural. At 18:6, 19:19 and 19:20 TS agrees with MT and SP
against G in reading the singular; at 20:2 it agrees with MT and SP against G,
reading the plural; and at 19:19 it preserves a singular against MT SP and G, who
have the plural. Finally, at 18:22 TS preserves the 2mpl verb in agreement with
G, against the 2ms of MT and SP.
There is also variation between the 3mpl and the 3ms in four instances, at
18:5,15 18:8, 18:22 and 19:17. As with the 2ms/pl variation it is difficult to deter-
mine the preferable reading. Qimron notes that at 18:8 the final waw seems to
have been inserted in the space between words; in that case TS’s original text
agreed with SP and G and was revised to agree with MT.16
The presence or absence of the waw conjunctive also varies among the wit-
nesses, and it is usually difficult to determine the preferable reading. At 18:5
and 18:22 (‫)ואשר‬17 TS has the conjunction, against MT SP G. At 18:22 )‫ (ולוא‬TS
also has the conjunction, with MT G and against SP. TS likewise has the con-
junction at 19:17 with G, against MT SP. At 19:21 and 20:1 )‫ (ועם‬TS agrees with
SP G 4QDeutf in not having the conjunction, against MT. TS also does not have
the conjunction at 20:1 )‫ (כי‬in agreement with MT SP 4QDeutf against G. This
G reading may be the result of translation technique. Finally, in the list of for-
bidden professions found in 18:10–11, the use of the conjunction varies among
the versions:
‫ ומעונן ומנחש ומכשף חובר חבר שואל אוב וידעונים‬ TS

‫ מעונן ומנחש ומכשף וחבר חבר ושאל אוב וידעני‬ MT
‫ מענן מנחש מכשף חבר חבר שאל אוב וידעוני‬ SP
G: κληδονιζόμενος καὶ οἰωνιζόμενος φάρμακος ἐπᾴδων ἐπαοιδήν ἐγγαστρίμυθος

καὶ τερατοσκόπος
Another category of minor variant is the presence or absence of particles.

There are five readings in this category:
15 Yadin (Temple Scroll, 2:273) argued that the change to the 3mpl at 18:5 (unique to the
Temple Scroll) was an intentional one, to include both the priests and the Levites;
Schiffman (“Deuteronomic Paraphrase,” 555) maintains that the change was made to
smooth over a linguistic problem.
16 Qimron, Temple Scroll, 85.
17 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2:277, suggests that the conjunction was added for clarification.
326 Crawford
At 18:5 TS has ‫ כול‬against MT SP G.

At 18:6 G has τῶν υἱῶν against TS MT SP.
At 18:20 MT SP have ‫ את‬against TS.
At 18:22 G has ἐκεῖνος against TS MT SP.
At 19:15 G has πᾶν against TS MT SP.
At 19:21 TS and G have ‫ עליו‬against MT SP.18
The Temple Scroll and G tend toward expansion, with the exception of 18:20
where one could argue for an eye-skip on the part of the scribe of the Temple
Scroll. None of these expansions are the preferable reading.
2.3 Other Variants

The remaining variants do not fall into categories, so each one will be treated
separately.
18:5 TS reads ‫ ולברך‬with SP and G against MT. The entire phrase in TS is ‫ולשרת‬
‫ ;ולברך בשמי‬aside from the change to the first person singular and minor vari-
ants in the first verb, TS SP and G agree against MT’s ‫הוה‬-‫לשרת בשם י‬. The
phrase ‫ לשרת ולברך‬occurs at Deut 10:8, 21:5 and 1 Chr 23:13. Thus one could
argue that the text of TS SP and G is an expansion influenced by those verses.19
However, Wevers notes that the MT collocation “to serve in the name of the
Lord” is unusual; one serves at the altar, but blesses in the Lord’s name.20 Thus
it can be argued that M’s text is the result of haplography and that TS SP G have
the preferable reading.
18:6 TS and G are missing ‫ובא‬, which is found in MT SP. Wevers notes that ‫ ובא‬is
not necessary for the Greek translation;21 however, its absence in TS may argue
for a Hebrew Vorlage without it.
18:6 TS has the phrase ‫ לשכן שמי‬after ‫אבחר‬, against MT SP and G; aside from the
change to first person this phrase is ubiquitous throughout Deuteronomy (cf.
12:11, 14:23, 16:2, 16:6, 16:11 and 26:2), and is most likely an inadvertent expansion
on the part of the scribe of 11QTa or its parent text.
18:7 TS has ‫ככול אחיו הלויים ישרת‬, against MT SP G’s ‫להיו ככל‬-‫הוה א‬-‫ושרת בשם י‬
‫אחיו הלוים‬. It is most probable that the text has been deliberately rearranged by
the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll; Stackert suggests that the change
18 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2:279, suggests this is an addition for clarification.
19 So Schiffman, “Deuteronomic Paraphrase,” 555.
20 Wevers, Notes, 295.
in word order was made to emphasize the inferior role of the Levites vis-à-vis
the priests.22
18:8 TS and G read ‫ ;ממכר‬MT (and probably 4QDeutf) have ‫ ;ממכריו‬SP has
‫ממכרו‬. This phrase as a whole is difficult in Hebrew.23 McCarthy assumes that
G has omitted the suffix;24 however, the absence of the suffix in TS argues
against its deliberate omission by G. The more likely scenario is that the arche-
type of the Hebrew text(s) read ‫ ;ממכר‬the suffixes in MT and SP were added in
an attempt at clarification.
18:9 ‫ תבוא‬is a variant in the verb tense, with G (pres. subj.) seemingly in agree-
ment. The phrase ‫ כי תבוא‬occurs in Deut 17:14, 23:25, 23:26 and 26:1.25 The
MT SP reading ‫ כי אתה בא‬occurs at 31:17 and 31:23; the reading ‫אשר אתה בא‬
occurs at 7:1, 9:5, 11:10, 11:29, 12:29, 23:21, 28:21, 28:63 and 30:16. This is a case
where it is difficult to determine the preferable reading.
18:11 TS has the plural ‫ ידעונים‬against the singular of MT SP and G. The plural
occurs slightly more often (cf. Lev 19:31, 20:6; 1 Sam 28:3; 2 Kgs 21:6, 23:24; Isa
8:19, 19:3) than the singular (Lev 20:27; 1 Sam 28:9). This is probably a small
change on the part of the scribe of 11QTa under the influence of the other plu-
ral readings.
18:12 TS’s ‫ מלפניכה‬is a modernization of ‫ מפניך‬of MT SP and G.
18:20 TS’s ‫( והומת‬in agreement with G; cf. Deut 21:22) clarifies the ambiguity of
‫ ומת‬in MT SP.
19:15 TS reads ‫ ;ולכול חטא אשר יחטא‬MT has ‫ ;ולכל חטאת בכל חטא אשר יחטא‬SP
reads ‫ ;ולכל חטא בכל חטא אשר יחטא‬G preserves καὶ κατὰ πᾶν ἁμαρτίαν ἣν ἄν
ἁμάρτῃ. It seems likely that MT and SP have a conflate text; TS and G preserve
the earlier (and preferable) text.26
19:15 TS’s ‫ שנים‬is modernizing.
19:16 TS reads ‫ אם‬against ‫ כי‬in the other Hebrew witnesses. As Levinson and
Zahn have shown, the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll prefers ‫ אם‬to
22 J. Stackert, “The Cultic Status of the Levites in the Temple Scroll: Between History and
Hermeneutics,” in Levites and Priests in Biblical History and Tradition (ed. M. Leuchter and
J. Hutton; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 199–214, at 211.
23 See J. Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Philadelphia/Jerusalem: Jewish
Publication Society, 1996), 172.
24 McCarthy, Deuteronomy, 105*, “G’s characteristic omission of the suffix.” Wevers, Notes,
297, implies that G’s construction is paraphrastic.
25 At 18:6 and 30:1 ‫ כי‬is followed by the 3ms and 3mpl verb forms respectively.
26 See also McCarthy, Deuteronomy, 107*.
328 Crawford
introduce conditional clauses; thus the reading here is a substitution by the

composer/redactor.27
19:17 The lemma found in TS, ‫ולפני הכוהנים והלויים ולפני השופטים‬, has a com-
plicated textual history. ‫ והלויים‬is a unique variant, and is an addition by the
composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll, in keeping with his interest in making
a strong separation between the priests and the Levites.28 However, TS and G
agree against MT SP in the reading ‫ ;ולפני השופטים‬Wevers notes that the Greek
conjunctions cut the text so as to imply a triad of judges, i.e. the Lord, the
priests and the judges.29 It is likely that TS’s parent text read with G, and made
it easier for the composer/redactor to add “and the Levites,” preserving the
triad of judges but making the distinction between the priests and the Levites.
19:18 TS lacks ‫היטב‬, found in the other versions. It is likely that this is simply the
result of an eyeskip, not a genuine variant.
19:18 If not for G’s ἐμαρτύρησεν, TS’s ‫ העיד‬could be understood as a plene spelling
of the noun ‫העד‬. However, G’s reading makes it clear that it shared with TS a
parent text that had a Hiphil verb instead of the noun.30 Rofé’s assessment of
the TS G reading as secondary is probably correct.31
19:20 11QTa has added ‫ עוד‬above the line, resulting in a sequence that agrees
with SP and G, a probable reflection of 11QTa’s parent text. MT has the less com-
mon sequence, and may be preferable.
20:2 TS’s ‫ למלחמה‬is a change on the part of the scribe to the more common
locution.
3 Conclusions
This text-critical study of 1½ columns of the Temple Scroll has brought into
focus some important insights. We can say with certainty that the unique
27 B. Levinson and M. Zahn, “Revelation Regained: The Hermeneutics of ‫ כי‬and ‫ אם‬in
the Temple Scroll,” reprinted in B. Levinson, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection
of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll (Winona Lake:
Eisenbrauns, 2013), 1–44.
28 See also col. 57:12–13, where the king’s council is made up of twelve “princes,” twelve
priests and twelve Levites. Later biblical literature also makes a distinction between the
priests and the Levites (cf. 1 Chr 13:2; 2 Chr 8:15, 23:4; Ezra 3:12, 7:7; Neh 13:30), unlike
Deuteronomy, for which the priests are members of the tribe of Levi, but there is no dis-
tinction of function (cf. Deut 17:9, 17:18, 18:1, 21:5, 24:8, 27:9 and 31:9).
30 See McCarthy, Deuteronomy, 107*.
31 A. Rofé, “Qumranic Paraphrases, the Greek Deuteronomy and the Late History of the
Biblical ‫נשיא‬,” Textus 14 (1988): 163–74, at 165.
variants preserved by the Temple Scroll (at least, in this section) are the work
of the composer/redactor and in no case point to a preferable reading. Thus
we can begin by tentatively concluding that a variant reading preserved by the
Temple Scroll alone is not likely to be preferable and will not aid in recovering
the earliest inferable text of Deuteronomy.
However, variants found in the Temple Scroll that do agree with another wit-
ness disclose important text-critical information. The most important group of
these variants are those where the Temple Scroll agrees with G against MT SP,
at 18:6, 18:8, 18:9, 18:20, 18:22, 19:15, 19:17 (2×), 19:18 and 19:21. In these variants
the Temple Scroll provides a Hebrew witness to the parent text of G. It can
be argued, on the basis of these findings, that G and the Temple Scroll shared
a Hebrew ancestor that had branched off from the common ancestor of the
three major witnesses. It is also noteworthy that where the Temple Scroll does
not agree with G against MT SP, G’s variant is arguably the result of change after
its translation, or the result of translation technique (cf. 18:6 [4×], 18:22, 19:15,
19:19, 19:20 [2×] and 20:2).
There are seven readings where the Temple Scroll agrees with SP G against
MT.32 For three of these, 18:11, 18:12 and 19:21, TS SP G lack a conjunction against
MT, while at 20:1 TS SP G and 4QDeutf have the conjunction against MT. At 18:5
the base text of TS shared a formulaic expansion with SP G (‫להיך‬-‫הוה א‬-‫)לפני י‬,
which TS has changed to the first person. The readings at 18:5 (‫ )ולברך‬and 19:20
are more significant; at 18:5 TS supports the preferable reading of SP G against
haplography in MT, and at 19:20 TS supports the secondary word order of SP G.
There are fewer instances where the Temple Scroll agrees with MT against
SP G (18:8, 18:10), or with MT G against SP (18:6, 18:10, 18:22, 19:17). With the
exception of 18:6, a variant that is an important marker of textual affiliation in
Deuteronomy (see n. 12), these are all minor variants for which it is difficult to
determine the preferable reading.
What then can finally be said about the Temple Scroll’s utility for the tex-
tual criticism of Deuteronomy? The Temple Scroll can be a useful witness to
the text of Deuteronomy, but it must be used with caution. Its unique variants
need to be viewed with suspicion, as the product of the composer/redactor.
However, the variants that are in agreement with another witness(es) can yield
real insight into the textual history of Deuteronomy.
32 18:8 may provide an eighth, if the Temple Scroll’s original text (in agreement with SP G)
was revised to agree with MT.
chapter 18
Exegesis, Ideology, and Literary History in the

Temple Scroll: The Case of the Temple Plan
Molly M. Zahn*
Study of Second Temple texts that rewrite or otherwise interpret earlier scrip-
tural materials frequently involves attempts to distinguish between “exegesis”
and “ideology” or Tendenz: does the later text simply reflect a straightforward
attempt to clarify or explain the earlier materials, or does the earlier text serve
merely as raw material onto which the concerns of later readers are projected?
This issue has proven a source of ongoing disagreement in research on the
Temple Scroll (TS). Its connections to earlier scriptural materials, in particular
to texts that have come down to us in the Pentateuch, are undeniable, but what
is the proper understanding of these connections? Some scholars tend towards
understanding the Temple Scroll as primarily an exegetical text, and seek to
offer exegetical motivations or biblical precedent even for those sections of
the Scroll that have no parallel in earlier pentateuchal traditions.1 In contrast,
Johann Maier has argued forcefully that the Temple Scroll’s purposes were not
primarily exegetical; rather, materials now known to us from the Pentateuch
were freely combined with other textual resources to create a new whole. In
this view it is solely the aims and ideology of the redactor, not any exegetical
constraints, that control the Scroll’s contents.2
* I would like to thank the editors for their invitation to contribute to this special volume in
honor of Professor Bernstein, and for their valuable comments and suggestions. An earlier
form of this paper was presented in the Qumran section of the SBL Annual Meeting (Atlanta,
2015), and I am grateful for the excellent feedback I received from several members of the
audience, especially George Brooke, Michael Segal, and Eibert Tigchelaar. Thanks are also
due to Dan Machiela, who offered helpful reflections on a draft of the manuscript.
1 See e.g. Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977–
83); Dwight D. Swanson, The Temple Scroll and the Bible: The Methodology of 11QT (STDJ 14;
Leiden: Brill, 1994); Phillip R. Callaway, “Extending Divine Revelation: Micro-Compositional
Strategies in the Temple Scroll,” in Temple Scroll Studies (ed. George J. Brooke; JSPSup 7;
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 149–62.
2 Johann Maier, Die Tempelrolle vom Toten Meer und das «Neue Jerusalem» (3d ed.; UTB 829;
Munich: Reinhardt, 1997), 7.
Exegesis, Ideology, And Literary History In The Temple Scroll 331
In this paper, I will revisit this question of exegesis versus ideology or

Tendenz with special reference to one of the most distinctive features of TS, its
extensive instructions for a monumental temple accompanied by three con-
centric courts. I will briefly show that here, as is likely the case generally in TS,
exegesis cannot really be separated from ideology. A clear exegetical impetus
exists for the Scroll’s temple plan, but the interpretive solution offered in TS is
highly ideological in nature.3 My main goal in this paper, though, is to explore
an issue that complicates study of the Scroll’s temple plan, namely the appar-
ent existence of a form of that plan in the probably pentateuchal manuscript
4Q365+365a, published as 4QReworked Pentateuch C. This means that the
question of “exegesis vs. Tendenz” properly pertains not (only) to the redac-
tor of TS, but to the composer of 4Q365+365a. Further, the presence of this
distinctive temple plan in both TS and 4Q365+365a raises a series of questions
relevant to our understanding both of the compositional process behind TS
and of the relationship between authoritative text, rewriting, and ideology in
Second Temple Judaism more broadly.
1 TS’s Temple Plan
The instructions in TS for a temple and its surrounding courts are, like the rest
of the Scroll, presented as direct revelation from God to Moses on Mt Sinai.
Given the location at Sinai during the wilderness wandering, TS implies that
this is the temple that should be built upon the Israelites’ entry into the land;
that is, it corresponds in some way to the Deuteronomic “place that YHWH will
choose” as well as to Solomon’s temple.4
That this correspondence is not exact—that the temple in TS in fact differs
from Solomon’s temple—constitutes the ideological or tendentious element
of the temple plan, to be considered below. First, though, we should note the
various ways in which the idea of a temple plan revealed at Sinai can be re-
garded as an exegetical response to existing traditions. Yadin considered the
Scroll’s temple plan to be an exegetical elaboration of 1 Chr 28:11–19, in which
David passes along to Solomon the plans for the temple, plans which he claims
3 On the difficulty of maintaining a distinction between “pure” and “applied” exegesis, see
below and James Kugel, Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998),
21–22.
4 Lawrence Schiffman, “Theology of the Temple Scroll,” in idem, The Courtyards of the House
of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll (ed. F. García Martínez; STDJ 75; Leiden: Brill, 2008),
19–32, at 24.
332 Zahn
to have received “in writing, from the hand of YHWH” (28:19).5 As Schiffman
points out, however, if TS had simply been trying to provide the details be-
hind the brief sketch in Chronicles, we would expect its instructions to con-
form more closely to biblical descriptions of the Solomonic temple (1 Kgs 6; 2
Chr 3–5).6 More to the point, TS depicts the temple plan as revealed to Moses,
not David, suggesting that pentateuchal traditions are a more likely source of
exegetical stimulus. An attentive reader of the Pentateuch would find ample
reason to wonder why it lacks instructions for the temple. After all, extensive
instructions based on a heavenly blueprint or ‫( תבנית‬Exod 25:9) are given for
the tabernacle that accompanies the Israelites in the desert, and clear refer-
ence is made throughout Deuteronomy to a permanent center for worship at
“the place that YHWH your God will choose” (e.g., Deut 12:11).7 Why would God
give instructions for the portable sanctuary, but not for the permanent one?8
Even with this clear exegetical prompt, however, the temple plan in TS can-
not be explained purely as an attempt to redress a perceived gap in the text. The
plan, as Schiffman has demonstrated in several detailed studies, differs from
all known temple descriptions in Jewish tradition, including that of Solomon’s
temple in 1 Kings, Ezekiel’s temple vision, and descriptions of the second tem-
ple in Josephus and rabbinic sources.9 The relationship to descriptions of the
Solomonic temple is especially pertinent: in that it describes a temple struc-
ture different from that which Solomon is said to have built, and ascribes the
origins of that temple plan to Sinaitic revelation (i.e., divine revelation long
5 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.82, 177; see also Swanson, Temple Scroll and the Bible, 225–26.
6 Lawrence Schiffman, “The Construction of the Temple According to the Temple Scroll,” in
idem, The Courtyards of the House of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll, 233–51, at 251.
7 Compare Schiffman, “Theology of the Temple Scroll,” 24. (Note here his mention of Exod
25:8 “You shall build me a sanctuary ]‫ [מקדש‬so that I may dwell among you”—this verse in
context applies to the Tabernacle, but could imply a permanent sanctuary once in the land,
especially if read in light of Deuteronomy.) See also George J. Brooke, “The Ten Temples in the
Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (ed. J. Day; LHB/OT 422; London:
T&T Clark, 2005), 417–34, at 425.
8 Concern for the lack of instructions for the temple in the Pentateuch need not necessar-
ily preclude a connection with Chronicles/David traditions as well; as Yadin noted (Temple
Scroll, 1.82–83, 403–5), Midrash Samuel contains a tradition according to which a “temple
scroll” (‫ )מגילת בית המקדש‬containing the plan for the first temple was passed down from
Moses, via Joshua, the Elders, and the Prophets, to David and thence to Solomon. See also
Eva Mroczek, “How Not to Build a Temple: Jacob, David, and the Unbuilt Ideal in Ancient
Judaism,” JSJ 46 (2015): 512–46, at 540.
9 Lawrence Schiffman, “Architecture and Law: The Temple and Its Courtyards in the Temple
Scroll” in idem, The Courtyards of the House of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll, 215–32, at
224–27; see also Schiffman, “Construction of the Temple,” 250–51.
before Solomon’s time), TS actually mounts a strong critique of the Solomonic

temple, implying that it failed to conform to God’s revealed command.10 It is
the temple described in TS, not that of 1 Kings, that should have been built upon
Israel’s entry into the land.11
Despite this strong claim to superiority, the ideological significance of some
specific differences in detail between the temple plan of TS and that of oth-
ers is unclear, for example, differences in the height of the portico ]‫ [אולם‬or
the stories of chambers on the outside of the building.12 But one of the most
distinctive features of the Scroll’s temple plan does seem clearly to convey a
particular ideology. TS calls for the construction of three courts surrounding
the temple building itself. The presence of a third court is unique among an-
cient Jewish temple descriptions, which generally have only one or two courts.13
Two other elements are also unique: the concentric arrangement of the courts
(with gates on all four sides instead of only three as in Solomon’s and Ezekiel’s
temples) and the gargantuan dimensions of the outer court, which according
to TS was to measure “about 1600 cubits” (ca. 730 meters) on each side (40:8).
As Schiffman has persuasively argued, this arrangement is intended to mir-
ror or symbolically recreate the Israelites’ encampment in the wilderness,
in which the clans of the Levites were positioned immediately surrounding
the tabernacle and its court, with the remaining tribes arranged around the
Levites.14 The ideal temple would thus carry over into Israel’s life in the land
the special sanctity and closeness to God experienced during the wilderness
period.15 From the perspective of the second temple period, the difference be-
tween the plan outlined in TS and the reality of the first and second temples is
the result of divine instructions not implemented.
The temple plan in TS thus clearly contains a tendentious element, in its cri-
tique of the Solomonic temple. Yet it is important for a larger reflection on the
relationship between exegesis and Tendenz or ideology that a purely exegeti-
cal, non-ideological response to the interpretive question in this case (i.e., the
10 See Molly Zahn, “New Voices, Ancient Words: The Temple Scroll’s Reuse of the Bible,” in
Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (ed. J. Day; LHB/OT 422; London: T&T Clark, 2005),
435–58, at 450; H.-A. Mink, “The Use of Scripture in the Temple Scroll and the Status of the
Scroll as Law,” SJOT 1 (1987): 20–50, at 49.
11 Schiffman, “Theology of the Temple Scroll,” 24; Johann Maier, “The Architectural History
of the Temple in Jerusalem in the Light of the Temple Scroll,” in Temple Scroll Studies (ed.
George J. Brooke; JSPSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 23–62, at 23.
12 On these features, see Schiffman, “Construction of the Temple,” 237.
13 Schiffman, “Architecture and Law,” 225.
14 See Numbers 2–3 and Schiffman, “Architecture and Law,” 218, 228.
15 Schiffman, “Architecture and Law,” 229.
334 Zahn
absence of instructions for a temple in other pentateuchal traditions) would

