LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CHAPTER 23<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pseudepigrapha in the Pseudepigrapha: Mythical Books in Second Temple Literature<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The purpose of this study is to investigate a phenomenon observable in a variety of Second Temple-period texts, namely reference to, or even quotation of, texts that do not exist. Such references appear in various documents preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the corpus usually termed the Pseudepigrapha. In the study that follows we hope to call attention to and analyze this phenomenon.
\nWe need to say at the outset that such references may theoretically be of two types. There may be references to books that once existed but are lost. The phenomenon of \u201clost apocrypha\u201d has long been known, and such texts are often quoted in the church fathers. In fact, this assumption underlies the method for giving names to some Qumran texts that are designated by the term \u201capocryphon.\u201d The original editorial team named these texts as if they were in fact dealing with works once known and now recovered. The second possibility, which will constitute the bulk of our discussion, concerns the quotation of pseudepigraphic texts that never existed. Nonetheless, they were mentioned or even quoted as if they were real in preserved apocryphal or pseudepigraphic texts. We might go so far as to term this phenomenon \u201cfictitious pseudepigrapha.\u201d
\nThe phenomenon we are describing is found as well in the biblical corpus. Numerous books that are not extant today are referred to in the Bible. It is certainly true that some of these books may be actual books that were lost in antiquity. They might have been lost for a variety of reasons, most likely because they were overpowered by those books eventually canonized in the Hebrew Bible but also because of the change in the script. This is most likely the case for books like the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and Israel. It is probable that those books once actually existed since all ancient Near Eastern monarchs kept such chronicles. But other books referred to in the Bible may simply be literary devices, books that never existed, the quotation of which served the needs of the author who cited them. An example may be the Book of the Wars of the Lord. The rabbis saw the Book of Jashar as referring to an existing book of the Bible, as they thought that no separate book with this title had ever really existed.
\nFinally, a brief word about two subjects not to be included in this paper. The first is that of the heavenly tablets. This motif involves the notion of a preexistent divine revelation not found in the canonical Bible but claimed by the author who mentions it to have been vouchsafed to him, often through the intermediacy of an angel. This subject has been studied by others and will be omitted here. The other subject is that of heavenly books of life and death. These do not relate at all to our subject. This concept, which is also found in rabbinic literature, refers to the fate or destiny of a person in systems assuming predestination, or to God\u2019s verdict regarding that person\u2019s future assuming free will, as is the case in rabbinic Judaism. In any case, such books do not intend to pass down either divine revelation or human ancestral teaching and so are irrelevant to this discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Textual Tradition<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A number of cases of \u201cpseudepigraphal pseudepigrapha\u201d involve the claim that biblical figures passed on their traditions from generation to generation in written form. In some of these examples, the Bible does not even indicate that there existed any tradition, let alone that it was passed down. But to fill gaps in the chain of biblical tradition, and to endow ancestors, especially of the priests, with primeval authority, it is claimed that actual books were passed down. While there is certainly no historical evidence that such books existed in patriarchal or First Temple times, literature claiming to constitute the teachings or testaments of these figures did indeed circulate in the form of pseudepigraphic books in Second Temple times.
\nThe most famous biblical character in this regard is Enoch. 1 Enoch 13:7, preserved in 4QEnc 1 vi 2\u20133, refers to Enoch in the land of Dan, reading a book of the account (probably correctly restored as sefer dikhron) of the Watchers\u2019 requests\u2014a sort of petition. This takes place soon after the Watchers were expelled from heaven as a result of their sins in having relations with human women and bringing evil into the world. Enoch writes out a petition for forgiveness on their behalf. 1 Enoch 14:1, partially preserved in 4QEnc 1 vi 9, refers to the \u201cBook of the Words of Truth and Reprimand\u201d that Enoch apparently sent to the Watchers. The book itself represents a vision that Enoch had received indicating the banishment of the Watchers from heaven.
\nThe Book of Giants (4QEnGiantsa 8 1) begins by alluding to a book (sefer). Apparently this is the beginning of a section of the text that describes fictitious writings of Enoch. Indeed, line 3 continues by mentioning a copy (parshegen) of the second tablet of the epistle (\u2019igarta\u2019) written by Enoch\u2019s own hand (bi-khetav yad). This epistle seems to have been written to Shemi-\u1e25azah and his companions. Here Enoch does not petition on behalf of the Watchers but functions only as a scribe so that he does not take the side of the Watchers.
\nIn 1 Enoch 82, a chapter that is the conclusion of the Book of the Heavenly Luminaries (chs. 72\u201382), Enoch refers to the books he has written for Methuselah and other writings he is passing down to him (82:1\u20132). Methuselah is commanded to preserve them and deliver them to posterity. 1 Enoch 92:1 reflects this same motif in referring to the Epistle of Enoch (92\u2013105) as written by \u201cEnoch the Scribe of distinction and the wisest of men.\u201d The text is partly preserved in 4QEng 1 ii 22, which refers to \u201cthat which Enoch wrote (ktb) and gave to Methuselah,\u201d his son, and to all his brothers to pass on to future generations. This clearly refers to a book or epistle that was imagined to have been written by Enoch for the purpose of passing down primeval Israelite tradition.
\n1 Enoch 104:10, in the Epistle of Enoch, tells us that there will be sinners who will write books of evil and deceit. But the words of Enoch will be written down in various languages correctly and accurately. The books will be given to the righteous and the wise, and these books will be a source of joy, goodness, and wisdom. Since this passage occurs near the end of the Epistle of Enoch, it is obviously a reference to this literary unit, not some imagined literary texts. In this way, the Epistle is understood to be the means for passing on Enoch\u2019s teachings to future generations.
\n2 Enoch represents an adaptation of Enoch traditions found in the 1 Enoch corpus as well as others not included there. Chapter 2 deals specifically with books attributed to Enoch. In 2 En. 33:9\u201310, God instructs Enoch to take the books that he has written and to go down to earth. He is told to give the people manuscripts of his works so that mankind will recognize the uniqueness of the God of Israel. These books are supposed to be passed down in manuscript from generation to generation. Version B refers also to writings of Adam and Seth, in which God is shown to be especially concerned that these texts not perish in the upcoming flood.
\nIn 2 Enoch 47, Enoch gives his children his writings, and tells them to read them and follow their wisdom (vv. 1\u20133). In 48:7\u20139 he commands them to make them known among their children for all generations. Those who reject these books will incur great punishment. In ch. 54, they are commanded not to keep these books secret.
\nJubilees 45:16 speaks of the books of Jacob as well as the books of his forefathers that he gave to Levi to preserve and renew for his children. A very similar idea is found in the Aramaic Levi Document (Cairo Genizah MS Cambridge) col. e. Here Levi refers to a sefer musar \u1e25okhmah, \u201ca book of instruction in wisdom,\u201d which he commands his family to teach to their posterity (lines 17\u201318, 23=4Q213 1 i 9, 12). Apparently this is meant as a book that had been passed down to him, most probably from his father Jacob, bearing the proto-Israelite tradition, which he was now, soon before his death, passing on to his sons.
\nIn Jub. 10:14 the same is asserted about Noah, who is said to have given his writings to Shem. Indeed, 1QApGen 5:29 mentions a \u201cbook (ketav) of the words of Noah.\u201d This seems to be an introductory title to a section of the work that purported to be a Book of Noah. Essentially, then, we have a mention here, in a pseudepigraphal book, of an \u201cearlier\u201d imaginary pseudepigraphal book. According to Jub. 12:24\u201326, God taught Abraham Hebrew since it had been forgotten in the aftermath of the flood. Then Abraham took the books of his forefathers, which were in Hebrew, copied them, and started to study them. These works apparently motivated him to leave Haran and to set out for the land of Canaan.
\n4Q542 (Testament of Qehat) frg. 1 col. 2 includes a passage that sets forth a chain of tradition. The narrator is giving a testament-type speech and asking his children to observe the religion of Israel. The narrator is Qehat, the father of Amram, who is mentioned explicitly. He seems to refer to books that have been passed on from him to Amram, whom he addresses, to be passed on to his progeny, and these writings (ketave) are explicitly stated to have been given by Levi to Qehat. Amram is commanded to take care of them and to pass them on. Frg. 2 refers to reading, apparently referring to the same books.
