TORAH
\nThe Anticipatory Use of Information as a Literary Feature of the Genesis Narratives
\nThe subject of this paper relates to one particular aspect of the process by which the collection of individual narratives in the Book of Genesis achieved their final form as a unified whole. Specifically, I refer to a little-noted phenomenon that recurs with a fair degree of frequency, namely, the sudden introduction into a text of certain information which is extraneous to the immediate context but which is later seen to be crucial to the understanding of a subsequent episode or theme.
\nAs far as I know, the first to draw attention to this was Rashi\u2019s grandson, the renowned exegete Rabbi Samuel b. Meir, known by the acronym RaShBaM (Rashbam, c. 1080\u2013c. 1175 c.e.). In his comment to Gen. 1:1 he writes, \u201cIt is a characteristic of the Scriptures anticipatively to present an irrelevant item for the sake of the subsequent context.\u201d He then goes on to illustrate his point by citing, among others, the case of Gen. 9:18: \u201cThe sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth\u2014Ham being the father of Canaan.\u201d Now Noah\u2019s sons have previously been thrice listed without the additional remark, which is quite beside the point in a context dealing solely with the three sons who emerged from the ark after the Flood, and through whom the earth was repopulated. The information about Canaan\u2019s relationship to Ham is repeated in v 22, again without immediate relevancy.
\nIt is obvious that mention of Canaan in these two passages is connected with the succeeding narrative about Noah\u2019s drunkenness and the accompanying shameful act perpetrated by Ham, as a consequence of which Noah lays a curse upon Canaan. Modern commentators mostly take it for granted that the note about Ham being the father of Canaan is a gloss introduced into the text by a compiler or editor for the purpose of smoothing the transition from vv 18f. to 20ff. At first glance, Rashbam appears to give the same explanation, in that he takes the note to be a necessary clarification of the identity of Canaan, who is about to be cursed. Without it, the reader would not know who this Canaan is or what he had to do with Ham, who was the guilty party. Yet there is a fundamental difference between the perception of the Rashbam and the views of modern commentators. Whereas the latter relate to the note solely in terms of its immediately limited function within the specific pericope, Rashbam treats it from a broader perspective. To him it is one instance among several of an original, characteristic feature of the Narrator\u2019s literary technique, not a harmonizing gloss linking P and J materials.
\nIt seems to me that there are some arguments that can be brought in favor of Rashbam\u2019s general observation. Admittedly, the story of the curse upon Canaan is replete with difficulties. We are left uncertain as to the precise nature of Ham\u2019s offense, whether v 22 is to be taken literally as a euphemism for some act of gross immorality. We do not know why Ham is described here as \u201cthe youngest son\u201d (v 24) when, in fact, all the lists uniformly make him Noah\u2019s second son. And, most difficult of all, we are not told why Noah cursed Canaan, Ham\u2019s son, rather than Ham himself. One thing is certain: whatever happened to Noah, the biblical account of the experience has been thoroughly emasculated. Even as Shem and Japheth virtuously covered the nakedness of their father, so the narrator piously concealed from posterity the sordid details of the shameful incident, leaving us only a very truncated version and thus causing the insuperable difficulties of the present narrative. Incidentally, the same reticence and the same concision characterize the story of Reuben\u2019s sexual transgression.
\nBe all this as it may, the fact of Canaan\u2019s Hamite paternity clearly had great significance for the narrator or redactor; otherwise it would not have been reiterated within the short space of five verses. Moreover, one may rightly wonder why the entire episode is told in the first place. What role does it play within the wider story of Noah or, indeed, within the complex of pre-Abrahamic narratives? The answer is that it introduces one of the major themes of the Pentateuch, one which is repeated in one form or another several times in Genesis.
\nThe Table of Nations, which appears in the following chapter, presents both Egypt and Canaan as sons of Ham (10:6). In other texts, Egypt is equated with Ham. Such is the case in Ps 78:51, which describes the last of the plagues:
\nHe struck every firstborn of Egypt,
\nthe first fruits of their vigor in the land of Ham.
\nIn Pss. 105:23, 27; 106:22 the identity is even more specific, Egypt being designated \u201cthe land of Ham.\u201d The close association between Ham\/Egypt and Canaan undoubtedly has an historical basis. It harks back to that period when Canaan was a province of Egypt, i.e., in the course of the Late Kingdom, under the 18th and 19th dynasties (c. 1550\u20131200 b.c.e.). The expression of political relationships in terms of genealogies constructed along familial lines is, of course, a well-recognized and recurring feature of Genesis. \u201cCanaan\u201d in 9:18, 22 is representative of the population group, at this time under Egyptian suzerainty. The curse of Canaan, invoked in response to an act of moral depravity, is the first intimation of the theme of the corruption of the Canaanites, which is given as the justification for their being dispossessed of their land and for the transfer of that land to the descendants of Abraham. This reason is explicitly stated in Lev. 20:23f. following a list of sexual abominations:
\nYou shall not follow the practices of the nation that I am driving out before you. For it is because they did all these things that I abhorred them and said to you: You shall possess their land.\u2026
\nA similar reason is given in 18:24f. This verdict concludes another long list of prohibitions dealing with sexual relations which, significantly, begins as follows (v 3): \u201cYou shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you.\u201d Egypt and Canaan are coupled together as being equally guilty of moral perversion. This self-same theme is behind several episodes in the Book of Genesis: Pharaoh\u2019s treatment of Sarah (12:10\u201320), Abimelech\u2019s dealings with her (ch. 20), the sexual immorality of the Sodomites (19:5\u20138), Dina\u2019s experience with the Canaanite prince of Shechem (ch. 34), the sexual offenses of Er and Onan, sons of Judah\u2019s Canaanite wife (ch. 35), and, finally, Potiphar\u2019s wife\u2019s attempted seduction of Joseph in Egypt (ch. 39).
\nIn light of all the above, it is pertinent to raise the question as to whether the contextually irrelevant remark in 9:18, 22 as to Ham\u2019s paternity of Canaan is simply a gloss, or whether it is a literary device deliberately introduced into the text in order to insinuate, first, the identity of the Canaan who is about to be cursed\u2014a true son of Ham\u2014Egypt!, and, second, the Canaanites in general, a people whose depravity is a major theme of Genesis because it provides the moral justification for their displacement by the descendants of the patriarchs. The answer to this question will depend upon the cumulative effect of the frequency with which this anticipatory device is found in the Genesis narratives. Let us therefore consider some more examples.
\nThe genealogy of Shem is listed in Gen. 11:10\u201332, where it serves to close the gap between Noah and Abraham. The individual generations are given, all in identical formulaic language, until one arrives at v 26, when the pattern is suddenly varied. Hitherto, only the chief descendant has been noted, while other children are anonymously dismissed with the prosaic observation that the aforementioned \u201cbegot sons and daughters.\u201d In Terah\u2019s case, all three sons are named. This departure from the norm clearly indicates that a turning point in history has been reached, and this impression is reinforced by the introduction of the \u2019elleh t\u00f4led\u014dt formula in v 27 and the repetition of the information of v 26, except that this time we are supplied with the additional intelligence that \u201cHaran begot Lot\u201d and that he died young, before the exodus from Ur of the Chaldeans (v 28).
\nIt cannot be accidental that every one of these facts is essential to the understanding of subsequent developments in the biographies of Abraham and his offspring. Nahor need be mentioned because his name recurs repeatedly in connection with Isaac\u2019s marriage and Jacob\u2019s flight from Esau. Abraham\u2019s servant travels to \u201cthe city of Nahor\u201d (24:10), where he meets Rebekah, who is of the family of \u201cAbraham\u2019s brother Nahor\u201d (v 15), and the girl identifies herself as \u201cthe daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah whom she bore to Nahor\u201d (v 24), a fact repeated by the servant later on (v 47). Jacob flees Esau\u2019s wrath to find shelter with \u201cLaban the son of Nahor\u201d (29:5), and \u201cthe god of Nahor\u201d appears in the treaty concluded between him and his uncle (31:53). Lot has to be introduced because he is soon to be reported as traveling with Abraham (11:31; 12:5), and his being orphaned explains in advance why this happened. In other words, all the data contained in 11:27\u201328 is anticipatory and integral to the drama yet to unfold.
\nBut this is not all. There are other anomalous aspects of the genealogy of Terah. The names of the wives of Abram and Nahor are recorded (11:29), but not that of Haran; Sarai is indisputably the more important of the two women, yet, most strangely, her parentage is omitted while Milcah\u2019s is given; Sarai is described as being \u201cbarren\u201d (v 30), but not so Milcah, even though she too has no children. Here again, every item can be seen to be crucial to the subsequent narratives. Haran\u2019s wife is ignored because she plays no role in the patriarchal lives, while Milcah will be encountered again by virtue of her being Rebekah\u2019s grandmother. The preclusion of any information about the matriarch\u2019s forebears is so extraordinary that it must be deliberate and purposeful. It seems to me that this phenomenon can be satisfactorily explained only on the presumption of a foreknowledge of the encounter with Abimelech, as told in ch. 20. On that occasion, Abraham made the self-justifying claim that Sarah was truly his sister, i.e., his father\u2019s daughter, though not his mother\u2019s (20:12). In the earlier confrontation with Pharaoh, Abraham did not respond to the king\u2019s query, \u201cWhy did you say, \u2018She is my sister\u2019?\u201d because he is summarily expelled from the realm. In this instance, Abimelech insists on an answer (20:9), and the reader wonders how Abraham will extricate himself from his embarrassing predicament. Had Sarah\u2019s parentage been disclosed in the genealogy of ch. 11, the story of ch. 20 would have been divested of its suspense, with its literary qualities and effect being gravely impaired as a result. Finally, the designation of the matriarch as \u201cbarren\u201d is intended, as von Rad has noted, \u201cnot only to prepare the reader for the event that is conditioned by this fact, but, above all, to make him conscious of the paradox of God\u2019s initial speech to Abraham.\u201d How can God\u2019s promises be fulfilled if the patriarch\u2019s wife is barren? Of course, barrenness is a major motif of the patriarchal narrative cycles, one expression of the still larger Leitmotif, the interplay between divine promise and frustrating reality. In sum, the genealogy must be seen as being inseparable from the narratives.
\nStill another example of the literary technique of introducing a parenthetic note not immediately germane to the subject at hand, but whose significance later becomes apparent, is to be found in ch. 13 in connection with the separation of Lot from Abraham. In selecting for himself choice grazing land, Lot observed that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered \u201call the way to Zoar, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt\u201d (13:10). The sequence of the thought, however, is interrupted by the remark, \u201cthis was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.\u201d At the end of the narrative another note has been appended, to the effect that \u201cthe inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against the LORD\u201d (v 13). It hardly requires much imagination to see that both observations are preparatory to the events of chs. 18 and 19. The question is, however, whether they are nothing more than the interpolations of a glossator or whether they are an integral, functional part of the narration. Taken in isolation, the phenomenon can certainly be more easily explained as belonging to the former category. If treated in conjunction with several analogous instances, the alternative hypothesis would be favored.
\nIn Gen. 22:20\u201324 a genealogy appears wedged between two momentous events, the Akedah and the purchase of the Cave of Machpelah. It seems to have absolutely no connection with either, and certainly it does not forge a link between them. Yet a close look reveals several instructive features. The genealogy presumes a knowledge of 11:29, which mentions Milcah together with Sarai. The phrase \u201cMilcah too has borne children to your brother Nahor\u201d (22:20) is intelligible only in light of that passage and of the birth of Isaac. At the same time, it explains why Milcah was not described as barren in the earlier listing even though no offspring of hers was recorded there. Whoever inserted the genealogy of 11:29 deliberately withheld the list of her children because it has a special function in 22:20ff. The remarks relating to \u201cKemuel the father of Aram\u201d and \u201cBethuel being the father of Rebekah\u201d are clues to the function of the genealogy and point to the reason for its presence here. The previous pericope closed with divine blessings, and for these to be fulfilled Isaac must marry and found a family. The list therefore mentions Rebekah, Bethuel, Milcah, Nahor, and Aram as an intimation of Isaac\u2019s forthcoming marriage to Rebekah daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah of the city of Nahor in Aram-naharaim. In this way, its presence after the Akedah is purposeful, anticipating the events of ch. 24.
\nThat chapter, too, contains elements that exemplify this narrative technique of slipping in seemingly innocent phrases that are portentous of later developments. The opening sentence reads as follows: \u201cAbraham was now old, advanced in years, and the LORD has blessed Abraham in all things.\u201d This final clause appears to have no particular relevance to the matter at hand, which is the finding of a wife for the forty-year-old bachelor Isaac. Since it is the patriarch\u2019s extreme old age that lends urgency to the quest, the note about God\u2019s blessing of Abraham actually disturbs the smooth flow of the narration. It soon becomes clear, however, that Abraham\u2019s material wealth is crucial to the matchmaking procedure. The servant sets out with an entourage of ten camels carrying \u201call the bounty of his master\u201d (v 10). He presents the girl who waters his beasts with expensive gold jewelry (v 22), and she and her family receive gifts of silver and gold, of garments and other things, once the negotiations are brought to a successful conclusion (v 53). Furthermore, the servant cleverly stresses his master\u2019s great wealth in his address to the bride\u2019s family: \u201cThe LORD has greatly blessed my master, and he has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and asses\u201d (v 35). All this is critical to the softening-up process for the difficult task of persuading the girl and her family to consent to the marriage and to agree to her leaving home for travel to a distant land. The ultimate inducement is, of course, the servant\u2019s declaration that Isaac is Abraham\u2019s sole heir (v 36). Seen in the light of all these facts, the apparently intrusive opening remark about God having \u201cblessed Abraham in all things\u201d becomes endowed with literary importance and latent meaning. The same applies to the statement that \u201cRebekah had a brother whose name was Laban\u201d and that when he saw the golden nose-ring and bracelets he \u201cran out to the man at the spring\u201d (vv 29\u201330). Can it be doubted that here is an insight into Laban\u2019s character intended to prepare the reader for the developments of chs. 29\u201331?