scarcely be possible. If, for example, the temple plan had completely agreed
with biblical descriptions of Solomon’s temple, we might be tempted to re-
gard this as simply “gap-filling”: supplying details perceived to be missing by
importing them from another source. But even this seemingly straightforward
move would have a strong ideological component, in that it would promote an
idealization of the Solomonic temple through the assertion that the details for
that temple were revealed to Moses on Sinai. In other words, the presence of
a “real” exegetical problem or textual gap does not preclude, and sometimes
even requires, a tendentious or ideological response. Depending on the issue
at hand, an interpreter may not be able to avoid taking sides. Even more gener-
ally speaking, we may expect, as Bernstein has pointed out, that interpreters
will resolve exegetical problems in ways that accord with their own ideology,
perhaps without even recognizing that their solutions are tendentious.16
2 A Parallel to TS’s Distinctive Temple Plan
In both quantitative and qualitative terms, the temple plan constitutes a cen-
tral element of TS. Instructions for building the temple, its courts, and associ-
ated structures, and sacrificial and purity laws relating to the temple, fill 45 of
the 65 extant columns of 11Q19, the main copy of the Scroll. The concentric
structure evident in the arrangement of the temple and its courts represents
the major organizing principle of TS and indicates the conceptual centrality of
the temple in the system of thought that lies behind the Scroll.17 It may come
as somewhat of a surprise, therefore, that this most distinctive element of TS
is partially attested in another document. One large fragment of 4Q365a pre-
serves extensive parallels to 11Q19 columns 38 and 41; in the case of the latter,
the overlap is nearly verbatim and extends over most of the column. 11Q19 col.
41 and its parallel in 4Q365a 2 ii describe the measurements of the wall sur-
rounding the temple’s massive outer court and of the gates in that wall. It is the
presence of this huge third court that gives the temple plan in TS its character
as a representation of the desert camp, and that allows the Scroll to formulate
an image of Israel encamped around the divine dwelling place. Thus, striking-
ly, it is not simply the case that 4Q365a preserves a temple plan that is partially
16 Moshe J. Bernstein, “4Q252: From Re-written Bible to Biblical Commentary,” JJS 45 (1994):
1–27, at 9.
17 Maier, Tempelrolle, 8; also Schiffman, “Architecture and Law,” 229, 232.
parallel to that of TS. Rather, the parallels occur precisely in that part of the
temple plan that gives TS its particular ideological perspective.
4Q365a, the manuscript that contains these overlaps, has variously been
characterized as possibly an early copy of TS or as a literary source used by
TS.18 The five fragments of this manuscript, however, should very likely be clas-
sified as part of 4Q365, 4QReworked Pentateuch C. Despite the early separa-
tion of the 4Q365a fragments from the rest of 4Q365 on the basis of the fact
that they contain no pentateuchal material, the physical evidence does not
appear to support this separation.19 Furthermore, 4Q365, which was published
as a parabiblical composition, seems most probably to have constituted an ex-
panded copy of the Pentateuch. I have argued elsewhere that this manuscript,
4Q365+365a, may well represent a source for TS, but in the sense of serving
as its pentateuchal source.20 Frankly, however, I overlooked the significance of
the fact that the clearest overlaps between the two manuscripts occur in the
instructions for the outer court.
18 4Q365a was published as “4QTemple?” by Sidnie White (Crawford) in DJD 13. In a more
recent publication, Crawford adopts the position that these fragments do not represent
a copy of TS but rather constituted “source material” for TS; see Sidnie White Crawford,
“4QTemple? (4Q365a) Revisited,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related
Literature (ed. J. Penner et al.; STDJ 98; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 87–95. The PTS Dead Sea Scrolls
Project publication describes 4Q365a as a “Temple Scroll Source or Divergent Copy”; see
James H. Charlesworth with A. R. Van Kirk, “Temple Scroll Source or Divergent Copy
(4Q365a [4QTa?]),” in Temple Scroll and Related Documents (ed. J. H. Charlesworth et al.;
PTSDSS 7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 235–45.
19 See Florentino García Martínez, “Multiple Literary Editions of the Temple Scroll?,” in The
Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery (ed. L. H. Schiffman et al.; Jerusalem:
Israel Exploration Society/Shrine of the Book, 2000), 364–71, at 369–70; Armin Lange,
Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer Band 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck: 2009), 40.
20 M. Zahn, “4QReworked Pentateuch C and the Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll: A
New (Old) Proposal,” DSD 19 (2012): 133–58. Charlesworth argues that 4Q365a was written
on the same scroll as 4Q365 by the same scribe, but that it constitutes a different compo-
sition because it contains “no running biblical text, as in works categorized as reworked
Pentateuch” (“Temple Scroll Source or Divergent Copy,” 236). As García Martínez pointed
out already in 2000, such arguments are circular, depending as they do on the assumption
that we can accurately determine how much new/“non-biblical” material was permissible
in documents like the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts (“Multiple Literary Editions,”
370). Just as was the case for the labeling of the 4Q365a fragments as a separate manu-
script, the only basis for concluding that they cannot have been a part of a “reworked
Pentateuch” (even if copied on the same scroll) is the unsubstantiated assumption that
such texts would not contain so much new material.
336 Zahn
That significance must be articulated in different ways depending on one’s

view of the nature of the literary relationship between TS and 4Q365+365a.
Despite having argued in earlier publications that 4Q365+365a more likely rep-
resents a source for TS’s temple plan than the other way round, here I would
like to keep the question of direction of dependence open, for two reasons.
First, honesty requires me to admit that, even if one direction of dependence
seems more likely than another, the evidence can support multiple interpreta-
tions: we are dealing with probabilities rather than absolutes. Second, consid-
ering the overlap in the courts materials from several possible angles is more
productive heuristically, opening up lines of thinking and points of connection
to other issues that may otherwise have remained obscured.
3 General Implications
Some significant observations can be made without needing to decide whether

TS draws its temple plan from 4Q365+365a or vice versa. One of these pertains
to the ideological matrix of TS. In general terms, TS participates in a broad tra-
dition of dissatisfaction with the earthly (second) temple and revelations per-
taining to a future temple.21 Yet TS appears distinctive in its primary concern
not with an eschatological, divinely built temple, but with a historical one—
albeit one that was never built.22 Other Second Temple traditions concerning
the temple do not seem to contain the same move against the first temple as
that implied by the details of TS’s plan. Thus 4Q365+365a, whether it predates
TS or not, constitutes unique evidence that core elements of the Scroll’s dis-
tinctive ideology were shared by other writers.23
21 On this tradition see Eva Mroczek, “How Not to Build a Temple” (n. 8 above); Eibert J. C.
Tigchelaar, “The Imaginal Context and the Visionary of the Aramaic New Jerusalem,” in
Flores Florentino (ed. A. Hilhorst et al.; JSJSup 122; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 257–70. See also the
important earlier study by Florentino García Martínez, “The Temple Scroll and the New
Jerusalem,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W.
Flint and J. C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 2.431–60.
22 TS does mention (in col. 29) the eschatological sanctuary that God will create “according
to the covenant that I made with Jacob at Bethel” (29:10), thereby evidencing important
links to traditions found in Jubilees and the New Jerusalem texts; see Tigchelaar, “Imaginal
Context,” 266; Mroczek, “How Not to Build a Temple,” 533–35. However, this is the only
mention of the eschatological temple in TS.
23 Scholars have, of course, long argued that the compiler of TS drew on existing sources
(thus implying precedents for the Scroll’s distinctive points of view). But the discussions
tend to frame the issue in terms of compositional history rather than history of ideas,
The parallel with TS also sheds light on the nature of 4Q365+365a, regard-
less of whether it is textually earlier or later than TS. Even among scholars
who accept the identification of this manuscript (in its full extent, compris-
ing 4Q365 and 4Q365a) as an edition of the Pentateuch, little has been said
about its ideology or distinctive perspectives.24 I myself in my 2011 book noted
only that the presence of the temple and courts materials in 4Q365+365a gave
this manuscript “a distinctive focus on the Temple and Temple cult,” and that
the overlap with TS shows that “neither text [TS or 4Q365+365a] existed in
a vacuum, but shaped or was shaped by other texts circulating at the time.”25
But we can be more precise: this pentateuchal manuscript, 4Q365+365a, con-
tains an ideologically distinctive temple plan that implicitly critiques both
the Solomonic and the second temple. It does not simply represent a copy of
the Pentateuch with “exegetical” expansions, no matter how extensive, but
such that the significance of these (sometimes hypothetical) sources for understanding
the cultural/ideological context of TS is obscured. For example, Schiffman (“Architecture
and Law,” 216, 232) explicitly indicates that the temple plan must have originated prior
to its incorporation into TS, even mentioning its attestation in the photographic plate
PAM 43.366 (= the 4Q365a fragments) and Strugnell’s proposal that these fragments be-
long to “an expanded Torah scroll” (216; on Strugnell, see Zahn, “Literary Sources,” 137–38).
Nevertheless, Schiffman’s language in the subsequent discussion frequently blurs the
distinction between the temple plan and TS itself, for example in formulations such as
“… the scroll’s approach is not to be compared to the existing Second Temple” (224, my
emphasis) and “This itself represents a major innovation on the part of the scroll” (225,
my emphasis).
24 The identification of 4Q365+365a as a pentateuchal manuscript has been espoused in
print by myself, Lange (Handbuch, 39–40), and, in an incidental comment, by Esther Eshel
and Hanan Eshel, “Recensions of the War Scroll,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After
Their Discovery (ed. L. H. Schiffman et al.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Shrine
of the Book, 2000), 351–63, at 362. The Eshels are here following Qimron, who remarks
that “Yadin thought that 4Q365 was also a copy of the Temple Scroll, but this work is ap-
parently a sort of ‘Expanded Torah’ ”: E. Qimron, The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with
Extensive Reconstructions (Beer Sheva and Jerusalem: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Press/Israel Exploration Society, 1996), 4. Though Qimron here refers to the official pub-
lication of 4Q365 in DJD 13, he does not mention the separation of the 4Q365a fragments
from the rest of the manuscript. See also Emanuel Tov, “From 4QReworked Pentateuch
to 4QPentateuch(?),” in idem, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, Septuagint:
Collected Essays, Volume 3 (VTSup 167; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 45–59, and the literature cited
there with reference to 4Q364–367.
25 Molly M. Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture: Composition and Exegesis in the 4QReworked
Pentateuch Manuscripts (STDJ 95; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 121.
338 Zahn
represents the same strand of idealistic dissatisfaction with existing temple

traditions as is found in TS.
Generally speaking, older models of non-MT versions of the Pentateuch as
“sectarian” (or “vulgar,” “corrupt,” “popular,” etc.) have rightfully fallen by the
wayside.26 In their place has emerged a tendency to emphasize the plurifor-
mity of pentateuchal manuscripts as a reflection of the sophisticated scribal
exegesis apparently common throughout Second Temple Judaism.27 Without
denying the validity of this approach, it is worth highlighting that such exege-
sis could also be used in support of particular views that may not have been
universally shared.28 The instructions for the outer court in 4Q365+365a are an
outstanding example of editorial activity that could be regarded as “tenden-
tious” or even as “sectarian” (in the broad sense of representing views distinctive
to a particular group within Judaism). In fact, there are some striking concep-
tual parallels between the courts material in 4Q365+365a/TS and that most
prototypically “sectarian” manuscript variant, the Samaritan addition to the
Decalogue requiring worship on Mt. Gerizim. With that insertion, Samaritan
scribes separated their version of the Torah from other early Jewish versions by
defining the deuteronomic “place that YHWH will choose” as Gerizim, rather
than interpreting it to refer to Jerusalem as had long been the case in Judea.29
Like the Samaritan Pentateuch, the temple plan in 4Q365+365a gives more in-
formation about the nature of “the place that YHWH will choose” and, in the
process, creates a vision of Israel’s temple complex that rejects or undermines
the legitimacy of the Jerusalem temples. For the Samaritan Pentateuch this is
a matter of location—Gerizim vs. Jerusalem—while for 4Q365+365a the issue
is the structure and organization of the temple and its courts. Both, however,
26 See in particular David Andrew Teeter, Scribal Laws (FAT 92; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2014), esp. 208–24; Jonathan Ben-Dov, “Early Texts of the Torah: Revisiting the Greek
Scholarly Context,” JAJ 4 (2013): 210–34.
27 See especially the work of Eugene C. Ulrich, e.g., “The Absence of ‘Sectarian Variants’
in the Jewish Scriptural Scrolls Found at Qumran,” in The Bible As Book (ed. E. Herbert
and E. Tov; London: British Library, 2002), 179–95; also Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting
Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 4–6.
28 See for example the discussion concerning revisions to the book of Ezekiel from vari-
ous apocalyptic orientations in Ingrid Lilly, Two Books of Ezekiel: Papyrus 967 and the
Masoretic Text as Variant Literary Editions (VTSup 150; Leiden: Brill, 2012).
29 On the Samaritan 10th Commandment, see Gary Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 206–12; and, building on his approach, Molly Zahn, “The
Samaritan Pentateuch and the Scribal Culture of Second Temple Judaism,” JSJ 46 (2015):
285–313, at 301–7.
indicate that God gave instructions at Sinai for the future temple, and imply
that Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem did not conform to this divine command.
Moving onto more tentative ground, we discover further (potential) impli-
cations of the overlap in the courts material depending on whether we regard
TS as the later composition that drew upon 4Q365+365a (or a similar, common
source) or, on the contrary, view TS as the source for the temple material in
4Q365+365a.
4 If 365+365a (or a Common Source) is the Source for TS
If we could be confident that TS drew its temple plan from 4Q365+365a or a

similar source, we could then of course argue not only that the ideas about the
temple attested in TS had some kind of broader currency, but more specifically
that they predate the composition of TS itself. This in turn would have impor-
tant implications for our understanding of the compositional process of TS.
The possibility that TS may have adopted its distinctive plan for an outer court
from an earlier source indicates that we must avoid jumping to conclusions
about the origins of any given aspect of the Scroll’s ideology. It is a truism of
redaction criticism that it is in the changes to sources that we see a composer’s
ideology emerge most strongly. Furthermore, there is empirical evidence for
such change in the case of TS: close study of the textual parallels between 11Q19
and other manuscripts, particularly 4Q365+365a and 4Q524, indicates that the
composer of the 11Q19 form must have made substantial changes to earlier ver-
sions of the material. All this might reasonably lead us to expect that these
changes would express the most central elements of the Scroll’s ideology. That
impression may certainly be accurate for many aspects of the structure and
contents of 11Q19. However, the most characteristic and distinctive aspect of
the temple plan—the monumental outer court—is demonstrably not original
to TS, but seems to have been taken over without change from an earlier text.
As the Qumran material has taught us time and time again, even quite reason-
able principles must not become so rigid as to close off alternative possibilities
or exceptions to the rule. From the perspective of the question of exegesis vs.
Tendenz, this scenario demonstrates that Tendenz cannot be conceived of sim-
ply in terms of a single author or scribe’s activities. The temple plan in TS is no
less tendentious in comparison to other temple traditions, and no less central
to TS’s structure and ideology, for having originated in another text. In other
words, here TS expresses its Tendenz not by making changes to its source, but
by incorporating material without change.
340 Zahn
5 If TS is the Source for 365+365a
I still maintain that the most economical explanation for the parallels between
4Q365+365a and TS—not just in the courts material but also those involving
the wood offering (4Q365 23//11Q19 23–24)—is that TS drew on a version of
the Pentateuch identical with or very similar to that preserved in 4Q365+365a.30
The evidence, however, is not conclusive, and methodological responsibility
requires us to leave the reverse option open: 4Q365+365a could have drawn
the materials on the wood offering and the outer court from TS rather than the
other way around. If this is the case, the parallels obviously would not have the
same impact on our understanding of the issue of exegesis and Tendenz in TS.
But there would still be some interesting implications.
For one thing, the incorporation of ideologically distinctive material from
TS into a manuscript of the Pentateuch might indicate that the scribe respon-
sible for 4Q365+365a regarded that material as similar in authority to that of
the materials that we recognize as pentateuchal. Of course, the scribe may
simply have liked the TS materials and felt their insertion made for a better
version of the Torah, regardless of their authoritative status (or lack thereof).
But given that the scribe would have accessed these materials in the context
of a composition (i.e., TS) that claimed to have been spoken by God at Sinai,
it seems likely that the scribe would have agreed with or accepted that claim
to represent divine speech. We could even regard the insertion of TS materials
as a sort of harmonization or exegetical response to two partially overlapping
scriptural texts (i.e., TS and the Pentateuch). From the perspective of the ques-
tion of exegesis vs. Tendenz posed here, this scenario raises some interesting
possibilities—in fact illustrating once again the difficulty in separating “ten-
dentious” from “pure” exegesis. The scribe of 4Q365+365a would have regarded
both TS and the Pentateuch as scriptural, and may have inserted the distinctive
materials from TS into this new copy of the Pentateuch simply out of convic-
tion that they belonged there—that is, out of a concern for joining like with
like or gap-filling. But as a result, the Pentateuch is expanded with a highly
30 In addition to the arguments presented in Zahn, “Literary Sources,” 151–52, another con-
sideration may be the position of the wood offering in 4Q365 in Leviticus 24, after the end
of the festival calendar of Leviticus 23, in contrast to TS where the wood offering is inte-
grated into the calendar as one of the annual festivals. It seems somewhat more likely that
the composer of TS would take the wood offering and incorporate it into a comprehensive
festival calendar than that someone revising the Pentateuch in light of TS would take the
wood offering out of the festival calendar and tack it on after the end of the list of festivals.
tendentious temple plan (one with which the scribe presumably agreed or was
comfortable). Is this exegesis or Tendenz? Quite clearly, it is both.
A second implication that would arise from this less-likely scenario of reuse
(i.e., reuse of TS by the scribe of 4Q365+365a) pertains to our conceptualiza-
tion of textual influence in early Judaism. Canonically-framed mindsets have
led scholars to think about influence largely as flowing out from the canon
(that is, those texts that ended up in our Bibles) to various sorts of commen-
tary and “parabiblical” or rewritten works. More recently, however, it has been
acknowledged that processes of influence were likely more complex: certain-
ly, reflection on texts that later became canonical resulted in new rewritten
compositions, but it is possible or even likely that such rewritten composi-
tions also subsequently affected the continuing development of the biblical
texts themselves. For example, Mladen Popović has pointed out that texts like
4QPseudo-Ezekiel may have influenced the shape of the book of Ezekiel itself.31
If 4Q365+365a is later than and draws upon TS, we would have another exam-
ple of the same process: TS, itself a rewriting of earlier pentateuchal materials,
would then in turn have influenced the production of a subsequent version of
the Pentateuch.
6 Conclusion
The parallels between TS and 4Q365+365a in the instructions for the outer
court, in that they involve one of the most distinctively ideological aspects of
TS, raise a chain of questions that call for clarification of how Tendenz is de-
scribed and conceptualized in relation to “exegesis.” They also prompt us to
reflect on how Tendenz (or: particular ideological perspectives) might be trans-
mitted or shared between different works, thus moving us beyond a binary re-
lationship between the “scriptural text” and a single interpreting text or scribe.
Several aspects of this particular case highlight the impossibility of ex-
tricating ideology from exegesis. Even the most tendentious changes usu-
ally can be shown to have exegetical roots, as mentioned above for the
temple plan discussed here and as has also been noted for the Samaritan 10th
commandment.32 Conversely, as noted above, even the most straightforward
exegetical problem can be solved in a way that reflects a distinctive ideological
31 Mladen Popović, “Prophet, Books and Texts: Ezekiel, Pseudo-Ezekiel and the
Authoritativeness of Ezekiel Traditions in Early Judaism,” in Authoritative Scriptures in
Ancient Judaism (ed. M. Popović; JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 227–51, at 244.
32 See especially Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans, 206–212.
342 Zahn
position. Finally, as Alexander Samely has demonstrated in his work on the

Targumim, all exegesis is ideological in that it embodies or represents a par-
ticular set of beliefs or assumptions regarding the nature of the text to be
exegeted.33 For all of these reasons, then, it seems best to heed Kugel’s warning
that “the attempt to distinguish between ‘pure’ exegesis … and exegesis that is
ideologically or politically motivated is doomed to fail …”34
It is a pleasure and an honor to offer these reflections on exegesis and
Tendenz in celebration of Professor Bernstein, whose own commitment to un-
derstanding puzzling Qumran texts on their own terms has shaped my own
approach. He may be pleased to know that, despite my conviction of the in-
evitable overlap between exegesis and Tendenz, I do not think we should stop
attempting to reconstruct the exegetical logic of particular cases of revision or
reuse, or for that matter stop talking about ideology in exegetical or rewritten
texts. Rather, I aim to express what I consider a quite Bernsteinian point of
view: that we should regard rewritten texts as works of exegesis—that is, as
reflecting a quest to understand existing texts and traditions—but recognize
that this quest for understanding can only be carried out in light of the inter-
preter’s own worldview and theological commitments.
33 See in particular A. Samely, The Interpretation of Speech in the Pentateuch Targums (TSAJ
27; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 84–85, where he argues that the quest to identify “the-
ology” (as opposed to exegesis) in the Targumim overlooks the extent to which the exege-
sis itself constitutes or embodies a theology of sacred text.
34 Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 21.
chapter 19
The Neglected Oaths Passage (CD IX:8–12):

The Elusive, Allusive Meaning
Shlomo Zuckier*
This paper will address a four-line passage in the Damascus Document