\nA close counterpart to this narrative appears is in 4Q543 (Visions of Amrama), the beginning of which is apparently preserved. The text begins by referring to itself as \u201cA copy of the writing of the words of the vision of Amram that he revealed to his sons.\u201d Here the term is parshegen ketav, \u201ca copy of the text.\u201d 4Q545 (Visions of Amramc) starts out with the exact same introduction as does Amrama in frg. 1 col. 1, and they clearly represent the exact same text. In frg. 4 of Amrame (4Q547 9 8) he refers to the fact that he wrote (ketavet) the vision, so that we are clearly dealing with a pseudepigraphic writing.
\nThe narrator of 4Q541 (Apoc of Levib?) frgs. 1+2 says that someone else will utter words and then, in conformity with God\u2019s will, keep something (perhaps a book) and then write another book and a second. This enigmatic passage refers clearly to some biblical figure, perhaps Levi, who will pass on at least two books. Here the term is ketav, meaning \u201ctext.\u201d Frg. 7 of this text mentions a text (ketav) and then books of wisdom (sifre \u1e25okhme[ta) that will be opened containing the words of this figure or of God. The author of these texts seems to be distinct from the narrator, and, if frg. 9 col. 1 is relevant, then this figure appears to be an eschatological one, probably messianic, or may be foretelling the messianic future.
\n4Q536 (Book of Noah) 1 ii 12\u201313 discusses a figure who will reveal mysteries, presumably in the end of days. The narrative voice then says, \u201cWho will write these, my words, in a book that does not wear out? And my sayings [\u2026]?\u201d This speaker is obviously a biblical hero who expects that his words will be written in some pseudepigraphic work and passed down so that, unlike all normal books, this one will not wear out. In this case, the purpose of the books seems to be to provide apocalyptic revelation at the end of days.
\nAn interesting example of levels of pseudepigraphic writing is found in 4Q529 (Words of Michael) frg 1. The text purports to be a writing (ketava) by the angel Michael, and it describes how the writer saw Gabriel, in some kind of cosmic journey, and Gabriel himself, in a vision, described to Michael the books of the Great One, the Eternal Master (line 6). The text as a whole is some kind of ex eventu prophecy in which events of the end of days are foretold.
\nVarious sources mention assumed historical books, similar in some ways to those referred to in the Bible. 1 Esd 1:33 refers to Books of the Histories of the Kings of Judea where the acts of Josiah can be found. But in fact this is simply a reference to the unknown book mentioned in the Bible, the Books of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. The entire passage is parallel to 2 Chr 35:27. The same verse in Esdras refers to the Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah, an exact quotation of the same biblical passage.
\nIn the so-called Proto-Esthera text (4Q550 lines 3\u20135) there is reference to the books of his father (sifre avohi), Darius, being read before the Persian king. This is a reflection of the biblical reference in Esth 6:1 (sefer ha-zikhronot) and refers to books of chronicles of his father\u2019s reign. These were apparently routinely and officially kept court chronicles. But of course the books quoted in Proto-Esthera were not real. We read in Proto-Esthera that a scroll (megillah), presumably the court chronicles, was opened and read before the king, and the text, in turn, quotes a passage supposedly found in this fake pseudepigraphon. In 4Q550c (Proto-Estherd) 3:3\u20135, in a difficult fragmentary passage, there is reference to the command of the king to Bagasro to write apparently historical data; then some plural group is commanded to read from this text (ketava).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Orality, Books, and the Transmission of Tradition<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The presence of so many pseudepigraphal allusions to fictitious books in a relatively limited corpus of early Jewish literature needs to be explained. Before going further, we should call attention to the fact that the examples that we have discussed here are primarily concentrated in a group of texts composed in Aramaic during a specific period of Jewish history, in the fourth through second centuries B.C.E., when Aramaic was dominant. Aramaic literature flourished until the onset of the Maccabean era, when Jewish writers again returned to Hebrew as a sign of incipient nationalist feeling. For this reason, virtually the entire rest of the literature found at Qumran was composed in Hebrew. Several studies have already noted that the Aramaic literature we are discussing, most of it pseudepigraphal works regarding specific heroes of the book of Genesis, constitutes a distinctive stage in the evolution of Jewish literature and a distinctive genre within the so-called apocrypha and pseudepigrapha.
\nIn all the texts we have discussed, the function of the books in question has been to provide accurate transmission of the traditions of ancient Israel through the generations of the pre-Sinaitic period. According to all these works, pre-Sinaitic traditions were passed on in the form of such books from generation to generation until they finally reached the entire Jewish people even before the giving of the Torah at Sinai. In order to properly understand the significance of this notion, we have to consider what the alternative would have been. The only alternative form of transmission of tradition known to the Jewish people in antiquity was, of course, oral transmission. Indeed, it was the view of the later Pharisaic-rabbinic sages that oral tradition did, in fact, exist this early. This explanation, in the view of the sages, accounted for the patriarchal observance of many prescriptions of the still-to-be-given Written Torah even before the revelation at Sinai. The rabbis even assumed that many aspects of the Oral Torah, understood by them to have also been revealed at Sinai, were already known to the patriarchs. Some rabbinic traditions even attributed observance of the Written or Oral Torah to biblical figures who lived before Abraham.
\nThe Pharisaic-rabbinic system, as can readily be seen, is dependent on the assumption that oral tradition has a central role in the historical development of Judaism. Yet it is clear from the study of the legal materials preserved in the Dead Sea corpus that, alongside the notion of oral transmission of the Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition, there was a second trend. This trend, the Sadducean\/Zadokite one, rejected oral tradition and the dual Torah concept of tannaitic literature.
\nMoreover, this distinction regarding the role of oral tradition applies not only to matters of halakhah, but also to what the rabbis termed aggadah, the legends and teachings that make up much of midrashic literature. Just as the Pharisaic\/rabbinic and the Sadducean\/Zadokite approaches diverge regarding legal materials and their origins and source of authority, they also diverge regarding so-called aggadic materials. Such a distinction helps to explain the phenomenon that we have observed. The pseudepigraphal texts that we have examined allow no role for oral tradition or transmission. Hence, in order to place the later biblical tradition, from the patriarchs and Sinai on, squarely within the context of a tradition reaching all the way back to the beginning of Genesis, the only possible mechanism was to understand the tradition as having been passed down in a series of books described in the works we have studied but that, in fact, never existed in ancient times.
\nThis does not mean that none of the books ever existed. Although some of the books referred to, even cited or quoted in our texts, were a result of the interpretive imagination of the authors or their sources, some of the books mentioned, or at least books by the same names, in fact existed in Second Temple times. This is the case, for example, with literary allusions to books of Enoch and Noah referred to in our texts. But, of course, those texts preserved for us are not the ones alluded to in Second Temple literature. It was the fertile imagination of our authors that furnished those books that are alluded to or quoted in the Aramaic pseudepigrapha we have been studying. They attempted to pass off their own works as the words of ancient biblical heroes and had no hesitation in describing the contents of a work supposedly written by those heroes and passed on by them to posterity.
\nThe invention of pseudepigrapha within pseudepigraphal works did not actually die out in Second Temple times. It somehow reemerged in the great Jewish mystical work the Zohar. This work, and various other medieval mystical tracts, assumed the existence of ancient Jewish pseudepigraphal works that were no longer available. Accordingly, several such books, as well as quotations from them and allusions to them, are invented by the author in order to invest some of his teachings with the hoary antiquity and authority that these biblical figures had held for the authors of our Second Temple pseudepigraphal works. The Zohar alludes to the books of Adam and Enoch that are understood to teach ancient esoteric traditions. Yet the Zohar, at least in those parts that are attributed to the Tanna Simeon bar Yohai, is itself pseudepigraphal. After studying the material discussed here, we should not be surprised at all to see a pseudepigraphal work quoting other pseudepigraphic works that in fact had never existed.
\nBoth pseudepigraphal tradition and the later rabbinic aggadah attributed great antiquity to traditions only later revealed. In the case of the Pharisaic-rabbinic tradition, it was held that such traditions had been passed down orally in the patriarchal period, until they were eventually made part and parcel of the heritage of the biblical people of Israel and the later Jewish tradition. For those who composed the pseudepigraphal books that we have been discussing, an alternative system that typified the Sadducean\/Zadokite approach to Judaism was used, based on the tradition of written composition and transmission of all extrabiblical traditions. A long list of putative books of biblical wisdom, which of course had never existed, was created to fill a gap that could only be bridged for the authors with the transmission of authoritative written tradition.