\nThe story of the birth of Rebekah\u2019s twins, Esau and Jacob, and of their rivalry for the birthright is replete with anticipatory data. We are informed of the elder son\u2019s red complexion and hirsute body (25:25). Nether detail is again mentioned in the immediately ensuing narrative. It is clear, however, that the two descriptions provide etiologies for the names Edom and Seir, with both of which Esau is explicitly identified later in Genesis. At the same time, the hairiness of Esau turns out to be crucial to the events of the next episode. The same is true of Esau\u2019s being \u201ca skillful hunter\u201d (v 27) and of Isaac\u2019s fondness for game, a weakness that led him to favor Esau over Jacob (v 28). Every one of these facts is indispensable to the understanding of how Jacob succeeded in extracting the birthright blessing from his father by means of trickery (ch. 27).
\nChapter 26 is the one section wholly concerned with Isaac. All other traditions relating to this patriarch are integrated into the biographies of Abraham or Jacob. In the account of the sundry adventures preserved in this chapter, there is not a hint of Isaac\u2019s being a family man. The two sons do not figure in any way in the various incidents, which, in fact, may well have taken place before their birth. Yet, suddenly, the chapter ends with a remark about Esau\u2019s Hittite wives, who are a source of bitterness and vexation to his parents (vv 34\u201335). This extraordinary addendum, totally unrelated to what precedes, must either be a clumsy interpolation or else, on the contrary, its very discontinuity and irregularity belong to the rhetorical strategies of a gifted writer and constitute an important element of the creative process. Now, the perceptive reader will doubtless observe at once that the intrusive nature of Esau\u2019s marital affairs recalls the place and role of the genealogies of 11:10\u201332 and 22:20\u201324, both of which appear to be contextually extraneous but turn out to afford essential data preparatory to subsequent narrative developments. In like manner, the remarks presently under discussion make Rebekah\u2019s complaint to her husband in 27:46 intelligible. Having been apprised of Esau\u2019s murderous threat against Jacob, she realizes that, for his own safety, her younger son must be sent away (42\u201346). But she cannot disclose to her husband the true reason for Jacob\u2019s impending departure, and so she hits upon the pretext that it is time for the boy to marry. \u2018 \u201cI am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite women,\u2019 \u201d she says to Isaac. \u2018 \u201cIf Jacob marries a Hittite woman like these, from among the native women, what good will life be to me?\u2019 \u201d The persuasiveness of this argument is decisive because, as 26:34\u201335 have already informed us, Esau\u2019s union with the local women has already turned out to be an intolerable torment to Isaac, and so he readily grants his consent (28:1\u20132).
\nMy last example of the sort of device that I am illustrating here is 35:22. We are told that \u201cWhile Israel stayed in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father\u2019s concubine; and Israel found out.\u201d The disagreeable details that form the background to this strange interlude have obviously been suppressed, but a little light on this truncated story is shed by the Chronicler:
\nThe sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel\u2014for he was the firstborn; but when he disgraced his father\u2019s bed, his rank of firstborn was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel, so he is not reckoned as firstborn in the genealogy. (1 Chron. 5:1)
\nThe Chronicler was certainly aware of much more than tradition had transmitted in Gen. 35:22. What is particularly puzzling about the latter passage is the final phrase, which literally means \u201cand Jacob heard,\u201d for the sentence is complete without it. Possessing no direct object, and indicating no reaction on Jacob\u2019s part, it juts out as a literary membrum suspensum, and one wonders why it is there. The most plausible solution is that suggested by Rashbam, who refers to Gen. 49:3f. In his deathbed testament, Jacob condemns Reuben for his immoral act: \u201cFor when you mounted your father\u2019s bed, you brought disgrace.\u201d Because of it, Reuben forfeited his birthright. Brief and obscure though it be, the note of 35:22, which tells of the incident and informs us that Jacob heard about it even though he did not witness it, saves the poetic passage of 49:3f. from unintelligibility.
\nGehard von Rad has rightly pointed out that, in dealing with the individual units of the Book of Genesis, \u201cone must not lose sight of the great unit of which they are but parts,\u201d and that in its present form, it is \u201cthe narrative as a whole and the contexts into which all the individual parts fit and from which they are to be understood\u201d that must be kept in mind. The literary feature demonstrated above crosses all conventional source-critical divisions. For this reason, it deserves to be taken seriously in any examination of the literary structure and ultimate unity of the Book of Genesis.
\nGenesis 21:33: A Study in the Development of a Biblical Text and Its Rabbinic Transformation
\nFollowing the account of the pact that Abraham and King Abimelech concluded, as told in Genesis 21:32, it is recorded that the patriarch \u201cplanted a tamarisk at Beer-sheba, and invoked there the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God\u201d (v. 33). The Hebrew text reads as follows: \u05d5\u05d9\u05d8\u05e2 \u05d0\u05e9\u05dc \u05d1\u05d1\u05d0\u05e8\u05be\u05e9\u05d1\u05e2 \u05d5\u05d9\u05e7\u05e8\u05d0\u05be\u05e9\u05dd \u05d1\u05e9\u05dd \u05d4\u05f3 \u05d0\u05dc \u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd.
\nThis notice, brief to the point of obscurity, contains several unusual features and raises numerous questions.
\nFirst, there is the syntactical difficulty that the immediate antecedents in the plural\u2014Abimelech and Pichol\u2014cannot possibly be the subjects of the verbs in the singulars found in this verse. Only the remote \u201cAbraham\u201d can govern the verbs \u05d5\u05d9\u05d8\u05e2 and \u05d5\u05d9\u05e7\u05e8\u05d0. For the sake of clarity, the Samaritan recension and the ancient versions, the Septuagint, Peshitta and Vulgate, all felt constrained to insert [Abraham] into the text, and the English translations, including the Jewish ones, have traditionally followed this practice.
\nThe syntactical anomaly gives the appearance of thematic disjunction between the present verse and the preceding narrative. Some medieval Jewish commentators attempted to sustain the organic unity of the entire chapter. Thus, Bekhor Shor (12th cent.) for instance, understood the purpose of the tree-planting to be commemorative of the aforementioned pact. David Kimchi (1060?\u20131135?) supposes that the aborcultic act adjacent to the well at Beer-sheba was intended to exhibit undisputed assumption of sovereign possession of the facility. In modern times, Benno Jacob\u2019s explanation is similar to that of Bekhor Shor, while E. A. Speiser, despite the vagueness of his formulation, also seems to connect the tree-planting with the pact-making.
\nThe difficulty with these interpretations is that no analogous practice within a legal context is again to be found in the Bible, nor does anyone else plant a tree simply to memorialize some experience. Moreover, were Abraham\u2019s deed really the sequel to the preceding narrative, it might have been expected to have occurred before, not after, the departure of the two Philistines. Some explicit indication of the connection would surely have been forthcoming in the text. There seems no way of avoiding the conclusion that Genesis 21:33 belonged to an independent narrative, now thoroughly truncated, that dealt with Abraham\u2019s tamarisk at Beer-sheba. This irresistible inference itself raises two problems: Why has the original story been so radically abridged? And why was the notice about the tree preserved at all? The answers to these questions are dependent upon a third one: What is the connection between the two parts of verse 33\u2014the act of tree-planting and the act of worshiping? This last issue must be addressed first since it provides the key to the understanding of the entire passage.
\nThe straightforward implication of the text is that there exists an inextricable interconnection between the two clauses of the verse. That is to say, Abraham\u2019s planting of the tree is directly associated with his act of worship. Now it is well known that throughout the ancient Near East from Mesopotamia to Egypt, as well as in the Aegean and Minoan areas, the phenomenon of the sacred tree existed\u2014not necessarily as an object of worship in itself, so much as the locus of a numinous presence. It was, therefore, an ideal place for theophany and worship. The tree served as a medium of oracles and revelation.
\nSeveral biblical toponyms testify to the presence of many such sacred, arbored sites in Canaan. Genesis 12:6 records that \u201cAbram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem at the terebinth of Moreh.\u201d The term for \u201csite\u201d in Hebrew is maq\u014dm: its combination with a city-name is unique in the Bible so that in the verse quoted it most likely carries the special meaning of \u201csacred site,\u201d just like Arabic maq\u0101m, as it does numerous times in biblical texts. The name given to the terebinth is \u2019elon moreh [plural in Deut. 11:30], which means \u201cthe terebinth of the teacher\/oracle-giver.\u201d It was at this site that Abraham experienced a theophany and built an altar (v. 7). According to Joshua 24:26, the great military leader made a covenant with the people of Shechem, and \u201cHe took a great stone and set it up at the foot of the oak (Hebrew \u2019elah) in the sacred precinct of the Lord.\u201d In the Book of Judges it is said that Abimelech was proclaimed king at \u201cthe terebinth (\u2018elon) of the pillar at Shechem,\u201d and doubtless in the vicinity stood the \u201cDiviners\u2019 Oak\u201d (\u2019elon me\u2018onenim, 9:6, 37). Earlier, Jacob had buried the pagan religious symbols possessed by the members of his entourage \u201cunder the terebinth (\u2019elah) that was near Shechem\u201d (Gen. 35:4). Hebron too had its sacred trees, for Abraham had pitched his tent \u201cat the terebinths of Mamre (\u2019elonei mamre), which are in Hebron,\u201d and had \u201cbuilt an altar there to the Lord\u201d (Gen. 13:18). It is quite probable that it was beneath one of these special trees that the patriarch entertained his three unexpected visitors, for the text repeatedly mentions \u201cthe tree,\u201d the definite article seeming to indicate one well known (ibid. 18:4, 8). \u201cThe Oak of Weeping\u201d (\u2019allon bakhut) was where Rebekah\u2019s nurse Deborah was laid to rest (ibid. 35:8), while the later prophetess of the same name \u201cused to sit under the palm of Deborah\u201d to issue judicial decisions (Judg. 4:5), perhaps by oracular means. \u201cThe Terebinth of Tabor\u201d and \u201cThe Valley of the Oak\u201d (1 Sam. 10:3; 17:2) are two more sites bearing arboreal names that appear to indicate the presence of sacred trees. Finally, it is not without significance that it was from \u201cunder the terebinth at Ophrah\u201d that Gideon experienced a theophany (Judg. 6:10\u201321).
\nThe association of sacred trees with pagan cults, especially with fertility cults, made them anathema to the official religion of Israel. Canaanite cult sites established \u201cunder any luxuriant tree\u201d were to be utterly destroyed and were not to be imitated even in the worship of the God of Israel (Deut. 12:2\u20134). The planting of \u201cany kind of tree\u201d beside the altar of the Lord was unequivocally proscribed (ibid. 16:21), and no wonder, for male prostitutes who were active in Judea in the days of Rehoboam son of Solomon were apparently connected with shrines built \u201cunder every leafy tree\u201d (1 Kings 14:23\u201324). Hosea testifies to the practice of prostitution in the northern kingdom at shrines erected \u201cunder oaks, poplars, and terebinths\u201d (4:13\u201314).
\nIn light of all the above, it is extraordinary that tradition should have recorded an association of Abraham with a tree in a cultic context. This in itself constitutes eloquent testimony to the great antiquity of that tradition, to its reliability, popularity, and persistence. It was not expunged from the Torah\u2019s record.
\nFurther evidence for the antiquity of the tradition behind Genesis 21:33 lies in the divine epithet \u2019el \u2018olam. This title never recurs in the Bible, although it has turned up in a fifteenth century b.c.e. inscription found at Serabit el-Khadem in Sinai. There it appears in the form of \u2019l d \u2018lm (\u2019l \u1e0fu \u2018olam). Further, \u2018lm as an epithet of a deity occurs in Ugaritic text 2008:7, \u0161p\u0161 \u2018lm; in text 68:10, mlk \u2018lm; and in text 52:1 rpu mlk \u2018lm. It also shows up in the eighth century b.c.e. Phoenician inscription from Karatepe as \u0161m\u0161 \u2018lm. Once again, the retention of the unique Hebrew divine title \u2019el \u2018olam in Genesis 21:33 means that it must have belonged to the original, pre-pentateuchal form of the narrative. It is of great significance, however, that in the present narrative the divinity whom Abraham invoked has been carefully dissociated from any pagan deity by identifying \u2019el \u2018olam with YHWH. This development is particularly meaningful because the other unusual divine titles compounded with \u2019el in Genesis are not generally so identified. \u2019El Shadday appears five times and is not once particularized as YHWH. \u2019El \u2018Elyon is invoked four times in Chapter 14, but is connected with YHWH only when it issues from the mouth of Abraham in addressing a non-Hebrew (v. 22). That text and ours in 21:33, therefore, may be said to exhibit special sensitivity to the possibility of mistaken identification of an exceptional divine title.
\nFurther clue to the pre-history of the text may be recognized in another curious anomaly that, it seems to me, has not been sufficiently evaluated. The phrase va-yiqra\u2019 be-shem YHWH occurs thrice more in the patriarchal narratives: 12:8, 13:4, and 26:25. In each instance, it is accompanied by or associated with mention of an altar. The present citation constitutes the exception. The reverse situation is found: that is, mention of altar-building without the invocation of God\u201412:7; 13:18; 33:20; 35:7\u2014but not the invocation of God without reference to an altar. The solitary omission of the altar in Genesis 21:33 would therefore appear to be deliberate. It must flow from a sensitivity to the association of Abraham with the planting of a tree and his act of worship at that spot.
\nThe specific plant favored by the patriarch is designated an \u2019eshel. James Barr has persuasively illustrated that already within the formative period of the Hebrew Bible this term occasioned embarrassment. Such is reflected in the Chroniclers change of \u2019eshel in 1 Samuel 31:13 to \u2019elah in the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 10:12 in the story about the burial of King Saul and his sons \u201cunder the tamarisk tree in Jabesh.\u201d Barr has also pointed to the great variety of interpretation of this term \u2019eshel exhibited by the ancient versions of Genesis 21:33, a phenomenon engendered, as he puts it, by \u201ca name unpleasantly similar to that of the notorious idolatrous symbol, the Asherah.\u201d
\nAbraham\u2019s \u2019eshel at Beer-sheba is not again mentioned in the Bible. However, it is to be noted that Isaac traveled to Beer-sheba, received a theophany, built an altar, and \u201cinvoked the name of the Lord\u201d (Gen. 26:23\u201325). The narrative does not identify the site with that of Abraham\u2019s \u2019eshel, but it is to be noted that the theophany twice refers to Abraham by name. Jacob too visited Beer-sheba, on his way down to Egypt, offered sacrifices to \u201cthe God of Isaac his father,\u201d and also experienced a theophany at that site (ibid. 46:1\u20134). It is reasonable to assume that all three traditions relate to the same sacred locale. Such a conclusion provides a convincing explanation for Judahite Beer-sheba remaining an attractive and popular cultic site even for the citizens of the northern kingdom long after the division of the country following the death of Solomon. The prophet Amos found it necessary to condemn the custom of northerners traveling to the cult-site at Beer-sheba (Amos 5:5; cf. 8:14).
