Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea PDF
Preview Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea
Devorah Dimant, Reinhard G. Kratz (Eds.) REWRITING AND INTERPRETING THE HEBREW BIBLE THE BIBLICAL PATRIARCHS IN THE LIGHT OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Herausgegeben von John Barton · F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp Reinhard G. Kratz · Markus Witte Band 439 De Gruyter Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls Edited by Devorah Dimant and Reinhard G. Kratz De Gruyter ISBN 978-3-11-029042-4 e-ISBN 978-3-11-029055-4 ISSN 0934-2575 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. ” 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Preface In the past two decades, many previously unknown texts from Qumran that rework passages from the Hebrew Bible have been published. Dat‐ ed to the second and first centuries BCE, these documents attest to the methods of biblical exegesis employed during the transitional phase between the finalizing of the literary and textual shape of the Hebrew Bible and the commencement of extra‐biblical interpretation. At this early stage, the book of Genesis was the object of multiple reworking and exegetical elaborations and, therefore, has been selected as the subject of the present volume, with a particular emphasis on the patri‐ archs and the relationship between narrative and law. The volume thus contributes to the understanding of the early exegesis of the book of Genesis and the patriarchal tradition, and the prehistory of this tradi‐ tion within the Hebrew Bible. The volume is concerned in particular with the links displayed by Qumranic biblical interpretation to inner‐biblical interpretation and the final shaping of the Hebrew Scriptures. Moshe Bar‐Asher studies cases of inner‐biblical interpretative comments while Emanuel Tov investi‐ gates the phenomenon of harmonizations within the textual history of the patriarchal stories. Moshe Bernstein provides an overview of the references to the patriarchs in the Qumran scrolls. Three contributions deal with primeval history as the preamble to the lives of the patri‐ archs. Michael Segal treats the garden of Eden story in the scrolls and other contemporary Jewish sources. Devorah Dimant examines how the Flood story is viewed in the Qumran scrolls while Reinhard Kratz analyses this story and its tradition history in the Hebrew Bible. Roman Vielhauer explores the story of Sodom and Gomorrah both in the He‐ brew Bible and in the scrolls. George Brooke and Atar Livneh discuss aspects of Jacobʹs career. Harald Samuel reviews the career of Levi while Liora Goldman examines the Aramaic Visions of Amram. Law‐ rence Schiffman and Aharon Shemesh analyse halakhic aspects of sto‐ ries about the patriarchs. The essays assembled in this volume are based on the lectures giv‐ en in an international symposium held in Göttingen, May 2–4, 2011 as part of the German‐Israeli cooperative project ʺThe Interpretation of the Book of Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls,ʺ funded by the Deutsche vi Devorah Dimant and Reinhard G. Kratz Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and organized under the auspices of the Centrum Orbis Orientalis et Occidentalis (Centre for Ancient and Oriental Studies of the University of Göttingen and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Göttingen). We would like to express our gratitude to the contributors from England, Germany, Israel and the United States for their participation in the symposium and their valuable articles. Our thanks are due to the Lichtenberg‐Kolleg of the Georg‐August Universi‐ ty, Göttingen for funding and hosting this conference. Both editors of this volume as well as Emanuel Tov were fortunate to be elected fel‐ lows of the Kolleg during the academic year 2010–2011 and they would like to thank its former director, Professor Dagmar Coester‐Waltjen, for the generous and unfailing support in all relevant respects. Further, we thank the editors of the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttes‐ tamentliche Wissenschaft, Prof. Dr. John Barton (Oxford) and Prof. Dr. Markus Witte (Berlin), in cooperation with the publishing house De Gruyter (Berlin), for accepting the volume for publication and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for their financial support for the printing of the volume. Last but not least, we owe special thanks to stud. theol. Laura Victoria Schimmelpfennig and stud. theol. Johannes Müller who prepared the manuscript and the indices. Haifa and Göttingen, November 2012 Devorah Dimant and Reinhard G. Kratz Table of Contents Devorah Dimant and Reinhard G. Kratz Preface .................................................................................................. v Moshe Bar‐Asher The Bible Interpreting Itself .............................................................. 