\nHad these books ever, in fact, existed we should hope that they would have been preserved according to the instructions given in the Assumption of Moses (As. Mos. 1:15\u201318). At the end of ch. 1, Moses, referring to the Torah, instructs Joshua as follows: \u201cAnd now I warn you that \u2026 I am about to pass on to sleep with my fathers.\u2026 So study this writing carefully, so that you may know how to preserve the books that I entrust with you. Set them in order and anoint them with cedar-oil and store them away in jars of earthenware in the place the Lord intended.\u2026\u201d We should not be surprised that these pseudepigrapha in the pseudepigrapha never made it into the earthenware jars. After all, this rich pseudolibrary, unlike the collection that was preserved at Qumran, never existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CHAPTER 24<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second Temple Literature and the Cairo Genizah<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is usual to see the discovery of the Cairo Genizah in the context of the history of Judaic Studies in the nineteenth century. Such an approach places the Genizah within the history of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, showing how the Genizah materials provided a treasure trove of manuscripts upon which the new, recently-developed methods of academic study could be put to thorough use. This approach is certainly valid for providing an understanding of the historical significance of most of the materials found in the Genizah. Yet a different approach must be taken to the medieval copies of Second Temple texts found among the manuscripts of the Genizah. In this case, we are dealing with the recovery of texts from Jewish and Christian Late Antiquity, a process that has been going on from the Renaissance up to our own day. There can be no question that much of the agenda of this recovery lay, not in issues pertaining to the history of the Jews and Judaism, but, rather, in the long-standing quest for the recovery of what was termed Christian origins. Nonetheless, the significance of the Genizah for the study of the history of Judaism in Late Antiquity has been immense.
\nMuch of Second Temple literature was lost to the Jewish people and its traditional scholars already in antiquity. For example, the books of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, that is, a large number of books that originated in the Second Temple period, were known at best only obliquely to Jews in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The work of Philo can be said to have been almost completely lost, but that of Josephus, in the form of Yossipon, an abbreviated but reworked version of a Latin translation, did reenter the Jewish tradition in medieval times although it had limited effect on Jewish historical consciousness. While some apocryphal traditions certainly influenced medieval Jewish texts, Jews did not have direct access to this literature in the talmudic period and the Middle Ages.
\nIt was the Renaissance that brought these texts back to the Jewish people, albeit to a small number of dedicated scholars who sought to use this material to understand properly that little understood period that formed the bridge between the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah. At the same time, Christian scholars, as a result of the general attraction of the study of antiquity stimulated by the Renaissance, turned simultaneously to the study of Hebrew and Jewish texts and to the historical background of Christianity. Indeed, for Christian Europe one might say that the very notion of antiquity, let alone its study, was a creation of Renaissance Italy.
\nFor the study of Judaism, the Renaissance greatly widened the available corpus of literature so that it now included the Greek and Latin texts of the Apocrypha and the works of Philo and Josephus. Even the New Testament began to play a role in the reconstruction of Jewish history.
\nFor Christian students of Jewish Late Antiquity, who sought to understand the background of Christianity in Second Temple Judaism, the next significant developments took place after the Reformation, to a great extent in an England then virtually devoid of Jews. Here Hebraism was married to the search for Christian origins, and the result was an investigation of rabbinic literature intended to shed light on the Jewish practices and beliefs that lay behind the documents of the New Testament. It was an activity and interest that created the background for the gathering in England of the great collections of Hebrew manuscripts that play so significant a part in our research today. Much later, long after the return of Jews to Britain, this interest would lie at the basis of the appointment of Solomon Schechter to the faculty of Cambridge University.
\nIn the interim, other developments would further widen the corpus of known Second Temple literature, even before the discovery of the Genizah. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christian scholars scoured the literature\u2014indeed, the unpublished manuscripts\u2014of a variety of Eastern Christian churches that were in possession of various Second Temple-era documents. These were sometimes preserved in secondary translations of their original languages in far-flung places. For example, from Ethiopic came Jubilees and 1 Enoch, two works also known in partial Greek translations that must lie at the base of the Ethiopic. As a result of these developments, when in the latter part of the nineteenth century the Hebrew manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah began to make their way to various European collectors and libraries, the discovery in them of remnants of some Second Temple texts was part of the continuing process of the recovery of the literature of this period. This process would reach its climax with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert texts from 1947 on. It should be no surprise, therefore, that just as the Qumran scrolls would later be seen from the point of view of their significance to the history of Christianity, the same would be the case with the Second Temple texts discovered in the Cairo Genizah. However, for scholars of Second Temple Judaism, the discovery of these important Genizah texts, some of which parallel the Dead Sea Scrolls, opened up a valuable window on Judaism in the Hellenistic age. Let us now turn to those texts that were recovered in the Genizah and are known to date to Second Temple times, Ben Sira, the Zadokite Fragments (Damascus Document), and the Testament of Levi (now called Aramaic Levi Document).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ben Sira<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of all the works of Second Temple literature, Ben Sira, also known as Ecclesiasticus, is unique in its transmission history. This is the only noncanonical work of the Greco-Roman period to be quoted in rabbinic literature. Parts of Ben Sira, both in the original Hebrew and in an Aramaic translation, are cited in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds as well as in a variety of midrashic texts. (The rabbis also quoted other aphorisms in the name of Ben Sira that are not found in the book.) The dissemination of the book of Ben Sira in the Middle Ages, or at least knowledge about its having existed, was sufficiently widespread as to create an entire secondary apocryphal literature based on this apocryphal text, a sort of apocryphal apocrypha.
\nThis text was preserved in Greek as part of the Alexandrian Jewish canon of Scripture translated under the general title of Septuagint. In addition, a Syriac text exists that all scholars see as translated directly from the Hebrew, although based on a somewhat corrupt textual version of the Hebrew. Nonetheless, it is valuable for exegetical purposes and even, to some extent, for textual criticism. Ben Sira was composed ca. 180 B.C.E. in Hebrew and was translated into Greek by the grandson of the author in about 130 B.C.E. In essence, Ben Sira is a wisdom book that continues the biblical wisdom tradition in pre-Maccabean times.
\nPrevious to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, it was known that Ben Sira had originally been composed in Hebrew for it was stated directly by his grandson in the prologue to his Greek translation. Further, the Hebrew text of this book was known to Jerome (342\u2013420 C.E.). Beginning in 1896, Schechter began to analyze fragments from the Genizah. He identified part of the Hebrew text of Ben Sira, but immediately there ensued a debate about whether the Genizah fragments of this book were retranslations from the Greek or other ancient versions or texts of the original Hebrew. The discoveries in the Judean Desert settled this question once and for all, but some fifty years later.
\nEven before 1947, several manuscripts of the Hebrew Ben Sira had been recovered from the Genizah. Schechter\u2019s original fragments were followed by various others between 1897 and 1931. Additional material continued to come to light even after the discovery of the scrolls. Parts of five Genizah manuscripts have been recovered, and these manuscripts do indeed cover much of the book.
\nThose scholars who argued for the originality, or better, authenticity, of the Genizah texts were indeed vindicated by the presence of this text at Qumran and Masada. The Academy for the Hebrew Language edition of Ben Sira lists three Judean Desert manuscripts: 2Q18, Psalms Scroll from Cave 11, and Ben Sira from Masada.
\n2Q18 is an extremely fragmentary text, dating to the second half of the first century B.C.E., that has been ingeniously restored by Maurice Baillet. Baillet based his restoration on Genizah MS B, and, indeed, his fragment seems to have fit that text well, providing a Hebrew text from the pre-Christian era for Sir 6:14\u201315, 20\u201331. With publication of this fragment in 1962 there could no longer be any question of the authenticity of the Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira from the Genizah.
\nFurther evidence for Ben Sira from the Qumran scrolls came within a larger scroll known as the Cave 11 Psalms Scroll (11QPsa). Before turning to the Ben Sira material within this scroll, we must explain the controversy that surrounded this document since its publication by James A. Sanders in 1965. The text has been dated to the first half of the first century C.E. Because this manuscript contains, sometimes in different order, Psalms from the end of the book, certain previously-known apocryphal Psalms, and some additional hymns, it has been characterized as a prayer collection for liturgical purposes. Sanders, followed by other scholars, has seen this text as evidence that the canonical book of Psalms had not yet been closed when this manuscript was written. Other Qumran Psalms manuscripts show evidence of both expanded collections of this type as well as collections containing only masoretic Psalms. Within this expanded Psalms Scroll, whatever its purpose, there is found an excerpt from Ben Sira.