\nIn sum, it would be difficult to find a better explanation for the preservation of the statement about Abraham\u2019s activities found in Genesis 21:33 than that it is excerpted from an originally larger narrative describing the origins and founding of the famous cult-center at Beer-sheba. In consequence of the great popularity of that shrine as a place of pilgrimage, the story had become a classic, and reference to it could not be entirely omitted. Due to the obnoxious nature of the tree-cult in the folk religion, and to the possibility of mistakenly finding legitimacy for it through the patriarch\u2019s venture, only the skeleton outline of the ancient narrative was retained. The careful editing is evidenced by the exceptional absence of altar-building, and the identification of the unique epithet \u2019el \u2018olam with YHWH, as well as by the exclusion of any mention of a theophany.
\nThe sensitivity to the presence of the \u2019eshel persisted beyond the period of the early Bible translations into the rabbinic age. A discussion about the term is reported in B. Sotah 10a, and in several midrashic sources. R. Judah, followed by Resh Lakish, maintained that it meant an orchard (pardes). The popularity of this rendering is attested by its acceptance on the part of the Psuedo-Jonathan, the Yerushalmi, the Neofiti, and the Samaritan targums. According to R. Nehemiah, however, the \u2019eshel was not something arboreal, but a \u201chospice\u201d (pundaq, Greek pandocheion). Abraham is credited with providing wayfarers with food and shelter, thereby bringing them close to the true God. To add force to this transformational interpretation, \u2019eshel is even taken to be an acronym formed from the initial letters of three words, \u2019akhilah, shetiyah, levayah, \u201ceating, drinking, and accompanying on the way.\u201d Rabbinic exegesis has emptied the verse of its cultic content. An incident belonging to the realm of personal piety in a ritual context has been transformed so that it now exemplifies God\u2019s demands on man in a socio-moral context. At the same time, the provision of wayfarers and of the homeless has itself been elevated by the Rabbis to the status of a mode of divine worship. As the Talmud records in the name of Rab Judah who cited it in the name of Rab: \u201cHospitality to wayfarers is greater than welcoming the presence of the Shekhinah\u201d (Shab. 127a).
\nThe Decalogue
\nI
\nThe observation of Moses Maimonides (1135\u20131204 c.e.) that the Decalogue constitutes the very essence of religion would probably be shared wholeheartedly by the votaries of all major religions. From earliest times this document has occupied a pivotal position in the Jewish religious consciousness. Philo of Alexandria (born circa 20 b.c.e.) devoted a special treatise to the subject, in which he declared the Decalogue to be the summation (Keph\u00e1laia) of all the particular and special laws recorded in the Scriptures. Rabbinic midrash similarly emphasized that the Decalogue contained the essential Torah from which all else is derived. Little wonder that it achieved a position of such paramount importance that the daily morning service in the Second Temple once began with its recitation preceded by a blessing and that it was at one time part of the contents of tefillin.
\nIt is taken for granted that the Decalogue comprises the minimal moral imperatives essential to the maintenance of an ordered and wholesome society, and that it is the great Jewish contribution to the world. But what was the state of affairs before Sinai? Was the world steeped in savagery and barbarism? The Bible itself assumes the existence of a moral code from the beginning of the appearance of human life on this planet. Otherwise, how could Cain have been guilty of murder? For what \u201clawlessness\u201d could God have brought the great flood, and for what \u201cevil\u201d would the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and their allied cities have been brought to account? The rabbinic notion of a \u201cNoahide code,\u201d obligatory upon the human race, is itself a recognition of pre-Sinaitic norms of law and order. Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of ancient history is aware that the people of Israel arrived very late on the world scene. By then the great civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had all passed their prime and were already heirs to ancient traditions and cultures. Obviously, these great civilizations could not have come about without a \u201csocial contract,\u201d a commitment to enforceable criteria of right and wrong that covered most of the principles enshrined in the Decalogue. This elementary presupposition is, in fact, well illustrated by the discovery of no less than six collections of laws from the ancient Near East, from the third millennium b.c.e. down.
\nThere are the laws of Ur-Nammu, king of the Sumerian city of Ur (circa 2050 b.c.e.); those of Bilalama, king of the Amorite city of Eshnunna (circa 1925 b.c.e.); the law of Lipit-Ishtar, ruler of Isin (circa 1860 b.c.e.); the collection of Hammurabi of Babylon (circa 1700 b.c.e.); the Hittite code (circa fifteenth century b.c.e.); and the Assyrian laws from the city of Assur (circa 1350 b.c.e.). In addition to these, we have the wisdom and didactic literature of Egypt and Mesopotamia, which is replete with most of the injunctions found in the Decalogue, while magical texts, some of them from the Old Babylonian period (circa 1800 b.c.e.), often assume that sickness results from the violation of a taboo, and contain lists of wrongs committed, many of an ethical and moral nature. Perhaps the most instructive text of all is the so-called Book of the Dead with its \u201cnegative confession.\u201d This is a declaration or protestation of ignorance or innocence to be recited by the dead as a prior condition to entry into the next world. The negative formulation testifies to the reality of positive moral ideals, widely accepted as the indispensable imperatives of an ordered society. In the presence of Osiris and his court, convened in the \u201cHall of Two Truths,\u201d the dead man professed, among other items, \u201cI have not committed evil among men, \u2026 I have not blasphemed a god, \u2026 I have not done violence to a poor man, \u2026 I have not killed, \u2026 I have not stolen, \u2026 I have not been covetous, \u2026 I have not robbed, \u2026 I have not told lies, \u2026 I have not committed adultery.\u201d
\nClearly, the prohibitions of theft, murder, adultery, false witness, and so forth, were hardly novel at the time of the Exodus. Rather, they had long been accepted as the elementary standards of civilized, organized life. The fundamental question therefore arises: Wherein lay the uniqueness of Israel\u2019s contribution in giving the world the Decalogue?
\nII
\nOne of the fundamental principles of rabbinic exegesis of the Bible is that the Scriptures employed contemporary forms and modes of speech in order to convey their message in an intelligible manner: \u201cThe Torah speaks in human language.\u201d One of the major concerns of modern biblical scholars is to recover the \u201chuman language,\u201d the original life-setting of a scriptural passage, to discover why a text is expressed in the way it is and in the form it has assumed. Is there correlation between content and literary form? In other words, does an analysis of the typical structure of a biblical passage throw light on the context?
\nThe only way such questions might be answered is by turning to the vast literature of the ancient Near East, which has preserved the \u201chuman language,\u201d the patterns of speech and the literary structures which were contemporaneous with the literary creativity of Israel or which were part of Israel\u2019s cultural baggage. Not always are the solutions forthcoming, but often they are, and in the case of the Decalogue comparative studies are particularly helpful.
\nNow the term used in the Bible for the divine-Israelite encounter at Sinai is berit. Hebrew makes no distinction in terminology between a covenant with God and a treaty drawn up between kings or between two individuals. All are termed berit. This fact provides a clue to the true significance of the Decalogue. The conventional Near Eastern treaty served as the conceptual model for the national experience at Sinai. In the ancient world of the Fertile Crescent, the covenant treaty was the recognized instrument by which desired relationships were effectuated and regulated. Many examples of such treaties have survived the ravages of time. They divide themselves roughly into three general groupings. There are the Hittite treaties from the second half of the second millennium b.c.e., Aramaic treaties from the ninth century b.c.e. from the Syro-Palestine sphere, and treaties from the Assyrian Empire from the ninth to the seventh centuries b.c.e.
\nIt is the oldest group, the Hittite treaties, that are of particular interest in connection with the present topic. It has been noted that these conform to a more or less fixed basic literary pattern. In general, legal terminology and documentary patterns exhibit a remarkable tenacity and consistency in the ancient Near East. The training of scribes, of course, had a lot to do with it, as is proved by extant Mesopotamian formularies and vocabulary lists for scribes who specialized in legal phraseology. Scribes and diplomats who drafted treaties in the Hittite Empire generally hewed closely to a basic prototypal structure covering six sections. First comes the \u201cPreamble.\u201d The author of the treaty is identified by name, and his titles, attributes, and genealogy are listed. Next comes the \u201cHistorical Prologue,\u201d or introduction, which surveys the historical relationships between the contracting parties. In this section are detailed the past benefactions bestowed upon the vassal by the suzerain king, which are the basis for the vassal\u2019s present gratitude and future allegiance. Then follow, in turn, the \u201cStipulations,\u201d which are the core of the treaty; the call for the \u201cDeposition\u201d of a copy of the treaty in the vassal\u2019s sanctuary, with provision for its periodic public reading; and a long list of gods who act as \u201cWitnesses\u201d to the terms of the document. Finally, the \u201cCurses and Blessings\u201d complete the covenant, the former describing the dire consequences of the vassal\u2019s infraction of the treaty terms, the latter pointing to the beneficial results of faithful adherence to them.
\nIII
\nTurning now to the Covenant at Sinai, one may detect at once the striking similarities between it and the Hittite treaty forms just described. The Decalogue opens with a preamble identifying the author of the Covenant: \u201cI am the Lord your God.\u201d Then comes the historical prologue, a retrospect of the benefactions that God has wrought for Israel: \u201cwho brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.\u201d This is the overriding, pivotal event, the dominant theme in Israelite history that cemented the relations between God and Israel, and that remained the cause for Israel\u2019s eternal gratitude and the basis of the obligations it owed Him. The third section, the \u201cThou shalt\u201d and \u201cThou shalt not,\u201d comprises the stipulations, the principles on which the future relations of Israel to God are to be based. The other three elements that characterize the Hittite treaties are not included in the Decalogue itself, but they are present elsewhere in the account of the Sinaitic revelation. A copy of the Covenant is required to be deposited in the sanctuary, and provision is made for the periodic public reading of the text. Of course, there is no room for gods as witnesses in Israel\u2019s monotheistic religion, but their place is taken by \u201cheaven and earth,\u201d or by memorial stones, and the curses and blessings\u2014in reverse order\u2014are very much alive in the great \u201cReproofs,\u201d or Tokhahot.
\nIV
\nWhat significance attaches to the fact that the ancient Near Eastern treaty pattern became the model for the expression of the division of the divine-human encounter at Sinai? First and foremost it must be stressed with every emphasis at one\u2019s command that in using the term berit, \u201cCovenant,\u201d the Bible is not resorting to a mere figure of speech, but is describing a living reality, an actual legal circumstance, nothing less than the assertion of an actual, eternally binding pact between God and His people. Just as the ancient treaties served to regularize and control relationships between one individual and another and between one state and another, so the Covenant at Sinai aimed to delineate the proper relationships between God and Israel. But there is also one fundamental difference. The Near Eastern treaties are political documents that usually affect only the foreign policies of states. They do not infringe upon internal affairs except insofar as these impinge upon the interests of the suzerain state. The Sinai Covenant, on the other hand, projects a revolutionary expansion of the original concept, first by including each and every aspect of life within the treaty stipulations, and then by making God and an entire people the parties to the Covenant. These two features of the biblical exemplar are absolutely unique. There is no parallel in history for such concepts, no analogy to Israel\u2019s claim to have undergone a national religious experience, no conceptual prototype for that claim.
\nNo less revolutionary than the innovations themselves are the consequences that flow from them. The entire nation of Israel is conceived as being a corporate entity, a \u201cpsychic totality.\u201d The obligation to keep the law is national, societal, and communal. Evil is a breach of the Covenant that undermines society. The welfare of society, the integrity of its fabric, is contingent upon the observance of the law. No wonder that the conventional treaty provision requiring periodic public reading of the treaty\u2019s stipulations was expanded in Israel and transformed into a wholly new dimension\u2014the obligation, oft-repeated, to disseminate the law among the masses, the universal duty of continuous self-education.
\nIn the ancient Near East the opposite was the case. Hammurabi, it is true, wrote the laws\u2014so he said\u2014so that a plaintiff or defendant might know what they were. But this was largely a fiction, since mass illiteracy was the rule, and interest in the law was aroused only after the inception of a case, and was restricted to the details of the particular paragraph of the code that applied in the circumstances. More in common with the spirit of Mesopotamian society was the injunction forbidding the dissemination of the details of the temple service for the New Year festival. One is reminded of the fact that until Draco (circa 621 b.c.e.) codified the laws of Athens, these remained the exclusive knowledge of the nobility, and their publication among the masses was forbidden. Diametrically opposed to such a notion is the biblical outlook. In Judaism the mass dissemination of the law in all its details is a major priority. The reason is obvious. Law is not simply an intellectual exercise, but a moral discipline through whose instrumentality the entire society is shaped.
\nV
\nA further crucial distinction between the Decalogue and ancient Near Eastern codes lies in the source and sanction of law. No biblical law is ever attributed to Moses himself or to any prophet personally. The narratives know nothing of a lawgiver-sage or a lawgiver-king. The great empire builders and organizers, David and Solomon, have no connection with law codes. The great reformers Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah reorganize the judiciary and the cult, but they do so only to implement the ancient law of God. They make no claim to innovation. The only name exclusively connected with law is that of Moses, and he is a prophet who mediates the divine communication to Israel.