(CD IX:8–12) that has not merited sufficient attention to date.1 It will consider
the meaning of the passage and point to several biblical allusions it contains
* I have been lucky enough to study with mori ve-rabbi, Dr. Bernstein, in a variety of areas,
among them: keri’at ha-torah, Biblical Hebrew, ancient Jewish biblical interpretation, Dead
Sea Scrolls, and a theological framework for studying Bible, all with characteristic critical
rigor. Paramount among the skills he has passed on is the art of the close reading—consis-
tently coming to terms with each text on grammatical, literary, theological, contextual, and
allusive levels (to name just a few). Dr. Bernstein’s ability to exemplify this method in the
classroom made his courses among the most rigorous and productive classroom experiences
I have been so privileged to experience. In honoring his important role in to my education, I
offer this close reading and analysis of a short passage in the Damascus Document that may
not have received its due.
Thank you to my colleagues Binyamin Y. Goldstein, Ari Lamm, and Yael Landman
Wermuth for their very helpful suggestions to earlier drafts. This article was originally pre-
sented to a course on the Damascus Document taught by Prof. Steven Fraade. Many thanks to
him, and to the class, for their suggestions to that early version.
1 The first scholarly treatment of this text, albeit partial, was in Lawrence H. Schiffman,
Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Courts, Testimony and the Penal Code (BJS 33; Chico,
CA: Scholars, 1983) 113–31, in a chapter entitled “The Restoration of Lost or Stolen Property,”
which analyzed IX:10–12. The passage was discussed as part of longer treatments in Yonder
Gillihan, Civic Ideology, Organization, and Law in the Rule Scrolls: a Comparative Study of the
Covenanters’ Sect and Contemporary Voluntary Associations in Political Context (Leiden: Brill,
2011), 205–207; and Catherine M. Murphy, Wealth in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Qumran
Community (STDJ 40; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 47–51. It has also been the focus of two articles:
Emmanuel Pradeilhes, “Le serment judiciaire dans le Document de Damas (CD 9, 8b–12),”
Revue d’Etudes des Civilisations Anciennes du Proche-Orient 7 (1998): 26–41; and the more re-
cent Kimberley Czajkowski, “Lost and Stolen Property at Qumran: The ‘Oath of Adjuration’,”
JSJ 47 (2016): 88–103. While some of these treatments pay a certain degree of attention to
biblical allusion, that angle has certainly not been exhausted by the literature. Jonathan G.
Campbell, The Use of Scripture in the Damascus Document 1–8, 19–20 (BZAW 228; Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1995) does not treat this passage, true to its name. A comprehensive look at use of
scripture in D remains a desideratum.
344 Zuckier
in an effort to contextualize the text and better appreciate its legal and literary
meaning.
The text under consideration reads as follows:
‫על השבועה אשר אמר לא תושיעך ידך לך איש אשר ישביע על פני השדה אשר‬
‫לא לפנים השפטים או מאמרם הושיע ידו לו‬
‫וכל האובד ולא נודע מי גנבו ממאד המחנה אשר גנב בו ישביע בעליו בשבועת‬
‫האלה והשומע אם יודע הוא ולא יגיד ואשם‬
The passage has been translated in the volume produced by Joseph Baumgarten
and Daniel Schwartz as follows:2
Concerning Oaths: as to that which he said, “Let not your hand help you,”
a man who causes (another) to swear in the open field that is not in the
presence of the judges or by their bidding has let his hand help him.
And anything lost, and it is not known who stole it from the posses-
sion of the camp in which it was stolen, its owner shall cause to be pro-
nounced an oath curse. And he who hears it, if he knows and does not
tell, shall bear guilt.
1 Finding the Framework
It is not immediately clear what earlier sources or legal principles (if any) D
might be drawing upon in formulating these rules. These regulations are not
obviously spelling out any biblical laws, nor do they have clear parallels in later
rabbinic law. Thus, one attempting to explicate this passage encounters the
difficulty of lacking the proper framework within which to locate this material.
This may also explain why these lines have been less discussed than some other
materials in D.3 One goal of this paper is to provide the context and structure
for understanding these passages.
2 Joseph M. Baumgarten and Daniel Schwartz, “Damascus Document,” in 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; Tübingen: Mohr, 1995), 42–43.
3 This is especially true for the first half of the passage, CD IX:8–10. See, e.g., Lawrence
Schiffman, Sectarian Law, where that passage merits minimal attention (and is not consid-
ered in light of the two following lines).
The Neglected Oaths Passage ( CD IX:8–12 ) 345
2 One Law or Two?
It is also possible to raise internal questions about this passage. Determining

the relationship between these two rules within the passage is an important
matter to consider. First appears a rule disqualifying an adjuration oath (‫)ישביע‬
that is not carried out in front of judges; then it is asserted that if one loses an
item, one may adjure (‫ )ישביע‬others, such that anyone who knows and does
not speak is guilty. How can this juxtaposition be explained? At least, one
might argue that the two passages regarding oaths appear next to one another
because they both fall under the general heading “regarding oaths,” if that is
how ‫ על השבועה‬is to be understood.4 However, there is a strong argument to
be made for reading these two passages as connected in a more substantive
way, such that the second case follows from the first. In other words, the rule
regarding oaths made not in front of judges (Case 1) might be directed pri-
marily at the case of a lost item where one person adjures another with an
oath that he or she has no knowledge of its whereabouts (Case 2). Given the
reasonable concern that the frustrated owner of the lost item might go on an
independent oath-administering spree, this passage is meant to disabuse him
of such a plan.5
4 Several translations (García Martínez–Tigchelaar, Baumgarten–Schwartz, and Wise—

Abegg—Cook) as well as Schiffman (Sectarian Law, 118), take the words ‫ על השבועה‬as a
header of sorts, and treat ‫ אשר אמר לא תושיעך ידך לך‬separately, as the beginning of this
section. However, this may not be the best reading, for several reasons:
1. The words ‫אשר אמר‬, which would appear to introduce a relative clause, do not smoothly
function at the beginning of a sentence or section.
2. In comparing this formulation to its parallel later in D, ‫על הש[ב]ת לשמרה כמשפטה‬
(X:14), it appears that the ____‫ על ה‬formula does not stand alone but is accompanied by
what follows it.
3. A header for oaths in general seems out of place, given that oaths were already discussed
in XVI:7–11 above (according to the currently accepted organization of the fragments).
We thus follow Geza Vermes, who translates “Concerning the oath with reference to that
which He said …”.
More generally, see Aharon Shemesh and Cana Werman, “Halakhah at Qumran: Genre
and Authority,” DSD 10 (2003): 104–29, at p. 115, which invokes a “ ‘concerning X’ rubric, char-
acteristic of the Damascus Document.” See the rebuttal in Moshe J. Bernstein, Reading and
Re-Reading Scripture, 513 n. 32. See also Bernstein’s forthcoming paper (previously presented
as a lecture), “Between Temple Scroll and Damascus Document: The Forms of the ‘Minor’
Legal Texts from Qumran,” which includes a fairly extensive treatment of the headers.
Finally, see Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 208, who reads the passages that follow as “stand[ing]
in thematic unity.”
5 See Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 206, who makes this point.
346 Zuckier
The question of how to read these two passages appears to be at issue

among the various translations of the passage. The Wise-Abegg-Cook trans-
lation separates these two passages into separate sections, the first entitled
“Another Law about Oaths” and the second entitled “Lost Property.” On the
other hand, other translations of these passages (including García Martínez–
Tigchelaar) integrate them under a single heading. Still, no translation intro-
duces the second passage with “for example,” or the like, which would indicate
a clearer presumption of sequential connection.
3 Intertexts
I will argue in this paper that considering the many intertextual references
within this text can help to both situate this passage in its literary and legal
context, and to provide a view of its authors’ literary artistry. To that end, I will
consider the various intertexts and compare them to the “final product” in D.6
3.1 Intertext 1: I Samuel 25:26

Let us now turn to the first intertext, appearing in the first of two cases. The
case begins with an introductory phrase ‫על השבועה אשר אמר לא תושיעך ידך‬
‫לך‬, “about the oath, that which it is said ‘let not your hand save you.’ ” The text
then describes the scenario in which one would violate this verse. Let us first
examine the cited verse itself.
This entire passage is predicated on the cited prohibition of ‫לא תושיעך ידך‬
‫לך‬, literally “let not your hand save you.” This invokes 1 Samuel 25:26,7 which
reads as follows:
‫הֹוׁש ַע יָ ְדָך ָלְך וְ ַע ָּתה‬

ֵ ְ‫(כו) וְ ַע ָּתה ֲאד ֹנִ י ַחי יְ קֹוָ ק וְ ֵחי נַ ְפ ְׁשָך ֲא ֶׁשר ְמנָ ֲעָך יְ קֹוָ ק ִמּבֹוא ְב ָד ִמים ו‬
‫יִ ְהיּו ְכנָ ָבל א ֶֹיְביָך וְ ַה ְמ ַב ְק ִׁשים ֶאל ֲאד ֹנִ י ָר ָעה׃‬
6 I refer to the various use of biblical language by our text forms as “biblical allusions” and
“intertextual references” and refrain from attempting to characterize our passage as “rewrit-
ten Bible,” “rewriting Bible,” “reworked Bible,” or otherwise. Moshe Bernstein has raised the
question of using these categories (as well as others) to generically refer to Qumran texts. See,
among others, his “Pentateuchal Interpretation at Qumran” and “ ‘Rewritten Bible’: A Generic
Category which has Outlived its Usefulness?,” in the aptly named Reading and Re-Reading
Scripture at Qumran, 11–62.
7 See also 1 Sam 25:31 and 33, which refer back to this verse.
I swear, my lord, as the Lord lives and as you live—the Lord who has kept
you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand—let your en-
emies and all who would harm my lord fare like Nabal!8
In this passage, Abigail attempts to convince David not to punish her husband
Nabal for his alleged insubordination. In her appeal, she expresses her wish
by saying ‫אשר מנעך יקוק מבוא בדמים והושע ידך לך‬, “the Lord who has kept you
from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand,” convincing him not to
take the law into his own hands and incur bloodguilt by killing Nabal. D infers
from this verse that there is a general prohibition against taking the law into
one’s own hands. It is interesting to note that what D presents as a law, formu-
lated as “you shall not let your hand save you,” is never presented biblically as
a legal prohibition, in either formulation or in force.9 Presumably, D’s state-
ment can be explained based on D reading the verse as pointing to a presumed
rule standing behind Abigail’s remarks.10 Since David accepts her pleading
and does not kill Nabal, D reasons that this rule is accepted, and therefore is
available for interpretation and application in its own legal code.11 In addition
to viewing this passage as a prohibition of legal significance (rather than as a
mere personal rebuke), D also significantly expands the scope of the prohibi-
tion, by extending the verse to prohibit self-help in non-capital cases.
3.2 Intertext 2: Exodus 22:6–8

Aside from the clear reference to 1 Sam 25:26, this passage in D offers several
more oblique biblical allusions, the most significant of which is to Exod 22:6–8.
8 Biblical translations are from JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: JPS, 1999), modi-
fied in some places.
9 Additionally, rabbinic literature never cites this text in legal discussions, although it does
raise the question of self-help, ‫(לא) עביד איניש דינא לנפשיה‬, e.g., on b. B. Qam. 27b–28a.
10 This apparent citation lacking a precise biblical equivalent is discussed in Joseph M.
Baumgarten, “A ‘Scriptural’ Citation in 4Q Fragments of the Damascus Document,” JJS 43
(1992): 95–98 at page 97. See also Bernstein, Reading and Re-Reading Scripture, 460–61, on
non-Pentateuchal legal interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which describes this pas-
sage as a paraphrase of the verse.
11 It is somewhat ironic to raise the prohibition against self-help to the king, when kings
are often afforded precisely that sort of privilege under the law. But if David accepts
that self-help is illegitimate here, the same should certainly hold for non-royalty. For the
topic of separation of powers and the role of the king in ancient Judaism, see generally
David Flatto, “Between Royal Absolutism and an Independent Judiciary: The Evolution of
Separation of Powers in Biblical, Second Temple and Rabbinic Texts” (PhD Diss., Harvard
University, 2010), esp. 97–140.
348 Zuckier
Though this allusion has not yet been addressed in secondary literature,12 the
entire second half of the D passage corresponds very well to the following
verses:
‫יִּמ ֵצא ַהּגַ ּנָ ב יְ ַׁש ֵּלם‬

ָ ‫יִּתן ִאיׁש ֶאל ֵר ֵעהּו ֶּכ ֶסף אֹו ֵכ ִלים ִל ְׁשמֹר וְ גֻ ּנַ ב ִמ ֵּבית ָה ִאיׁש ִאם‬
ֵ ‫(ו) ִּכי‬
‫ְׁשנָ יִם׃‬
‫אכת‬ ֶ ‫ֹלהים ִאם לֹא ָׁש ַלח יָ דֹו ִּב ְמ ֶל‬-
ִ ‫יִּמ ֵצא ַהּגַ ּנָ ב וְ נִ ְק ַרב ַּב ַעל ַה ַּביִת ֶאל ָה ֱא‬
ָ ‫(ז) ִאם לֹא‬
‫ֵר ֵעהּו׃‬
‫אמר‬ ַ ֹ ‫(ח) ַעל ָּכל ְּד ַבר ֶּפ ַׁשע ַעל ׁשֹור ַעל ֲחמֹור ַעל ֶׂשה ַעל ַׂש ְל ָמה ַעל ָּכל ֲא ֵב ָדה ֲא ֶׁשר י‬
‫ֹלהים יְ ַׁש ֵּלם ְׁשנַ יִם ְל ֵר ֵעהּו׃‬-
ִ ‫יען ֱא‬ֻ ‫יהם ֲא ֶׁשר יַ ְר ִׁש‬ ֶ ֵ‫ֹלהים יָבֹא ְּד ַבר ְׁשנ‬-
ִ ‫ִּכי הּוא זֶ ה ַעד ָה ֱא‬
6 When a man gives money or goods to another for safekeeping, and they
are stolen from the man’s house—if the thief is caught, he shall pay dou-
ble; 7 if the thief is not caught, the owner of the house shall depose before
God13 that he has not laid hands on the other’s property. 8 In all charges
of misappropriation—pertaining to an ox, an ass, a sheep, a garment, or
any other loss, whereof one party alleges, “This is it”—the case of both
parties shall come before God: he whom God declares guilty shall pay
double to the other.
There are remarkable parallels, in terms of both form and content, between
these two passages. First, the general structures of both pericopae are very
close to one another: these are scenarios where (A) an item is lost (B) from
someone’s property and (C) the robber is not found; (D) the owner goes
to court (E) where an oath is administered as to further unknown evidence;
(F) and a party found in the wrong is guilty. [These stages are ordered based on
CD IX, but the themes are present in both D and Exod 22:6–8.]
Upon comparing these two structures, several literary parallels between the
two passages emerge:
12 Interestingly, Pradeilhes, “Les serment,” 36, cites in connection with our D text Exod 22:10,
the following biblical scenario involving a deposit rather than a lost item.
13 Some commentators consider the possibility that ‫להים‬-‫ א‬here means “judges.” See, e.g.,
Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: JPS, 1991), to Exod 21:6, and
Frank C. Fensham, “New Light on Exodus 21:6 and 22:7 from the Laws of Eshnunna,” JBL 78
(1959): 160–61, as well as Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael and the Targums to these verses. How
one translates the word will not affect the claims argued here.
1. ‫ וכל האובד‬is based on the biblical generalization ‫על כל אבדה‬.

2. ‫ ממאד המחנה אשר גנב בו‬parallels ‫וגנב מבית האיש‬, modifying the location
(on which see below). Note that ‫ גנב‬in CD is read as gunnav, as in the
verse.14
3. ‫ לא נודע מי גנבו‬parallels ‫לא ימצא הגנב‬.
4. ‫ ישביע בעליו בשבועת האלה‬is an interpretation of ‫להים‬-‫ונקרב בעל הבית אל הא‬
(see analysis of the extension below).
These correspondences can be represented visually as follows:
Exodus 22:6–8 CD IX:8–12
‫כי יתן איש אל רעהו כסף או כלים לשמר וגנב מבית האיש אם‬ ‫וכל האובד ולא נודע‬
‫ימצא הגנב ישלם שנים אם לא ימצא הגנב ונקרב בעל הבית אל‬ ‫מי גנבו ממאד המחנה‬
‫להים אם לא שלח ידו במלאכת רעהו על כל דבר פשע על‬-‫הא‬ ‫אשר גנב בו ישביע‬
‫שור על חמור על שה על שלמה על כל אבדה אשר יאמר כי הוא‬ ‫בעליו בשבועת האלה‬
‫להים ישלם‬-‫להים יבא דבר שניהם אשר ירשיען א‬-‫זה עד הא‬ ‫והשומע אם יודע הוא‬
‫שנים לרעהו׃‬ ‫ולא יגיד ואשם‬
Of course, while the two texts do share these affinities, and it appears that D
is drawing upon Exodus, there are certain divergences between the texts as
well. These can largely be explained on the basis of the creative interpretation
characteristically employed by D, as well as by cultural shifts that are reflect-
ed in the reformulation of the law. Some of the primary divergences are thus
explained:
1. Exodus 22:8 generalizes from a situation of bailment in verse 6 to a broad-

er definition—various animals and items, even ‫כל אבדה‬, any lost item,
and even with no deposit at the background of the story, employing a
strong reading of the generalizing ‫כל‬. D interprets this as extending the
scenario to apply not only to items entrusted to someone, but to any item
14 The Wise-Abegg-Cook translation appears to take ‫ גנב‬as ganav, and therefore as redun-
dant to ‫מי גנבו‬, which informs their decision to only feature the English verb “stole” once.
350 Zuckier
that is lost in any scenario. For this reason, the section begins with the
language of ‫כל האובד‬, a paraphrase of ‫כל אבדה‬.15
2. While Exod 22:6 describes the item as having been stolen “from the house
of the man,” while D says it is stolen “from the collective of the camp.”
This results naturally when one translates the biblical economic system
that allowed for private property to the Qumranic (or otherwise sectar-
ian) system that apparently did not.16 Note also that, in the shift from ‫בית‬
‫ האיש‬to ‫מאוד המחנה‬, the house has disappeared, either for reasons related
to the absence of private property or due to differences in realia for a
desert-dwelling people’s camp.17
3. The owner approaching the E-lohim (‫להים‬-‫ )ונקרב בעל הבית אל הא‬in
Exodus is interpreted by D as meaning that he administers an oath
(‫)ישביע בעליו בשבועת האלה‬. Strikingly, rabbinic literature shares this pre-
sumption: Mekhilta to Exod 22:7 and b. B. Qam. 63b gloss the phrase ‫ונקרב‬
‫להים‬-‫בעל הבית אל הא‬, “then the master of the house shall come near unto
God,” simply with ‫בשבועה‬, “with an oath,” supporting this contextually by
noting the oath in the parallel case of verse 10.18
4. The oath (presuming note 3) is broadened from the oath in Exodus as-
serting that he did not lay hands on the item (‫אם לא שלח ידו במלאכת‬
‫ )רעהו‬to a much broader oath in D regarding lack of knowledge of any rel-
evant evidence (‫)והשומע אם יודע הוא‬. Such an extension does not appear
15 This is a reasonable interpretative move, but by no means an obvious one. For example,
the rabbis see the broadening phrase ‫ כל אבדה‬as including not only cases where an item
is actually stolen or lost but also cases where the owner claims that it is lost. See, e.g., b. B.
Qam. 106b.
Interestingly, while rabbinic literature does not generalize this rule to lost objects out-
side the context of bailments, it does move in the direction of grouping cases of loss and
stealing. Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael Neziqin 16 utilizes the phrase ‫גנבה ואבדה‬, “[cases of]
stealing and loss,” which is frequently used in later rabbinic literature. M. B. Mesiʿa 3:1 re-
fers to these scenarios in the passive or stative: ‫ונגנבו או שאבדו‬, “and they were stolen or
lost.” It is notable that these categories emerge in parallel fashion to those in CD IX despite
the (assumed) lack of direct interaction between these interpretive traditions.
16 Of course, this extension makes a non-trivial legal point. It is not necessarily the case
that stealing from communal property will be legally identical to stealing from individual
property. For a rough analogue, consider the rabbinic exclusion of Temple-owned proper-
ties from many of these laws, possibly due to this distinction. See, e.g., m. Ter. 6:4, which
rules that the penalty of paying double applies only to stealing from individual property,
not from Temple property.
17 Cf. Murphy, Wealth, 48–49, for further discussion.
18 For a contrasting view, see Sarna, Exodus, comment to Exod 21:6, which assumes that
‫להים‬-‫“ אל הא‬most likely simply means ‘in the sanctuary.’ ”.
in rabbinic literature, and it is the primary innovation of this law.19 This

innovation dovetails well with the extension of this scenario beyond that
of a bailment discussed above (point 1). See below, the discussion of Lev
5:1 and Prov 29:24, for a possible explanation of this extension.
5. The organizational structure of the passage shifts, as well. While the pri-
mary goal of Exod 22:6–8 is to discuss various scenarios that may come
about when an item is deposited, D reworks the biblical law of Exod 22:6–
8, diverging from the central case of its source text and giving the oath
pride of place in service of its goal of clarifying the nature of the oath in
22:7.
It is thus possible to account for the significant shifts in language from Exodus
to D, and to confirm that D is indeed reworking the text in Exodus.
Furthermore, understanding the D passage as a paraphrase of Exod 22:6–8
clarifies syntactic difficulties and redundancies in the passage:
1. It might seem odd that there is an apparent repetition in the phrase ‫ולא‬
‫נודע מי גנבו ממאד המחנה אשר גנב בו‬, “no one knows who stole it from the
possession of the camp from which it was stolen.” Why the double usage
of the verb ‫ ?גנב‬However, if one considers that each of the two halves of
this quote parallels a different part of the verse in Exodus—‫ממאד המחנה‬
‫ אשר גנב בו‬parallels ‫ וגנב מבית האיש‬and ‫ לא נודע מי גנבו‬parallels ‫לא ימצא‬
‫—הגנב‬there is an explanation for an otherwise confounding redundancy.
2. The biblical allusion might explain a problem for previous interpreters
of this text. Lawrence Schiffman has noted that the word ‫ אובד‬is used to
refer to something that is lost or stolen, despite the fact that it is never
used to describe a stolen item in its biblical appearances.20
19 However, see m. B. Mesiʿa 3:12 and b. B. Mesiʿa 43b, which potentially extend the verse to
situations where there was no robbery, only the thought of committing such a robbery.
20 See Schiffman, Sectarian Law, at 124 n. 2:
The use of the root ‘bd, “to be lost,” is found in reference to property in Deut 22:3; cf.
1 Sam 9:3, 20; Jer 50:6; Ezek 34:4, 16; Ps 119:176. In none of these passages, however, is the
thing missing presumed or shown to have been stolen.
This implied confusion is easily resolved, however, if one considers that Exod 22:6–8
is paraphrased by this passage, as in this biblical passage stolen property is indeed called
‫אבדה‬, a lost item. In fact, this connection demonstrates the importance of Exod 22:6–8
for reading this passage in D.
352 Zuckier
3.3 Intertext 3: Leviticus 5:1