1 Emanuel Tov Textual Harmonization in the Stories of the Patriarchs ................ 19 Moshe J. Bernstein Where Are the Patriarchs in the Literature of Qumran? ............... 51 Michael Segal The First Patriarchs: Law and Narrative in the Garden of Eden Story ........................................................................................... 77 Devorah Dimant The Flood as a Preamble to the Lives of the Patriarchs: The Perspective of Qumran Hebrew Texts ..................................... 101 Reinhard G. Kratz The Flood as a Preamble to the Lives of the Patriarchs: The Biblical Perspective ..................................................................... 135 Roman Vielhauer Sodom and Gomorrah: From the Bible to Qumran ....................... 147 George J. Brooke Jacob and His House in the Scrolls from Qumran ......................... 171 Atar Livneh With My Sword and Bow: Jacob as Warrior in Jubilees ................. 189 Harald Samuel Levi, the Levites, and the Law .......................................................... 215 viii Table of Contents Liora Goldman The Burial of the Fathers in the Visions of Amram from Qumran . 231 Lawrence H. Schiffman The Patriarchs and Halakhah in the Dead Sea Scrolls .................. 251 Aharon Shemesh Shabbat, Circumcision and Circumcision on Shabbat in Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls ................................................................... 263 Index ........................................................................................................... 289 The Bible Interpreting Itself Moshe Bar‐Asher Introduction 1. In this study I would like to comment on the phenomenon which can be called ʺThe Bible as the interpreter of its own language.ʺ1 Certain aspects of this phenomenon have been well known for a long time, 1 Various aspects of internal commentary in the Bible have been discussed in studies conducted in the previous generation; I will mention only a few: Fishbane 1985, and in some of Yair Zakovitchʹs studies. Firstly in Zakovitch 1986, and later, and in greater detail, in Zakovitch 1992. Occasionally, linguistic topics are dealt with in studies such as these (example 19 on p. 25 in Zakovitchʹs book is brought below in § 12; I will also mention the examples alluded below n. 40 in Yellin 1983, 280‒291). However, I have not seen anyone who has presented the issues in the way that they are presented here: a linguistic explanation of words and expressions, primarily in context, while presenting four different aspects of the phenomenon, with explicit ex‐ amples. Beyond the others, there is the comprehensive and instructive study by Abraham Kariv ʺThe Bible Interpreting Itself.ʺ An updated version of this study ap‐ pears in Kariv 1970, 239‒263. His exegetical comments on the verses he deals with come in the course of his commentary, that is the word being explained and its ex‐ planation appear in one sequence (in sort of glosses). For example, in the verse ʺhe called up his retainers, born into his householdʺ (Gen. 14:14) the phrase ʺborn into his householdʺ explains ʺhis retainers.ʺ Many good, sensible examples appear in this study, but there are also some unconvincing, and even baseless, ones. In any event, my study differs from his. I almost never deal with the many small details of a run‐ ning commentary in this study. Two examples deal with synonyms that appear con‐ secutively in the text: ʺin troughs – the water receptaclesʺ (Gen. 30:38, in Kariv 1970, 240); ʺthen is the prey of a great spoil dividedʺ (Isa. 33:23, in Kariv 1970, 262). In his study these examples are two of many whereas in my study this type is mentioned only casually (see below § 15). We disagree about the explanation of the third exam‐ ple. In the sentence ʺand [he] became a young man, an archerʺ (Gen. 21:20, this ex‐ ample appears in Kariv 1970, 239) he believes that the word תשָּׁ קַ (qaššāt) explains the ‐ word הבֶ ֹ ר (rōbe), implying he understood the word rōbe is equivalent to ʺshooting [ar‐ ‐ ‐ rows].ʺ I am of the opinion that the word rōbe means ʺyoung manʺ and the word רעַ ַנּהַ ‐ (hannaʹr) that appears in the first part of the verse comes to clarify the meaning of rōbe that appears in the second part (see below §§ 19‒21 and n. 37). I wish to say al‐ ‐ ready now that in the phenomenon dealt with in this study, Biblical style serves lin‐ guistic ends, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
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