\nColumns 21 and 22 of the scroll contain a Hebrew text of Sir 51:13\u201319, 30. In its complete form in antiquity, the manuscript must have included this entire passage, 51:13\u201330. The missing text is the result of the decomposition of the bottom of the scroll. The most significant results of the publication of this Ben Sira text relate not to the Hebrew text recovered but rather to what it teaches us about the Greek translation. This passage is clearly erotic in its imagery, describing the acquisition of wisdom in sexual terms. The translator has provided us a sanitized version, however, from which no one would ever know the literal meaning of the expressions used by the author of the Hebrew text. Here again parallels were found with Genizah MS B. Since the Qumran text is sufficiently extensive, detailed comparison is possible and, in fact, reveals considerable variation.
\nBefore leaving the discussion of the Psalms Scroll, we should note that immediately before the Ben Sira passage, Genizah MS B includes a passage not known from any of the ancient versions nor from the few ancient manuscripts in our possession. In the Genizah version, immediately before our passage, there appears a poem structured on a pattern similar to that of Psalm 136, each verse of which ends, \u05db\u05d9 \u05dc\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd \u05d7\u05e1\u05d3\u05d5 \u201cfor his mercy endures for ever.\u201d This poem is not found in the Greek or Syriac versions. A few phrases in this poem parallel some of the ends of the benedictions of the weekday Amidah. Some have therefore seen this poem as an early liturgical text dating to Second Temple times. It has been suggested that because this text fell into disuse as part of the liturgy, it was deleted from both the Greek and Syriac versions. This explanation seems far-fetched, especially in light of its being an imitation of the biblical Psalm 136 that found its way into the rabbinic liturgy. Accordingly, it is best to see this poem, preserved only in the medieval Genizah manuscript, as a late addition, not part of the ancient text.
\nThe crowning glory of the recovery of the original Hebrew of Ben Sira was the finding at Masada of the Ben Sira Scroll. In this case, the complete scroll in antiquity would have contained the entire book of Ben Sira. As presently preserved, the scroll includes Sir 39:27\u201343:30. At last, with the publication of this text in 1965 (on the occasion of the opening of the Shrine of the Book of the Israel Museum), a sustained exemplar of the ancient text of Ben Sira is now available. This manuscript dates to the first half of the first century B.C.E., most probably between 100 and 75 B.C.E.
\nFor most of the Masada manuscript, parallel text has been preserved also in MS B from the Genizah. Here we are truly able to compare the readings of the two texts in order to determine the relationship between the ancient and medieval manuscripts. Despite some simplistic portrayals claiming complete agreement, which may represent modern Hebrew triumphalism as much as scholarly judgment, there are considerable differences between the readings preserved in the Masada text and those of both the main text and marginal glosses in MS B. Nonetheless, the similarities are great enough to allow us to conclude that the medieval manuscript is ultimately derived from the same text as preserved in the Masada scroll. Nevertheless, the medieval manuscripts do indeed show evidence of considerable later textual development. This should not surprise us since the existence of this text in several Genizah manuscripts, as well as its function as the basis for a variety of \u201capocryphal\u201d medieval texts, indicate that it was in use among medieval Jews. For this reason, the suggestion that this text came into medieval Jewish hands as a result of the finding of biblical manuscripts near Jericho must be rejected. Further, use of this text in rabbinic literature leads us to expect its circulation and transmission among Jews in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
\nMS B includes extensive marginal notes. It can be determined that the text and margin of this manuscript represent two separate recensions of the Hebrew Ben Sira that diverged from one another at some date before the copying of the various Genizah manuscripts. This picture fits with our view of the continued transmission of the Hebrew Ben Sira in the Middle Ages. We should also note that the Masada scroll of Ben Sira often agrees with the marginal readings of MS B, the readings of which tend to agree with the Hebrew text used by the Greek translator.
\nThe finding of manuscripts of Ben Sira in the Cairo Genizah was the beginning of the recovery of the original Hebrew of this text, a process that culminated with the discovery of the Ben Sira manuscripts from Qumran and Masada. However, comparison of these manuscripts indicates that Ben Sira had a complex textual history in rabbinic and medieval times that has yet to be fully analyzed or appreciated. This complex history itself is evidence of the continuing lure of the wisdom of this great teacher whose words had been prohibited\u2014at least for public reading\u2014by the very same sages who quoted them and admiringly used them to support their teachings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Zadokite Fragments<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of the Second Temple texts found in the Cairo Genizah, there can be no question that the most significant document for the history of Judaism is that known as the Zadokite Fragments or Damascus Document. This text was found in two manuscripts, each partially preserved, among the texts brought to Cambridge from Cairo by Solomon Schechter. Schechter dated the manuscripts to the tenth and eleventh-twelfth centuries respectively, but did not notice that MS B must be seen as an expanded version or recension of MS A for those sections of the text preserved in both manuscripts. It was this text that, in the hands of Schechter, and later Louis Ginzberg, made possible the understanding of much of the life and teachings of the Dead Sea sect.
\nThis document, as preserved in the two partial medieval copies, was understood to contain two sections. The first is an admonition, setting forth the basic self-image, history, and ideology of what appeared to be a previously \u201cunknown Jewish sect,\u201d to borrow a term from Ginzberg. The second section is a series of laws on topics known from biblical and later Jewish law, for example, laws of the Sabbath, civil law, purity and impurity. These laws in many cases agreed with those of later rabbinic law, but in cases of disagreement they were often more stringent.
\nThe discovery of this document immediately raised two major issues. First, and we may say foremost as well, was the fundamental question usually expressed by the phrase, \u201cWho wrote the scrolls?\u201d Indeed, the discovery of these manuscripts led to suggested provenance of every possible kind: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans, Christians, and Karaites. Each of these views was later to be put forward again after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Schechter saw the authors as members of the Dosithean sect of Samaritans, a small group known through later Samaritan literature. Ginzberg, however, argued for Pharisaic identification because of shared halakhic rulings.
\nThe second debate concerned the question of how, if Schechter and Ginzberg were right that the text was ancient, these manuscripts describing a Second Temple-period Jewish sect could have found their way into the medieval treasure trove we call the Cairo Genizah. Reading various sources referring to the predecessors of the Karaite movement, some saw this material as the result of a living tradition that extended from ancient sectarian circles to medieval Karaism and thence to the Cairo Genizah. Others pointed to reports of premodern discoveries of Hebrew manuscripts in the Judean Desert and suggested that such texts as the Zadokite Fragments and Ben Sira were among those discovered. These references, and certain parallels in content and terminology, had led some scholars, mistakenly as we now know as a result of the carbon 14 dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, to identify the authors of these texts as Karaites.
\nThe discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls changed this situation in various ways. When the initial discovery of the scrolls became known to Eleazar Sukenik, he immediately suggested that the new documents were to be related to the Zadokite Fragments. This meant that future analysis of the newly-found scrolls, because of common features of language and content, would be based on the assumption that these texts all belonged to the same sect. Since we now see CD as referring to the scattered sectaries who lived throughout the land and some other texts, like 1QS, as referring to life in the sectarian center at Qumran, this point of view has been refined only to some extent. Still it remains a pillar of scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
\nThe second proposal, also put forward by Sukenik, was that the sectarian group featured in both the Genizah texts of the Zadokite Fragments and the new Dead Sea Scrolls should be identified with the Essenes described by the classical authors. This remained the dominant theory of sectarian identification in present-day scholarship, despite a variety of challenges.
\nOur understanding of this document, however, changed appreciably with the discovery of fragmentary manuscripts of this text in the caves of Qumran in the early 1950s. Yet it would be a long time until the contents of these manuscripts would be in the hands of wide circles of scholars. Evidence for this text now available to us comes from several caves. Two manuscripts, 5Q12 and 6Q15, were published in 1962. The remaining manuscripts, all from Cave 4, appeared only in 1996 after the complete reorganization of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication program. Cave 4 yielded eight fragmentary manuscripts, bringing the total of Qumran copies of this work to ten, certainly enough to lead us to believe that this was a popular work among the sectarians.
\nEven before the publication of these texts, progress had taken place in interpreting the Genizah material, specifically regarding its halakhah. Further, the suggestion had been widely accepted that whereas the Rule of the Community, found in an almost complete manuscript and in several fragmentary copies in the Qumran scrolls, set down rules for the central sectarian community, the Zadokite Fragments legislated for the so-called camps, the far-flung settlements of sectarians throughout the land of Israel.