\nThis picture is in striking contrast to the situation in the ancient world, where the legislators are kings, princes, and sages. The king and the state constitute the source of law, its sanction, and the authority behind it. It is perfectly true that the polytheistic gods themselves did not behave according to moral norms, but they did, nevertheless, desire that mankind be in possession of just laws. They wanted the king to establish justice in the land. Some gods, such as Shamash, the sun-god, were looked upon as the custodians of justice and equity. Thus, Hammurabi invokes the gods in the prologue to his laws, and the stela on which they are inscribed is decorated with a relief depicting Shamash presiding over their promulgation. The text, however, leaves no doubt that Hammurabi ascribes the laws to himself: \u201cI established law and justice in the language of the land.\u201d \u201cThe laws of justice which Hammurabi, the efficient king, set up.\u201d \u201cI am the king who is preeminent among the kings; my words are choice; my ability has no equal. By the order of Shamash, the great judge of heaven and earth, may my justice prevail in the land; by the word of Marduk, my lord, may my statutes have no one to rescind them.\u201d It is very much Hammurabi who is the author of the laws, not the gods. The role of the god in law is to serve as the source of wisdom, as the one who implants in man the faculty of discernment and truth and the perception of justice. This is what enables kings to make righteous laws. But the actual origin and source of law lie in human wisdom, not in the revealed will of the gods. The biblical claim that the law, in fact, constitutes the revealed will of God remains unparalleled.
\nVI
\nThere is no biblical tradition to indicate how the Decalogue was distributed over the tablets of stone. The Pentateuch invariably refers to tablets, in the plural, and usually mentions two specifically, but what was written on each is not clarified. The Tannaitic midrash on Exodus\u2014the Mekhilta\u2014assumes that there were five on each tablet, and Jewish art has fossilized this interpretation. In the Talmud of Palestine, however, another tradition is evident, to the effect that the Ten Commandments were written in toto on each stone separately. Both traditions reflect an acute perception of the essential nature of Torah legislation, namely, that the covenant idea suffuses every aspect of life.
\nThe Decalogue, indeed, falls more or less naturally into two divisions. The first four \u201cWords\u201d indubitably relate to the divine-human sphere; the last five clearly govern interpersonal relationships; and the fifth acts as a kind of bridge between the two parts, for the Bible uses the same vocabulary for revering parents as for revering God.
\nThis balance between what we would call the \u201creligious\u201d and the \u201csocial\u201d is well illustrated by the opening and closing words: \u201cGod \u2026 fellowman.\u201d Each of the first five declarations contains the phrase \u201cthe Lord your God,\u201d which does not appear in the last five. The \u201creligious\u201d demands precede the \u201csociomoral\u201d because only a sense of responsibility to God provides the ultimate guarantee of the observance of our duties toward our fellow beings; conversely, professed belief in God, and the observance of the outward forms of religious expression, are well-nigh worthless unless they profoundly affect human relationships. This interweaving of the spiritual, the cultic, the moral, and the legal, this lack of differentiation between \u201creligious\u201d matters, matters of interpersonal relationships, and matters of social and sexual morality\u2014this is the quintessential differentiating characteristic of biblical law. All other systems in the ancient world display an atomistic approach to life. Civil obligations belong to the domain of law, moral demands to the domain of wisdom literature, cultic responsibilities to the domain of priestly handbooks. Law is strictly secular in content. In Israel, however, life is treated holistically. It is not compartmentalized. Crime is also sin. An offense against sexual morality, against business morality, against social morality, is simultaneously a \u201creligious\u201d offense because one and all they are infractions of the divine will.
\nVII
\nIt will surely have been noted that the Decalogue is distinguished by the total absence of specific individual penalties for the violation of the injunctions and prohibitions. We find only \u201cThou shalt\u201d or \u201cThou shalt not.\u201d These apodictic formulations have no definitions, no limitations, no punishments\u2014they are unqualified, absolute declarations. This is no coincidence. The phenomenon goes to the very heart of the meaning and significance of the Decalogue.
\nWhat the apodictic formulation asserts is that there are certain God-given values and behavioral norms which are absolute and not self-originating; morality is the expression of the divine will, and the motivation for observing the law is not fear of punishment but the desire to conform to the will of God. The Decalogue is a self-enforcing code that appeals to the conscience, the spiritual discipline, and the moral fiber of the individual, not to the threat of penalty that can be imposed by the external coercive power of the state. Of course, we do not live in a utopian society, and, as the Mishnah expresses it, \u201cwere it not for the fear of government, people would devour each other alive.\u201d So elsewhere in the Torah the casuistic pattern of law with its specific penalties is the general rule.
\nThe Decalogue is obviously not meant to provide an alternative to the coercive power of the state. But the dismal record of the modern state in providing for its citizens\u2019 quality of life suggests that without the value system of the Decalogue, society is unlikely to make much progress in solving its chronic ills.
\nIntroduction to the Hilleli Manuscript
\nTHE CODEX FORM
\nThe extremities of the Fertile Crescent produced two distinct media of writing. The papyrus scroll was characteristic of Egypt; the tablet was the distinguishing mark of Mesopotamian literacy. Between them the scroll and the tablet constituted the oldest and the most persistent writing format in the ancient world.
\nBoth types were in vogue in Israel. The Decalogue was, of course, inscribed on tablets of stone (Ex. 24:12; 31:18; 34:1, 4; Deut. 4:13, 5:19; 9:9\u201311; 10:1, 3; 2 Kings 8:9) and prophetic utterances were also recorded on tablets, though probably of wood (Isa. 30:8; Hab. 2:2). The wide-spread use of this format is attested by such figurative phases as \u201cthe tablet of the heart\u201d (Jer. 17:1; Prov. 3:3; 7:3). The medium was, however, ill-suited to literary compositions or lengthy documents. For such purposes the \u201cbook-scroll\u201d (Jer. 36:2, 4; Ezek. 2:9; Ps. 40:8), whether of papyrus or of animal hides, was the dominant form, so that a \u201cbook\u201d per se could readily suggest a rolling-up action (Isa. 34:4). The scroll remained the standard form of the book throughout the lands of the Mediterranean zone until well into late Roman times and this was particularly true among the Jews.
\nThe Letter of Aristeas clearly informs us that in the third century bce the High Priest in Jerusalem sent a Torah scroll form to King Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Alexandria and the Greek translation thereof was likewise written on scrolls. About a century later, at a prayer-service called together at Mizpeh by Judah Maccabeus, a book of the Law was \u201cspread out\u201d in the presence of the congregation (1 Macc. 3:48), again proving that the scroll form had not been displaced.
\nIf the tablet form was a less convenient literary device than the scroll, it was nonetheless destined ultimately to serve as the inspiration for a revolutionary development in the history of book-making. We have in mind the invention of the tablet-book, the hinging together of wax-covered wood or ivory writing boards. Sets of sixteen such, all attached end to end by means of a gold pin or leather straps and folding up like a screen, have turned up at Calah (Nimrud) in Assyria dating from the beginning of the eighth century bce. The format is believed to have originated much earlier and to have been widely employed in the writing of Aramaic.
\nThroughout the Mediterranean world, in Roman times, tabellae were extensively used for notes, letters and documents, and several were often bound in book form (polyptychon), just as in Mesopotamia. It was inevitable that sooner or later the wooden book would be imitated in a more flexible material, and the parchment notebook appeared in Roman Italy. When it first did so cannot be positively determined, but the format is referred to by the Latin poet Martial (c. 85 ce), and some scholars believe that the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar (d. 44 bce) was written on parchment codices.
\nIn Egypt, the papyrus scroll did not beget the papyrus notebook. For technical reasons involving problems of stress and strain that developed at the creases and caused cracking, it had not proved satisfactory to fold over papyrus and the scroll remained the sole mode of keeping a papyrus strip of any length.
\nIn Eretz-Yisrael in Tannaitic and Amoraic times it was customary to record Halakoth on pinakes which were multileaved and which could be made of papyrus, but these codices were restricted to private use and never employed for public purposes. The codex form made no headway among Jews until comparatively late times. The situation, however, was quite different among the early Christians who adopted the codex from the very beginnings of the Church. Following the accepted Jewish practice in Eretz-Yisrael, the disciples of Jesus would record their master\u2019s sayings in note-book form. Thus, the Christian Scriptures initially and naturally came into being in codex form and the discovery of its numerous and diverse advantages ensured its retention. Its convenient portability contrasted with the unwieldiness that attached to large scrolls and was particularly attractive to itinerant missionaries who could also conceal it more readily if need be. It made for easier and quicker reference use, especially in the consultation of specific passages like proof texts, and it did not require the utilization of both hands as did the scroll. It was more economical in that both sides of the page could be written on and it permitted the composition of larger works than did the scroll with its normal length of about 35 ft. Indeed, its average content would be about six times that of its competing format and it no longer became necessary to divide works into more than one unit with the accompanying danger of misplaced volumes. Finally, it enabled more than one book to be encompassed within the confines of a single volume.
\nThe statistics drawn from the extant literary remains from Egypt between the second and fourth centuries ce tell their own story about the Christian adoption of the codex. Whereas less than 3% of the 690 pagan literary papyri deriving from the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd centuries ce are in codex form, all known Christian papyri of the New Testament and the Jewish Scriptures from this period are so. From the three centuries being surveyed, 62 manuscripts of the latter and 49 of the former have survived, and only 12 of these are in scroll form, some of which are certainly of Jewish origin. By the 4th century, the parchment codex was supreme among the Christians of Egypt. This state of affairs bears elements of irony for though it was initially imitation of Jewish practice that led the Christians to utilize the codex for their own sacred works, it soon became the distinguishing mark of the independence of the Church from the Jewish community and its severance from Jewish traditions and practice. This is emphasized by the fact that already in the 2nd century the Jewish Bible had been transcribed by Christians from scroll to codex form, a process that could only have been the result of deliberate and tendentious choice.
\nBy the end of the 4th century, the codex had made rapid progress also in the pagan Egyptian community. No less than 74% of its extant literary manuscripts have come down to us in this format. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that the Jews stubbornly resisted the tide of scribal innovation and stuck to the scroll form for the Hebrew Scriptures. The rich collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls contains not a single codex and there is abundant evidence to prove that in the times of the Tannaim and Amoraim the scribes did not write the Bible continuously as a single scroll. Of course, it would have been well nigh impossible to handle such a gigantic document for liturgical purposes and its usefulness for study or reference would have been extremely limited. Rabbinic debate about the \u201cwriting\u201d or \u201cfastening together\u201d of individual biblical books or corpora makes it perfectly clear that such attempts were discouraged by the religious authorities and were rare phenomena. It is not accidental that all these discussions are predicated on the assumption of the scroll-form as the natural medium for the transcription of the Bible and that there are no controversies relating to possible halakhic implications of the employment of the codex. In fact, the first unambiguous notice in Jewish literature of the scriptural codex, in contradistinction to the scroll, appears only in the 8th century, though it cannot be doubted that the Hebrew Bible had already been reduced to the book form some centuries earlier.
\nOne or two external sources also bear witness to the tardiness of Jews in adopting the new, more convenient format. In the last quarter of the 4th cent. Optatus of Mileum still made a clear distinction in terminology when referring to Jewish and Christian modes of writing the Scriptures. Whereas for the latter he uses membranae (\u201cparchment codices\u201d) or codices itself, he employs volumen (\u201cscroll\u201d) for the Jewish type. His contemporary Hieronymous, it is true, in speaking of the sacred books of the Jews variously speaks of volumina or codices, but no conclusions can be drawn from this since, as has been shown, the two terms are used synonymously by this author. More significant is the statement of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus (d.c. 458), that in his time the use of the scroll was current among Jews.
\nMODEL TEXTS
\nThe scribal art in ancient times was the possession of an elitist group of specialists and the opportunities for its acquisition were restricted to a limited number of self-perpetuating schools that were highly conservative by nature. For these reasons, the training of a scribe would leave little room for innovation and would assuredly foster a profound respect for textual exactitude. Already by the end of the second millenium bce, authoritative, standardized versions of the classical texts of Mesopotamia had emerged and the scribes were highly conscious of the importance of transmitting faithful copies of the parent-texts. The striving for accuracy often found expression in the colophons. Wherever possible the scribes did their best to copy from the original work or at least from the earliest recension they could find. In like manner, the desire for a definitive text that would serve as a model for scribes is well exemplified in the history of the Greek classics. The Athenian tyrant Pisistratus (c. 535 bce) ordered a body of scholars to establish definitive editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. This, in turn, served as the basis of the text-critical work of the scholars at the Alexandrian Library three centuries later who produced the model texts for all subsequent editions.
\nIn the case of the sacred Scriptures of Israel, put to public liturgical use and employed as the curriculum of the schools, it is obvious that the natural scribal attitude of reverence for the classical text would have been greatly heightened. Care and accuracy in the transmission of a canonized text would be an elementary expectation, and the existence of model books must be taken for granted. The very fact that so few textual families can be discerned in the biblical scrolls from the Judean desert area gives added credence to this assumption. In this connection it is of great significance that when the Jews of Alexandria in the third century bce wanted to have the Torah translated into Greek, they displayed keen awareness of the fact that carelessly written texts were in circulation and they sent to the High Priest in Jerusalem to secure an exact copy. Centuries later, soon after the destruction of the Temple, Josephus could boast of a long tradition of scrupulous accuracy that had characterized the textual transmission of the Jewish Scriptures. All this again presupposes the existence of official, authoritative texts that served as models for scribes.
\nThe extant literary sources indeed confirm that at least from late Second Temple times and into the Talmudic period such was the case. Witness the report of \u201cthe three Books\u201d in the Temple court found to contain textual variants, and of the attempt on the part of the religious authorities to establish a unified text. We are expressly informed that a scroll deposited in the Temple court served as the model for the correction of other copies and there existed a class of \u201cbook-correctors\u201d in Jerusalem who drew their salaries from the Temple treasury. In the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt (c. 135 ce), Rabbi Akiva warned Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai against teaching from \u201cuncorrected\u201d books and toward the end of the 3rd century ce, the Palestinian Amora Rabbi Ammi admonished against retention in the home for more than thirty days of \u201cuncorrected\u201d books.
\nUnfortunately, no model texts of Scripture have survived from Talmudic times or, at least, none has hitherto been discovered. It is not until the Middle Ages were well advanced that the model codex appears embodying the final crystallization of the Hebrew consonantal text accompanied by its vowel symbols and its liturgical diacritical notations and equipped with the great Masoretic mnemotechnic apparatus designed to guard the Biblical text from error.