The second part of the D passage features several biblical allusions, some more
obvious than others. Let us begin with a fairly clear allusion, to Lev 5:1. The
verse reads:
‫(א) וְ נֶ ֶפׁש ִּכי ֶת ֱח ָטא וְ ָׁש ְמ ָעה קֹול ָא ָלה וְ הּוא ֵעד אֹו ָר ָאה אֹו יָ ָדע ִאם לֹוא יַ ּגִ יד וְ נָ ָׂשא ֲעֹונֹו׃‬
1 if a person incurs guilt—When he has heard a public imprecation

and—although able to testify as one who has either seen or learned of
the matter—if he does not give information, he will bear his sin …
This verse discusses the culpability of a person who has witnessed, seen, or
known something and subsequently hears an oath asking him to testify, and
does not offer testimony. This verse appears to present an adjuration oath, a
subpoena-like method of forcing someone to testify utilizing an oath.
The parallel to the line in D is fairly close, in terms of both language and
content:
‫ישביע בעליו בשבועת האלה והשומע אם יודע הוא ולא יגיד ואשם‬
‫לוא י ִ ַּגיד וְ נָשָׂ א‬ ֹ ‫וְ נֶ ֶפׁש ִּכי ֶת ֱח ָטא וְ ָׁש ְמ ָעה קוֹ ל אָ לָ ה וְ הּוא ֵעד אֹו ָר ָאה‬
ֹ ‫או י ָָדע ִאם‬
ֹ‫עֲ וֹ נו‬
The scenario is set in both cases where someone knows information (/‫או ידע‬
‫ )אם יודע הוא‬and is adjured with an oath (‫בשבועת האלה‬/‫)קול אלה‬, and is con-
sidered to be guilty if he does not speak (‫ולא יגיד ואשם‬/‫)אם לוא יגיד ונשא עונו‬. Of
course, the content is also very close—these are both situations where some-
one adjures their fellow with an oath presuming that they know something of
value about a case. This is the closest thing to a biblical source for this law in D.
As one might expect, there are minor variations in formulation—D adds the
person administering the oath in this case, namely the owner of the lost item,
which may point to this case as a subset of Lev 5:1. ‫ קול אלה‬is renamed ‫שבועת‬
‫האלה‬, for reasons that will become clear below. ‫ ואשם‬is rendered as ‫ונשא עונו‬,
not a major shift, as the verdicts of ‫( אשם‬he is guilty) and ‫( נשא עונו‬he bears his
sin) are functionally equivalent.21 Most importantly, the vague description of
21 So Schiffman, Sectarian Law, 114. See Lev 5:17, where the two verdicts are used in (appar-
ently synonymous) apposition to one another: ‫וְ לֹא יָ ַדע וְ ָא ֵׁשם וְ נָ ָׂשא ֲעֹונֹו‬. For further analy-
sis on each of these categories and their relationship, see Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice,
Atonement (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005), 20–43. For a contrary view, see Jacob
Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 295–96.
the case in Lev 5:1 is explicated here as applying to this particular scenario of
a person who lost an item, where the oath is used in an attempt to ascertain
information regarding the lost item.22
3.4 Intertext 4: Proverbs 29:24

Closely aligned with the intertext immediately above, it may be the case that
this passage in D is building upon a half-verse in Proverbs, as well. In the course
of a discussion of virtuous and corrupt personal qualities throughout chapter
29, verse 24 reads as follows:
‫חֹולק ִעם־ּגַ ּנָ ב ׂשֹונֵ א נַ ְפׁשֹו ָא ָלה יִ ְׁש ַמע וְ לֹא יַ ּגִ יד׃‬
ֵ
He who shares with a thief is his own enemy; He hears the imprecation
and does not tell.
The verse indicts one sharing with a thief (i.e. an accomplice), on account
of the fact that the person will hear an oath and not speak.23 The verse fairly
clearly builds upon Leviticus 5:1:
Prov 29:24 Lev 5:1
‫חֹולק ִעם־ּגַ ּנָ ב ׂשֹונֵ א נַ ְפׁשֹו‬ ֵ ‫וְ נֶ ֶפׁש ִּכי ֶת ֱח ָטא‬

‫ָא ָלה יִ ְׁש ַמע‬ ‫וְ ָׁש ְמ ָעה קֹול ָא ָלה‬
‫וְ לֹא יַ ּגִ יד‬ ‫וְ הּוא ֵעד אֹו ָר ָאה אֹו יָ ָדע ִאם לֹוא יַ ּגִ יד‬
‫וְ נָ ָׂשא ֲעֹונֹו‬
22 Whether or not the malfeasor would presumably be present for this statement, and
whether it is presumed that a guilty party hearing this procedure would feel a need to
come forward do not directly bear on our analysis. See discussion in Czajkowski, “Lost
and Stolen Property,” 95–102, and the passage it cites in Schiffman, Sectarian Law, 114.
23 I take the apodosis of this verse as explaining its protasis (following the cited JPS transla-
tion as well as Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 292–94). Compare with Avigdor Hurvitz, Mishlei
(Mikra le-Yisrael; Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2012), ad. loc., who views the reference to adjuration
as an indication of the severity of partnering with a thief.
354 Zuckier
There are several striking similarities in language—‫ לא יגיד‬,‫ע אלה‬.‫מ‬.‫ ש‬,‫—נפש‬

and they deal with a similar case, some form of sin associated with oaths and
failure to testify. It would seem that Prov 29:24 is explicating Lev 5:1, and ap-
plying it to a more specific scenario. While it is not immediately clear why a
person would fail to testify in Lev 5:1, Prov 29:24 presents a scenario where that
failure to testify is due to complicity, as the one failing to testify is “splitting”
with the thief.24 D appears to be taking this yet a step further, building upon
this language (as will be demonstrated below) and presenting a scenario where
the individual being targeted with the adjuration oath is none other than the
thief himself! There is thus a trajectory between the three texts from a general
case of oath adjuration (Lev 5:1), to a case of adjuration of an accomplice to
robbery (Prov 29:24), to a case of an adjuration of a potential thief.
Returning from the thematic to the linguistic, D appears to be using lan-
guage from both Lev 5:1 and Prov 29:24 in its formulation. Let us compare the
three texts simultaneously and point to the various parallels:
Prov 29:24 CD IX:8–12 Lev 5:1
‫חֹולק ִעם־ּגַ ּנָ ב ׂשֹונֵ א נַ ְפׁשֹו‬

ֵ ‫וכל האובד ולא נודע מי גנבו‬ ‫וְ נֶ ֶפׁש ִּכי ֶת ֱח ָטא‬
‫ממאד המחנה אשר גנב בו‬
‫אָ לָ ה יִ ְׁש ַמע‬ ‫ישביע בעליו בשבועת האלה‬ ‫וְ ׁ ָש ְמ ָעה קֹול אָ לָ ה‬
‫והשומע‬
‫אם יודע הוא‬ ‫וְ הוּא ֵעד אֹו ָר ָאה אוֹ י ָָדע‬
‫וְ לֹא י ִ ַּגיד‬ ‫ולא יגיד‬ ‫ִאם לוֹ א י ִ ַּגיד‬

‫ואשם‬ ‫וְ נָ ָׂשא ֲעֹונֹו‬
The language in D is closer to that of Lev 5:1 than of Prov 29:24. However, there
are several important parallels among all three texts. Given the trajectory of
the case, it seems that D may at least follow Prov 29:24’s setup of the case, even
if it was not directly influenced by its language.25
24 See discussion in Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 292–94.

25 Many thanks to Binyamin Y. Goldstein for calling this parallel to my attention.
3.5 Intertext 5: Numbers 5:19–21

It was noted above that the oath is cited differently in the two cases. While Lev
5:1 uses the language ‫קול אלה‬, “a voice of curse,” D features ‫בשבועת האלה‬, “with
the oath of cursing” (or: “with a maledictory oath”).26 The use of that uncom-
mon phrase serves to connect it to its only biblical appearance, namely Num
5:19–21:
‫(יט) וְ ִה ְׁש ִּב ַיע א ָֹתּה ַהּכ ֵֹהן וְ ָא ַמר ֶאל ָה ִא ָּׁשה ִאם לֹא ָׁש ַכב ִאיׁש א ָֹתְך וְ ִאם לֹא ָׂש ִטית‬
‫יׁשְך ִהּנָ ִקי ִמ ֵּמי ַה ָּמ ִרים ַה ְמ ָא ֲר ִרים ָה ֵא ֶּלה׃‬ֵ ‫ֻט ְמ ָאה ַּת ַחת ִא‬
‫יׁשְך׃‬
ֵ ‫יׁשְך וְ ִכי נִ ְט ֵמאת וַ ּיִ ֵּתן ִאיׁש ָּבְך ֶאת ְׁש ָכ ְבּתֹו ִמ ַּב ְל ֲע ֵדי ִא‬ ֵ ‫(כ) וְ ַא ְּת ִּכי ָׂש ִטית ַּת ַחת ִא‬
‫אֹותְך‬
ָ ‫יִּתן יְ קֹוָ ק‬ ֵ ‫יע הַ ּכֹהֵ ן אֶ ת הָ ִא ּ ׁ ָשה ִּב ְׁשבֻ ַעת הָ אָ לָ ה וְ ָא ַמר ַהּכ ֵֹהן ָל ִא ָּׁשה‬ ַ ‫(כא) וְ ִה ְׁש ִּב‬
‫ְל ָא ָלה וְ ִל ְׁש ֻב ָעה ְּבתֹוְך ַע ֵּמְך ְּב ֵתת יְ קֹוָ ק ֶאת יְ ֵר ֵכְך נ ֶֹפ ֶלת וְ ֶאת ִּב ְטנֵ ְך ָצ ָבה׃‬
19 The priest shall adjure the woman, saying to her, “If no man has lain
with you, if you have not gone astray in defilement while married to your
husband, be immune to harm from this water of bitterness that induces
the spell. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband
and have defiled yourself, if a man other than your husband has had car-
nal relations with you”—21 here the priest shall administer an oath of
cursing to the woman, as the priest goes on to say to the woman—“may
the Lord make you a curse and an imprecation among your people, as the
Lord cause your thigh to sag and your belly to distend …”
This passage is part of the sotah law, the ordeal for a woman accused by her
husband of being secluded with another man and then brought before the
priest. The priest presents two alternatives to the woman—either she has not
“strayed” with another man and the water will be ineffective, or she has slept
with another man, and the water will serve as a curse to her. Following this
dichotomy, the priest makes the woman swear with the ‫שבועת האלה‬, “the oath
of cursing,” and its implications are spelled out—if the woman did stray from
her husband, and yet goes forward with this process, she will suffer the effects
of this curse.27
26 There may be a further relationship between Lev 5:1 and Num 5:11–31, in that both have
an oath that, if one is found guilty, one bears one’s sin (Lev 5:1 and Num 5:31; ‫ונשא עונו‬
and ‫)ונשא את עונה‬. The connection between these two texts helps further integrate the
invocation of both within a short D passage, as a network of biblical intertexts is formed.
27 Jacob Milgrom, JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990), comment to
Num 5:19–20, notes the rabbinic hope that the woman, if guilty, will admit her guilt so as
to avoid this ordeal. See Sifre Num. 9.
356 Zuckier
Given the phrase ‫שבועת האלה‬, which only occurs in these two sources, pre-
ceded by the hiphʿil of the verb ‫ע‬.‫ב‬.‫( ש‬to cause to swear), and the relatively
similar context, one may assume that D is alluding to Numbers here.28 It would
appear that the adjuration oath in CD IX:11–12 works similarly to the one in
Numbers 5, that if the person is guilty and does not admit the truth, they will
be afflicted by the curse.29 In this way, language from Num 5:19–21 is used as a
supplement to the clearer base of the text in Lev 5:1. By using ‫שבועת האלה‬, D is
making an interpretive move to standardize and systematize the language of
these various biblical adjuration oaths. Additionally, the text in Num 5:21 pro-
vides a case of a mandatory adjuration oath, which cannot be said of Lev 5:1.30
3.6 Intertext 6: Deuteronomy 21:1–9

While the allusions to Lev 5:1 and Num 5:19–21 are relatively straightforward,
and have been noted previously by scholars,31 another, more opaque allusion,
presents itself in this text as well.
Considering both the first and second sections here together, it appears that
Deut 21:1–9 may have significant parallels to CD IX:8–12. Let us examine the
passage in Deuteronomy:
‫נֹודע‬ַ ‫ֹלהיָך נ ֵֹתן ְלָך ְל ִר ְׁש ָּתּה נ ֵֹפל ַּב ָּׂש ֶדה לֹא‬ ֶ -‫יִּמ ֵצא ָח ָלל ָּב ֲא ָד ָמה ֲא ֶׁשר יְ קֹוָ ק ֱא‬ ָ ‫(א) ִּכי‬
‫ִמי ִה ָּכהּו׃‬
‫ּומ ְדדּו ֶאל ֶה ָע ִרים ֲא ֶׁשר ְס ִביבֹת ֶה ָח ָלל׃‬ָ ‫(ב) וְ יָ ְצאּו זְ ֵקנֶ יָך וְ ׁש ְֹפ ֶטיָך‬
‫(ג) וְ ָהיָ ה ָה ִעיר ַה ְּקר ָֹבה ֶאל ֶה ָח ָלל וְ ָל ְקחּו זִ ְקנֵ י ָה ִעיר ַה ִהוא ֶעגְ ַלת ָּב ָקר ֲא ֶׁשר לֹא ֻע ַּבד ָּבּה‬
‫ֲא ֶׁשר לֹא ָמ ְׁש ָכה ְּבעֹל׃‬
‫יתן ֲא ֶׁשר לֹא יֵ ָע ֵבד ּבֹו וְ לֹא יִ ּזָ ֵר ַע‬ ָ ‫הֹורדּו זִ ְקנֵ י ָה ִעיר ַה ִהוא ֶאת ָה ֶעגְ ָלה ֶאל נַ ַחל ֵא‬ ִ ְ‫(ד) ו‬
‫וְ ָע ְרפּו ָׁשם ֶאת ָה ֶעגְ ָלה ַּבּנָ ַחל׃‬
‫ּול ָב ֵרְך ְּב ֵׁשם יְ קֹוָ ק וְ ַעל‬ ֶ -‫(ה) וְ נִ ּגְ ׁשּו ַהּכ ֲֹהנִ ים ְּבנֵ י ֵלוִ י ִּכי ָבם ָּב ַחר יְ קֹוָ ק ֱא‬
ְ ‫ֹלהיָך ְל ָׁש ְרתֹו‬
‫יהם יִ ְהיֶ ה ָּכל ִריב וְ ָכל נָ גַ ע׃‬ ֶ ‫ִּפ‬
28 One distinction between the two cases is the identity of the adjurer. In the sotah case it
is an appointee (i.e. the priest) who is administering the oath, while the case in D appar-
ently has the plaintiff (‫בעליו‬, or the owners of the lost item) administering the oath.
29 There is an additional connection at play between CD IX and Num 5, as well. The immedi-
ately following passage in D (at CD IX:13–16), refers to Num 5:8, both by using the phrase
‫ אשם מושב‬and by employing a(n imprecise) citation of the verse. Passages CD IX:8–12
and IX:13–16 are thus connected in two ways—through the common usage of the word
‫אשם‬, and through the common invocation of Num 5. This associative form of organiza-
tion may occur more generally within D, a phenomenon that, to my knowledge, has yet to
be satisfactorily explored.
30 See Murphy, Wealth, 48.
31 These two allusions have been noticed by Schiffman, Sectarian Law, 111–13.
‫רּופה‬
ָ ‫יהם ַעל ָה ֶעגְ ָלה ָה ֲע‬ ֶ ‫(ו) וְ כֹל זִ ְקנֵ י ָה ִעיר ַה ִהוא ַה ְּקר ִֹבים ֶאל ֶה ָח ָלל יִ ְר ֲחצּו ֶאת יְ ֵד‬
‫ַבּנָ ַחל׃‬
‫(ז) וְ ָענּו וְ ָא ְמרּו יָ ֵדינּו לֹא ָׁש ְפכּו ֶאת ַה ָּדם ַהּזֶ ה וְ ֵעינֵ ינּו לֹא ָראּו׃‬
‫ית יְ קֹוָ ק וְ ַאל ִּת ֵּתן ָּדם נָ ִקי ְּב ֶק ֶרב ַע ְּמָך יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל וְ נִ ַּכ ֵּפר‬ ָ ‫(ח) ַּכ ֵּפר ְל ַע ְּמָך יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל ֲא ֶׁשר ָּפ ִד‬
‫ָל ֶהם ַה ָּדם׃‬
‫(ט) וְ ַא ָּתה ְּת ַב ֵער ַה ָּדם ַהּנָ ִקי ִמ ִּק ְר ֶּבָך ִּכי ַת ֲע ֶׂשה ַהּיָ ָׁשר ְּב ֵעינֵ י יְ קֹוָ ק׃‬
1 If, in the land that the Lord your God is assigning you to possess,
someone slain is found lying in the open, the identity of the slayer not
being known, 2 your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure
the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns. 3 The elders of the
town nearest to the corpse shall then take a heifer which has never been
worked, which has never pulled in a yoke; 4 and the elders of that town
shall bring the heifer down to an ever-flowing wadi, which is not tilled or
sown. There, in the wadi, they shall break the heifer’s neck. 5 The priests,
sons of Levi, shall come forward; for the Lord your God has chosen them
to minister to Him and to pronounce blessing in the name of the Lord,
and every lawsuit and case of assault is subject to their ruling. 6 Then all
the elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall wash their hands over
the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi. 7 And they shall make this
declaration: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it
done. 8 Absolve, O Lord, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and
do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people
Israel.” And they will be absolved of bloodguilt. 9 Thus you will remove
from your midst guilt for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing
what is right in the sight of the Lord.
When a dead body is found near a city, and the assailant is unknown, a process
of breaking a calf’s neck, meant to atone for the murder, is mandated. This in-
cludes a declaration of innocence on behalf of the city by the judges.
The beginning of this passage has several parallels to CD IX:8–12. Most nota-
ble is the layout of the scenario where there is a parallel between ‫לא נודע מי גנבו‬
and ‫לא נודע מי הכהו‬, two unique “whodunit” formulations.32 In addition, the
elders and magistrates are intricately involved in this process, as they are the
ones who measure which city is closest to the body, bring the calf to the val-
ley, and behead the calf, denying responsibility or knowledge about the events
pertaining to his death, and requesting atonement for Israel. This is similar to
32 Within ancient Jewish literature, these are the only such appearances of the sequence
‫לא נודע מי‬.
358 Zuckier
the role of the court in administering the oath in D. Furthermore, the behead-
ing process takes place in the field, ‫( בשדה‬although the term ‫ נחל‬or “valley,” is
used as well), which relates on a literary level to the ‫ על פני השדה‬appearing in D.
In addition to each of these specific parallels, both texts relate to a process
involving communal leaders responding to a matter of communal concern on
account of a crime committed locally that lacks a clear suspect. Both involve
a declaration of lack of knowledge about the crime, and both must be per-
formed with judges, (even) while taking place in the field.33 Yet again, presum-
ably if anyone does have knowledge about the crime and has not reported it,
they are to be punished for falsifying the oath; the beheading of the calf may
symbolize what is meant to be done to one utters a false oath, ensuring that the
elders’ assertion of innocence for their community be true.34
The parallels between Deuteronomy 21 and CD IX:8–12 span both of the
rules discussed in the D passage. Such an allusion to Deut 21, then, might serve
to bridge the two parts of the D passage, such that they should be read as one
cohesive unit.35
One might wonder what purpose is served by all of the allusions that appear
in this text. And in particular, for this case, why would the author of D connect
the legal passage about maledictory oaths to a legal passage about absolution
from guilt of a town’s elders?
Lawrence Schiffman explains the basis of invoking Lev 5:1 and Num 5:19–21:
The sect made an analogy between these two passages in order to fill in
the details of the procedure of reproof not given in the Torah. This is a
form of the type of exegesis called midrash by the Qumran sect. This same
kind of exegesis is evident in our law. In order to fill in the specifics of
the law of Lev. 5:1, the sect made an analogy with the law of the woman
suspected of adultery (Num 5:11–31).36
33 Of course, there is a difference between the two scenarios: While the Deuteronomy case
of necessity takes place in a field, the D case may or may not occur in a field, although
both require the presence of judges.
34 It has been suggested that this oath is similar to the exculpatory oath of Exodus 22:6–10.
See, e.g., Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 157, and Jeffrey
Tigay, JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: JPS, 1996), 472–76.
35 This unification could work whether one is operating on the plane of authorial intent or
reader response.
36 Schiffman, Sectarian Law, 112.
I agree with Schiffman’s reasoning and would like to extend it a step further.
Deut 21 is also part of this overall story, part of the same exegetical framework
from which D is drawing its legal interpretation. In order to support this read-
ing, the author(s) of D must commit to a particular reading of Deuteronomy
that is plausible, if uncommon, and which renders the connection between
the two texts most interesting.
The standard interpretation of the verse is that, given the unexplained dead
body, there is a need for the community to appease the land for the blood that
has been spilled upon it. As is seen in the Cain and Abel story, and in Num 35:33
(“the land may not be atoned for blood spilled within it but with the blood of
the spiller”), the very earth upon which blood is unjustly spilled demands jus-
tice in kind.37 Thus the court organizes a ritual in which a pure and unused calf
is slaughtered without reason, which re-enacts the unexplained murder while
simultaneously appeasing the land with its blood, in something resembling a
sacrificial ritual. In this manner the community attains atonement for the hor-
rific murder that took place.
If the statement is meant to play a role in expiating the murder, there is a
question as to why the elders of the city recite this formula, when the secret
murderer is unlikely to be counted among their ranks. In fact, the Mishnah
(m. Sotah 9:6) asks this very question:
‫זקני אותה העיר רוחצין את ידיהן במים במקום עריפה של עגלה ואומרים (דברים‬
‫כ״א) ידינו לא שפכו את הדם הזה ועינינו לא ראו וכי על דעתינו עלתה שזקני בית‬
‫דין שופכי דמים הן‬
The elders of that city wash their hands with water at the place of the
beheading of the calf and say “our hands did not spill this blood and our
eyes did not see.” But did it dawn on our minds that the elders of the
court are murderers?
According to the continuation of the Mishnah, the community was expected

to provide food and lodging to the visitor, and its failure to do so contributed in
some way to his death. The elders, then, apologize for the community’s failure
to support the visitor, a sin in which they are complicit. D’s usage (and implicit
reading) of the text, however, leads to an alternative answer: maybe this text
actually represents an adjuration! The elders and priests, while representing
their town, not only say that they neither killed nor saw the killing of the unfor-
tunate victim; they may also be committing their entire city to either admitting
37 See Moshe Greenberg, “Bloodguilt,” IDB 1.449–50.