\nThe true scope of the work as a whole became known only with the publication, first in bootleg form and later in the official edition, of the fragments from Cave 4. Already in 1954 Chaim Rabin had written to Yigael Yadin of the importance of these fragments. J. T. Milik had given some description of these texts and of the nature of the document as a whole. When the documents were finally published by Joseph M. Baumgarten in 1996, what we found out was that this was truly a book of laws on a variety of topics of general Jewish law and sectarian procedure, and that the admonition constituted only some 25 percent of the surviving parts of the work as a whole\u2014apparently intended as an introduction. Even before the publication of these materials Milik had presented a reconstruction of the entire document including the rearrangement of the order of some pages in MS A that had been incorrectly placed by Schechter. Study of all the Cave 4 manuscripts is simply not advanced enough to allow us to suggest a new table of contents that would represent the order of the original text. Further, we cannot be entirely certain that all fragments have been properly grouped, since classification of manuscripts generally assumes that all fragments in the hand of one scribe belong to the same text. Nevertheless, it remains possible that some scribe had copied more than one halakhic text, and that some fragments do not belong with the Zadokite Fragments.
\nBefore proceeding to discuss what we have learned from the new fragments in light of other recently published texts, something must be said about the name of the document. Between Schechter\u2019s editio princeps and the now standard Rabin edition, published in 1954, the name of the text changed, first to Damascus Covenant (based on Hebrew \u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea \u05d3\u05de\u05e9\u05e7) and then, in common usage today, to Damascus Document. The name change based itself upon references to Damascus at several points in the admonition. Some scholars took these references as referring literally to this place, even suggesting that it be excavated, or that these references bespoke a Babylonian origin for the Dead Sea sect. Yet our view remains that the use of Damascus here is symbolic, in accord with the imagery of Amos 5:27. For this reason, we see little reason to call this document by a name that attributes its origins to a Syrian city. In light of the repeated references to the sect\u2019s leaders as Sons of Zadok in this text and in other sectarian documents, we would have preferred to retain Schechter\u2019s nomenclature.
\nOn the basis of the Genizah manuscripts alone, in a previous study, we suggested that the various legal compilations in the Zadokite Fragments originated in the study sessions of the community. We argued that laws derived from scriptural interpretation at these sessions were collected into lists of regulations known as serakhim. The existence of additional collections of this type in the newly published fragments from Qumran, as well as the presence there of headings of the kind also found in the Genizah texts (e.g., \u201cRegarding the Sabbath to observe it according to its regulation\u201d [CD 10:14]), confirm this assumption. At the same time we see evidence for subject organization of Jewish legal traditions even before the Mishnah began to be edited. Further, the assertion that the laws in this text stemmed from biblical interpretation is likewise confirmed by investigation of those laws that we encounter for the first time in the Qumran manuscripts of the Zadokite Fragments.
\nThe availability of a much wider selection of halakhic documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls has made it possible to better understand the context of the halakhic materials in the Zadokite Fragments. Especially important here are the Temple Scroll, recovered during the 1967 War, and the Halakhic Letter (4QMMT), announced only in 1984. Both of these texts have direct legal parallels, and in some cases exegetical parallels, to the laws of the Zadokite Fragments. Further, some texts in the Zadokite Fragments are formulated quite closely to parallels in the Temple Scroll. At the same time, some laws in the Zadokite Fragments, specifically the penal code, are shared with the corresponding penal code in the Rule of the Community, although they exhibit recensional variations. Other parallels, or perhaps we should say common use of exactly the same material, exist between the Zadokite Fragments and a text called SD (Serekh-Damascus or Miscellaneous Rules), which is a compilation of materials from the Zadokite Fragments and the Rule of the Community.
\nSeveral conclusions emerge now from the picture we have just outlined, a picture that could not have been sketched previous to the release of the entire Qumran corpus in 1991. To start with, it is now clear that the Zadokite Fragments, the Temple Scroll, and 4QMMT share a halakhic substratum that we may identify with the Sadducean trend in Jewish law known from rabbinic sources. The Zadokite Fragments embody many older halakhic traditions and interpretations that stem from this common priestly tradition that was inherited by the Dead Sea sectarians.
\nThe existence of material held in common between the Zadokite Fragments and the Rule of the Community makes clear that the initial association of these documents, immediately after the discovery of the first Qumran scrolls, was correct. In particular, the inclusion of sectarian regulations among the Jewish legal rulings in this text certainly argues for its character as a Qumran sectarian document. Yet it remains probable, in view of the truncated nature of the admission process to sectarian membership described here, that this text does indeed refer to communities throughout the land of Israel. Full status at the highest level, however, could only be attained in the more intense sectarian center, the communal life of which is described in the Rule of the Community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aramaic Levi Document<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The final major text to be discussed is that usually called Testament of Levi. For a variety of reasons, this text has come most recently to be termed the Aramaic Levi Document. To understand the significance of this text and the problems posed by it, we must first discuss the general problem of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.
\nThe Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is generally considered to be part of the Pseudepigrapha, a loose collection of Second Temple-period Jewish texts. This text includes exhortations supposedly delivered by each of the twelve sons of Jacob soon before their deaths. It was first published in Greek in the late seventeenth century, although in the early sixteenth century a thirteenth-century Latin translation was also available. Among other themes, we should mention that this text emphasizes Levitical priesthood and precedence of the tribe of Levi even over that of Judah. While the text contains many clearly Jewish elements, it was immediately realized that some passages had to have been written by Christians. Scholars have accordingly debated as to whether we are dealing here with a Jewish work to which Christian additions have been made, a Jewish-Christian text, or an entirely Christian work. Further, it was generally assumed that the Twelve Testaments constitute one unified text, although there is now good reason to believe that it represents a collection of individual compositions, or perhaps that a few compositions have been subsumed into a larger work.
\nThis debate was greatly enriched by the finding of a version of the Testament of Levi in Aramaic in the Cairo Genizah. Essentially the same text would be found in the Qumran caves as well. Further, some medieval versions (not found in the Genizah) of a Testament of Naphtali would also find parallels in the Qumran texts.
\nFragments of the Aramaic Testament of Levi were first identified in Genizah manuscripts now located at Cambridge and Oxford. These manuscripts may be dated to the eleventh or perhaps tenth century C.E. and roughly parallel Testament of Levi 9\u201313. This text however, does not correspond exactly to the Testament of Levi known in the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Rather, from the Genizah copy alone, it is apparent that the Aramaic Testament of Levi was a related text or source for that larger composition. The existence of a Greek manuscript from the monastery at Mount Athos, which parallels parts of the Genizah fragments, also indicates that these fragments are only part of a larger composition that existed in antiquity.
\nAlready with the publication of Cave 1 texts in 1955, it was clear that this Aramaic Levi Document (as it is now called to distinguish it from the Testament of Levi in the Greek Testaments) was an ancient composition that somehow had survived into the Genizah period. 1Q21 was in some way related to Testament of Levi 8 and to the Oxford Genizah fragments. Yet it soon became clear that in the Aramaic text we do not deal with copies of the same material preserved in the Greek texts of the Testament of Levi. Rather, these are sources or alternative recensions of similar material. This explains why 4QTest Levi ara corresponds also partly to the Oxford fragments and partly to the aforementioned Greek manuscript. Another section of this Qumran manuscript parallels Testament of Levi 14 as well as parts of both the Oxford and Cambridge Genizah manuscripts. The attempt to relate additional Aramaic texts from Cave 4 to the Aramaic Levi Document has not been successful. We should, however, take note of the fact that the Zadokite Fragments 4:14\u201318 may contain a quotation from the Testament of Levi or Levi Document in Hebrew.
\nBefore proceeding to draw general conclusions, the data regarding the related Testament of Naphtali must be briefly sketched. Here there are no Genizah fragments to be discussed, but some version of this text survived into the Middle Ages in midrashic texts. Previous to the discovery of the Qumran material, it had been assumed that the medieval version derived from the Greek Testament of Naphtali found in the full Testaments. An Oxford manuscript of the Chronicles of Yerahmeel includes a version of this Testament. Material related to the Testament of Judah survives also in medieval texts, but the fragments identified as a Testament of Judah from Qumran exhibit no real parallels, and the identification of this material is highly speculative. Cave 4 did preserve fragments of a Hebrew Testament of Naphtali that contains a longer version of T. Naph. 1:6\u201312.
\nIn any case, of all the Testaments collected in the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, only versions of Levi and Naphtali were found among the Qumran documents. This has led to the proposal that, in fact, only these texts, and perhaps some passages still unidentified, were available to the author of the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. In this case we would conclude that the Testaments as a whole, with their Christian references, should be seen as a Christian work that made use of those Jewish Testaments, Levi and Naphtali, that were available to the author. The rest of the Testaments, providing texts for each of the twelve sons of Jacob, were essentially original compositions, whereas those of Levi and Naphtali were based on preexisting Jewish documents that must have created the pattern for the composition as a whole.