\nSPANISH CODICES
\nAt quite an early stage in its intellectual and cultural development, Spanish Jewry exhibited an unusual sensitivity to textual accuracy which won renown for the reliability of its Talmudic manuscripts. This particular acumen, coupled with a passion for biblical Hebrew linguistic studies, cultivated an attention to detail and textual minutiae which found an outlet in the production of Bible codices that gained fame for their excellence and exactitude. Tenth century sources already refer to the \u201caccurate and ancient Spanish and Tiberian Bibles\u201d and Jonah ibn Janah (c. 985\u2013c. 1040) stressed the indispensable importance of exact manuscripts as tools for grammatical research.
\nThe reputation of Spanish codices spread far and wide, beyond the confines of Spain and into Germany. The famed glossator of the Code of Maimonides, Rabbi Meir ha-Kohen of Rothenberg, (end 13th cent.), mentions that he had examined the \u201csuperior and exact Books of Spain\u201d which were famous for their high quality.\u201d Jews in the Middle Ages would make the journey from Germany to Toledo for the sole purpose of acquiring model Spanish Torah codices. The scribal schools of Toledo were the most prolific in the production of Hebrew manuscript Bibles and it is from that city that issue the oldest, most sumptuous and most reliable extant codices. That these lost nothing of their popularity with the passage of time is evidenced by the testimony to their superiority lavished by Elijah Levita (1468\u20131549) who came from Germany, and Jedidiah Solomon Norzi who made use of a Toledo codex of 1277 and of Spanish notes for the great text-critical and masoretic commentary, the Minhat Shai, which he completed in Italy in 1626.
\nTHE CODEX HILLELI
\nThe most famous of all Spanish Bibles is that known as the Codex Hilleli. A celebrated report by the astronomer-chronicler R. Abraham b. Samuel Zacuto, written c. 1504, provides practically everything that is known about the codex:
\n\u201cIn the year 4956 AM, on the 28th day of the month of Ab, a severe persecution (of Jews) occurred in the Kingdom of Leon at the hand of two kings who attacked them in a certain citadel. They carried away the Hebrew Scriptures written about 600 years earlier by R. Moses b. Hillel after whom it was called \u2018Hilleli.\u2019 They were exact, and all Bibles were corrected in accord with them. I myself saw two parts, the Former and the Latter Prophets written in bold and precise characters, which had been brought from Portugal at the expulsion and sold in Bugia, Africa, where they currently are, 900 years after their transcription. In his Grammar, David Kimhi, in connection with the verse \u2018that you may remember\u2019 (Num. 15:40), wrote that the Hilleli Pentateuch was in Toledo.\u201d
\nZacuto\u2019s narrative refers to the sufferings of the Jews in the campaign of the combined armies of Castile and Aragon against the fanatical Almohades in 1197. Although the model Hilleli codex was among the spoils taken from Leon, it must very soon have been rescued in some manner and installed in Toledo, for Zacuto cites the testimony of David Kimhi, a contemporary of these events, to the presence of the Pentateuch section in that city in his day. Actually, Kimhi also refers to the Kethubim section as having been there too, while Zacuto himself reports the Prophets to have been in Jewish hands in Portugal in his own times, 300 years later. They may well have been taken to Portugal by exiles from Toledo. The Pentateuch herewith reproduced was completed in that city in 1241 and was corrected according to the Hilleli model. A complete Bible executed in Toledo in 1246 notes the absence of two verses in Josh. 21 (vv. 36, 37) \u201cfrom the codex which is called Hilleli,\u201d while another Toledo Bible of 1280 adduces variations from the Hilleli in its Masoretic notes to Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is of further interest that the Hilleli is also cited in a codex completed in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1483. It is quite possible that the copyist of this Bible actually consulted the codex in his native town whither it had been brought from Toledo and from which two parts, at least, were taken to Bugia, Africa, by the exiles of 1497. However, a note of caution must be injected here, since in 1487 the Hilleli is still cited in another Bible from Toledo.
\nZacuto\u2019s statement, taken in conjunction with the information that may be culled from Kimhi, indicates that the Hilleli was bound in four volumes. What happened to the rest of it or, indeed, even to the two prophetical sections, is a complete blank. As has been mentioned, it was present in Toledo in the days of Kimhi, although it is not correct, as Jacob Saphir asserts, that the grammarian claims to have seen it with his own eyes. Kimhi adduces the codex in the name of his contemporary Jacob b. Eleazar, the poet, grammarian and philosopher of Toledo, in whose possession the Hilleli seems to have been at that time. How hazardous it is to assume that a direct citation implies first-hand evidence may be demonstrated by a comparison of Kimhi\u2019s comment of Ps. 109:10 with the parallel note in his Sefer Ha-Shorashim. In the former, the Hilleli is quoted directly, while in the latter the identical information is given in the name of Jacob b. Eleazar.
\nWhat is the date and origin of this famous codex? The only \u201cinformation\u201d at our disposal is the assertion of Zacuto that the manuscript was 600 years old in 1197. This would place its composition about 600 c.e. Were this to be historic fact, it would take us back to the period soon after the close of the Babylonian Talmud. This was precisely the time of the introduction of the codex Bible form among Jews and, even more significantly, the age when the invention and development of the system of vowel and accentuation signs took place. For these reasons, Zacuto\u2019s report cannot be accepted at its face value. If the Hilleli did indeed constitute the contemporary embodiment of two such revolutionary innovations, it would be inexplicable that tradition would not have preserved this momentous fact, especially when the codex became so famous as an exemplary model for scribes.
\nThis brings us to the problem of the name and author of the codex. The confusion and uncertainty attending these issues is exemplified by the remark of Elijah Bahur Asher Ha-Levi (Levita) in the 16th century:
\n\u201c\u2026 I had thought that the codex was called after its author whose name was Hillel, but I discovered that in some recensions it is written Hilali \u05d4\u05dc\u05d0\u05dc\u05d9 with an aleph between the two lameds \u2026 I also saw that in the Mikhlol printed in Constantinople they vocalized Helali, with \u1e63ere under the he, and so I do not know what is what.\u201d
\nThe variety of spellings is indeed bewildering and includes \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05dc, \u05d4\u05dc\u05dc\u05d9, \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05dc\u05d9, \u05d4\u05dc\u05d0\u05dc\u05d9, \u05d4\u05dc\u05dc\u05d9\u05d4, \u05d4\u05dc\u05dc\u05d9\u05d9\u05d0, \u05d4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d9\u05dc\u05d9\u05d0 and even \u05d4\u05dc\u05d5\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd. These variants have generated a diversity of suggestions. The most popular is Levita\u2019s original conclusion deriving the title from the name of the copyist. However, the exact name and identification is far from certain for some texts have simply \u201cHillel,\u201d while others have \u201cMoses b. Hillel\u201d and \u201cHillel b. Moses b. Hillel.\u201d At any rate, all attempts to connect this name with a known historical personage have foundered. Menahem Ha-Meiri, and after him Joseph Sambari, believed him to have been Hillel the Elder; S. J. L. Rapoport identified him with the Palestinian Patriarch Hillel II; S. H. Halberstam wanted to recognize in him \u201cMoses Ha-Naqdan\u201d (\u201cthe Punctuator\u201d), the supposititious inventor of the Masoretic system of the vowel and accentuation signs\u2014according to a spurious document of Firkowitz.
\nA different approach to the origin of the appellation is that first espoused by J. F\u00fcrst and adopted by H. Graetz, A. Jellinek and C. D. Ginsburg, namely, that \u201cHilleli\u201d is derived from a locale, the town of \u1e24illa on the Euphrates not far from the ruins of ancient Babylon. Even Halberstam, who does not believe that such an insignificant place could have produced such an important model codex, yet concedes that the scribe, supposedly \u201cMoses (The Punctuator),\u201d came from \u1e24illa and so was called \u201ca son of \u1e24illa (ben \u1e24illa)\u201d or \u201cHilleli\u201d. However, as A. A. Harkavy pointed out, the form Hilla could not possibly have yielded an adjectival form Hilleli. Even more serious is the objection that the initial consonant of the town\u2019s name is a \u1e25eth not a he, so that the names cannot be interconnected. What is decisive is the fact that the town of \u1e24illa was not founded until 1102. If it were indeed the locale of the codex or the birthplace of its scribe, then the Hilleli would obviously have had to have been written well after this date.
\nAll in all, notwithstanding the variety of spellings, it is simplest to accept \u201cHillel\u201d as the given name or cognomen of the scribe. After all, Hilleli is the most frequently found form and the variant Hillali is but its Arabized equivalent. Some medieval manuscripts bear the inscription \u201cfrom the codex of Hillel(i) the scribe\u201d and a Bible from Chufut-Kale (cod. 44) dated 994 ce is attributed to Moses ben Hillel. H. L. Strack, who examined it, pronounced the epigraph to be genuine and to have emanated from the writer of the manuscript himself. The famed Codex Hilleli may well have been his work or that of his father. It would have thus originated in the 10th century. Leon may well have been its provenance or, at least, it must certainly have resided in Leon for a considerable period of time. There is no reason to doubt Zacuto\u2019s account of its removal from that city in 1197 and despite its attested presence in Toledo for so long, it could still be referred to as \u201cThe Hilleli of Leon\u201d in a Spanish Bible completed in 1448 ce, as well as by Jedidiah Solomon Norzi in the 17th century. The association with Leon must have been very powerful to have preserved this kind of tradition.
\nThe practice of using the Hilleli as a standard exemplar for the needs of scribes naturally gave rise to the compilation of independent lists detailing its orthographic singularities, especially in respect of plene and defective readings. Such lists seems to have enjoyed wide circulation in the Middle Ages and for this reason, marginal references to the Hilleli found in the Masoretic codices need not necessarily imply that the exemplar was consulted first hand. The scribe may simply have utilized one or other copy of these registers. Some have, in fact, survived until modern times. Thus, the references to the Hilleli readings to be found in the work of Moses B. Isaac Botarel (d. beg. 15th cent.), Menahem b. Judah b. Menahem de Lonzano (d. beg. 16th cent.), Jedidiah Solomon Norzi (1560\u20131616), Joseph b. Isaac Sambari (1640\u20131703) and others, may variously refer either to such lists or to marginal notes in Bible manuscripts or to codices directly copied from and modeled after the original Hilleli. The same would apply to the Torah with Haphtaroth and Five Megilloth printed in Guadalajara in 1475 and which laid claim to have been \u201ccorrected according to the Hilleli.\u201d At any rate, all these citations and assertions attest to the unrivalled and sustained reputation of the Hilleli over a period of hundreds of years. Its present whereabouts is, alas, unknown.
\nThe facsimile herewith presented is that of the codex housed in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Written on vellum in Spanish square characters, it is the work of the scribe Israel b. Isaac b. Israel who completed its execution in Toledo in the month of Sivan, 5001\/1241 for Abraham b. Solomon Abidarham (sic). The patron was doubtless a member of the wealthy and distinguished Abudarham family of Toledo. The scribe\u2019s name is known also as the copyist of an Oxford manuscript of the Latter Prophets, dated 1222. He is also referred to by Menahem Ha-Meiri as having testified to the correct collation of a Pentateuch in Toledo. He may well be identified with the scribe called \u201cRabbi Israel\u201d to whose pen Isaac Abravanel attributed \u201cthe exact Scriptures we have with us in Spain.\u201d The work originally encompassed the entire Hebrew Bible, but the Nebi\u2019im and Kethubim have vanished. The Torah, practically complete, is currently bound in three volumes, the first two comprising respectively Genesis and Exodus, while the third covers the rest of the Pentateuch. It was undoubtedly intended as a model for scribes. It contains the Diqdukei Ha-Teamim of Aaron b. Asher and note is taken of the presence of extraordinary tagim, or ornamental strokes on letters, as well as of certain peculiarly shaped letters.
\nThe significance of the codex lies in the fact that it constitutes a seven hundred year old superb example of the Sephardi scribal art which, as the colophon asserts and the notes abundantly testify, was \u201ccarefully corrected according to the model called the Hilleli\u201d at a time when that codex still resided in Toledo, the same place of execution of the present manuscript.
\nWriting a Commentary on the Torah
\nThe recent publication of the JPS Commentary, blending the latest scholarship in history, archaeology, anthropology, and linguistic-textual research with the religious, ethical, and halakhic teachings of rabbinic sources, represents the newest link in the centuries-old Jewish tradition of writing Bible commentaries. So argues Professor Nahum M. Sarna in this illuminating essay, which both informs us as to the process by which the JPS Commentary came into being\u2014from inception to publication, and which provides a suggestive aper\u00e7u of medieval trends of biblical exegesis. By demonstrating the rabbis\u2019 open-minded, even radical independence in exegesis, Sarna reinforces the historical-intellectual connection between the JPS Commentary and those which, through the ages, have preceded it.
\nWe express our deep gratitude to Dr. and Mrs. Sidney Peerless, immediate family of Rabbi Feinberg and long-time friends of the Judaic Studies Program, for their continued support of this lectureship and its publication.
\nDr. Benny Kraut
\nProfessor and Director
\nUC Judaic Studies Program
\nThere are translations of the Bible and there are commentaries on it. The first is essentially a Christian enterprise; the second is characteristically Jewish, This dichotomy may sound strange, and may well be claimed to be unhistorical. After all, the early translations were made by Jews to serve the needs of Jewish communities. Nevertheless, it is also a fact that Jewish religious authorities generally frowned upon translations, resisted attempts to make them official, and even when they finally capitulated to the pressure of the non-Hebrew speaking Jewish masses, they strictly circumscribed the public use of Bible translations in liturgical contexts, as we shall soon see.
\nThere were, and are, several excellent reasons for this hostile rabbinic attitude\u2014aside from the polemical purposes for which sectarian and Christian theologians exploited translations. Next to the virus of anti-Semitism, the universal acceptance of the one received Hebrew text of the Tanakh\u2014as the Hebrew Bible has come to be called among Jews\u2014has always been the great unifying agent in Jewish life. To give recognition to a translation is to foster a divisive factor that is ultimately destructive of that unity.