360 Zuckier
their guilt or providing evidence they know about the killing, at risk of violat-
ing the adjuration oath. The beheading of the calf serves as a reminder for
those who would be withholding this information what their fate might be for
doing so.38
4 Recontextualizing
The analysis above demonstrates that the various biblical echoes and allusions
throughout this short D passage work together, forming an intertextual matrix
of sorts.39 Between the beheaded calf, sotah wife, and oath relating to testi-
mony, we have an extensive list of Pentateuchal legal contexts where one per-
son imposes an oath on another. While two of these cases are relatively clear
(sotah and the adjuration oath) and the others less so, the fact that they are all
invoked together by this source appears to indicate that they all can be read
together.
Calling to mind these cases through biblical allusion reveals precedents for
the new law, which was important for the sectarian authors who used these
texts.40 For a text where lengthy legal arguments are uncommon, and instead
38 This passage might also be connected to the oaths taken at Mount Gerizim and Mount
Ebal in Deut 27:14. In this case the phrase ‫ וענו הלוים ואמרו‬is parallel to ‫ וענו ואמרו‬of Deut
21:1–9.
39 The “strong scriptural background to the Qumran movement’s regulations about lost or
stolen property” (Czajkowski, “Lost and Stolen Property,” 102) has been previously noted
in the literature. This paper has both introduced new biblical intertexts, and deepened
the analysis of the previously noted ones.
40 I present here two statements on the role of scripture in the Damascus Document.
Philip Davies, The Damascus Covenant: An Interpretation of the Damascus Document
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983), 55:
“This state of affairs is misconceived if CD is dismissed as a mere ‘mosaic’ of quota-
tions to which no evidential value may be attached … the cumulative force of the numer-
ous quotations and allusions amounts to a statement that the ‘plot’ of CD can be read
in the bible … The conclusion is forced upon one that not only is the bible used by the
community to present its appeal, but also that it was in the bible in the first place that the
community found its identity.”
Jonathan Campbell, The Use of Scripture in the Damascus Document 1–8, 19–20, 9–10:
“A reading of the text of the Admonition may lead us to wonder whether there is more
to the use of scripture in the document than appears at first sight, not only as far as the
quotations are concerned, but also, and perhaps more interestingly, regarding the many
allusions. Indeed, it is difficult not to notice how much biblical allusion is to be found
biblical paraphrase is a key component of legal discussions,41 the cumulative

and associative power of calling to mind many of the cases that legislate ad-
ministration of oaths to others is a powerful tool in producing a legal-interpre-
tive argument.
At the same time that these precedents allow for a legal expansion, however,
there must appear a simultaneous reining in of the law. If any citizen had the
power of forcing an oath upon her neighbor upon the smallest suspicion of
wrongdoing, there would be an unsavory proliferation of false or unnecessary
oaths, as well as likely cases of people taking further matters into their own
hands. It is for this reason that precisely here D sees fit to disallow oaths not
in front of judges or upon their say-so. The two passages are thus as tightly
connected to one another in function as they are interwoven by their biblical
intertexts.42
5 Conclusion
The Dead Sea Scrolls (and especially the Damascus Document) were composed
in a community that had a very strong knowledge of the Bible, which explains
the high degree of allusion present within a very short section of text. The pas-
sage studied in this paper exemplifies the use of oblique biblical allusions by
D. While biblical allusion may at times be played down as a mere adornment
to the text, or as an archaizing technique used to offer a text a “biblical feel-
ing,” or to lend the text authority, this study demonstrates that understand-
ing the biblical language used in the Damascus Document can be crucial to
understanding its material. In our case, the six biblical texts alluded to in this
46-word snippet (!) are essential to the full understanding of the passage. The
allusions, and what they implicitly assume, bolster our understanding of the
legal material being discussed, offer literary themes, solve textual problems,
even upon a cursory reading of the work … We may intuitively suspect a more developed
and deliberate use of scripture than scholars have hitherto reckoned with …”
41 As Moshe Bernstein, Reading and Re-Reading Scripture, 26, puts it, “While the laws of
CD are not presented like those of 4QMMT or those of 11QTemple, each with its unique
relationship to the Pentateuch, we can observe enough connections between some of
the laws and the biblical text to realize that the ultimate framework for the legal code is
Pentateuchal.” See also Steven Fraade, “Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran,” in Biblical
Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (eds.
M. E. Stone and E. G. Chazon; STDJ 28; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 59–79.
42 See Murphy, Wealth, 50–51, who finds additional intertextual connections in CD IX:13–16
as well.
362 Zuckier
place the law in its biblical context, and explain the legal innovations under-
taken by the Qumran sect.
It should not be surprising that CD IX:8–12 emerges as a rewriting of vari-
ous biblical passages, most directly of Exod 22:6–8, given the methods of the
Damascus Document in general. In fact, the very next passage in D has been
singled out as playing a similar role. As Moshe Bernstein noted in a survey of
Pentateuchal legal exegesis:
The laws of repayment or restitution (CD 9:13–16) are modeled on biblical

formulations, even though we do not see direct quotation.43
Upon undertaking a close reading with an eye towards identifying oblique bib-
lical allusions, we can now conclude the same about CD IX:8–12, as well.
43 Bernstein, Reading and Re-Reading Scripture, 26.

Index of Ancient Sources
Hebrew Bible 4:25–26 47

4:25 54n50
Genesis 70, 71 5:22 60
1 98 5:24 60
1:8 22 5:29 54n50
1:13 22 6–49 64
1:19 22 6:3 57, 292
1:20 52 6:5–9 228, 236
1:23 22 6:5 228
1:24 52, 53, 53n42 6:6 45
1:25 53 6:7 45
1:26 35n26, 53 6:8–13 59
1:27 157 6:8 228
1:31 12, 22, 219 6:9–10 59n67
2 54n50, 57, 57n61, 6:9 59, 60, 226, 228,
59 243
2:3 22 7:1 226
2:4–17 50 7:9 157
2:8 50 7:11 11, 23n55, 23n57, 24,
2:15 50, 57 24n61
2:17 50, 58, 59 8:4 23n55, 23n57
2:23 54n50 8:8 292n48
3 43 8:13 24, 24n65
3:6 56 8:14 23n55, 23n57
3:7 57 9:6 54
3:8–13 43 9:23 47
3:9 43, 45 10 48
3:12 43 11:1 60, 60n69
3:13 43 11:7 35n26
3:18 55 11:10ff 48
3:20 54, 54n50, 55 11:31 10
3:21 219 12:10–12 51
3:28 60n69 12:14–15 229
4:1 54n50, 55 13:18 57
4:2–7 44n1 14:5 24n65
4:7–8 47 16:4–14 50, 51
4:7 44n11 16:11 54n50
4:8–11 44 18:19 150n36, 253
4:8 44 20:1 51
4:9 45 20:2–18 51, 52
4:12–17 249n2 21:9–21 50
4:17–22 47 21:9 50
364 Index Of Ancient Sources
Genesis (cont.) 46:23 219

21:22–32 52 47:27 310
22 60 48–50 312
22:6 60 48:21–22 312
22:8 60, 61 49 312
22:20–24 48 49:3 292n48
22:23 48n26 49:10 293
23:1 57 49:22–26 312
24 46 49:29–50:14 313
24:15 46n17, 48n26 49:29–33 313
24:27 46n17 50 308
24:47 48n26 50:1–3 313
25:12–18 48 50:15–21 311
25:18 48n25 50:15–20 313
25:25 48 50:22–26 313
26 52 50:23 306
26:6–11 51 50:24–25 308
26:12–13 56 50:25 314
26:26–32 52 50:26 304n4
28 221
28:2–5 61 Exodus
28:6–9 61 1:1–5 304
28:8 61 1:1–7 303f, 309, 318
28:9 61 1:1–8 309
28:10–15 221 1:5 115
28:10 61 1:6–7 310n17
29:23 54n50 1:6 308, 314
29:31–32 57 1:7 306,310n17
29:33 54n50 1:8 306, 314
29:34 54n50 6:16–20 318n35
29:35 54n50 6:17 93n51
30:6 54n50 6:30 93n51
30:8 54n50 7:7 318n35
30:11 54n50 12 287n23
30:13 54n50 12:15 22
30:18 54n50 12:18 11n19, 23n55, 98
30:20 54n50 13 287n23
30:24 54n50 13:7 102n14, 109
36:1–30 48 15:3 288n27
36:24 180 16:1 23n55, 139
36:31–39 49 18:13–27 148n31
36:31 49 19:1 23n57
36:40–43 48 20:9–10 140
37:1–2 42n5 20:10 12, 22
45:4–15 313n21 20:21 294n61
45:8 213, 219 21:24 141
46 115 22:6–8 347, 348, 349, 351,
46:3–4 313 351n20
Index Of Ancient Sources 365
22:6 350 18:18 146n28

22:7 350, 351 19:6 22
22:8 349 19:31 327
25:9 332 20:6 327
25:11 262n32 20:27 327
25:25 264 21:13–14 146n28
25:27 264 22:4 159
27:1–2 262 22:7 159
27:3 262 22:27 22
27:4–5 259ff 23 340n30
28:14 262n32 23:5 23n57
30 115, 116 23:6 23n55
30:3 262n32 23:24 23n57
30:18 263 23:34 23n55
34 320 23:38 167n44
35 260 23:39 23n55
35:16 260, 263 23:41 23n57
37:2 262n32 24 340n30
37:12 264 25 115
37:14 264 25:9 23n57
38:1 262 25:10 11
38:3 262, 262n31 26:30 83
38:4–6 259–260 27 115
38:8 263
38:24 260 Numbers
38:30 260 1:44 147
39:9 260 5 356
39:15 262n32 5:11–31 355n26
39:39 260, 263 5:19–21 355f
40:15 250n9 5:21 356
40:17 23n57 5:31 355n26
6:24–26 28
Leviticus 9:1 23n57
4:2 103 9:5 23n55
5:1 351, 352ff 9:11 23n57
5:10 24n61 10:11 22, 22n53, 23n57
5:11 24n61 11:10–17 148n31
5:15 115 11:24–25 148n31
5:17 352n21 15 116
10:3 250 15:4 115
11:29 171 15:39 87–89, 95
12 57n62 20:1 23n57
16:2 182, 183, 183n100 23:19 288n27
16:12–13 182 24:18–19 214
16:13 183 25:13 250n9
16:29 23n57 28:2 166
17 83 28:16 23n55, 23n57
18 115 28:17 23n55
Numbers (cont.) 17:8 151n39,

29:1 23n57 17:9 147, 152, 328n28
29:12 23n55 17:10 151
33:3 23n55, 23n57 17:14–20 145n23, 146f
33:38 23n57, 24n62 17:14–18 145
35:33 359 17:17 151n38
17:20 147
Deuteronomy 71, 319–329 17:16 145, 146
1:3 24n65 17:17 146, 157
1:9–18 148n31 17:18 146f, 328n28
1:16–20 148n32 17:20 146
1:16–17 151n38 18 116
4:29 87 18:1 328n28
4:30 251 18:5–20 320
4:44 146n26 18:5–14 321ff
5 287n23 18:5 324f, 324n11,
5:12 98 325n15, 326, 329
5:14 22 18:6 324f, 324n12,
5:28–29 294n61 327n25, 329
6:5 87 18:7 324
6:7 93n54 18:8 324n11, 325ff, 329,
7 320 329n32
7:1 327 18:9 324, 327, 329
7:3 146n28 18:10–11 325
8 287n23 18:10 329
9:5 327 18:11 327, 329
10 287n23 18:12 324, 324n13, 327,
10:12 87 329
11 287n23 18:13 324, 324n11
11:10 327 18:18–19 294n61
11:29 327 18:20–22 320ff
12:3 152n40 18:20 326f, 329
12:11 326, 332 18:22 324ff, 324n11,
12:22 294n57 329
12:29 327 19:1–4 324
13:2–6 84n21 19:15–21 320ff
14:23 326 19:15 324ff, 329
15:9 24n62 19:16 327
15:22 294n57 19:17 324f, 328f
16–18 142 19:18 328f
16:2 326 19:19 325, 329
16:6 326 19:20 324f, 328f
16:11 326 19:21 329
16:18–18:22 141, 144, 151 19:21 324n11, 325f, 329
16:18–20 148n32, 151n38 20:1–3 320ff
16:18 150n36 20:1 324f, 329
17:7 146n28 20:2 324, 328f
17:8–13 148–153 21:1–9 356ff
21:5 328n28
22:3 351n20 28:3 327

22:6–7 163 28:9 327
22:7 163
23:21 327 1–2 Kings 67
23:25 327
23:26 327
1 Kings
24:8 328n28
6 332
25:14–15 99
6:1 24n65
26:1 327
7:28 264
26:2 326
7:38 263n35
26:4–9 306
11:1–2 146n28
27:9 328n28
12:32 23n55, 23n57
27:14 360n38
15:1 24n62
28:21 327
15:9 24n62
28:63 327
15:25 24n62
29:17–18 87–90, 95
15:28 24n62
30:1 327n25
15:33 24n62
30:16 327
16:8 24n61
31:9 328n28
16:10 24n62
31:17 251, 327
16:15 24n61
31:21 251
16:23 24n61
31:23 327
16:29 24n61
32 142, 287n23
22:20–23 84n21
32:28 93
22:41 24n62
33:8–11 294n61
22:52 24n62
33:8 252n15
34 142
2 Kings
1:17 24n62
Joshua 67
3:1 24n62
5:10 23n55
8:16 24n62
15:52 217
8:25 24n61
24:2–13 307
9:29 24n61
12:7 24n61, 24n62
Judges 67, 281 13:1 24n61
6:29 90n35 13:10 24n61
14:1 24n62
1–2 Samuel 67, 301 14:23 24n61
15:1 24n61
1 Samuel 15:8 24n61
8:4–22 145 15:13 24n61
8:13 146n28 15:17 24n61
9:3 351n20 15:23 24n61
9:20 351n20 15:27 24n61
10:17–27 145 15:30 24n62
25:26 346f 15:32 24n62
25:31 346n7 16:1 24n61
25:33 346n7 17:1 24n62
25:39 249n2 17:6 12
2 Kings (cont.) 55:3 252n15

18:1 24n62 57:1 252n14
18:10 24n62 57:15 299n82
18:13 24n65 57:20 297n73
21:6 327 58:7 86n28
22:3 24n65 66:2 299n82
23:23 24n65
23:24 327 Jeremiah
24:12 24n62 1:2 24n65
25:1 12, 23n57 1:3 23n57
25:8 23n57, 24n61 1:10 296
25:27 24n65 2:3 161
2:11 93n52
Isaiah 70, 282 18:6 296
1:21 150n36 18:22 297n77
5:14–24 300n87 20:9 297n77
6:10 299n82 21:19 10
8:19 327 22:25 10
11:14 214 25:16 81n10
13:19 10 27:12 296
14:4 297n73 28:1 23n57
19:3 327 28:17 23n57
20–23 214 31:33 70
21:11 211ff 32:23 206n80
22:1 214 36:9 23n57
23:13 10 36:22 23n57
27:11 80n8, 80n9, 93 39:1 23n57
28:7–13 92 39:2 23n57, 24n65
28:11 92, 93 41:1 23n57
30:10 93, 95 46:2 12
32:7 86 49:7–22 214
34:1–17 214 50:6 351n20
34:7 211ff 51:59 12
36:1 24n65 52:4 23n57
38:8 99 52:6 23n57
38:15 297n73 52:12 23n57, 24n61
40:12–13 28–39 52:28 24n62
40:12 28 52:29 24n62
40:18–20 31 52:30 24n62
43:14 10 52:31 24n65
43:27 80n8 51:55 297n77
47:1 10
47:5 10 Ezekiel 283
48:14 10 1:1 24n65
48:20 10 7:19 90n40
54:6 298n81 9:12 146n28
54:8 298n81 13 92n46, 95
54:10 298n81 13–14 91, 94
13:6–8 92 Obadiah 214

13:6–9 92
13:8 92 Micah
13:9 92 3:5 91
13:13–16 84 6:12 245n47
13:4 94
13:22 92n46
Nahum
14 82, 88ff, 92
3:6 300n87
14:1–11 82–85
14:2–3 95
14:3 95 Habakkuk
14:4 90n40 1:6 10
14:7 90n40 2:5 300n88
14:9 91 2:15 300n88
18:30 90n40
22:28 92n48 Haggai
23:14 10 1:1 23, 23n57,
24:1 23n57 24n62
25:12–15 214 1:15 24n62
26:1 24n65 2:10 24n62
26:5–6 146n28
29:17 24n65 Zechariah
30:20 24n65 1:1 23n57, 24n62
31:1 24n65 1:7 24n62
32:1 24n65 3:2 28
32:17 24n65 3:8 278
33:21 24n65 7:1 24n62
34:4 351n20 7:3 23n57
34:16 351n20
35:1–15 214 Psalms 70, 71, 282
36:26–27 70n22 1 244
44:12 90n40 1:6 244
44:15 78 12:3 87
45:20 22, 22n53 25:4 245
45:21 23n55 26:4 86n28
45:25 23n55 26:10 86
27:11–12 245
Hosea 33:5 150n36
4:7 93n52 37 244
4:14 80n9, 93 37:1 244
6:3 80n7 37:3 244
37:5–7 244
Joel 37:6 244
3:3 219 37:16–17 244
37:20 244
Amos 37:23 244
5:14 90n35 37:30–31 244
37:31 244
Psalms (cont.) 9:13–18 245

37:34 244 10:8 80n9
57:11 87n30 10:10 80n9
91 28 14:27 206n80
92:6 30n8 21:3 150n36
106:20 93n52 22:21 246n51
106:43 251n11 27:8 249n2
117:2 87n30 28:4 196n24
119 244f 28:7 196n24
119:3 246n50 28:9 196n24
119:15 245 29:24 351, 353–54
119:104 245 29:18 196n24
119:128 245 31:26 196n24
119:176 351n20
Job 281
Proverbs 190ff, 283 9:7 30
1–9 245, 246
1:1–7 245n49 Song 283
1:8 196n24, 197n28
1:10 197n28
Ruth 281
1:15 197n28
1:20–33 245
2:1 197n28 Ecclesiastes 281
2:16–19 245
2:20 245 Lamentations 282
3:1 196n24, 197n28 2:14 92n48
3:11 197n28
3:13–18 245 Esther 74, 283
3:21 197n28 1:3 24n62
4:1 197n28 1:19 270n13, 273,
4:2 196n24 273n14,274
4:5–9 245 2:16 23n57, 24n62
4:14 245 3:7 23n57, 24n62
4:18 245 3:12 23n57
5:3–14 245 3:13 21, 26
5:4–6 245 8:8 270n13, 273n14, 274
5:7 197n28, 250 8:9 22, 23n57
6:20 196n24 8:12 21, 26
6:23 196n24 9:17 22
7:2 196n24 9:18 22
7:5–27 245
7:24 197n28, 250 Daniel 283
7:25 245 1:1 24n62
7:27 245 1:17 243n43
8:1–9:12 245 1:21 24n62
8:32 197n28, 250 2 240
2:1 24n62 10:9 22, 22n53

2:2 10 10:16–17 23
2:19–20 239
2:19 239 Nehemiah
2:21 240n39 1:1 24n62
2:47 240 2:1 24n62
3 266 5:14 24n62
3:6 276n23 8:2 23
3:8 277 8:14 23n57
3:11 276n23 10:31 146n28
3:12 268, 277 13:6 24n62
3:20 277 13:25 146n28
3:24 277n26 13:30 328n28
3:25 268, 277n26
3:28 268
1–2 Chronicles 67, 74, 75, 283, 301f
4 240, 265
4–6 266
4:34 240 1 Chronicles
5 240, 275 12:16 23n57
5:11 240 13:2 328n28
5:14 240 26:31 24n62
6 265–79 28:11–19 331
6:8 276
6:9 270, 276 2 Chronicles
6:13 270, 270 2:12 263n36
6:14 268 3–5 332
6:16 271, 276 3:2 23n57, 24n62
6:23 268 4:1 262n30
6:24 268 4:16 263
8:1 24n62 6:13 263n35
9:1 24n62 6:42 252n15
9:2 24n62 8:15 328n28
10:1 24n62 13:1 24n62
10:13 20 15:10 23n57, 24n62
11:1 24n62 15:19 24n62
12:3 201 16:1 24n62
16:12 24n62
Ezra–Nehemiah 74, 283 16:13 24n62
17:7 24n62
19:8 147
Ezra
19:10 206n80
1:1 24n62
23:4 328n28
3:6 23
29:3 23n57
3:8 23n57
29:17 23
3:12 328n28
30:2 23n57
7:7 24n62, 328n28
30:13 23n57
7:8 12, 22,23n57
31:7 23n57
2 Chronicles (cont.) Daniel

32:31 80n8 2:13 273
34:3 24n65 2:15 273
34:8 24n62 3:10 273
35:19 24n65 3:12 273
36:17 10 3:96 273
36:22 24n62 4:6 273
6:8 271
Samaritan Pentateuch 6:9–11 273
6:12 272f
6:13–14 273
Samaritan Pent. (= SP) 285f, 290f, 338
6:13 273
6:15 272
Deuteronomy 6:16 273
17:10 151n40 6:18 269
18:5–14 321ff 6:22 269
19:15–20:3 323ff 6:27 273
Ancient Biblical Versions 2 Chronicles

19:10 206n80
Greek
Aquila
Septuagint (= LXX) Isaiah
21:11 214
Deuteronomy
17:10 151n40 Theodotion
18:5–14 321ff Daniel 266
18:20–22 321ff
19:15–21 321ff
Aramaic
20:1–3 321ff
Targum Onqelos
Isaiah
Exodus
40:12–13 31
27:4 261
21:11 214
Palestinian Targumim
Jeremiah
Exodus
32:23 206n80
27:5 261
Hosea
Pseudo–Jonathan
4:15 80n8
Exodus
27:4 261
Proverbs
14:27 206n80
Targum Isaiah
21:11 214
Psalms 40:13 37, 37n35
26:4 86n28 43:27 80n8
Peshitta 44:22–23 307

44:23–45:1 307
Deuteronomy 45:1–5 307
17:10 151n40 47:11 252
47:23–25 252
49:4–5 252
Isaiah
49:7 296
21:11 214
51:26 296
Psalms
Susanna 266
26:4 86n28
Bel and the Dragon 266

Apocrypha/Pseudepigrapha
Song of Azariah and

Apocrypha
the Three Youths 266
Tobit
Baruch
1:3–9 235
3:9–4:4 193
1:3 235
4 235, 246
4:5 235 1 Maccabees
2:57 253n16
Judith 288
8:16 288n27 2 Maccabees
8:27 253n16 2:13 252n11
9:9 288n27 2:13–15 74
16:2 288n17
3 Maccabees
Additions to Esther 266 1:3 273
Wisdom of Solomon 4 Maccabees

2:10 205n76 4:23–24 273
10:13–14 307 4:26 273
10:2 273
Ben Sira 192, 204f, 253, 296
3:17–29 206n82 Ecclesiasticus See “Ben Sira”
6:9 248n2, 249n2
6:18–37 206 Pseudepigrapha
6:22 206
24 193, 204 1 Enoch See “Enoch”
24:30–34 206
36:13 296
Aramaic Levi Document 224, 238
36:29–31 249n2
38:34–39:11 206
42:15–43:33 205 Enoch 193–196, 208
44–45 307 1–36 (Book of
44:1 249 Watchers) 194, 196, 231
Enoch (cont.) 99:10 194, 195n18

1:1 195f 104:2–6 201
1:4 193 104:12 194n17
5:8 194n17 104:13 194
7:2–6 33 105:1 194
10:3 230n16 105:12 195
10:4–15 33 108:13 194
10:16 230n16, 232n21
13:10 241 Jubilees 105, 138n9, 139ff,
14:1 241 280, 288, 291f,
32:6 194n17 303–318
37:1–2 194n17 1:5 46
42:133 193 1:27–2:1 317
72–82 (Astronomical 2:7 50, 57, 57n61
Book) 196, 231 2:11 52
81:1–82:3 193 2:13 53, 53n42
81:1–2 194 2:14 53, 54
81:1 194 3:9 50, 57n62
81:2 194 3:12 57n59
82:2 194n17 3:15–16 58
82:4 193 3:15 50
84:6 232n21 3:16 57n59
89:11–12 307 3:20 56
89:13–19 307 3:21 57n59
89:13–14 307 3:28 60
89:15 307 4:3–4 44
89:28–35 193 4:7 54n50
91–92 231 4:17–18 317
91:18–19 194 4:17 243n43
92:1 194n17 4:30 50, 58–59
92:3 194 4:33 59n67
93:2 232n21 5:3–5 45
93:4 231 5:8 57n59
93:5 230n16 5:9 59n67
93:6 193 6:8 54
93:10 194n17, 195, 232n21 7 48
93:14 234 8 48
94:1–5 194, 232 8:3–4 317
94:1 233 8:5 54n49
94:6–104:8 194 8:8 54n49
94:6–96:3 195n20 7:9 47
96:4–98:8 195n20 7:18 47n22
98:9 195, 195n18 10:13–14 317
98:11 195 10:17 59
98:14 195 10:18–26 60
98:15 195 10:18 54n49
98:9–99:10 195n20 10:22 53
99:2 193 11:6 54n49
11:12 54n49 38:14 49