\nIt is precisely the fact that Levi is preserved in Aramaic and Naphtali in Hebrew that leads to the conclusion that these are separate works, rather than parts of some Second Temple-period prototype of the later Greek text. However, it must be admitted that Naphtali could, in fact, be a translation from an Aramaic original that was not preserved. Such a possibility is supported by the existence of one Hebrew manuscript at Qumran of a translation of Tobit from its original Aramaic.
\nFocusing again on the Genizah manuscripts of the Testament of Levi, we can now say that they represent exactly the same text as was later found in ancient manuscripts at Qumran and that is found in the Greek manuscript from Mount Athos. These texts are substantially different from the Greek Testament of Levi, for which reason they are termed the Aramaic Levi Document. Finally, examination of this text as well as the Hebrew Testament of Naphtali from Qumran favors the likelihood that the entire Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, as known in Greek, is a Christian work that made use of the Levi and Naphtali material represented at Qumran and perhaps of some other similar sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few conclusions emerge from the study of the very few works from the Second Temple period that survived in the Cairo Genizah. First, we should note that in view of the very large number of manuscripts in the Genizah collections, it is likely that very little more of Second Temple literature than what has been identified so far survived among Jews in the early medieval period. It is possible that some fragments may still be discovered in the collections in Russia, but the picture is not likely to change substantially. The discovery of a few Second Temple-period texts in the Genizah in no way contradicts our general impression that the literature of Second Temple Judaism was for the most part lost to the Jews of the talmudic and medieval periods. That this is the case for literature written in Greek is self-evident, but it was certainly the case also for the vast Aramaic and Hebrew literature of Second Temple times\u2014much of which was found at Qumran. This literature was virtually extinct in talmudic circles, even though its influence is sometimes apparent, especially in the aggadic sphere.
\nWe must, therefore, provide some explanation for the survival of these particular texts and their presence in the Genizah. After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars turned to several accounts of the discovery of scrolls near Jericho in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, but these accounts generally describe the finding of biblical scrolls. In the case of Ben Sira, it is clear that this book was being used in rabbinic circles and in the general Jewish community and, therefore, must have circulated widely.
\nWe cannot ascertain the origin of the Zadokite Fragments in the Genizah. Some have sought to explain the presence of ancient sectarian ideas in Karaism as resulting from the discovery of ancient texts in the early Middle Ages. Nevertheless, it seems more logical to postulate that these texts survived in a continuing sectarian tradition that persisted throughout talmudic times and that emerged anew into the light of day after lying dormant for some time. In such a case, the Genizah copies of the Zadokite Fragments would have originated, not in an earlier discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in this continuing sectarian tradition.
\nThe Aramaic Levi Document, however, is even more difficult to pin down. Like Ben Sira, this is not a text peculiar to the Qumran sect. Rather, it was part of the common literary heritage of the Jews of the Second Temple period. It seems to have had no influence in the rabbinic period, and the emergence of the Aramaic original in the Genizah could be explained equally well by an early \u201carchaeological\u201d discovery as by textual transmission. The existence of a translation of this document in an eleventh-century Greek manuscript indicates circulation beyond the Jewish community.
\nThe contribution of the Cairo Genizah to reclaiming the literature of Second Temple Judaism is a pivotal one. In many ways, it was the discovery of the Genizah that spurred on the search for original Hebrew texts from Second Temple times, a search that would literally hit pay dirt at Qumran. The Cairo Genizah and the ancient library of Qumran are in some ways inseparable. After more than a century of research on the Genizah, and more than a half century of study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can only stand in awe of the precious legacy that has been returned to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CHAPTER 25<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inverting Reality: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Popular Media<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second \u201cbattle of the scrolls,\u201d which took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s, culminated in the successful publication of all the scrolls and in the tremendous advances in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls studies that we all take for granted within the walls of Academe. Yet we are aware that there still remains a large gap between the realities of scrolls research and public perception. It is virtually impossible to give a lecture on the scrolls without being asked the usual questions: Is it true that the Vatican is hiding (or was hiding) the Dead Sea Scrolls? or: Isn\u2019t it true that Jesus and\/or John the Baptist are mentioned (or referred to) in the scrolls? It is the contention in this chapter that these misconceptions, as well as a host of related false information, result from the nature of the press coverage given, from the very beginning of the story until today, of the scrolls, their discovery, contents, and publication history. In general, the media have tended to invert reality and to portray the scrolls as relevant to Christianity but not Judaism, as remaining unpublished (or hidden) due to alleged threats to Christian (or even Jewish) faith, and as still under the control (although they never were) of the Vatican. This inversion of reality is of course to be expected in sensationalist or lowbrow articles or videos. More surprising is the fact that supposedly responsible journalists often use these misconceptions as a come-on, allow responsible scholars to counter them, and then leave readers with the impression that there are varying views. Even such articles or videos will give equal time to impossible one-person theories on the false assumption that \u201call Dead Sea Scrolls theories are created equal.\u201d Thus, the inversion of reality in the public mind results from its inversion in media coverage. In this respect, like so many other aspects of our modern culture, the media do not simply report \u201cthe facts and all the facts\u201d or \u201call the news that\u2019s fit to print,\u201d but they in fact shape the public perception. We will see as well that, besides being simply a shaper of the public image of the scrolls, the media have been a player in the history of scrolls research, leading to a sort of conflict of interest that here again is not atypical of trends in our general culture, as, for example, in the area of domestic politics.
\nThe early publicity surrounding the scrolls pointed to a desire by legitimate scholars to carry their point of view to the public by using the media. In fact, in this respect, Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, like some archaeologists, have had privileged access to media exposure when compared to their academic colleagues in other fields. From the earliest days of scrolls research, we have to admit that, realizing the public fascination with the scrolls and their almost magical attention for media coverage, scholars have sought and cultivated the media spotlight. This has been a double-edged sword: interest in the scrolls has been greatly encouraged, but room has been made for the presentation of skewed pictures and even irresponsible scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Original Controversies<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the beginning, the popular media played \u201can important role in arousing worldwide public interest in and even fascination with\u201d the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nevertheless, as noted by Neil Asher Silberman, \u201con more than a few occasions, media coverage of the scrolls has transcended strictly scientific reporting to become deeply intertwined with wider modern political and religious controversies.\u201d This was already the case with the very early announcements of the finds in the New York Times of 25 April 1948, by Millar Burrows on behalf of the American School (now Schools) of Oriental Research. Immediately, Eleazar Sukenik of the Hebrew University responded with his own press conference, determined to prove his right of scholarly primogeniture as the first to have correctly dated and identified the scrolls, as well as to advance the claim of the new State of Israel to the scrolls. In August 1949, Professor Godfrey Driver criticized the Americans in the London Times for encouraging Archbishop Athanasius Samuel to bring the scrolls in his possession to the U.S. and for not sharing their information adequately with other scholars. Likewise, through 1949, as a result of the genuine excitement caused by the announcements of the discovery of the scrolls, questions of their antiquity and authenticity were often discussed in the press.
\nThe early years saw an ongoing, sub rosa, cat-and-mouse game between the American Christian scholars and Israelis to gain possession of the scrolls in the hands of Athanasius Samuel. When the American scholars could not find a buyer for the scrolls, Mar Samuel eventually hawked the scrolls through an ad in the Wall Street Journal, resulting in their being bought by Yigael Yadin and their return to Israel in 1954. Here it was the use of the press\u2019s advertising power that facilitated the acquisition of this group of scrolls by Israel.
\nThe first discoveries in the caves of Qumran took place amidst the events surrounding the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. The caves themselves are located in territory that was first British Mandate Palestine, then Jordan, then territory conquered by Israel in 1967. Hence, their political value as a source of national pride and contested legal status. After Yadin\u2019s purchase, the reclamation of the scrolls for Israel was announced in a 1955 press conference by the prime minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett. The theme of the announcement was the great pride Israelis could feel as a result of the discovery of the scrolls and the connection they fostered between the ancient Jewish state and the modern state of Israel. Yadin himself often stressed this connection in his various publications as well. Yet curiously, this motif was lost to the Israeli press as the scrolls began increasingly to be interpreted as relevant primarily to the study of Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scrolls and Christianity<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The almost instantaneous attention the scrolls got, dependent in part on the na\u00efve popular notion that the scrolls might present some kind of deus ex machina revelation for a world still reeling from World War II and the Holocaust, was no doubt a major factor in contributing to the immense popularity of the now famous New Yorker article by Edmund Wilson, which was soon issued in an expanded version as a book. This article\/book brought to the public not only the mystery of the scrolls and a summary of their story and significance, but also popularized the views put forward in scholarly circles by Andr\u00e9 Dupont-Sommer, many of which were later picked up by John Allegro, a member of the International Team set up in Jordan to publish the scrolls discovered there after the 1948 war. The marketing of these views by Wilson, because of his substantial reputation, influenced the whole later development of how the scrolls have been seen in the popular media. Wilson and Allegro argued that many of the key theological beliefs of Christianity had originated in the obscure sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls which they identified with the Essenes. Qumran was then the true cradle of Christianity. The purpose of Allegro\u2019s work was to undermine Christianity by claiming that Christianity was not the result of a unique revelation but a logical development out of Jewish circles. Wilson\u2019s presentation had, in fact, been supported by the iconoclastic\u2014indeed contrarian\u2014Israeli scholar David Flusser, who because of his access to the Israeli press and public opinion (and later television) would eventually convince most Israelis that the scrolls were of interest only for the history of Christianity.