\nFurthermore, by uncompromising insistence on exclusive authority for the Hebrew Bible, the Rabbis ensured the preservation of the Hebrew language as the linguistic medium of Jewish intellectual creativity throughout the lands of the Jewish diaspora, even though Hebrew ceased to be the language of everyday speech among all Jews.
\nTranslations, particularly those adopted by ecclesiastical hierarchies, tend to wield potent influence, frequently deleterious, over the hearts and minds of their devotees. They often receive virtual, if not official, canonicity. Either way, the phenomenon engenders an attitude that encourages a fundamentalist, monolithic approach to the Scriptures, one that is subversive of intellectual freedom, corrosive of tolerance, and productive of doctrinal tyranny. Moreover, a translation of the Holy Scriptures, however felicitously and elegantly executed, must perforce, in the long run, be the enemy of truth. It is surely difficult enough to transplant a piece of literature from its native cultural soil into another milieu of quite a different character and composition. Can the fine nuances of language, the deliberately introduced ambiguities, the instinctive elements and distinctive qualities of style of a great national opus of consummate artistry really be accurately conveyed and truthfully reproduced in another language? Can the cultural, linguistic, and spiritual barriers really be overcome? These difficulties are compounded immeasurably by the large number of obscure Hebrew words, phrases and grammatical forms that are scattered over the texts. The truth is that despite the vast strides in our knowledge of the ancient Semitic languages made over the past century, many passages in the Hebrew Bible still remain imperfectly understood. In many instances, therefore, translations are deceptive. They substitute simplicities or speculative emendations for the obscurities, either of which can be quite misleading.
\nNo wonder the second century c.e. Palestinian sage Rabbi Judah declared that \u201cHe who translates a [biblical] verse literally is a falsifier, and he who amplifies it blasphemes and defames.\u201d One might add that perhaps the most serious shortcoming inherent in all and any translation of the Hebrew Scriptures is the automatic fossilization of a single understanding of a text. Willy nilly, translation is interpretation, an exercise in exegesis; by virtue of this inescapable fact, it violates a cardinal principle of the rabbinic approach to the Bible. Traditionally, Jewish exposition of the Hebrew is firmly grounded in the conviction that embedded in the text is a multiplicity of meanings, the full richness of which cannot be expressed through a single body of doctrine or by any monolithic system that is logically self-consistent. The multiple sense of Scripture was always the lodestar of the Jewish interpreter.
\n\u201cOne thing God has spoken, two things have I heard,\u201d said the Psalmist. And that is an understatement, for the school of Rabbi Ishmael cited Jeremiah 23:29: \u201cBehold, My word is like fire\u2014declares the Lord\u2014and like a hammer that shatters rock.\u201d And they expounded it to mean that, \u201cJust as a rock is shattered into numerous fragments (or, \u201cgenerates innumerable sparks\u201d) so may a single verse convey a multiplicity of meanings.\u201d Indeed, like a skillfully cut diamond, the brilliance and beauty of the Torah are enhanced by its \u201cseventy facets.\u201d
\nTo be sure, Jewish popular pressure for vernacular translations of the Hebrew Scriptures was in itself highly commendable. It testified to an intense piety and passionate attachment to the heritage of Israel on the part of the ordinary, unlearned Jew to whom the ancient sources of his tradition were no longer intelligible in their Hebrew original. First, it was the Aramaic language, the lingua franca of the ancient Near East, that gradually encroached upon the native tongue. As early as the ninth and eighth centuries b.c.e., Aramaic was in use in the lands adjacent to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah\u2014in the Syrian and Transjordanian regions. At least, it was employed for monumental inscriptions. Within Israel itself, the hundred years of warfare with the Aramean states in the north, and the intermingling of populations that inevitably occurs as national borders are violated back and forth with the waxing and waning of the fortunes of war\u2014doubtless this situation greatly contributed to the incursions of the Aramaic language into Hebrew. Certainly, the most important factor in the spread of Aramaic was the massive transplanting of populations by the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser V and Sargon II following the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722\u2013721 b.c.e. and the exile of much of its population. Aramaic-speaking peoples in sizable numbers were settled in the area. Of course, the successive deportations of the Judeans at the hands of the Babylonians in the years 597 b.c.e. and 587 b.c.e. provided the final and most powerful impetus for the Aramaization of the Jewish people. By the time of Ezra and the return of the exiles to Zion, Aramaic was the native tongue of large numbers of Jews.
\nA unique popular institution emerged to accommodate this unprecedented situation. The public reading of the Torah came to be accompanied by oral translation into Aramaic. Fearful that the latter might, in time, supplant the original, the religious authorities imposed certain judicious restrictions upon the practice. The meturgeman, as the interpreter was called, was not permitted to make use of an aide-memoir or even to look at the text of the Torah while translating. Nor might the official lector assist him in any way. Further, when the meturgeman was present, the lector would read only one verse at a time, instead of the usual minimum of three verses. In the course of time, the Aramaic translation\u2014the Targum, as it came to be known\u2014was officially accepted, was put into written form, and even became prescribed for study alongside the weekly Torah readings, and this even long after Aramaic had ceased to be the spoken language of Jews.
\nMuch less fortunate was the Jewish experience with the Greek translation of the Scriptures. The Epistle of Aristeas, which purports to tell the history of the Septuagint, claims that the initiative for it came from Demetrius of Phalerum, historian and scholar at the great library of Alexandria, and that King Ptolemy Philadelphus (285\u2013247) was its sponsor. We know, however, that this work was a clever piece of Hellenistic-Jewish propaganda and apologetics, and that in reality the Greek rendering of the Torah was meant to satisfy the needs of the enormous Greek-speaking Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt, that had largely forgotten its Hebrew.
\nFor a while, this translation was favored even by the Jewish religious leadership in Palestine. Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel (1st century c.e.) declared that investigation demonstrated that the Torah could be adequately translated only into Greek. The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (20 b.c.e.\u201350 c.e.) reported that the 8th day of the month of Teveth was an annual festival of thanksgiving to God for the gift of the Septuagint. Later on, however, for several excellent reasons, that Greek translation fell from favor among Jews. Megillat Ta\u2018anit, \u201cThe Scroll of Fasting,\u201d is a list of thirty-six days on which important events in Jewish history occured and on which it is forbidden to fast. It probably derives from about the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt (ca. 135 c.e.). An Appendix to it has a list of fast-days, among them \u201cthe eighth day of Tevet when the Torah was translated (literally, \u201cwritten\u201d) into Greek in the days of King Ptolemy\u2014and darkness descended on the world for three days.\u201d And Tractate Soferim adds that that day was as disastrous for Israel as the day when the golden calf was made, for the Torah cannot be adequately translated.
\nOf course, Jews continued down the ages to translate the Tanakh into their particular vernacular. Often, they were pioneers in this enterprise. But, no one had any illusions about it. The translations were exercises that betrayed concessions to Jewish ignorance of Hebrew. They possessed no authority, and were not used liturgically\u2014at least not until the period of Jewish emancipation in Europe. Not translation, but commentary became the standard universal mode of relating to the sacred texts. As Gershom Scholem has formulated it, \u201cCommentary on Scripture became the characteristic expression of Jewish thinking about truth.\u201d To put it another way, it was into commentary that Jews poured their intellectual energies. Commentary on Scripture became the main traditional vehicle for Jewish intellectual endeavor. How could it have been otherwise, seeing that the Hebrew Bible constituted the very protoplasm of Jewish existence, the matrix out of which emerged all subsequent development? To the delight of Jewish scholars, and especially of professors of biblical studies, there came a time when the Hebrew Bible could no longer be read, only studied. This state of affairs was the product of a specific historical circumstance. Following the sweeping victories of Alexander of Macedonia and the consequent Hellenization of the lands of the ancient Near East, the cultural environment that produced the Hebrew Bible was no longer familiar to the reader. Thereafter, the traditional metaphors of the biblical text ceased to be immediately intelligible. How, for instance, is one to relate to the Hebrew of Psalm 7:10, which literally tells us that the righteous God \u201cexamines hearts and kidneys?\u201d If one does not know that in ancient Israelite psychology the heart was seen as the seat of the intellect and the kidneys the seat of the conscience, one might conclude that the psalmist conceives of God as a cardiologist and nephrologist, rather than One who probes the human mind and conscience to detect and react to hypocrisy, pretense, deception, duplicity, and similar unsavory human attributes. Without a commentary, one would not know this, and the sense of the text would be distorted. Of course, it may be claimed that a translation may equally convey the true intent of Hebrew idiom as does the new Jewish Publication Society version. This version renders the passage in question: \u201cHe who probes the mind and conscience is God the righteous,\u201d and it carries a footnote informing the reader of the literal meaning. But then that is commentary, and it raises at once the question as to the nature of a translation and the obligation of the translator. Is the rendering to be photographic or impressionistic? Should it seek to maintain a meticulous regard for verbal or phraseological equivalence or rather seek to convey the sense of the original? Is the prime consideration the genius and idiom of the receptor language or of the original? In each case, modern translations have opted for the alternative and have thereby transformed themselves into commentaries. As such, however, they are woefully defective for the interpretation has generally become monolithic. The translations violate the above cited cardinal rabbinic exegetical principal of the multiple sense of Scripture.
\nIt goes without saying, that a Bible commentary means commentary on the Hebrew text, not on a translation. It should also be self-evident that commentary cannot be confined solely to elucidating the text by attempting to rescue the supposed \u201coriginal meaning\u201d of the writers through recourse to philological research and recovery of the contemporary cultural milieu in which the works were authored. This approach is without doubt indispensable. It is the sine qua non and starting point of any modern interpretive endeavor. But to believe that this alone is determinative is to commit what literary critics call the \u201cintentional fallacy.\u201d Throughout the millennia Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was informed by the abiding consciousness that it was the major source for the national language, the font of all Jewish values, ideals and hopes, and the fountainhead of inspiration for the distinctive life-style of the Jew. These always were and still are matters of transcendent seriousness that demanded and demand, not surface reading, but deep study and comprehensive exposition. The unbelievably rich hermeneutical literature generally subsumed today under the rubric of parshanut hamikra\u2019 is characterized appropriately by infinitely variegated attitudes and approaches, and by an obstinately healthy refusal to absolutize any single stance. The intrinsically endless variety of interpretation, often internally contradictory and replete with antinomies has always confronted the literate Jew with a vast array of exegetical texts not one of which is authoritative but each of which commands attention and calls for concentration of thought and continuous study. The literature of biblical interpretation itself became an essential propaedeutic discipline for the cultivated Jew. This vast, inexhaustible store of exegetical material reinforced and enhanced the study of Tanakh as a religious obligation, a spiritual exercise, a mode of worship, and a moral training.
\nAll this found concrete expression in what has become known in Hebrew as the Miqra\u2019ot Gedolot, the \u201cRabbinic Bible.\u201d To my mind, this is one of the noblest expressions of rabbinic Judaism. What I mean is that the Hebrew text is surrounded by a sea of commentaries of diverse authorship, provenance, dating and exegetical approaches, often mutually incompatible and contradictory. They coexist within the confines of a single page, all accommodated within the framework of a single tradition.
\nThe commentators themselves never entertained the notion that what they wrote was definitive. For instance, Rashi, according to the testimony of his grandson, the Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, ca. 1080\/1085\u20131158), was quite clear about this. In the latter\u2019s commentary to Genesis 37:2 he explicitly relates that his grandfather told him that had he the time, he would have revised his commentaries to bring them into accord with \u201cthe innovative expositions of the text being made daily.\u201d Without doubt, Rashi was referring to the great grammatical, philological, and exegetical works of the Spanish Jews, a knowledge of which had begun to percolate into the communities of France and the Rhineland.
\nMoreover, the traditional commentators were sometimes none too gentle with each other. This same Rashbam relates to the dying patriarch Jacob\u2019s testament addressed to Judah in Genesis 49:9: \u201cJudah is a lion\u2019s whelp; on prey, my son, you have grown.\u201d He comments: \u201cWhoever interprets the verse as referring to the sale of Joseph is completely ignorant of both verse structure and the division of the cantillation signs.\u201d Interestingly, the interpretation that Rashbam rejects is to be found, inter alia, in such classical texts as Genesis Rabba 98:9 and the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum, as well as in his own grandfather\u2019s commentary. Nahmanides (1194\u20131270), in his exegesis of Genesis 9:18 remarks that the celebrated commentator \u201cRabbi Abraham [ibn Ezra, 1092\u20131167] has forsaken his path in the straightforward interpretation of Scripture, and has begun to prophesy lies.\u201d He also lashed out at Moses Maimonides (1135\u20131204) of whose explanations of Genesis 18:1 in his Moreh Nevukhim (\u201cGuide for the Perplexed\u201d) II.42, he writes that \u201cit is forbidden to listen to them, let alone believe them.\u201d In the same vein, he accuses Maimonides of \u201cheaping foolishness upon foolishness\u201d\u2014so in his comment to Numbers 20:1.
\nIt is an egregious error to believe that the traditional Jewish commentators regarded the exposition of the Tanakh as a self-contained, autonomous and closed field of intellectual endeavor. To the contrary, their free and practically untrammeled investigation of the Scriptures are replete with critical observations of a historical, textual, theological, and halakhic nature. They could interpret legal and ritual texts not in accord with halakhic rulings. Occasionally, they criticized the Sages of the Talmud for divesting the text of its plain meaning.