12:25–27 317 38:15–24 49
13:13–15 51 39:2 42n5
14:10 57n59 39:6 317
16:10 51 41:28 317
17:4 50 43:14–20 313
17:14 54n49 44:5–6 313
18 60 44:14 317
18:5 60 45:4 46n17
18:7 60 45:13 312
19:7 57n59 45:14 312
19:10 48 45:15 313
19:13 47 45:16 312, 314, 316, 317
19:14 317 46:1–2 311
19:15–29 61 46:1–3 310
19:30 61 46:2 312
19:31 61 46:3–8 310n17
20:2–10 253 46:3 308, 314
20:4 46n17, 317 46:4 308
20:12b–13 48n25 46:5–6 314, 314n22
21:10 317 46:6 314
24:2 56 46:7 314
24:3 56 46:8 308, 314, 318n35
24:8–33 52 46:9 315, 318n35
24:14–15 56 46:14 311
24:24–26 52 46:15 311
27:9–11 61 47:1 315f, 318n15
27:12 61 47:9 317
28:11–12 57n59 49:1–23 139
29:14–20 61 49:1 139
29:17–18 61 50:1–13 139
30:7 47n19 50:1 139
30:11–15 47n19 50:6 139
30:17–20 317 50:7–8 139
31:13–17 317 50:20 310
31:24 46n17
32 317 Psalms of Solomon
32:1 317 17:33 145n25
32:3 317
32:20 54
Testament of Levi
32:24–26 317
13:9 238n36
33:22 317
34:3 317
34:10 42n5 Qumran Literature
34:20 317
36:3–4 253 CD 6, 140, 253, 289, 298
38 49 1:1 208
38:6 317 1:10 87
CD (cont.) 6:1–6 223ff

1:18 94, 94n56 6:1 232n21
2–3 253n16 6:2 228, 235
2:14–3:4 249 6:3–5 232
2:16 88 6:3 227
3:11–12 88 6:6 235
3:14–15 85 6:12 239n38
3:21 78 19 228, 238
4:4 78 19:23–31 223ff
4:8 72 19:23 229
4:13 81n11 19:24–26 228–29
4:15 85 19:24–25 237
4:17–19a 85 19:24 227n9, 229
4:20–5:2 157 19:25 237, 241
5:2–6 251 19:28–31 229
5:7–11 134n79
5:16–17 93 1Q28 (1QS) 6, 289
5:18 81n11 1:1–3 70
8:16 86n28 1:16–2:25 95
9:8–12 343–362 1:3 92n47
9:13–16 361n42, 362 2:24 150n36
10:14–11:18 98 2:26 150n36
10:14 140, 345n4 3:3 88
10:15–17 98 3:7 150n36
11:17–18 167n43 3:13–4:26 36, 236n31
13:7 140 3:13 36
15:9 87 4:5 90n34
15:12 87 4:6 36
16:7–11 345n4 5:1 140
20:8–10 95 5:1–10:8 140
20:8–9 95 5:2 204
20:9 89n33 5:4–5 70n22
5:7–9 204
1QIsaa 10, 30n7, 36, 5:8–9 87
280–302 5:12–15 140n13
6:6–8 72
1Q8 (1QIsab) 10, 280–302 8:16 92n47
9:17 150n36
9:18 36n28
1QpHab
11:3–4 200n40
7:3–5 72
11:7–9 198
7:8 92n47
11:15–16 31n10
8:3 299n88
20:10–11 150n36
11:3–8 85
11:3 299n88
11:13 70n22 1Q28a (1QSa) 6
1Q20 (1QapGen) 223–47, 293, 302 1Q33 (1QM) 13, 138, 253, 296
5:19 226n8 1:3 13n25
5:20–25 239n38 1:5 150n36
1:13 18 2Q16 (2QRutha) 284

1:15 150n36
3:14 18 2Q21 (Apocryphon of Moses) 280
4:16 18n39
5:4 263n37
4Q1 (4QGena) 305n5
6:21 13n25
8:2 150n36
11:1–3 251 4Q2 (4QGenb) 284
11:10 299n82
14:9 81n11 4Q7 (4QGeng) 284
17:2–3 250
4Q11 (4QpaleoGen–
1QHa 6, 296f Exodl) 284ff, 304f
1:23 297n73 1 304
3:25 297n73 10 ii 304
3:32 297n73 35 304
4:38 87n30 40 259n14
7:23 87
8:25 87 4Q13 305
10:17 93n53, 94, 94n56
10:21 80n9 4Q17 (4QpaleoExod–Levf) 285
10:15–16 80n8
10:29 297n77
4Q27 (4QNumb) 285
10:31 81n10, 297n77
10:34 94
10:38 81n10 4Q33 (4QDeutf) 323ff
11:29 86n28
12 84, 86, 93 4Q35 (4QDeuth) 298, 302
12:6–23 79–82
12:9–10 86n29 4Q38a (4QDeutk2) 322ff
12:14–17 85–88
12:16–17 88ff
4Q41 (4QDeutn) 71
12:20 90n34
12:23b–41 79
15:6 299n82 4Q47 (4QJosha) 280–302
15:37 86n28
16:31 297n77 4Q51 (4QSama) 280–302
16:37 299n82
20:16 31n10 4Q52 (4QSamb) 280–302
21:6 299n82
22:31 31n10 4Q53 (4QSamc) 280–302
23:16 299n82
4Q57 (4QIsac) 280–302
1Q71 10
4Q70 (4QJera) 284
2Q11 (2QDeutb) 149n33
4Q72 (4QJerc) 10, 284
2Q13 (2QJer) 280–302
4Q85 (4QPsc) 284 4Q203 (Enoch)

5:2 232n20
4Q106–107 (4QCanta, b) 280–302 9:3 239n38
4Q115 4Q204 (Enoch) 230

24 7 30n8 1 v 4 232n21
1 vi 7 241
1 vi 9 241
4Q158 (4QRPa) 286,
5 ii 26 239n38
4Q163 (pIsac)
4Q212 230, 233
23 ii 10 94n56
1 ii 231
1 ii 18 231
4Q166 (pHosa) 1 ii 19–20 231
ii 5 92n47 1 ii 21 231
ii 10 85n25 1 iii 19–20 232n21
1 iii 25 231
4Q168 (pMic) 301n92 1 iv 12–13 232n21
1 iv 13 232
4Q169 (pNahum) 1 iv 14 232
3 ii 2 300n87 1 iv 22 232, 234
3–4 i 7 94n56 1 v 25 233
3–4 ii 2 94n56
3–4 ii 3 94n56 4Q213
1 i 238n36
4Q171 (pPsa) 1 i 9 237f
1–10 i 27 80n8 1 i 11–19 238
2:5 237n32
4Q174 (Florilegium) 265ff 4 233
1–2 i 17 90n34 4:5 233
4:6 233
4:7 233
4Q175 (Testimonia) 294f, 302
4:8 233
4Q176 (4QTanh) 289, 298f, 302

4Q213a
8–11 298
1:12–14 234
8–11 8 298n81
1:14 240
4Q177 (Catenaa) 86n29

4Q214a
5–6 5 86
2–3 ii 5 237
5–6 9 86n29
4Q215a 6
4Q179 389
4Q216
4Q201 (Enoch)
1:5 23n56
1 iv 5 239n38
4Q242 265ff
4Q243–245 274ff 1:11 13, 17, 18n34, 22, 23,

25
4Q243–244 (Ps.–Dan.) 275 1:12–13 16
1:12 17, 18n36, 18n38
1:13–14 14, 18, 22, 26
4Q243 27
1:13 13, 17n31, 17n32, 21,
2 275
26n67
4:1 275
1:14 19n42, 23, 292n48
7:2 234n28
1:15 18, 18n36, 18n37, 19
8:2 276
1:16–17 14, 19, 19n43, 23
8:3 276
1:17 13, 17n31, 19, 21n47,
9:1 275
23
13 275n19
1:18 18n36, 18n37, 19
1:19–20 13, 21n47
4Q244 1:19 17n31, 23
12 275n19 1:20 20, 20n44, 25
1:22 10n17, 14, 16, 17n31,
4Q246 265ff 18n35, 22, 23
ii 4–9 234 2:1–2 16, 23
2:1 10n17, 14, 16, 17,
4Q252 6–27, 77, 292f, 302 17n30, 19, 19n41,
1:1 9, 11, 13, 17, 20n46, 20n46, 23, 24, 25
24 2:2–3 14, 16
1:2–3 19–20 2:2 10n17, 12, 13, 17n31,
1:2 11, 292 21n47
1:3–4 13, 16 2:3–4 17n30
1:3 10, 11, 17, 20, 24, 26 2:3 13, 15, 17, 17n31, 20,
1:4 10, 10n17, 12, 13, 17, 21, 21n47
17n30, 18, 19n41, 2:8 10, 18, 20n44
21, 22, 23, 26, 2:9 10, 18, 18n36, 18n38
292n48 2:10 18n36, 18n38
1:5 12, 16 3:1–2 19
1:6–7 18n34, 23 3:2 25
1:6 10n17, 13, 16, 17, 18, 3:3 12
18n36, 18n38, 19, 22, 3:4 14
25, 26 3:5–6 25
1:7–8 16 4:1–2 15
1:7 13, 17n31, 18, 20, 4:1 11, 14
20n44, 21, 25, 26 4:3 11
1:8–9 20, 20n44, 25 4:5–6 15, 25
1:8 10n17, 13, 17n31, 4:5 14
18n34, 19, 21n47, 22, 5:1 12
23, 26 5:2 10, 14
1:9–10 12, 22, 26 5:3 292
1:9 18, 18n36, 19, 22 5:4–5 15, 26
1:10 10n17, 13, 18n34, 19, 5:4 14, 25
19n41, 22, 23, 26
1:11–12 13, 18, 22, 26 4Q253 (4QCommGen B) 289
4Q253a (4QCommMal) 289 7 ii 16 22n54

17 2 22n54
4Q254 (4QCommGen C) 289 17 3 22n54
17 4 22n54
17 5 22n54
4Q254a (4QCommGen D) 289
4Q318
4Q256 6
7:4 23n58
8:1 23n58
4Q258 (4QSd) 150n36
4Q319
4Q259 (4QSe) 150n36 4:10 18, 21
4:11 21n50
4Q266–272 (4QD) 208, 289, 298
4Q320
4Q266 (Da) 1 i 3 21
1 i 4 23n56
11 17 23n56 1 ii 1 21n50
1 ii 2 21n50
4Q270 (De) 1 ii 3 21n50, 23n60
7 ii 11 23n56 1 ii 5 21n50
1 ii 6 21n50
1 ii 7 21n50
4Q275
1 ii 9 21n50
1 3 23n56
1 ii 10 21n50
1 ii 11 21n50
4Q286 1 ii 12 21n50
7 ii 12 93n52 2 9 21n50
2 10 21n50
4Q298 6 2 11 21n50
2 12 21n50
4Q317 2 13 23n59
1+1a ii 2 22n54 2 14 18, 22, 23n60
1+1a ii 5 22n54 4 iii 2 18
1+1a ii 7 22n54 4 iii 4 21n50
1+1a ii 12 22n54 4 iii 5 21n50
1+1a ii 15 22n54 4 iii 6 21n50
1+1a ii 18 22n54 4 iv 1 21n50
1+1a ii 22 22n54 4 iv 2 21n50
1+1a ii 26 22n54 4 iv 3 21n50
1+1a ii 27 22n54 4 iv 7 21n50
1+1a ii 32 22n54 4 iv 8 21n50
1+1a ii 33 22n54 4 iv 9 21n50
6 4 22n54 4 v 10 21n50
6 6 22n54 4 vi 1 21n50
4 vi 2 21n50
4 vi 6 21n50 5:8 23n60

4 vi 7 21n50 5:9 21n50
4Q321 4Q322
1:1 21, 22n54 1 2a 21n50
1:2 21n50 1 3 22
1:3 21n50, 22n54
1:4 21n50, 23n59 4Q323
1:5 21n50, 23n60 1 2 22n54
1:6 21n50
1:7–8 22n54
4Q324
1:7 21n50
1 3 22n54
2:3–4 22n54
1 5 22n54
2:3 22n54
2:4 21n50, 22n54
2:8 23n60 4Q324a
3:3 21n50 1 ii 1 22n54
3:4 21n50 1 ii 3 22, 23n56
3:5 21n50 1 ii 4 22n54
3:6 22n54, 23n59
3:7 21n50, 22n54 4Q324c
3:8 21n50 1 2 22
4:1 21n50
4:2 21n50 4Q324d
4:3 21n50 2 2 22n54
4:5 21n50, 22n54 2 3 22n54
4:6 22n54, 23n59 3 ii 4 22n54
4:7–8 22n54 7 ii 2 13n24, 22
4:7 23n60
4:8 23n56 4Q325
5:3 23n59, 23n60 1 1 22n54
5:7 23n59 1 2 22n54
5:8 23n60 1 3 22n54, 23n56
6:2–3 23n60 1 4 22n54
6:2 23n59 1 5 22n54
7:5 23n59 1 6–7 23n56
1 6 22n54
4Q321a 2 4 23n56
1:5 21n50
2:2 22n54 4Q326
2:6 23n60 1 2 22n54
2:8 23n56 1 4 22n54
5:3 22n54
5:4 21n50, 22n54
4Q329
5:5 21n50
2a–b 4 23n56
5:6 21n50
5:7 21n50
4Q329a 4Q380 289

1 6 21n50
4Q381 71, 289
4Q330
1 ii 1 22, 22n53, 23n56 Apocryphon of Jeremiah 280, 290
2 2 22
2 4 23n56
Pseudo–Ezekiel 290
3 2 23n56
4Q383–390 6
4Q332
1 2 22n54
1 3 22 4Q384 (papApocryphon of Jeremiah B?)
24 a+b 4 252n14
4Q333
1 5 23n56 4Q385a–c, 386, 388, 391
(Pseudo–Ezekiel) 341
4Q345
1R 1 23n58 4Q390
(4QApocryphon of Jeremiah Ce)
4Q364–367 (RP) 138, 138n9, 286ff
4Q391–399 6
4Q364 (4QRPb) 286
4Q394–399 (MMT) 76, 138, 252, 298
B 55–85 179n88
4Q365+365a 331ff
B 75–82 159
4Q365 (4QRPc) 331ff

4Q394
6a ii 286
1–2 i 3–5 22n54
6c 286
1–2 ii 8 13, 22
12a–b ii 260n18
1–2 iii 2–3 22n54
23 340
1–2 iii 3–4 22n54
1–2 iii 4–5 22n54
4Q365a 331ff 1–2 iii 5–6 22n54
2 ii 334 1–2 iii 6–8 22n54
1–2 iv 3–4 22n54
4Q368 1–2 iv 5–7 22n54
2 10 23n58 1–2 v 1–2 22n54
1–2 v 3–5 22n54
4Q377 252
1 i 8 252n13 4Q396
1 ii 5 252 1–2 iv 4–11 159n16
1 ii 10 252
4Q397
4Q379 6 13:10 158
12 3–4 23n56 6 13:12–15 159n16
12 7 23n56
22 ii 7–15 294n60 4Q400
1 i 1 23n56
4Q415–418a (Instruction) 191ff 4Q424

1 4 86n28
4Q415
6 4 200n45 4Q428 79
4Q416 191ff 4Q430 79

1 199
1 i 1–9 196 4Q432 79
1 i 4 196
1 i 9–13 196
4Q434
2 i 5 200n42
1 i 4 70n22
2 ii 13–15 198
2 iii 9 200n44
2 iii 14 200n44 4Q504
2 iii 18 200n46 4 70n22
11 70n22
4Q417
1 i 199 4Q510
1 i 2–7 199–200 1 5 33n18
1 i 3 200n42 1 6–7 33
1 i 8–9 201 1 8 37
1 i 17–18 201
1 i 17 198 4Q511 (Songs of
1 i 18 200n42 the Sage) 28–39
1 i 25 198 30 29–30
1 i 27 88 44–47 29
4Q418 4Q522 (Apocryphon

2–2c 4 198 of Joshua) 280, 290
10a–b 1 200n46
43 199–200 4Q525 (Beatitudes) 190ff
43–45 i 4 200n43
43–45 i 14 200n42 4Q531
44 199–200 19:2 232n20
45 i 2–5 199–200
69 ii 11–15 201
4Q533 (Book of Giants)
77 2 200n47
4:1 232n20
77 4 200n47
81+81a 1–14 201
81+81a 1–2 198n31 4Q534
81+81a 4–5 197n30 1 i 234
81+81a 5 201 1 i 6 234
81+81a 12 202 1 i 8 239n38
81+81a 13 201
81+81a 17 198, 202 4Q537
123 ii 4 200n46 5:2 235
184 2 200n46
190 2 200n46 4Q541
7:4 239
4Q541 (cont.) 18:11 21

9 i 232n20 19:12 21
9 i 3–4 239 21:13 21
9 i 7 239 23–24 340
25:10 22, 22n53
4Q542 (Testament 27:10 23
of Qahat) 227n9, 234, 253 28:19 332
1 i 4 227n9 40:8 333
1 i 9 235 41 334
1 ii 12 227n9 44:5 144
46:6–7 18n39
51 320
4Q543–549 (Visions
51:4–5 186n109
of Amram) 254
51:6–7 144
51:11–66:7 144
4Q544 (Vis. Amr.b) 51:11–18 148n32
1:11–12 227n9 54:8–18 84n21
2 234 56 149f
56:1–5 146
4Q545 56:12–59:21 145
4:6 239n38 56:15–17 145
56:16 146, 147
4Q547 56:20–21 146
1–2:11–13 227n9 57:1 146
1–2:12 227n9 57:5–11 146
57:11–15 146
4Q548 234 57:12–13 328n28
1 ii–2:2 234 57:15–19 146
1 ii–2:14 234 58:3–21 146
58:14 147
59:2–21 146
11Q1 (11QpaleoLeva) 294 59:21 146
60:10–61:15 320ff
11Q5 (11QPsa) 150n36 64:13–14 86
11Q11 29n4 11Q20

14:2 22
11Q19 (11QTa) 6, 71, 136–154,
257–264, 280, 11Q21
293–294, 302, 1 1–3 257
319–329, 330–342
2 320 MasLevb 284
3 259
3:15–17 257
12 259 MasEzek 284
14:9 23n56
17:6 22, 23n56 MasPsa 284
5/6Hev7 (P.Yadin 7) Posterior Analytics 162

OTR:46 21n52 On Rhetoric 162
1.2.13 162n25
5/6Hev42 1.2.21 162n25
1:1 23 2.22.3 162n25
5/6Hev45 Lysias
1:1 24, 24n63 On the Murder of Eratosthenes
1:31–32 164n33
On the Olive Stump
5/6Hev46
7:26 164n33
1:1 24n63
Dinarchus
XHev/Se49
Against Demosthenes
1R 1 24n63
1:45 164n33
MurExod 284
Diodorus Siculus
17:30 270n13
Mur12 284
Philo Judaeus
Mur22 On the Life of Moses 143n17
1–9 ITR 1 24n63 2:40 143n16
On the Special Laws 140
Mur24 1:274 260n23
B 1 24n63 4:132–135 141n14
C 1 24n63 4:133–135 141
D 1 24n63 4:136–238 144
E 1 24n63 4:190–191 148n31
I 11 24n63 Decalogue
19–20 141n14
Mur29 154–175 141n14
ITR1 24n63
OTR9 24n63 Josephus
Antiquitates Judaicae
Mur30 2:198–200 308
1OTR 8 24n63 2:200 308
3:149 260
Greek and Latin Literature 4:196–198 142
4:196–301 144
4:218 148n31
Isocrates
Against Lochites
20:3 174n69 Pseudo-Philo
Liber Antiquitatum
Biblicarum (= LAB) 292, 302
Aristotle
8–9 307
Prior Analytics 162
8:1–14 307
2.27 162n25
9:1 307
Quintilian Philippians
Institutes of Oratory 3:5 187
5:10:86–88 164n32
5:10:88 164n33 Rabbinic Literature
8:4:9–11 164n32
Mishnah
Cicero
Topica
Zeraʿim
4:23 164n31
Sheviʾit
18:68–71 164n31
7:1 171n58
22:84 164n31
On Invention
2:50:148–153 164n31 Moʿed
ʿEruvin
3:4 99
Gaius
Pesahim
Institutes
4:5 109
2:73 164n33
Sukkah
2:7 109
Jerome Betzah
Commentary on Isaiah 1:1 109, 110
21:11–12 216 Taʿanit
Commentary on Obadiah 4:3 21n51
1:1 216f Hagigah
1:1 133
New Testament 1:2 109
2:2 110
Matthew 3:3 159n15
12:11–12 187
23 187n112 Nashim
23:16–22 187 Yevamot
1:1 134
Luke 8:3 173
18:1–8 187 Nazir
7:4 171n59, 173
Sotah
Acts
9:6 359
23:6 187
26:5 187
Neziqin
Bava Metziʾa
Romans
3:1 350n15
5:12–21 187
3:12 351n19
Bava Batra
2 Corinthians 9:7 173n66
3:7–11 187 Makkot
9:9–10 187 1:6 186n110
ʾAvot Sotah
1:12 169n53 7:11–12 176n78
5:17 188n116
ʿEduyyot Neziqin
1 109 Sanhedrin
1:3 102n14, 109 7:11 165, 166n40
1:12 110
6:2 171n59
Qodashim
Hullin
Qodashim 12:5 163
Hullin
2:7 171n59
Tohorot
Keritot
Yadayim
3:9–10 171n59
2:20 179
Middot
3:1–4 258n6
Yerushalmi
Tohorot
Miqvaʾot Zeraʿim
6:8 102n14 Berakhot
Makhshirin 1:1 99
6:8 173n66 Peʾah
Yadayim 2:1 177n80
3:2 174n68
4:3 110 Moʿed
4:6 185n108, 186n109, Shabbat
187 1:4 108n26
4:7 178n88, 184, 185, Pesahim
185n104 6:1 173, 173n67
4:8 179n89 Yoma
1:5 183n100
Tosefta Sukkah
4:1 167n42
Taʿanit
Moʿed
1:1 211
Pesahim
Megillah
4:13–14 165
4:1 211
Yoma
Hagigah
1:8 183
1:2 102n14
Megillah
2:3 167n45
2:5 211
Hagigah
2:11 167n45 Neziqin
Bava Batra
8:1 180, 181n97
Nashim
Sanhedrin
Ketubbot
4:1 171n57
1:1 21n51
4:1–2 174n78
5:1 173n66
Qodashim 63b 350

