Texts, Translations, Notes, and Commentary

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-156
Author(s):  
Steven D. Fraade
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Ancient Source ◽  
Damascus Document ◽  
Qumran Community

The chapter provides a critical representation of the text(s), based on manuscript comparison and consulting of digital images, an English translation that cleaves to the original Hebrew while rendering it in accessible prose. Critical Notes to both the Hebrew text and its English translation, and a Commentary that seeks to highlight and interconnect the overarching themes and rhetorical strategies of the text, as it might have been communally performed in the intellectual and ritual life of the Qumran community (or communities). Suggestions for Further Reading are incorporated into each section. The Notes, which form the largest part of this chapter, identify and analyze the plenitude of both explicit (citation) and implicit (allusion) scriptural interpretation, both legal and non-legal, as well as convergences and divergences with a panoply of ancient Jewish sources, including, in addition to the Hebrew Bible, other scrolls, other second temple Jewish literature, New Testament, and early rabbinic sources, the last of which is a particular feature of this commentary in comparison to its antecedents (see Ancient Source indices). These cross-references will serve to better understand and appreciate the Damascus Document in its broader historical and cultural contexts. The Comments on each editorial unit seek to frame the text in relation to broader consideration of the identity formation, reinforcement, and transmission of both individuals and communities, of both veteran members and novices. Particular attention is given to the seeming polemical nature of much of the text, as well as its intra-mural educational purposes. The commentary takes seriously the self-designation of the community, through this text (CD [MS B] 20:10, 13), as a studying and practicing community, “the house of the Torah.” Another important feature of the Damascus Document, and hence its commentary, is the different types and functions of human leadership of the community which sees both it leaders and itself as divinely elect and in possession of esoteric wisdom and discernment.

The Non-Masoretic Hebrew Vorlage of the Old Greek Ezekiel (LXX967/LXXB), Other Non-Masoretic and Proto-Masoretic Ezekiel Texts: Evidence from Quotations of and Allusions to Ezekiel in Second Temple Judaism

2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-351
Author(s):  
Karin Finsterbusch
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
First Century ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Damascus Document ◽  
History Of ◽  
Old Greek ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract In Second Temple Jewish Literature, more than a hundred quotations of and allusions to Ezekiel are preserved. Although only a few of them are text-critically relevant, these cases may help to shed light on the complex textual history of the book. In this article, eleven cases of quotations and allusions are analyzed in detail: Six cases should be regarded as evidence for the existence of the non-masoretic Hebrew Vorlage of the Old Greek Ezekiel. In two of these cases, non-aligned textual elements appear as well. Taken together with two non-aligned cases in the Damascus Document, these quotations and allusions substantiate the assumption that even more non-masoretic Ezekiel texts were in use until the beginning of the first century BCE—alongside proto-masoretic Ezekiel texts, which are attested by three cases of quotations and allusions.

Going Through Hell; ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΣ in Greco-Roman Culture, Second Temple Judaism, and Philo of Alexandria

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-378
Author(s):  
Clint Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Greek Myths

This article questions the longstanding supposition that the eschatology of the Second Temple period was solely influenced by Persian or Iranian eschatology, arguing instead that the literature of this period reflects awareness of several key Greco-Roman mythological concepts. In particular, the concepts of Tartarus and the Greek myths of Titans and Giants underlie much of the treatment of eschatology in the Jewish literature of the period. A thorough treatment of Tartarus and related concepts in literary and non-literary sources from ancient Greek and Greco-Roman culture provides a backdrop for a discussion of these themes in the Second Temple period and especially in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.

Exogamy and Divorce in Ezra and Nehemiah

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
Herbert R. Marbury
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
History Of

This article focuses on the divorce rhetoric of Ezra-Nehemiah within the context of Persian imperial dominion. After outlining the scholarly history of inquiry into the divorces and admonitions against exogamy—stemming from challenges to historicity, the dating of the reforms, and the debate about Ezra’s or Nehemiah’s priority—this work examines the framing devices of return and restoration with regard to the Second Temple. The article takes up Persian engagement with temple communities in Egypt and Babylon and turns to analyze the multivalent character of the divorce rhetoric to show that it is a response to similar Persian engagement in Yehud. Finally, this work shows how the rhetoric evidences the negotiation of Persian power by the Second Temple priesthood and plays a role in Yehudite identity formation.

Response to the Respondents: Competition, Qumran and Supersessionism

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-133
Author(s):  
Joel Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
History Of ◽  
Qumran Community ◽  
The Way

Abstract The critics of JBHT in this issue have questioned three main aspects of the book: its assertion that early Christians competed with people who believed that John the Baptist was the principal figure in the history of salvation, its assertion that early in his career the Baptist was a member of the Qumran community, and the way in which the book situates the Baptist in relation to Second Temple Judaism in general. The article addresses these concerns, rebutting certain objections but acknowledging areas in which the book could have been more nuanced or further developed.

Slavonic

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Alexander Kulik
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period

The corpus of Jewish literature of the Second Temple period is represented in the Slavonic tradition by biblical pseudepigrapha (especially of apocalyptic genre) and Josephus. The extant Slavonic manuscripts containing these documents belong to the period spanning the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. However, in some cases their language enables us to date the earliest of their proto-texts reliably to the tenth to eleventh centuries. Like the majority of early Slavonic writings, all the texts in the corpus under discussion have been translated from Greek, and most of these translations were produced in South Slavia. Some of these texts have been preserved uniquely in Slavonic, while others have parallel versions in non-Slavonic languages. Some texts must be faithful rendering of ancient originals. Other texts in their present form are products of medieval Byzantine or Slavonic reworking. The differentiation between ancient and medieval materials is not always easy to make.

scholarly journals Wisdom and Law in the Hebrew Bible and at Qumran

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-181
Author(s):  
Charlotte Hempel
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Spread Model ◽  
Community Rule ◽  
Relationship Of

This article begins by noting the paucity of engagement between scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls (dss) and a number of significant studies on the relationship of wisdom and law in the Hebrew Bible. A substantial case study on Proverbs 1-9 and the Community Rule from Qumran is put in conversation with the seminal work of, especially, Moshe Weinfeld on Deuteronomy and its refinement by subsequent research to trace a dynamic interaction between wisdom and law in the Second Temple period. The article ends with critical reflections on the wide-spread model of segmenting ancient Jewish literature and those responsible for it into neat categories such as wisdom and law. It is argued that such a model presupposes a degree of specialization that is not borne out by the range of literature that found its way into the Hebrew Bible or the caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran.

Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 277-293
Author(s):  
Karina Martin Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Literary Environment ◽  
Book Of The Watchers

This essay showcases a sample of the diverse approaches to gender and sexuality that can be found in the literature of Second Temple Judaism. Within four of the major genres of Jewish literature during this period, it analyzes one example that makes particularly striking claims with respect to gender and sexuality: The Book of the Watchers, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, Jubilees, and Judith. Although all of the texts surveyed here come out of a culture with strong patriarchal tendencies, they do not all uphold patriarchal assumptions in equal measure or in the same ways. Taken together in their diversity, the texts demonstrate that the Jewish literary environment out of which the New Testament emerged was one in which sexuality was not a taboo subject but often provided an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the human person in relation to the divine.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document