\nThese scholars were people who were unquestionably committed to the halakhic authority of the rabbis in their rulings on matters of Jewish law in all its aspects. But they could question the exegesis by which such rulings were derived from the text. It is as though they held that the halakhah enjoys its own, autonomous existence and authority and that the scholars are free to investigate the text independently of dogmatic or traditional considerations. For instance, in expounding on Exodus 23:2, Rashi takes note of Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:6 and states: \u201cThere are interpretations of this verse by the sages of Israel, but the language of the text cannot accommodate them.\u201d Rashbam, in discussing the rabbinic exposition of Leviticus 7:18 as found in Mishnah Zeva\u1e25im 2:2\u20134 and the gemara in Zeva\u1e25im 29b, frankly asserts: \u201cThe Sages have wrested it (the verse) from its plain meaning.\u201d Samuel hen Hofni (d. 1030), Gaon (head of the academy) at Sura in Babylonia is cited by David Kimhi (1160?\u20131235?) in his comment to 1 Samuel 28:24 as follows: \u201cEven though the words of the sages in the Talmud imply that the woman [i.e. the witch of Ein-dor] really did resurrect the dead Samuel, yet insofar as human reason rejects this they are unacceptable.\u201d
\nIt will be remembered that Abrahm ibn Ezra tackles the problematic passage in Genesis 12:6, \u201cThe Canaanite was then in the land.\u201d First he cites Rashi\u2019s explanation: \u201cPossibly Canaan seized the land of Israel from others.\u201d Then he seems to cast doubt on its validity, and cryptically adds: \u201cIf this is not so, I have a secret, and the prudent person will keep silent.\u201d The nature of this \u201csecret\u201d is not disclosed, but is left to the imagination of the reader. However, a supercommentary on Ibn Ezra by Joseph ben Eliezer Tov Elem (Bonfils; d. ca. 1335), called Tsafenat Pa\u2018anea\u1e25, clearly understood that Ibn Ezra meant that Genesis 12:6 is partly a textual gloss deriving from the post-Mosaic era. Further, he engages in a spirited theological defense of such a notion and implicitly denies it to be heretical. Basing himself on historical considerations, he concludes that \u201cMoses did not write this word \u2018then\u2019 here, but Joshua or one of the other prophets wrote it.\u201d He adds the following rationalization: \u201cSince we must believe in the words of tradition and prophecy, what difference does it make whether Moses or some other prophet wrote it, seeing that the words of all of them are truth and [given] by divine revelation (literally, \u2018prophecy\u2019).\u201d No less a person than Rabbi Judah He-Hasid of Regensberg (1150\u20131217), the saintly mystic, ethicist, theologian, and halakhist, in his commentary to Deuteronomy 2:8 mentions that a certain verse is a post-exilic explanatory gloss inserted into the text of the Torah. Tan\u1e25um ben Joseph Yerushalmi (13th century), a rationalist biblical exegete and philologist, raises the possibility that some of the variant readings in Chronicles as opposed to parallel texts in Samuel\u2013Kings, may well have originated with the errors of copyists.
\nWhat is perhaps the most remarkable example of independent and radical exegesis is provided by the history of the exegesis on the prohibition of \u201cseething a kid in its mother\u2019s milk,\u201d found in Exodus 23:19; 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. These three verses constitute the scriptural source for the interdiction on cooking, eating, and deriving benefit from a mixture of meat and milk, as well as for the elaborate series of concomitant ordinances designed to safeguard the prohibition. Notwithstanding the authorities behind the traditional interpretation of those biblical texts, and the obvious centrality of the institution of kashrut in the everyday life of the Jew, there exists a wholly different pattern of exegesis of this biblical injunction in some medieval Jewish works.
\nMena\u1e25em ben Saruq (910\u2013970) noted that the prohibition of Exodus 23:19 and 34:26 is juxtaposed to the law of the first fruits. He surmised that there is a direct convection between the two. Accordingly, he took the Hebrew gdiy to mean \u201cberries,\u201d and not \u201ca kid,\u201d as it is usually understood. This eccentric explanation was taken up and expanded by another lexicographer, Mena\u1e25em ben Solomon (first half, twelfth century), in his Even Bo\u1e25an. The \u201cmother\u2019s milk\u201d was interpreted to refer to the juice of the bud that contains the berry, and the entire injunction conveyed to him a proscription on bringing the first fruits to the priest before they are ripe.
\nI register this selection of little known and generally ignored items, not because they typify medieval Jewish exegesis of the Bible: they do not. They do demonstrate, however, the open-mindedness, the latitude and the range of approaches that many commentators allowed themselves, particularities that have become ever more rare among traditional Jewish exegetes since the end of the Middle Ages. This brings me to the need for a new commentary geared to the English-speaking Jewish communities.
\nIt is reported that when the Prophetical division of the Tanakh was first translated into Aramaic by Jonathan ben Uzziel, the Land of Israel quaked over an area of four hundred square parasangs. No such violent reaction of Nature occurred when the new Jewish Publication Society translation of the Bible appeared a few years ago. Emboldened by this calm and obviously sympathetic and agreeable, if soundless, response, Chaim Potok and I approached the officers of the Jewish Publication Society with our proposal for the production of a new commentary. We pointed out that not translation but commentary was the traditional Jewish approach, and we drew attention to the phenomenon that in recent years most faith communities in the United States had published their own up-to-date commentaries. We Jews had none.
\nThe work of J.H. Hertz on the Torah had been a bold educational enterprise for its day. It had successfully educated a couple of generations of Jews. But it had been composed to suit the needs of the immigrants from central and eastern Europe, and their first native-born generation in the English-speaking countries. The passage of more than a half century of fruitful research in many fields has rendered Hertz\u2019s scholarship and approach hopelessly out of date. Its apologetics are no longer appealing to the post World War II generation of Jews. Israel has since become the world\u2019s leading center of biblical studies and any modern commentary must take account of the considerable quantity of published research penned by highly competent scholars.
\nTrue, there is also the Soncino series of Bible commentaries, but in a very real sense it was obsolete even before its appearance in print. It was not executed by scholars trained in Bible and Semitics, and was apparently predicated on the presupposition that all productive scholarship came to an end early in this century. Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut\u2019s commentary on the Torah is a commendable production, but it is geared to the Reform Jewish community.
\nAs I stated earlier, Chaim Potok and I presented the officers of The Jewish Publication Society with our proposal for a new commentary on the Bible for the entire English-speaking Jewish community. In their wisdom they realized that to do justice to the new JPS Tanakh translation, and to a venerable Jewish tradition, a commentary was sorely needed. The decisive step was taken in 1973. In August of that year, the then JPS president, Jerome J. Shestak, met in Jerusalem with myself, Chaim Potok, Moshe Greenberg, Jonas Greenfield, and Yosef Yerushalmi. After extensive discussions, we formulated guidelines for the project. Following this, I was appointed General Editor with Chaim Potok as Literary Editor. Jerome Shestak was to act as the liaison between the Society and those responsible for the Commentary.
\nOf course, it was understood from the beginning that the Commentary would stretch the resources of the JPS far beyond prudent limits. Hence, dedicated officers of the Society undertook to recruit patrons who would each contribute substantial sums to a special fund to be applied exclusively toward defraying the enormous expense that the production would entail.
\nThe selection of the authors was the next step to be taken, and it proved to be no easy task. It was complicated by the very nature of the enterprise, which dictated certain obvious restrictions and criteria. It goes without saying that those who were to be assigned the commentaries on the various books had to be senior professional scholars, recognized authorities in the fields of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies. They also needed to be thoroughly at home in rabbinic literature and in medieval Jewish exegesis. Another important qualification was the ability to write good, clear, readable English. The authors would have to know how to adapt the results of scholarly research to the needs of the lay reader, and would have to be able to resist the temptation to employ the kind of technical terminology that is so dear to academicians and specialists.
\nIn the past, not many Jews entered the field of modern biblical studies, mainly for want of professional opportunity. This situation has been slowly changing. Today, there is a respectable cadre of young Jewish scholars of high caliber. But there is a dearth of senior scholars. Hence, the pool of potential authors for our Commentary series was severely limited. Two American Jewish professors and two Israeli scholars were recruited, aside from the present writer. Both Israeli scholars subsequently withdrew. We were fortunate to replace one of them with another professional American scholar of distinction, while this writer undertook to author two of the commentaries. The final line-up was: Sarna for Genesis and Exodus, Baruch Levine for Leviticus, Jacob Milgrom for Numbers and Jeffrey Tigay for Deuteronomy.
\nIt had been decided previously to follow the format of the Hertz Pentateuch. That is, the Hebrew, and English translation would appear on a single page in parallel columns, with the commentary spread over the page underneath them. The new Tanakh translation, of course, would be the English text but the selection of a Hebrew text of the Torah unexpectedly turned out to be a vexing problem. Because the entire volume was to be set by computer, it was necessary to find a good text with vowels and cantillation signs on the computer tape. We scoured the world for such a product but encountered repeated disappointment. We were informed that just such a program already existed in a European country at a distinguished academic institution. Its creation had been sponsored and financed by the government of that country. However, the person in charge turned out not to be possessed of the highest ethical standards. Sensing the possibility of self-enrichment, that person asked us to deposit quite a large sum of money in a private New York bank account so that, we were unabashedly told, a comfortable retirement for him could be assured. Of course, the Jewish Publication Society would have nothing to do with any such arrangement, and the search turned to Israel. There, a publishing firm possessed just the product that we were looking for. It transpired, however, that a fresh problem arose, not of ethics, but of expense. The firm demanded royalties on each volume to a degree that would have put it beyond the range of affordability for the average Jewish family, and would have doomed the Commentary to unprofitability from the start.
\nFurther investigation yielded no results until we learned that back in Philadelphia itself, where the offices of the Jewish Publication Society have been housed for over a hundred years, there existed a very important research project on the Septuagint, being undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania. This involved the use of a computerized data base for research on the Greek Bible that required a parallel alignment of all elements of the Hebrew and Greek texts. What is known to scholars as the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia was actually available on computer, at least in consonantal form without the vowels and cantillation signs. This is the latest revision of the famous Biblia Hebraica originally edited by Rudolf Kittel, which reproduced the Leningrad Codex (B 19A\/L), the oldest dated manuscript of the complete Hebrew Bible. It contains a colophon to the effect that it was copied in 1008\/1009 c.e. from a manuscript written by the distinguished Masorete Aaron ben Moses ben Asher who lived in the first half of the tenth century in Tiberias. This text would need to be vocalized and adapted in format to the weekly liturgical Torah readings, with their internal subdivisions (\u2018aliyot) clearly noted. Another necessary adjustment would be the spacing of the Hebrew text to correspond to the arrangement of the recently completed translation of the Jewish Publication Society (\u201cThe Tanakh\u201d). In this version thematic and literary units have been appropriately marked off by means of indentation, and poetic sections are graphically indicated. All these issues are relatively minor, technical matters that might be easily resolved by a competent programmer. The University of Pennsylvania project would, at last solve our problem of finding a computer-generated Hebrew text for our Commentary.
\nThe holders of the copyright readily made Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia text available to us, and our own project could henceforth proceed smoothly. Or so we thought. However, to our dismay, receipt of the print-out of Genesis revealed numerous errors. The General Editor had to undertake the laborious task of checking every letter, vowel, diacritical point and cantillation sign. To guard as much as possible against inevitable human fallibility, a highly competent Orthodox Rabbi was hired to duplicate this inspection independently. The two sets of corrections were then collated, and a master-copy was produced and sent back to the programmer. Alas, the revised print-out uncovered fresh errors not previously present, and a further print-out was ordered. Finally, the process of correction was completed, and the commentary of Genesis was satisfactorily published.
\nThe same inspection process has had to be repeated with each of the other four books of the Torah. Even this expensive and time-consuming system of checks and balances turned out not to be fool-proof. Inexplicably, an extra word mysteriously appeared in the text of Leviticus 23:18, which was not in the last corrected version of the Hebrew. Much to our embarrassment, the error appears in the first edition of the commentary on Leviticus. Three of the five volumes of the Commentary on the Torah have now appeared, and the fourth, which is that on Exodus, is due to be published in December 1990. The character and thrust of the series are available for all to see.
\nOur new JPS Commentary follows the traditional Jewish approach to the Hebrew Bible as a living organism that perpetually rejuvenates and transforms itself, so that what is time-bound becomes ever timely and what is timely becomes timeless. With deep reverence for the sanctity of the Scriptures, and with profound respect for the insights and teaching that twenty centuries of Jewish commentators have drawn from the texts, our new venture forges a fresh link in that unbroken chain of Jewish exegesis.
\nFor the first time, the assured results of modern literary, archaeological, historical, sociological, anthropological, linguistic and textual research are systematically distilled and digested in non-technical language and presented to the intelligent Jewish public\u2014together with heavy emphasis on the spiritual, ethical, and halakhic teachings of the rabbinic sources, all harmoniously interblended.
\nPermit me to conclude with a story, excerpted from a medieval Jewish fantasy written by Immanuel of Rome, who lived ca. 1265\u20131331. He was a friend of Dante and authored a Hebrew work called Ha-Tofet Ve-ha\u2018eden (Inferno and Paradise), patterned after the famous Divine Comedy of his illustrious contemporary. In this work, he takes a tour of Hell and Heaven. Just as Dante had the great Virgil as his guide, so Immanuel of Rome had the biblical Daniel as his escort. When Immanuel ascends to heaven by what is clearly Jacob\u2019s ladder, he sees there King David sitting on his throne surrounded by all the great Jewish Bible commentators. They are discussing the interpretation of Ps. 68 which David had composed, but the meaning of which he himself had forgotten. This psalm, incidentally is the most difficult of all the 150 psalms that comprise the Book of Psalms. Each of the great Jewish commentators\u2014Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Kimhi and so on\u2014gives his interpretation, but none satisfies King David. Then Immanuel of Rome presents his own. King David enthusiastically confirms the correctness of the exposition, rises from his throne, and kisses Immanuel on his forehead. Buoyed by this experience, Immanuel then visits Hell. But there he becomes thoroughly alarmed and depressed at the sight of all those miserable wretches suffering excruciating tortures. He recalls his own sinful life, and wonders what fate will await him. The good Daniel, however, assures him that he has received divine pardon for all his numerous sins for the reason\u2014and note this well\u2014that he devoted his life to biblical studies.
\nEvery commentary on the Bible is a child of its time. It can be none other. The emphases mirror and reflect its contemporary cultural, social, intellectual, and spiritual concerns and Zeitgeist. Hence, by definition, every commentary must embody that which is ephemeral side by side with that which is enduring. History will inexorably render its verdict on our enterprise. We trust that the enduring will outweigh the ephemeral.
\nPROPHETS
\nNaboth\u2019s Vineyard Revisited (1 Kings 21)*
\nKing Ahab\u2019s unavailing attempt to acquire the vineyard of a certain \u201cNaboth the Jezreelite,\u201d and Queen Jezebel\u2019s infamous stratagem designed to ensure that her husband realize his desire, are narrated at length in 1 Kings 21. This text preserves several noteworthy and perplexing features that have not been fully elucidated.