Zevahim 106b 350n15
1:8 170n54 Bava Metziʿa
43b 351n19
Bavli Bava Batra
13b 305
100a–b 182n97
Moʿed
115b 180n94
Shabbat
116a 181n97
14a 102n14
Sanhedrin
34b 99
17a–b 171n58,
132a 174n68
93a 278
ʿEruvin
Makkot
4a 102n14
5b 174n69, 186n110
13b 171n58, 176n78
21b 114
41a 21n51 Qodashim
43b 21n51 Bekhorot
Pesahim 45a 106n23
66a 173 Temurah
Yoma 12a 102n14
19b 183n100 16a 170n54
Sukkah
5b 102n14 Tohorot
Betzah Niddah
20a 167n45 17a 116
Taʿanit 30b 106n22
19b 21n51
27b 21n51 Minor Tractates
29b 21n51
Megillah
Derekh Eres
18b 211
ʿArayot
31a 21n51
6 172
Hagigah
24b 159
Midrashim
Nashim
Ketubbot Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael
8a 254n20 Neziqin
Nazir 7 184n104
57a 174n68 10 184n104
Qiddushin 16 350n15
58b 109 Pisha
5 166n39
Vayassa
Neziqin
1:2 21n51
Bava Qamma
27b–28a 347n9
Sifre Numbers
8 171n60, 173n66
9 355n27 Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana

65 166n39 7:11 211ff
75 170n54
106 173n68 Genesis Rabbati
117 173n66 209:12 210ff, 219
142 166n39
Medieval Jewish Authors
Sifre Deuteronomy
253 173n66
Rashi
313 177n80
Ezekiel
14:3 83
Sifra
Hova
Abraham ibn Ezra
1:11–13 171n59
Isaiah
ʾAhare Mot
28:11 92n50
2 182
Hosea
Qedoshim
4:14 80n9
10:10 174n69
Behuqotai
2:8 177n80 Maimonides
Mishneh Torah 143
Genesis Rabbah
9:5 210f, 219 David Kimhi (Radak)
20:12 210 Isaiah
19:9 43n8 21:11 215
20:12 211, 219 28:11 92n50
22:1 55n52 43:27 80n8
22:9–10 45n14 Ezekiel
36:8 211 14:3 83
92 177n80 Hosea
94:9 211, 219 4:14 80n9
Leviticus Rabbah Tosafot on the Babylonian Talmud

29:1 221 Yoma
79b 102n14
Bava Batra
ʾAvot deRabbi Natan
66b 102n14
A 18 143n15
Persian Literature
Midrash Samuel 332n8
Pahlavi Vidēvdād 107ff

Midrash Tanhuma
2:5C 125
va–yetze 3 221
3:4F 125
3:14K–L 124
Pesiqta Rabbati 3:15E 125
21 176n78 3:19A 125
151a–b 221 3:36 126, 128
Pahlavi Vidēvdād (cont.) 496 124

3:37–9 127 505 124
3:38 129 510:1 122
3:40C 126, 128 515 124
4:2I 125 537 124
5:1–3 120, 132 563 124
5:3 120,124 564 124
5:4 120f, 132 632 124
5:42A 125 632:9 122
5:46C 125 654 124
5:60 125 658 124
6:5 129f 663 124
6:10C 124 666 124
7:52–54 127f 670 124
9:3B 125
13:36D 125 Supplementary Texts
16:1–2 124 to the Šāyešt nē Šāyešt
16:8A 124 11:1–2 117
18:4–44 126 12:17–19 117
17 116 14:4 117
19:29 127n64 16 117
19:41 127n64
Other
Hērbedestān 119ff
8:5 125
Nash Papyrus 287
9:8 123
12:5 125
KhQ1
1:1 24
Nērangestān 119
10:22 125
28:50 125 Fesh-Arch3
38:1 125 1:1 24, 24n62
38:5 125
39:5 125 The Chronology of
53:40 125 Ancient Nations 118n50
Zand ī Fragard ī Havdalah de-Rabbi Akiva 28

Jud-dēvdād 111, 113ff
439 124 Sefer ha-Razim 29
475 124
486–87 124, 130 Sefat Emet 102n14
487 124
495 124
Index of Modern Authors
Abegg, Martin G. 2, 6, 7n4, 9n12, 14n28, Baumgarten, Joseph M. 161n21, 168n50,
26n67, 34n23, 64n3, 150n36, 345n4, 346, 186n109, 344, 344n2, 345n4, 347n10
349n14 Beentjes, Pancratius C. 288n28
Abusch, Tzvi 116n45 BeDuin, Jason D. 118, 118n50
Adhami, Siamak 121n57 Begg, Christopher T. 52n39
Aejmelaus, Anneli 35n24 Ben-Dov, Jonathan 21n49, 338n26
Albani, Matthias 46n16, 53n42 Ben Yehuda, Eliezer 262n34
Albeck, Hanoch 186n110 Berkovitz, Abraham 2, 257n5
Alexander, Philip S. 33n18, 41n1, 70n24, 137, Bernard-Donals, Michael 186n108
137n3, 163n29 Bernstein, Moshe J. 10, 10n16, 14n26, 40n1,
Allegro, John M. 286n21 41n2, 42, 42n4, 45n1464, 60n68, 64n1,
Allen, Leslie C. 82n15, 83n17, 83n19, 84n20 65, 65n4, 65n6, 65n7, 71, 71n27, 77, 98,
Alon, Gedaliah 166n41 98n6, 118, 137, 137n4, 156, 156nn3–4, 157,
Altheim, Franz 113n37 157n9, 158n11, 160n17, 161n21, 175n76,
Altmann, Alexander 214n11 188n117, 190, 190n1, 198n32, 223nn1–3,
Amihay, Aryeh 72, 72n31 227n10, 228, 228nn11–12, 230n15,
Aminof, Irit 215n11 243n43, 247, 248, 248n1, 252n15, 253n15,
Andersen, Arnold A. 286n21 292n47, 298n79, 334, 334n16, 345n4,
Ando, Clifford 112n33 346n6, 347n10, 361n41, 362, 362n43
Angel, Joseph 2, 28n2, 29n4, 29n5, 33n19, Berthelot, Katell 207n85, 223n2, 224n4
33n20, 34n21, 34n22, 36n27, 36n29, Beyerle, Stefan 295n61
167n44 Bickerman, Elias 224, 224n4
Aptowitzer, Viktor 210n2 Biggs, Robert D. 116n45
Argall, Randall A. 205n73 Blenkinsopp, Joseph 83n17
Arndt, Timotheus 211n2 Block, Daniel I. 83nn18–19, 91n43
Aro, Sanna 104n19 Blumenthal, Adolf 210n1, 217n20
Assmann, Jan 66, 66n11, 67n15, 68 Boccaccini, Gabrielle 193n13
Attridge, Harold W. 286n21 Böck, Barbara 114n40
Aucker, W. Brian 75n36 Bockmuehl, Marcus 169n52
Auwers, Jean-Marie 73n33 Bohak, Gideon 28n1
Avemarie, Friedrich 215n11, 216n19 Borchardt, Francis 207n86
Avery-Peck, Alan J. 157n8 Bowley, James E. 6, 249n4
Avishur, Yitzhak 31n13, 32, 32n14, 215n11 Brady, Monica 289n34
Azodi, Azizeh 113n37 Braude, William G. 219n26
Breed, Brian W. 267n8
Bacher, Wilhelm 156n1 Brenner-Idan, Athalya 289n36
Baden, Joel 148n31 Breuer, Yochanan 155n1
Baek, Kyung S. 7n4, 203n63 Brin, Gershon 149n34, 160n20
Baillet, Maurice 29n4, 30n6, 30n9, 31n12 Bronstein, Yosef 103n14
Bakhos, Carol 123n58, 164n35, 210n1 Brooke, George J. 2, 3, 8, 8n7, 20n45, 25n66,
Bar-Asher, Moshe 155n1, 218n25 41n1, 50n32, 53n42, 64n2, 65n5, 65n7,
Bar-Asher Siegal, Michael 182n97 65n8, 66n9, 70n26, 71n29, 75n36, 76n40,
Barclay, John M. G. 70n24 78n3, 161n23, 204n67, 274n18, 283n11, 293,
Baron, Salo W. 217n20 293nn49–51, 294n57, 298, 298n79, 300n87,
Baumgarten, Albert I. 97, 97n5, 98, 174n72 300n89, 319n4, 330n1, 332n7, 333n11
392 Index Of Modern Authors
Brownlee, William H. 299, 299n84, 300n88 Corley, Jeremy 248n2

Broyles, Craig C. 300n89 Cothenet, Édouard 94n57
Brüll, Nehemias 210n2, 211n5, 217n20, 219, Cowley, Arthur E. 11, 11n20, 12, 12n22, 18n33
219n27 Crawford, see under White Crawford, Sidnie
Burnyeat, Myles 162n25 Crosby, Alfred W. 106, 106n22
Cross, Frank M. 191n5, 284n14, 301n94, 305,
Callaway, Phillip R. 330n1 305n5
Campbell, Jonathan G. 41n1, 74n35, 289, Czajkowski, Kimberley 343n1, 353n22,
289n32, 343n1, 360n40 360n39
Cantera, Alberto 120n53
Capes, David B. 76n41 Dahmen, Ulrich 236n31
Carman, Christian C. 105n20 Daube, David 103, 103n16, 133n75, 163,
Carmichael, Calum 164n36 163n29, 164, 164n36, 169, 169n53,
Carmignac, Jean 84n22, 296, 296n66, 178n84, 184n103
297n74 Dávid, Nora 296n65
Carr, David M. 206n78, 292n43 Davies, Philip R. 163n29, 360n40
Cassuto, Umberto 259n17 Davies, William D. 202, 202n61, 203n62
Catastini, Alessandro 92n46 Davila, James R. 145n23, 284n14
Cereti, Carlo G. 121n57 Davis, Kipp 8n8
Charette, François 105n20 Day, John 332n7, 333n10
Charles, Robert H. 291n40 Delcor, Matthias 84n22, 86n27, 224n4
Charlesworth, James H. 140n12, 150n36, De Rossi, Giovanni B. 215n12, 215nn14–16,
225n5, 257n3, 298n81, 299n83, 300n89, 216n20
320n8, 335n18, 335n20, 344n2 Detienne, Marcel 112n33
Chazon, Esther G. 29n4, 139n11, 175n75, De Troyer, Kristin 283n11, 301n94
228n11, 290n37, 309n13, 361n41 Di Lella, Alexander A. 206n80, 267n8,
Cheung, Simon C. 244n45 270n13
Cheyne, Thomas K. 217n20 Dimant, Devorah 2, 3, 40n1, 57n60, 74n35,
Childs, Brevard S. 213n10, 306n9 78nn1–2, 138n9, 152n44, 157n7, 203n64,
Chipman, Jonathan 29n4 224, 224n4, 233, 233n25, 248n1, 254n22,
Chomsky, Noam 8, 8n11 255nn23–24, 256n25, 285n18, 290n37,
Christensen, Arthur 113n37 309n13
Claussen, Carsten 203n64 DiTommasso, Lorenzo 275n21
Clements, Ronald E. 83n17 Doering, Lutz 178n84
Clements, Ruth A. 96n1, 201n52, 213n7, Dolgopolski, Sergey 163n26
309n13 Donner, Herbert 213n8
Cohen, Gerson D. 214n11, 217n22, 219n28 Drawnel, Henryk 233, 233n25, 234n27, 237,
Cohen, Naomi Goldstein 210n1 237nn33–34, 238n36, 246n50
Cohen, Shaye J. D. 107, 107n24, 108, Driver, Samuel R. 217n20
108nn26–28 Duhaime, Jean 7n4, 203n63
Collin, Matthieu 301n92 Duncan, Julie A. 295n61
Collins, John J. 175n73, 192n11, 193n13,
201n52, 207, 207nn83–84, 207nn86–87, Efron, Joshua 181n96
265n2, 267n8, 270n13, 273n14, 274n18, Ehrlich, Carl S. 215n11
275nn19-22, 276nn24–25, 277n27 Eichrodt, Walther 83n17, 91n41
Cook, Edward M. 6, 9n12, 14n28, 26n67, Eisenman, Robert H. 64n3
34n23, 150n36, 345n4, 346, 349n14 Elitsur, Yoel 218n25
Coope, Ursula 113n39 Elizur, Shulamit 248n2
Cordoni, Constanza 211n2 Elliger, Karl 301n92
Index Of Modern Authors 393
Elman, Yaakov 2, 3, 103n15, 107nn24–25, Frey, Jörg 46n16, 53n42, 70n23, 198n32,

108n28, 109, 109n29, 111n31, 114, 114n43, 203n64
115n43, 123, 123n58, 129n68, 132n72, Friedman, Elyakim 174nn69–70
132n74 Friedman, Shamma 183n98, 186n110
Elwolde, John 78n3, 288n28, 293n54, 297, Furley, David 162n25
297n75 Furstenberg, Yair 186n109, 187n112
Engel, Helmut 288n26
Epstein, Abraham 210n2, 217n20 Gabbay, Uri 103n15
Epstein, Jaacov N. 169n52, 174n69 Galor, Katharina 192n10
Erll, Astrid 66n11 Gammie, John G. 199n36
Eshel, Esther 29n4, 230n15, 233, 233n25, Garber, Zev 187n113
234n27, 237n33, 238n36, 287n24, García Martínez, Florentino 70n25, 80n9,
289n34, 337n24 150n36, 161n21, 190n1, 198n32, 198n34,
Eshel, Hanan 337n24 257n3, 331n4, 335nn19–20, 336n21,
Evans, Craig A. 33n18, 71n26, 293n54, 345n4, 346
300n87, 300n89 Gardet, Louis 106n22
Evans, James 105n20 Gathercole, Simon J. 70n24
Geller, Mark J. 104n19
Fabry, Heinz-Josef 236n31 Gerleman, Gillis 295n63
Falk, Daniel K. 78n3, 198n34, 204n67, Gesenius, Wilhelm 213n8
229n14, 230n15, 230n18, 233, 233n26, Gilat, Yitzhak D. 99, 99n8
237n32 Gillihan, Yonder 343n1, 345nn4–5
Falk, Zeev 182n97 Ginsburg, Christian D. 215n16
Faur, José 168n47 Ginzberg, Louis 217n20, 217n23
Feintuch, Yonatan 182n97, 183n100 Ginzburg, Dov 258n10
Feldman, Ariel 252n15 Glessmer, Uwe 21n49
Feldman, Louis H. 43n6, 167n44, 221n30, Glicksman, Andrew T. 253n16
260n24, 261n25 Goering, Greg Schmidt 190n2, 205n73
Feldmeier, Reinhard 215n11 Goff, Matthew J. 191n3, 191n5, 192, 192nn8–9,
Fensham, Frank C. 348n13 192n11, 197n26, 197n30, 199n38, 201n53,
Fernández Marcos, Natalio 281n2 206n77, 236n31
Fernheimer, Janice 186n108 Goldberg, Ilana 300n89
Finkelstein, Eliezer U. 215n15 Goldin, Judah 143n15
Finkelstein, Louis 166nn40–41 Goldingay, John 32n13, 35n25, 270n13
Finsterbuch, Karin 136n1 Goldstein, Binyamin 354n25
Fischel, Henry 165n36, 168n46 Goodblatt, David 102n13
Fishbane, Michael 82n15, 160n17 Gooding, David W. 260n21
Flatto, David 347n11 Goodman, Martin 47n19, 50n32, 75, 75n37,
Flint, Peter W. 7n4, 203n63, 249n4, 265n2, 75n38, 174n72
274n18, 275nn19–22, 276nn24–25, 298, Govett, Robert 215n13
298nn80–81, 336n21 Grabbe, Lester L. 161n21
Florentin, Moshe 321, 321n9 Graetz, Heinrich 169, 169n52
Fonrobert, Charlotte E. 188n115 Grappe, Christian 256n25
Forbes, Christopher 187n114 Greenberg, Gillian 300n89
Fraade, Steven 2, 3, 96n1, 136n1, 139n11, Greenberg, Moshe 83nn18–19, 84n21, 90n37,
140n13, 143n17, 144n18, 145n23, 148n31, 91n42, 92n48, 359n37
151n37, 152n42, 153n45, 175, 175n75, Greenfield, Jonas C. 224n4, 233, 233n25,
176n77, 176n79, 361n41 234n27, 237n33, 238n36
Francis, Michael 48n25 Gross, Andrew D. 257, 257n3
Grossman, Jonathan 267n8 Hogan, Karina M. 192n11

Grossman, Maxine L. 7n4 Høgenhaven, Jesper 289, 289n30
Gruber, Mayer 157n8, 158, 158n10 Holm-Nielsen, Svend 80n7, 81n10, 84n22,
Gruenwald, Ithamar 78n1 88n32, 90n36
Guggenheimer, Heinrich W. 217n22 Holmstedt, Robert 6, 6n2, 8, 8n8, 8n9, 8n10,
Guilbert, Pierre 84n22 13n25, 14n27, 15, 15n29, 18n40
Guillaume, Philippe 100n9 Horbury, William 216n18
Gunkel, Hermann 244 Horgan, Maurya P. 299n83
Günzburg, David 210n2 Houtman, Cornelis 305, 306n8
Gurevich, Aron J. 106, 106n22 Hughes, Julie A. 78n3, 79n5, 80n9, 81n11,
Guttman, Alexander 166n39, 169n52, 170n54 84n22, 85n24, 90n36, 93n52, 93n54
Humbert, Jean-Baptiste 192n10
HaCohen, Shmuel 267n8 Hurvitz, Avigdor 353n23
Halbertal, Moshe 143n15 Hutton, Jeremy 327n22
Halivni, David Weiss 144n18, 169n52
Halivni, Ephraim 115n43 Ibba, Giovanni 33n18
Halpern-Amaru, Betsy 4, 49n28, 50n32, Ilan, Tal 181, 181n97
309, 309n13, 310, 310n14, 310n16, 311, 312, Ingelaere, Jean-Claude 256n25
312n20, 314, 314nn23–24, 315, 315nn26–27, Instone-Brewer, David 185n105
316, 316nn28–29
Handelman, Susan 163n27, 174, 174n71 Jacobs, Louis 162, 163n26
Hanhart, Robert 235n30 Jacobson, Howard 41n2, 308n12
Hanneken, Todd R. 47n19, 54n48 Jacobus, Helen R. 105n20, 114n40
Harlow, Daniel C. 192n11 Jaffee, Martin S. 153n45, 188n115
Harrington, Daniel 136n2, 191, 191n3, 191n5, Janowitz, Naomi 188n115
192n6, 292n45, 308n11 Japhet, Sara 295n62, 302n95
Harris, Jay 169n52 Jassen, Alex 252n14
Hartman, Louis F. 267n8, 270n13 Jastram, Nathan 211n2, 211n5, 217n23, 219,
Hasan-Rokem, Galit 210n1 219n27
Hayes, Christine 157n7, 161nn21–22, 175n74, Jastrow, Marcus 262n33
175n76, 177, 177nn81–83, 188n115, Jones, H. Stuart 260n19
188n117 Jong, Ab de 114, 114n41
Heckel, Ulrich 215n11 Jonge, Henk Jan de 73n33
Heger, Paul 259nn15–17, 260nn21–22, Jonker, Louis C. 267n5
261n26, 262n29 Joüon, Paul 12, 12n23, 35n24, 37n34, 90n38
Hellholm, David 195n22
Helmer, Christine 73n32 Kaestli, Jean-Daniel 66n9
Hempel, Charlotte 198n32, 199n36, 201n56, Kahana, Menahem 173n68
203n65 Kahle, Paul 283, 283n12
Hendel, Ronald S. 44n11, 292n44, 320n5 Kahneman, Daniel 129n66
Hengel, Martin 175n73 Kaiser, Otto 213n9
Henze, Matthias 156n3 Kalmin, Richard 187n112
Herbert, Edward D. 74n34, 289n30, 319n4, Kaminka, Armand 168n46, 169n53
338n27 Kaminsky, Joel S. 192n11
Herr, Moses D. 215n11 Kampen, John 2, 3, 160n17, 161n21, 175n76,
Hidary, Richard 2, 3, 156n2, 167n45, 168n49, 190nn1–2, 191n3, 192n7, 196n25, 197n30,
170n55, 176n78, 176n80, 186n108, 188n117 198n32, 199n37, 200n41, 202nn59–60,
Hilhorst, Antonius 41n1, 309n13, 336n21 204n67
Himmelfarb, Martha 49n28, 216n19 Kapstein, Israel J. 219n26
Kasher, Rimon 83n17, 83n19 201n56, 203n65, 211n2, 211n4, 213n7,