\nThe press reported on the theories of Dupont-Sommer, and Allegro defended his conclusions on BBC. The other members of the International Team rebutted Allegro in the London Times and elsewhere, pointing to his many excesses and incorrect interpretations. But all of this was to no avail. It is our view that the Wilson article permanently shaped the entire thrust of Dead Sea Scrolls reporting as it has continued up until now. In light of this article and its formative influence, it has been extremely difficult to achieve a hearing for scrolls research in the media that is not integrally\u2014indeed directly\u2014connected to issues of Christian origins.
\nAlready in the debate over Christian origins we can see the inversion of reality in which the real scholars have to defend themselves and their work against unlikely, illogical, or unfounded theories. These theories, often sensational, spark debate in the press because the media often focus on the sensational and then pit the legitimate scholars against the proponent of the latest theory. This continues into the present and is heightened by the false claim that the scrolls are \u201chidden\u201d and authoritative scholars must be involved in a fraud or cover-up while the others are telling the truth. To be sure, the initial secrecy of the International Team has always helped to foster such conspiracy theories regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls.
\nThis inversion is the case with the theories of Barbara Thiering and Robert Eisenman, who see Christian figures as having lived or visited Qumran, and Norman Golb, who claims that the scrolls are the remnants of the Jerusalem library of the temple, brought to Qumran for safekeeping during the revolt of 66\u201373 C.E., and not the library of a sectarian group who lived at Qumran. These theories are actually impossible, from an objective, that is, scientific, point of view. But the media continue to give these views equal play, as if they have the same claim to column inches and attention\u2014even a greater claim\u2014than the more prosaic conclusions of everyone else in the academic world. This trend of reversing reality was most prominent in coverage of the \u201cdiscovery\u201d of the falsely labeled \u201cPierced Messiah\u201d text by Eisenman and Michael Wise and the supposed mention of Jesus (Yeshua\u2014actually the biblical Joshua) in 4QTestimonia \u201cidentified\u201d by two Orthodox rabbis and featured in an article in the Los Angeles Times. These were portrayed in the press as serious, and true and responsible scholars were left to defend the so-called \u201cconsensus\u201d or \u201ccabal\u201d against the most ridiculous of claims.
\nThis is not to say that throughout the history of newspaper journalism connected with the scrolls there has not been any totally balanced reporting. But usually balanced reporting will still use the come-on of the issues of Christian origins as a means of exciting readers, so that the message some-how still comes through to many readers that the scrolls are, as it were, \u201cChristian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Scrolls and the Irrational<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course, nothing discussed so far ranks with media reports of the appearance of Elvis in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the cure for AIDS, proof of life after death, and the prediction of the end of the world, all found in the scrolls according to various supermarket tabloids. Such statements, as ridiculous as they are, were mocked in a cartoon which shows scholars eating chocolate brownies and declaring that this great recipe was discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This cartoon nevertheless points up the fascination for the scrolls and the public interest in what research will discover next.
\nBeyond this, such reports also relate to a cultural aspect that may underlie some of the almost irrational fascination with the scrolls in the media and popular culture. One often gets the feeling, especially in some of the videos and TV programs, that the scrolls are perceived as some kind of potential new revelation, a secret gospel waiting to be revealed and, hence, kept secret by its custodians. This new revelation may be understood in one of two ways. It may be taken as the solution to the problem of Christian origins, assuming that the scrolls tell some alternative story of Jesus and the earliest Christians, a sort of apocryphal gospel; or it can relate to some assumed guidance for the present, our own trying times, an irrational pipe dream that we of course know neither the scrolls nor any other archaeological discovery can fulfill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Publication Controversy<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps one of the most active areas of press activity in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls was in the publication controversy that raged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Here the media became an active participant in the calls for reform and, in fact, may be considered the arena in which the campaign to \u201cliberate\u201d the scrolls was defined, conducted, and won.
\nJohn Allegro had long ago accused the International Team of hiding the scrolls because of the problems they supposedly posed to traditional Christian beliefs. He had sought to protest the ongoing failure of the members of the team to do their share, as he had, in publishing the scrolls assigned to them. The International Team worked on assembling the fragments and sorting the manuscripts until 1960, when they lost interest or their funding dried up. In the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now Rockefeller Museum) in East Jerusalem found itself in Israeli territory. Soon scholars all over the world began to realize that not only were the scrolls not being published, but many of the early scholars on the International Team claimed \u201crights\u201d to be the first to publish them and denied access to anyone else but their select group. It was then that the struggle over the publication (or better nonpublication) of the scrolls began. This battle was fought largely in the press.
\nAlready in the late 1970s, Geza Vermes at Oxford and Morton Smith of Columbia University protested that the scrolls were unavailable to scholars. In 1984, Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, joined ranks with them to launch a media campaign in the pages of his journal to \u201cliberate\u201d the scrolls. This campaign started as a result of the 1985 Dead Sea Scrolls Conference held at New York University.
\nA few words should be said about the particular role of Shanks and BAR in the scrolls publication controversy. Shanks and his periodical are, on the one hand, part of the \u201cmedia\u201d in terms of archaeology and Dead Sea Scrolls. On the other hand, their links with certain scholars and other players in the controversy, as well as their role as a purveyor of scholarship, even to scholars, have made them a special case. But most importantly, Shanks and his magazine have gained a kind of de facto control over the news media in the U.S. when it comes to biblical archaeology. They have effectively become a gatekeeper for most major newspapers, the New York Times being the best example. This is also the result of a peculiar fact about the Times, the newspaper of record for the Dead Sea Scrolls controversy, and many other newspapers in the U.S., namely, that archaeology, including the scrolls, is considered the responsibility of the science desk of the paper. This means that those who write about these issues know little about religion or its history, and less about the scrolls and their contents. The availability of a source for significant and authoritative information, as well as ready-made stories, makes BAR their best friend. It was this fact that resulted in the role of the Times as an echo of BAR, both editorially and in news articles (for the most part in the science section). Effectively, and for good reason, Shanks had an ally in John Noble Wilford, then science editor at the Times, as he sought to bring about the release of the scrolls and their publication. Further, as a result of his status and position at BAR, Shanks found it easy to get op-eds accepted in the Times and Washington Post, and these articles contributed greatly to public awareness of the scrolls and what was at that time their plight.
\nAs a result of the BAR-led campaign, it was not long before the media not only was reporting on the controversy but becoming a major participant. The PBS Nova film \u201cSecrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls\u201d was released early in October 1991, and it in fact was a major stimulus for the timing of the release of the Huntington Library\u2019s microfilm copies of the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The availability of the microfilms, reported in major American newspapers, as well as the publication of the Eisenman-Robinson photographs and the Wacholder-Abegg reconstructions, all in quick succession, led to mounting press coverage that, in turn created what was virtually a media assault on the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). This caused its director, Amir Drori, to formally grant access to the manuscripts for research by qualified scholars.
\nA further role of the press concerns the replacement of John Strugnell as editor-in-chief of the International Team as a result of an antisemitic interview published in the prestigious Israeli Hebrew daily Ha\u2019aretz. The interview, later excerpted in translation in the Times and BAR, was conducted by Avi Katzman, a pugnacious journalist, who sees reporters as involved activists. This interview, and the storm it precipitated, convinced both the International Team and the Israel Antiquities Authority that Strugnell was no longer appropriate to serve as editor-in-chief, and the IAA appointed Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University to the position, a decision that was the key to achieving the goal of full scholarly publication of the scrolls.