\nIt is clear from the start that even in paganized Northern Israel, the monarch had no power, in the present instance, simply to impose his will by force upon his subjects. He accepted the restraint of law. He offered to pay the full value of the property or even to exchange it for a superior parcel of land (vv. 1\u20133). Upon Naboth\u2019s refusal, he could only lie on his bed in a sullen mood, sulk, and reject food, but he could not confiscate the vineyard he so yearned to possess (v. 4).
\nThis remarkable limitation upon crown rights is of particular interest in light of the contrasting arbitrary authority and personal privileges that kings could assert and enjoy in Israel\u2019s neighboring states. Akkadian legal and other documents from Ugarit and elsewhere have shown that Samuel\u2019s denunciation of the institution of kingship, as recorded in 1 Sam. 8:9\u201317, is an authentic reflection of the contemporary state of affairs in the region. The prophet\u2019s assertion that the king would seize his subjects\u2019 \u201cchoice fields, vineyards, and olive groves\u201d and dispose of them at will (8:14) is in striking opposition to the situation in which Ahab now finds himself.
\nThe impotence of the Israelite king, from a legal point of view, explains the diabolical measures to which Jezebel feels she must resort. As a Phoenician princess, accustomed to a different, Near Eastern conception of tyrannical kingship, in which monarchs can indulge their whims and exercise absolute, arbitrary power, Jezebel evinces undisguised contempt for Israelite limitations on royal authority (1 Kgs. 21:7). Nevertheless, she realizes that if she is to secure the coveted property for her husband, her scheme must scrupulously preserve the appearance of legality, even though the substance of justice can be disregarded. So she lays on a veneer of legitimacy by cloaking injustice in the robes of law. Wielding corrupt royal influence, she issues a writ in the kings name, recruits unprincipled, servile judges, and suborns two malevolent false witnesses (vv. 8\u201310). On her orders, Naboth is unjustly charged with two capital crimes, blasphemy and treason. Of course, the victim is found guilty on both counts, is summarily executed, and his property is expropriated by the king (vv. 11\u201316).
\nThe two offenses, blasphemy and treason, are listed in the pentateuchal legislation. Exod. 22:27 prescribes:
\nYou shall not revile God nor put a curse upon a chieftain among your people.
\nWhile the Hebrew term n\u0101\u015b\u00ee, here rendered \u201cchieftain,\u201d is a designation for a tribal leader and reflects a premonarchic governmental administration, once the monarchy was established, its connotation of \u201cruler\u201d would plainly be extended to include the king. The Covenant Code thus makes blasphemy and treason statutory offenses, but it specifies no penalty for infractions. However, Lev. 24:15\u201316 is explicit regarding the punishment for blasphemy:
\nAnd to the Israelite people, speak thus: Anyone who blasphemes his God shall bear his guilt; if he also pronounces the name Lord, he shall be put to death. The whole community shall stone him; stranger or citizen, if he has pronounced the Name, he shall be put to death.
\nBlasphemy appears to have been regarded everywhere as a capital offense, as a crime against public and social order, what in Roman law is termed crimen publicum. The reason for this classification seems to have been the belief that the offense incurred the wrath of the insulted deity to the misfortune of the entire community. Hence the severity of the penalty and the involvement of the whole community in carrying out the punishment. The Middle Assyrian Laws, Tablet A 2, legislate that a woman who utters blasphemy \u201cshall bear her liability; her husband, her sons, and her daughters shall not be touched.\u201d The nature of the penalty is not specified, but as Driver points out, the explicit exclusion of her near relatives appears to be a revision of an earlier practice that seems to have entailed the punishment of the entire family. Some light on the lacuna in the Assyrian Laws is most likely shed by an inscription of Ashurbanipal (668\u2013627 b.c.e.), which records the way in which two blasphemers were treated; their tongues were ripped out and they were skinned alive.
\nAs to the crime of reviling the king, no biblical legal text mentions the consequential punishment. However, since God and king are paired, implicitly in Exod. 22:27[28] and explicitly here in 1 Kgs. 21:10, 13 and in Isa. 8:21 (in reverse order), it is reasonable to assume that this offense was understood to be on the same level of high crime as blasphemy. It too was taken to be a grave threat to the established social order, a crime against the state, an act of treason meriting capital punishment. Quite likely, this conception is reflected in the desire of Abishai, son of Zeruiah, to slay Shimei ben Gera for \u201coutrageously insulting\u201d King David, as told in 2 Sam. 16:5\u201313, 1 Kgs. 2:8\u20139.
\nAhab\u2019s expropriation of the vineyard is, on the surface, a puzzling detail in the narrative. After all, Ahab and Jezebel felt compelled to comply, however reluctantly and perversely, with the demands and forms of Israelite law and tradition. Hence, it is certain that the king\u2019s taking possession of the property immediately following the pretended trial and judicial murder of Naboth was legally sanctioned in the circumstances. If this were not the case, the biblical historiographer, who displays such intense antipathy toward the house of Omri and especially toward Ahab and his pagan spouse, would assuredly have added the illegality of the royal acquisition to the inventory of heinous sins they committed. Elijah\u2019s condemnation \u201cWould you murder and take possession?\u201d is a judgment on the criminal, immoral nature of the entire conspiracy, not just on the specific act of royal acquisition. It cannot be that Jezebel simply confiscated the vineyard extrajudicially, something neither she nor Ahab dared to do in the first place. If in the end the king would still have to act arbitrarily and ultra vires, why go through the motions of a trumped-up indictment and spurious judicial proceedings? It is most probable then that the act was seen as juridically acceptable. The forfeiture must have been merited in accordance with existing, recognized procedure and tradition. It may therefore be assumed that some formal, symbolic ritual that validated and effectuated the transfer of title from Naboth to Ahab lies behind the repeated use of the term \u201ctake possession.\u201d Jezebel instructs her husband to \u201cgo take possession of the vineyard.\u201d The text tells us that \u201cAhab set out for the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite to take possession of it\u201d (vv. 15\u201316). Similarly, the divine directive to Elijah to confront the king stresses, \u201cHe is now in Naboth\u2019s vineyard; he has gone down there to take possession of it\u201d (v. 18).
\nJezebel\u2019s effort to create a fictional impression of legality, her careful attention to the proper judicial formalities, albeit in order to accomplish an immoral objective, raises a basic question. The queen undoubtedly knew full well that the crimes of which Naboth was to be accused would be punishable by his execution and the consequent confiscation of his property, so that Ahab\u2019s possession of it would be assured. But on what legal grounds did the vineyard become forfeit and devolve to the crown? This basic question exercised the medieval Jewish exegetes Rashi, David Qim\u1e25i, Gersonides, and Abrabanel. They all maintained that the \u201clegal\u201d justification for Ahab\u2019s final act was the existence of a law that the estate of a felon executed by royal degree escheated to the crown. This interpretation follows the majority view put forth in a debate among the tannaim of the second century c.e., as recorded in rabbinic sources, although it is not clear whether the forfeiture was understood by these authorities to be a part of the penalty for the commission of high crime or a logical consequence of the punishment. The minority view held that Ahab received Naboth\u2019s estate by inheritance, since he was the deceased victim\u2019s first cousin and thus a rightful heir. This explanation is also cited by David Qim\u1e25i. What is of special significance is that the sages on both sides of the debate, as well as the medieval exegetes, took it for granted that Ahab obtained the property on the basis of some established juridical principle applicable in the particular circumstances.
\nIt is hardly likely that the minority view presented above rests on anything more than an attempt to counter the claim of the majority and to find an alternative reason why Ahab could inherit the estate. But what is behind the majority view? Before dealing with this issue, we must note that a complicating factor appears in 2 Kgs. 9:25\u201326.
\nIn this text we are informed that when the rebel Jehu carries out his coup d\u2019etat against Joram of Israel, the last of the Omrides, he has the body of the slain king dumped in \u201cthe field of Naboth the Jezreelite,\u201d and he cites a supposedly divine pronouncement, \u201cI swear, I have taken note of the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons yesterday.\u2026\u201d Surprisingly, the narrative of 1 Kings 21 makes no mention of Naboth\u2019s sons or of their execution. The instructions sent by Jezebel to the judges contain not a word about them, nor are they referred to in the report of the fulfillment of her orders or in the announcement of the fulfillment to the queen, nor when she informs her husband, nor in the narration of the situation in v. 16. Indeed, had Jezebel really ordered the murder of the children, the narrator would surely have told of it as still one more example of the monstrous evil and the heinous crimes that characterized her reign. There would have been absolutely no reason to ignore or suppress the fact, and every reason to highlight it. The report of 2 Kgs. 9:26 must derive from an independent, variant version of the Naboth affair. At any rate, it is of interest that the above-mentioned rabbinic sources do not take the statement literally but treat it figuratively. That is, with the execution of Naboth the blood of his potential offspring was also shed, as it were, all of the generations now doomed never to be born. Be that as it may, even if Naboth\u2019s children had been executed with him, we would still be without clear explanation for Ahab\u2019s lawful acquisition of the vineyard.
\nAlthough pentateuchal law features no such penalty as state forfeiture of a convicted criminal\u2019s property, the practice is attested over a long period of time and over a wide geographic and varied cultural area. In the Bible itself, Ezra (10:8) uses the threat of confiscation as a sanction to enforce obedience to an order to the returnees from the Babylonian exile. Moreover, the associated admonition that the offender shall be \u201cexcluded from the congregation\u201d amounts to the Roman concept of civil death. It is hardly likely that this device was Ezra\u2019s innovation, even though it is not otherwise clearly mentioned in a biblical text. But we note that when David, in flight from Absalom, learned that Mephibosheth, grandson of the deceased Saul, had stayed in Jerusalem in hope of gaining the crown, he immediately decreed the confiscation of the traitor\u2019s lawful inheritance, and presented it to Ziba the informant (2 Sam. 16:4). These instances suggest that forfeiture of this kind was provided for in ancient Israelite customary law. Indeed, the strictures of Ezekiel (45:8, 46:18) against the confiscation of the people\u2019s land by \u201cthe prince\u201d (Hebrew n\u0101\u015b\u00ee\u2019), that is, by the king, in the prophet\u2019s idealized description of the restoration of Israel after the exile, indicate that such practices were not uncommon in the monarchy period. In extrabiblical sources, an Akkadian legal tablet from Alalakh from the reign of King Niqmepa, bearing the seal impression of his father, King ldrimi, and deriving from the fifteenth century b.c.e., records that a certain Arpa had become a criminal, a b\u0113l ma\u0161ikti, a term that has been shown to carry the implication of treason. He was executed for his crime, and his estate escheated to the palace. In Attic law, the penalty for treason (prodosia) was death, followed by confiscation of the condemned\u2019s property and a declaration of dishonor and deprivation of civil rights (atimia), which meant that his heirs too were disenfranchised. This is what happened to the Athenian orator and politician Antiphon, who was executed in 411 b.c.e. after being convicted of high treason. In ancient Rome, the property of a person convicted of a crime against the state (crimen publicum) became the property of the state (res publica). According to the Hanafi school of Islamic law, the blasphemer is disenfranchised, and all claims to property or inheritance are voided. In England, the famous and perhaps most crucial provision of the Magna Carta extracted from King John in 1215, clause 39, decreed that \u201cno freeman shall be taken or [and] imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, \u2026 except by the lawful judgment of his peers or [and] by the law of the land. It was aimed at preventing the arbitrary confiscation of property by the king; however, the law of the land did allow forfeiture of the property of a convicted criminal. English kings were still exercising this right in the seventeenth century. The Statute of Treasons of 1352 specified that treason against the king entailed forfeiture of land and goods, and this law continued in force until the Forfeitures Abolition Act enacted in 1870, which abolished the whole law of escheat as a punishment for felony.
\nThe guiding principle that underlay the right of the state to impose forfeiture was the doctrine of \u201ccorruption of blood.\u201d A convicted felon was deemed to be attainted; his blood was considered to be corrupt. The immediate consequence of this doctrine was the status of civiliter mortuus. In modern parlance, he became a \u201cnonperson.\u201d \u201cCivil death\u201d operated retroactively and henceforth. It entailed automatic divestment of the rights of ownership. It extinguished the power to inherit, retain, and bequeath property. Descendants were thereby disinherited. Hence, the estate of the convicted felon, being now ownerless, belonged to the state.
\nThe framers of the American Constitution took pains to nullify the doctrine of \u201ccorruption of blood.\u201d The second section of the second clause of Article III declared that \u201cno attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person attained.\u201d The legal implications of this clause have been explored several times in the courts, the most famous being the case of Avery v. Everett in the Court of Appeals of New York, October 2, 1888.
\nThe expression corruption of blood in the sense used in English law since feudal times has no counterpart in biblical Hebrew sources or in the cognate languages. But the concept, even if unarticulated, was implied in the recognized and accepted right of the monarch to take possession of the property of a felon convicted of blasphemy or treason, thereby disinheriting his heirs. Whether or not Naboth had heirs, Ahab was acting according to his legal rights in appropriating Naboth\u2019s vineyard following the unfortunate victim\u2019s condemnation on two capital charges, given the formal nature of the proceedings.
\nThe Abortive Insurrection in Zedekiah\u2019s Day (Jer. 27\u201329)
\nOn the second of Adar in the seventh regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar, i.e. on the 15\/16 March, 597 b.c.e., the city of Jerusalem surrendered to the Babylonian army after a brief siege. The short reign of Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, came to an abrupt end, and Zedekiah, son of Josiah, was installed by Nebuchadnezzar on the throne of Judah as a vassal king.
\nIt was not long, however, before the anti-Babylonian party in Jerusalem gained the upper hand and plotted rebellion. Sometime in the last decade of the sixth century b.c.e., there took place a six-power regional conference, the aim of which was to plot coordinated rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar. This event is known to us solely from Jer. 27:2 ff. which relates that the envoys of the trans-Jordanian monarchies of Edom, Moab and the Ammonites, together with those from the Phoenician city-states of Tyre and Sidon, assembled in Jerusalem clearly for that purpose.<\/p>\n
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