Katzin, David 288n28 220n29, 226n7, 242n41, 265n1, 280n1,
Katz, Menachem 168n47 281n1, 283n11, 288n28, 289n36, 296,
Kautzsch, Emil 11, 11n20, 12, 12n22, 18n33 296nn64–65, 296n67, 297, 297n76,
Keaney, John J. 112n32 299n82, 335n19, 337n24
Kennedy, George A. 164n30 Langer, Gerhard 211nn2–3
Kessler, Nadine 203n64 Lapin, Hayim 188n115
Kil, Yehudah 267n8 Lauterbach, Jacob 169n52
King, Phillip J. 258n7 Lemke, Werner E. 301n94
Kister, Menahem 41n2, 78n2, 85nn23–24, Lenglet, Adrien 267n8
95n60, 150n36, 152n44, 153n45, Leuchter, Mark 327n22
161nn21–22, 213n7, 249n5, 253, 253n17, Levine, Lee 101, 102n12, 133n75
254, 254n19, 254n22 Levinson, Bernard M. 71n28, 327, 328n27
Kittel, Bonnie P. 78n3 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 3, 66, 66n11, 66n13,
Klawans, Jonathan 76, 76n41 67n16, 68, 72, 76
Klein, Ralph W. 295n63, 301n94 Lieberman, Saul 163, 165n37, 210n2
Klostergaard Petersen, Anders 40n1, 41n1 Lieberman, Stephen 165n36
Knibb, Michael A. 289n33 Lieu, Judith M. 199n36
Knoppers, Gary K. 252n12, 338n29, 341n32 Licht, Jacob 78n3, 80n7, 81n10, 84n22,
Kooij, Arie van der 73n33 85n24, 86n28, 88n32, 93n54, 95n58
Kooten, Geurt Hendrik van 47n19, 50n32, Lichtenberger, Hermann 198n32, 201n56,
236n31 203n65, 298n81
Kottek, Samuel 104n19 Liddell, Henry G. 260nn19–20
Kottsieper, Ingo 40n1 Lightstone, Jack N. 184n104
Kotwal, Firoze M. P. 117n49, 125, 125nn60–61 Lilly, Ingrid 338n28
Kotzé, Gideon 267n5 Lim, Timothy H. 65n3, 75n36, 192n11,
Koyfman, Shlomo A. 98, 98n6, 118, 156, 292n47, 299, 299n85, 300n90, 301n91
156nn3–4, 157, 157n9, 158n11, 188n117 Lincoln, Bruce 133, 133n77
Kraft, Robert A. 136n2 Lindars, Barnabas 294n57
Kratz, Reinhard G. 57n60, 203n65, 248n1, Lindberg, David C. 104, 104n17, 105, 106n21,
285n18 118
Kraus, Wolfgang 285n18 Linsider, Joel 143n15
Kreuzer, Siegfried 267n5, 285n18, 302n96 Livneh, Atar 45n14, 311n19
Kreyenbroek, Philip G. 125, 125nn60–61, Loewinger, Samuel 210n2, 211n5, 217n23, 219,
129n66 219n27
Kugel, James L. 42n5, 43n6, 45n13, 45n14,
49n29, 50n33, 51nn36–38, 52nn40–41, Macagno, Fabrizio 162n25
53, 54n47, 55, 55n51, 56nn57–58, 57n59, Macaskill, Grant 197n29
58n62, 58n64, 59n65, 71n27, 167n44, Machiela, Daniel 2, 4, 207n85, 224n4, 225n5,
243n43, 331n3, 342n34 229n13, 235n29, 239n37
Kugler, Robert 175n73, 233n25 Macuch, Maria 117n48, 134n78
Kunst, Arnold 163n27 Maeir, Aren 288n28
Kutscher, Edward Y. 210n2, 217n22, 219n28 Magness, Jodi 192, 192n10
Maier, Christl 267n5
Labendz, Jenny 188n115 Maier, Johann 215n11, 216n19, 330n2, 333n11,
Lamberton, Robert 112n32 334n17
Landmesser, Christof 73n32 Mandel, Paul 175n75
Lange, Armin 2, 3, 41n1, 46n16, 53n42, 73, Mandelboim, Dov 219n26
73n32, 74n35, 136n1, 190n2, 198n32, Mansoor, Menahem 297n74
Martín-Contreras, Elvira 211n2 Newman, Judith H. 70n23

Marttila, Marko 41n1 Newsom, Carol A. 79nn4–5, 80nn8–9,
Marx, Alexander 217n20 81nn10–11, 82n14, 84n22, 86n26, 199n36,
Mason, Eric F. 298n80 255n24, 267n8, 270n13
McAdon, Brad 162n24 Nickelsburg, George W. E. 136n2, 193nn12–
McCarter, P. Kyle 301n94 13, 194nn15–16, 195nn21–22, 230nn15–16,
McCarthy, Carmel 293n54, 321n9, 327, 232nn21–23, 241n40
327n24, 328n30 Niehoff, Maren R. 103n16, 163n29
McCoy, Marina 161n24 Nitzan, Bilhah 29n4, 31n13, 32, 32n16, 33n17,
McKechnie, Paul 100n9 33n18, 38, 160n20
McKenzie Roderick 260n19 Noam, Vered 180, 180n94
Meiser, Martin 267n5 Novakovic, Lidija 300n89
Melamed, Ezra Zion 169n52 Novick, Tzvi 2, 4, 187n112, 255n23
Merklein, Helmut 283n11 Nünning, Ansgar 66n11
Metso, Sarianna 289, 289n31
Mielziner, Moses 172n62 O’Connor, Michael P. 9n13, 10, 10n18, 12n21
Milgram, Jonathan 182n97 Oppenheimer, A’hron 210n1
Milgrom, Jacob 158, 158n12, 159, 159nn14–15, Oppenheimer, Benjamin. 31n13
161n23, 188n117, 353n23, 354n24, 355n27 Owen, Elizabeth 286n20
Milik, Jozef T. 224, 224n4
Miller, Christian 255n23 Pajunen, Mika S. 29n4, 71n30, 289n34
Mink, Hans-Aage 333n10 Pakkala, Juha 41n1, 41n2, 45n14, 53n42
Miralles-Maciá, Lorena 211n2 Palmer, Georgiana 164n33
Mittleman, Alan 187n112 Pardes, Ilana 55n54
Mittmann-Richert, Ulrike 190n2 Parker, Simon B. 115n44
Moazami, Mahnaz 2, 3, 112, 112n35, 116n46, Parry, Donald W. 34n23, 138n9, 254n18
120nn54–55, 128n65, 132n73 Paul, Shalom 35n26
Molin, Georg 300n87 Pawlikowski, John 187n113
Montgomery, James A. 270n13 Payne, David 32n13, 35n25
Morgan, Michael A. 29n3, 32n15 Paz, Yakir 163n29
Mroczek, Eva 252n11, 332n8, 336nn21–22 Penner, Jeremy 29n4, 239n37, 297n76,
Mulder, Martin J. 216n18 335n18
Munnich, Olivier 268n9 Penner, Ken M. 239n37
Muraoka, Takamitsu 12n23, 35n24, 37n34, Perdue, Leo 199n36
90n38 Perrin, Andrew B. 193n14, 235n29, 246n52
Murphy, Catherine M. 343n1, 350n17, Peters, Dorothy M. 230n15, 232n21, 233,
356n30, 361n42 233n26
Pillinger, Renate 41n1
Naeh, Shlomo 188n116 Pirart, Éric 114n41
Najman, Hindy 136n1, 148n31 Pleše, Zlatko 216n17, 220n29
Naudé, Jackie 7, 7n5 Ploeg, Johannes P. M. van der 301n92
Naveh, Joseph 29n3, 32n15 Popkes, Enno E. 70n23
Nehemas, Alexander 162n25 Popović, Mladen 224n4, 236n31, 286n21, 341,
Netzer, Amnon 116n47 341n31
Neubauer, Adolph 217n20 Porter, Stanley E. 33n18, 70n26, 293n54
Neusner, Jacob 97, 97n4, 157n8, 168n46, Pradeilhes, Emmanuel 343n1
184n104, 212n6, 221n31, 305n7 Prior, Arthur 162n25
Newman, Hillel I. 213n7 Puech, Émile 309n13
Qimron, Elisha 7n3, 7n6, 24n64, 26, 26n68, Sanday, William 217n20

29n6, 32n14, 76n40, 152n41, 153n44, 160, Sanders, Ed P. 75, 76n39
160nn17–18, 250n6, 257n2, 259, 259n13, Sanderson, Judith 304, 304nn1–4, 305
320, 320n8, 321n10, 325, 325n16, 337n24 Sarna, Nahum 348n13, 350n18
Sarton, George 167n42
Rabin, Batya 263n37 Sassoon, Isaac 157n6, 167n42
Rabin, Chaim 89n33, 90n39, 95n59, 263n37 Satlow, Michael L. 99, 100, 100n9
Rand, Michael C. 257n3 Scarlata, Mark William 44n11
Rapoport-Albert, Ada 300n89 Schäfer, Peter 216n19
Rappaport, Uriel 74n35, 78n2, 152n44, 157n7, Schäfer, Rolf 282n4
255n23 Schalit, Avraham 261n25
Ravitsky, Aviram 165n37 Schechter, Solomon 143n15
Raviv, Rivka 278n28 Schiffman, Lawrence H. 2, 4, 43n6, 76n40,
Reeves, John C. 41n2 98n6, 145n22, 158n12, 167n44, 191n4,
Regev, Eyal 179n92, 180n94, 183n101, 184, 192n11, 208n88, 224n4, 256n26, 257n3,
184n104, 186n110 294n57, 319nn2–3, 320n7, 325n15,
Reggio, Isaac S. 165n37 326n19, 331n4, 332, 332nn6–7, 332n9,
Reiner, Erica 116n45 333, 333nn11–15, 334n17, 335n19,
Reinhardt, Tobias 164n31 337nn23–24, 343n1, 344n3, 345n4,
Revel, Bernard 167n44 351n20, 352n21, 353n22, 356n31, 358,
Rey, Jean-Sébastien 197n30 358n36, 359
Reynolds, Bennie H. 275n21 Schipper, Bernd U. 203n65, 205n71, 317n31,
Rezetko, Robert 75n36 351, 351n20
Riska, Magnus 294n58 Schmidt, Brent 175n73
Rochberg, Francesca 99n7, 104, 104n19 Schmitz, Barbara 288n26
Rofé, Alexander 328n31 Schoneveld, Jacobus 83n16
Rogerson, John W. 3, 66, 66n10, 66n12, Schremer, Adiel 102, 102n13, 122
66n14, 67, 67nn16–19, 68, 68n20, 70n23, Schuller, Eileen M. 79n4, 198n34, 289n34
72 Schultz, Brian 250n8
Roitman, Adolfo 192n11 Schumann, Andrew 165n37
Rozenak, Avinoam 186n109 Schwartz, Adolf 162, 162n25
Rubenstein, Jeffrey 166n40, 166n42, 173n63, Schwartz, Daniel R. 152n44, 157n7, 175,
173n65, 175n76, 176n76, 178, 178n87, 175n76, 178, 178nn84–86, 178n88,
185nn106–107, 186nn108-109 179nn89–90, 184n102, 185, 185nn105–
Ruiten, Jacques T. A. G. M. van 41n1, 42n3, 106, 185n108, 186nn109–10, 188nn116–17,
42n4, 44n9, 44n12, 45n14, 45n15, 46n17, 255n23, 344, 344n2, 345n4
47n19, 47n20, 47n22, 48nn24–26, Schwartz, Seth 205, 205nn75–76, 206,
50n31-33, 51n35, 53nn42–43, 53n46, 206n79
54n50, 55nn54–55, 56n57, 57nn60–61, Schwarz, Ottilie J. R. 289, 289n32
58n64, 59n65, 59n67, 60nn69–70, Schwemer, Daniel 116n45
236n31, 309n13, 310n17, 313n21, 315n25, Schwiderski, Dirk 247n53
316n30, 318n32, 318n34 Scott, Ian W. 203, 203n63
Russell, James R. 116, 116n47, 125nn61–62 Scott, Robert 260nn19–20
Screnock, John 8, 8n8, 13n25, 18n40
Sagi, Avi 188n116 Secunda, Samuel 103n15
Saltzman, Michele R. 120n53 Shaked, Shaul 29n3, 32n15, 78n1, 116n47
Samely, Alexander 342, 342n33 Sharp, Carolyn 161nn21–22
Sampley, J. Paul 187n114 Shayegan, Rahim 123n58
Shemesh, Aharon 96, 96n1, 97, 97n3, 98, 99, Stuckenbruck, Loren 201n56, 202n57,
99n8, 102, 102n13, 109, 109n30, 110, 115, 230n16, 232nn20–22, 232n24
118, 119n52, 122, 129, 129n67, 134n79, Sussmann, Yacakov 76n40, 168n49
157n6, 159, 160, 160nn19–20, 161n21, Swanson, Dwight D. 74n35, 330n1, 332n5
176n80, 179n92, 180n93, 345n4 Sweeney, Marvin A. 120n53
Sherman, Philip M. 60n69 Sysling, Harry 216n18
Secunda, Shai 114n42 Szabó, Xavér 191n2
Segal, Michael 2, 4, 40n1, 41n2, 43n6, 44n9,
45n14, 51n34, 57n60, 58n62, 59n65, Tal, Avraham 321, 321n9
213n7, 265n1, 266nn3–5, 267n6, 267n8, Talmon, Shemaryahu 21, 21n49, 74n34,
269n11, 274n16 301n94
Segal, Moses H. 210n2, 217n23 Talshir, Zipora 301n94
Segert, Stanislav 224, 224n4, 301n92 Tavadia, Jehangir C. 125n59, 131n69
Seeley, David R. 70n22 Tebes, Juan M. 258n7
Siegel, Jonathan P. 210n2, 217nn22–23 Teeter, D. Andrew 203n65, 205n71, 317n31,
Sigismund, Marcus 267n5 338n26
Sinclair, Lawrence A. 301n92 Thackeray, Henry St. J. 260n24, 261n25, 308
Sion, Avi 163n27 Thomas, Samuel I. 201, 201n51, 239n38
Skehan, Patrick W. 206n80, 304, 304nn1–4, Thompson, Dorothy J. 100n9
305 Tigay, Jeffrey H. 267n7, 327n23, 358n34
Skjærvø, P. Oktor 107n25, 120n53, 121, 121n57, Tigchelaar, Eibert J. C. 70n25, 78n3, 80n9,
126 139n10, 148n31, 191n3, 198n34, 204n67,
Sklar, Jay 352n21 224, 224n4, 257n3, 298, 298n78, 309n13,
Smith, Mark S. 115n44 336nn21–22, 345n4, 346
Sokoloff, Michael 261nn27–28 Tiller, Patrick A. 195n22, 232n21
Soloveitchik, Haym 101, 101n11, 102n13, 110 Toorn, Karel van der 73n33
Sperber, Daniel 100, 100n10 Tov, Emanuel 2, 4, 7, 34n23, 74n34, 138n9,
Stackert, Jeffrey 151n38, 327n22 190n2, 254n18, 282nn7–9, 283n10,
Stadel, Christian 226n6, 236n31 284n15, 285n18, 286n21, 287n22,
Stager, Lawrence E. 258n7 287nn24–25, 289n30, 289n36,
Steen, Eric J. van der 258n8 290nn37–38, 293nn54–55, 294n56,
Stegemann, Hartmut 79n4 294n59, 295n61, 301n93, 302n96, 305,
Steinfeld, Zvi A. 115n43 305n6, 319nn3–4, 337n24, 338n27
Stemberger, Gunter 169n52, 219n28 Towner, W. Sibley 163n27
Sterling, Gregory E. 201n52 Townsend, John 112
Stern, David 107n24 Trachtenberg, Joshua 28
Stern, Sacha 167n42, 175n76 Tremblay, Xavier 114n41
Steudel, Annette 86n29 Tzoref, Shani 145n25, 192n11, 291n38
Stinespring, William F. 300n87
Stökl Ben Ezra, Daniel 207n85, 223n2, 224n4 Udoh, Fabian E. 75n38
Stolper, Pinchas 108n28 Ulrich, Eugene C. 7n4, 69, 69n21, 73n33,
Stone, Michael E. 139n11, 175n75, 207n85, 259n14, 265n1, 284n14, 301n94, 304,
233, 233n25, 234n27, 237n33, 238n36, 304nn1–4, 305, 305n5, 321n9, 338n27
242n42, 290n37, 361n41 Uusimäki, Elisa 288n28
Strack, Hermann L. 169n52
Stroumsa, Guy G. 78n1, 114, 114n42, 115, 132, Vajifdar, Farrox 121n57
132n71 VanderKam, James C. 2, 4, 44n10, 44n11,
Strugnell, John 7n3, 76n40, 160, 160nn17–18, 46n16, 47n19, 48n23, 48n27, 53n46,
191, 191n3, 191n5, 192n6, 337n23 58n62, 64n2, 192, 192n11, 194nn15–16,
225n5, 254n21, 286n21, 289n34, Wiesenberg, Ernest 156n1

291nn41–42, 292n46, 293, 293n52, Wildberger, Hans 213n10, 217n21
311n18, 315n25, 318n33, 336n21 Wilk, Florian 71n29, 178n84
Van Kirk, Andrew de la Ronde 335n18 Wills, Lawrence M. 241n40, 269n10
Van Leeuwen, Raymond C. 245n48 Winnett, Fred V. 258n8
Van Seters, John 211n2 Wintermute, Orval S. 140n12
Vaux, Roland de 358n34 Wise, Michael O. 9n12, 14n28, 26n67,
Vermes, Geza 40n1, 136, 136n1, 138, 138n8, 34n23, 65n3, 145n21, 146n28,
157n6, 288n28, 345n4 147n29, 150n36, 192n11, 294n57,
Vernant, Jean-Pierre 112n33 345n4, 346, 349n14
Visotzky, Burton 164n35 Wiseman, Allen C. 174n68
Wissing, Paula 112n33
Wacholder, Ben-Zion 64n3, 224, 224n4, Wold, Benjamin G. 197n30, 200n48
230n18 Worrell, John 37n33
Wald, Stephen G. 210n1 Woude, Adam S. van der 257n3
Waltke, Bruce K. 9n13, 10, 10n18, 12n21 Wright, Benjamin G. 205nn71–72, 205n74,
Walton, Douglas 162n25 206nn80–81, 241n40
Wassen, Cecilia 207n85, 225n4, 239n37
Watson, Alan 112n33 Xeravits, Géza G. 191n2, 236n31
Waubke, Hans-Günther 178n84
Webster, Brian 191n5 Yadin, Azzan 169n51, 171n60, 172n62, 174n69,
Weigold, Matthias 74n35, 281n1 177n80
Weiss, Harold 167n44 Yadin, Yigael 147n30, 150n36, 151nn37–38,
Weissenberg, Hanne von 41n1, 251n10 152, 152n43, 257, 257n1, 258n11, 259n12,
Wenthe, Dean O. 289, 289n29, 296, 296n68 262n32, 263nn37–38, 287n22, 319, 319n1,
Werman, Cana 44n9, 46n17, 47n21, 48n23, 325n15, 325n17, 326n18, 330n1, 332n5
48n27, 49n28, 49n30, 51n37, 53nn42– Yamauchi, Edwin M. 258n7
43, 53n43, 54n48, 56n57, 57n61, 59n65, Young, Ian 291n38
153n45, 159, 160n20, 161n21, 176n80,
254n21, 345n4 Zahn, Molly M. 2, 4, 41n1, 78n3, 203, 203n66,
Wernberg-Møller, Preben 296, 296n69, 297, 204n67, 327, 328n27, 333n10, 335n20,
297nn70–72, 297n74 337nn23–25, 338n29, 340n30
Werrett, Ian 159n16 Zakovitch, Yair 267n7
Wevers, John W. 321n9, 324n14, 326, Zangenberg, Jürgen 192n10
326nn20–21, 327n24, 328n29 Zeitlin, Solomon 168n48, 169n52
White, Richard T. 163n29 Zevin, Shlomo Yosef 102n14
White Crawford, Sidnie 2, 4, 40n1, 74n34, Ziegler, Joseph 268n9
136n1, 137, 137n5, 138, 138n7, 144n20, Ziemer, Benjamin 291n43, 293n53
145n24, 146n27, 207n85, 225n4, 283n11, Zimmerli, Walther 83n17, 83n19
286n21, 335n18, 338n27 Zohar, Zvi 188n116
Whiting, R. M. 104n19 Zsengellér, József 40n1, 50n32, 136n1, 191n2
Wiesehöfer, Josef 113n37 Zuckier, Shlomo 2, 4

Ha-'Îsh Moshe Studies in Scriptural Interpretation in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature in Honor of Moshe J.... (Binyamin Y. Goldstein (Ed.) Etc.) (Z-Library)

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Hā-ʾîsh Mōshe

Studies on the Texts of the

Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/stdj

Names: Goldstein, Binyamin Y., editor. | Segal, Michael, 1972 editor. |

Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

1 Writing a Descriptive Grammar of 4Q252: The Noun Phrase 6

2 A Newly Discovered Interpretation of Isaiah 40:12–13 in the Songs of the

3 Missing and Misplaced? Omission and Transposition in the Book of

4 Hot at Qumran, Cold in Jerusalem: A Reconsideration of Some Late

5 The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Hodayot 78

6 The Quantification of Religious Obligation in Second Temple Judaism—

7 The Temple Scroll as Rewritten Bible: When Genres Bend 136

8 Hellenism and Hermeneutics: Did the Qumranites and Sadducees Use

9 The Puzzle of Torah and the Qumran Wisdom Texts 190

10 An Interpretative Reading in the Isaiah Scroll of Rabbi Meir 210

11 “Wisdom Motifs” in the Compositional Strategy of the Genesis

12 On the Paucity of Biblical Exemplars in Sectarian Texts 248

13 The Mikhbar in the Temple Scroll 257

14 Harmonization and Rewriting of Daniel 6 from the Bible to

15 The Textual Base of the Biblical Quotations in Second Temple

16 From Genesis to Exodus in the Book of Jubilees 303

19 The Neglected Oaths Passage (CD IX:8–12): The Elusive, Allusive

Index of Ancient Sources 363

Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran: I. Genesis and Its Interpretation

Co-editor (with Eileen Schuller, McMaster University) 4Q371–373 “Narrative

Associate Editor (with Esther G. Chazon), “Qumran Prayer,” in Prayer from

Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters

(* reprinted in Reading and Re-reading Scripture, vol. 1; ** reprinted in Reading

*“Three Notes on 4Q464” [Hebrew, “4Q464 ‫]”שלש הערות על תעודת קומראן‬,

“Interpretation of Scripture,” 1.376–383.

M. Klein, Anthropomorphisms and Anthropopathisms in the Targumim of the

Martin G. Abegg, Jr., PhD

Joseph L. Angel, PhD

George J. Brooke, Phd, DD

Devorah Dimant, PhD

Yaakov Elman, PhD

Steven D. Fraade, PhD

Richard Hidary, PhD

Armin Lange, DrTheol

Daniel Machiela, PhD

Tzvi Novick, PhD

Lawrence H. Schiffman, PhD

Michael Segal, PhD

Emanuel Tov, PhD

James C. VanderKam, PhD

Sidnie White Crawford, PhD

Molly M. Zahn, PhD

he focused his own research on Targum of Psalms, a topic on which he subse-

reading of instances in which Jubilees omits or transposes biblical material. In

In “ ‘Wisdom Motifs’ in the Compositional Strategy of the Genesis Apocryphon

In “The Neglected Oaths Passage (CD IX:8–12): The Elusive, Allusive

May 30, 2017 ‫ערב שבועות ה׳תשע״ז‬

Writing a Descriptive Grammar of 4Q252: The Noun

Martin G. Abegg, Jr.

best termed “Toward the Writing of a Descriptive Grammar of 4QCommentary

In order to characterize the language of any given text from Qumran, we

subconscious set of procedures. Our goal is to determine what the speakers

2 The Noun Phrase

2.1.1.2 Gentilic Nouns

2.2.1.1 Attributive Adjectives

2.2.1.2 Predicative Adjectives

24 See the partial reconstructions at 4Q324d 7 ii 2 and 4Q394 1–2 ii 8.

26 See paragraph 2.1.1.1 and Bernstein, “4Q252,” 78.

29 Holmstedt, The Relative Clause, 236.

41 See also 4Q252 1:4, 10; 2:1.

44 See also 4Q252 1:7, 8–9, 20; 2:8.

47 See also 4Q252 1:8, 17, 19–20; 2:2, 3.

66 Brooke, “252. 4QCommentary on Genesis A,” 194.

17 Nitzan, Qumran Prayer, 259.

47 Kugel, “Jubilees,” 1:291.

15 Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 12.

20 Rogerson, A Theology of the Old Testament, 33.

1 Cf. my discussion in Devorah Dimant, “The Apocalyptic Interpretation of Ezekiel at

14 Cf. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 318.

16 Cf. J. Schoneveld, “Ezekiel XIV 1–8,” OuS 15 (1969): 193–204 (193–96).