\nThe press, therefore, played a significant role in bringing about major changes regarding access to the scrolls, the leadership and composition of the International Team, and the pace of the official publication in the Oxford University Press series Discoveries in the Judean Desert (DJD). The media accomplished far more than the individual scholars who petitioned to see particular manuscripts and far more than the decision of the IAA to set, but never meet, official deadlines for the publication of the texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Video Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To illustrate these trends and others there follows a brief survey of a number of documentaries for television (usually cable) and scrolls videos. Considering the overarching, maybe dominant, role of television in shaping American popular culture, these examples (in almost all of which I had the opportunity to appear, often in a hopeless attempt to provide balance) should be helpful in understanding the issues. Of course, this survey is not exhaustive.
\nThe Nova documentary \u201cSecrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls\u201d was for many of us our first experience with the medium and also with its power as a force for shaping events. This program, aired right after the congressional vote on U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, truly pictured in as close to an objective way as possible the issues and debates regarding the scrolls, as well as the publication problem. If only it had truly set a pattern for all to follow.
\nAnother excellent documentary was produced for Compass, Australian Broadcasting Company\u2019s religion program. Rachael Kohn, working along with the Art Museum of New South Wales in Sydney and in preparation of their scrolls exhibit, produced an excellent program in which all theories were aired, fairly and reasonably. One-person views got their due (maybe more than their due) but were in proper context, and the debate was engaged by a series of excellent and appropriate scholars. Viewers truly got a fair picture. Similarly responsible is the program \u201cRevelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls\u201d from the Arts and Entertainment series Mysteries of the Bible, which always tried to bring to bear a fair representation of scholars and views on all the issues it tackled. (While we are not dealing here with educational entries, not aired on television, we should make special mention of the lectures on the scrolls available on video from the Biblical Archaeology Society. These are fair and balanced and represent scholarly lectures by first-rate academics.)
\nBBC Horizon\u2019s entry, \u201cResurrecting the Dead Sea Scrolls,\u201d as its title indicates, uses the Christianity issue as a come-on. This program essentially sets the issues in the story of the controversy over the Eisenman-Wise book and the claim of Eisenman regarding the scrolls as the real account of Christianity. It has many worthwhile interviews, but the introduction of footage of monks and monastic buildings and other such techniques makes clear that it is truly aimed at the assumption that the scrolls are most important for Christianity. Here the Eisenman theories are set out as if they are the equivalent of other views, to the extent that even the so-called Pierced Messiah text is portrayed as if the question of its meaning is a legitimate case of scholarly debate. The scrolls supposedly call into question the uniqueness of Jesus and the Gospels and will shake up Christians. Jesus is at the beginning and the end, good marketing since there are actually more Christians than Jews in the target audience.
\nIn the same way, the Learning Channel\u2019s entry, \u201cHistory\u2019s Mysteries: The Dead Sea Scrolls,\u201d begins with a fair and balanced picture of the controversy over the release of the scrolls and their contents and of the archaeology of Qumran (I can be seen in Cave 4), but then dedicates the rest of the program to a survey of the Eisenman views. Even though I and others are allowed to rebut him, the agenda of the program clearly makes it out as if his lone voice were that of truth (or light) against the other voices of cover-up (or darkness).
\nA fair and straightforward argument against programs skewed to misleading pictures of the relation of the scrolls to Christianity is \u201cSecrets of the Sea\u201d from the Everyman series on BBC. Here viewers get a truly objective sense of scrolls scholarship and of the real significance of the scrolls for the background of Christianity. Other views are fairly and clearly debunked. There is no pandering here. Another excellent program, from the Discovery Channel, is \u201cThe Dead Sea Scrolls: Voices of the Desert,\u201d produced by Brigham Young University. This, like the video on the scrolls and Masada made for their campus exhibit, is well balanced and properly discusses the Jewishness of the material and its use for understanding the background of Christianity. There is an overemphasis on science and technology and their contribution to scrolls research that is partly institutionally encouraged because of the role of BYU in these areas, and partly the result of the program\u2019s placement with Discovery. But this does not interfere with the straightforwardness of the reporting.
\nThe Dead Sea Scrolls segment of \u201cDoomsday\u201d is an example of how a scrolls segment, not in itself poorly done, could be modified to make it fit into a particular type of pseudo-technoscience series, Discover Magazine on the Discovery Channel. It sets the scrolls as \u201ca doomsday cult\u201d \u201cthat may have written the Bible\u201d and also emphasizes the use of scientific techniques in scrolls research, a strange combination of motifs. But doomsday and technology\u2014and the images of Waco burning, only present at the beginning and end\u2014created an unbalanced presentation. Although the information about the relevance of the scrolls to Christianity, explained by Hershel Shanks, properly complimented the Jewish data that I had presented, all in all the framework so skewed the program that it was not unnatural for it to conclude by saying that \u201cthe scrolls may reveal the secrets of the end of days.\u201d
\n\u201cTraders of the Lost Scrolls,\u201d also broadcast on BBC in 1997, tells the story of James Charlesworth as a scrolls discoverer and features a variety of scholars and others, always in automobiles (yours truly in a Manhattan yellow cab). There is some interesting information, but it is all set in the story of discovery that never materializes.
\nProbably most problematical of all the programs that we will survey here is \u201cThe Pharaoh\u2019s Holy Treasure,\u201d another BBC entry. It presents the unsupportable theory of Robert Feather that the Copper Scroll describes treasures\u2014for the most part brought by the Jews from Egypt\u2014which originated with Akhenaton and his followers. While I had ample time to rebut this impossible view, one has to question the wisdom of BBC in portraying Feather\u2019s views at all, given their clear and obvious impossibility.
\nAll things considered, this survey shows that television programs are of several kinds: the really balanced material that can popularize while staying true to reality; the kind that uses Christianity as a come-on, but that can, in any case, present a fair and accurate picture; the kind of program that basically falls into the trap of seeing the scrolls as if they directly describe the beginnings of Christianity; and finally, the absolutely imaginary, parallel to the journalism of the tabloids. When skewed pictures of the scrolls are presented, essentially following the tradition of Wilson and Allegro, now greatly expanded by Eisenman, Thiering, etc., it is still the norm that others are allowed to rebut them, a task that may appear successful, and which we must continue to undertake, but which for many viewers somehow remains irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several lessons are apparent from the difficulties that scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls have had in representing this discovery to the media.
\nFirst, we have to understand that those who seek to use the press, either for publicity, informing the public, or gaining prestige, will have to deal with the reality that the press and media take on a life of their own, beyond scholarly control. Their need to sell their product to the public, as well as the fact that they themselves may look askance at mainstream scholarship may cause them to invert reality.
\nSecond, in the case of the scrolls, certain formative concepts began a process of scroll imaging in the media that will not so easily be reversed. The scrolls discovery and story have spawned a host of notions that conflict with reality but which go back to the early writings of Wilson and Allegro. These were fostered by secrecy and have never been overcome. The media and public have had consistent problems in distinguishing the often subtle differences between use of the scrolls to illumine the background of Christianity\u2014a legitimate and necessary academic enterprise\u2014and the confused reading of the scrolls as Christian texts.
\nFinally, no matter what scholars do or say, the inevitable desire for a solution to the problem of Christian origins and the hope for a new, secret gospel are so strong that they have and will continue to dog the Dead Sea Scrolls and to determine much of the media\u2019s perspective and the character of its portrayal of the residents of Qumran and the texts they left us.
\nThe debates over the scrolls in some ways mirror the ancient reality in which they were composed and gathered. The public culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls in our own day is one of conflict, invective, secrecy, and of the inversion of reality. The life of the sectarians in antiquity was one of conflict with other Jewish groups and severe condemnation of them, secret teachings, and hope for the inversion of this world into a sectarian utopia in the end of days. I leave you with one final thought: Did the culture of the ancient sectarians, as expressed in their scrolls, affect the public culture that now surrounds them? Is there some unbreakable link between the ancient message of the scrolls and their portrayal in the media today? Has the sectarian urge to invert reality and the often-skewed ways in which the Qumranites saw the world around them led to the same skewing and the attendant inversion of reality on the part of the modern media? Is it the fault of the media, or is it inherent in the scrolls themselves and in the modern scholars who study them? Whatever the case, the intimate relationship of scrolls scholarship and the media is a permanent and complex part of the world of contemporary scholarship, showing how important the relics of the past can be in the formation of modern culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CHAPTER 23 Pseudepigrapha in the Pseudepigrapha: Mythical Books in Second Temple Literature The purpose of this study is to investigate a phenomenon observable in a variety of Second Temple-period texts, namely reference to, or even quotation of, texts that do not exist. Such references appear in various documents preserved in the Dead … <\/p>\n