Decrees for the “Volunteers” of the People

The Damascus Document’s Pesher of the Well (CD 6:2–11) has generally been treated as an isolated unit, either as an example of Qumran exegesis or as evidence for the history of the sect. The present study offers a fresh reading of this section that gives special attention to its rhetorical function within the document and its relationship to the document’s legal material in particular. It is argued that the pesher was intended to authorize the body of legal rulings found within the document by interpreting the two lines of Numbers 21:18 as an outline of two stages of the sect’s history. The pesher is built around two anchor-words in the lemma: ‮שרים‬‎ (“officials”), a reference to the sect’s founders who established an authoritative body of torah rulings, and ‮נדיבי העם‬‎, a reference to the sect’s later “volunteer initiates” who were to remain faithful to these rules throughout the Epoch of Wickedness.

Shapira’s Deuteronomy, Its Decalogue, and Dead Sea Scrolls Authentic and Forged

This essay engages Idan Dershowitz’s recent attempt to rehabilitate the Deuteronomy fragments Moses Wilhelm Shapira offered for sale in 1883. After summarizing the contents of Dershowitz’s volume, this paper evaluates Shapira’s fragments in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Moabitica and other forgeries connected to Shapira. It considers the implications of Shapira’s transcription of the text, which Dershowitz uses to demonstrate Shapira’s innocence. To counter Dershowitz’s hypothesis regarding the “proto-biblical” origin of the fragments, it is proposed that the composition is better understood as a post-biblical pastiche. Dershowitz has endeavored to sever the text from the possibilities allowed by 19th century European scholarship; the present article contextualizes the find within the religious world of 19th century Jerusalem. While the allure of significance can encourage scholars to overcome doubts and accept the authenticity of suspicious objects, Shapira’s fragments remain very dubious indeed.

The Social Context of 4QInstruction Reconsidered

The nature and the social context of Instruction were often discussed in the scholarship. Its relatively high number of copies that have been found in Qumran, and a series of shared literary, linguistic and ideological similarities to compositions often closely associated with the Qumran movement led scholars to debate the attribution of Instruction to this group of texts. This paper argues that the pericope in 4Q418 frg. 81, which uses extensively priestly language and metaphors, reflects similar social context and structure as the Community Rule, and therefore Instruction should be placed among the writings of the community. I will use two-stage analysis of the pericope, which will offer insight on the identity of the addressee, and try to bring some fresh insights on the literary unity of the composition.

Reading for Resonance

This article offers a hermeneutic approach attentive to the tangled idiomatic and literary interconnections among biblical texts and other Second Temple literature. It focuses on the expressions of divine presence in the Temple Scroll and their prepositions; the divine presence is ‘upon’ the temple and ‘in the midst’ of the people. This prepositional rhetoric engages recurrences and interconnections within and beyond the Hebrew Bible. It thus evokes multiple interlocking resonances and offers a window onto concepts of temple presence across biblical texts and traditions.

“Make Me a Sanctuary”

This contribution offers a new reading and reconstruction of an addition found in the text of Exod 24:18–25:1 as preserved in 4Q364 (4QRPb) 15. Alluding to Exod 25:8 (and possibly 9), it appears to elucidate the purpose of Moses’s forty days’ long stay atop Mount Sinai and serves as a nexus between Exod 24:18 and the following discussion of the Tabernacle.

Genesis 1–3 and the Formation of Subjectivity in the Hodayot and the Two Spirits Teaching

Although the lived experience of subjectivity for persons in antiquity cannot be known directly, one can study certain texts as tools for the formation of subjects. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls two compositions are particularly instructive, the Hodayot found in 1QHa 2–9, 18–28 (the Hodayot of the Maskil, also known as Hodayot of the Community) and the Two Spirits Teaching (1QS 3:13–4:26). Each develops an understanding of subjectivity based on subtle interpretations of creation traditions, developed through sophisticated intertextual readings. The Hodayot privilege Gen 2–3; the Two Spirits Teaching emphasizes Gen 1. Although mutually contradictory on the surface, the two accounts actually develop subjectivities that share many similarities. By analyzing these converging patterns one may get some sense of the lived subjectivity that was created by the various texts and practices of the Yahad community.

The Rhetorical Self in Tannaitic Halakha

The halakhic practice does more than regulating the inner world; it takes part in forming it, generating a unique legal subject. But is there a unique halakhic Self? This article examines this question in the context of Tannaitic halakha, both Mishnaic and Midrashic. More specifically I ask whether one can speak of subjectivity in Tannaitic halakha. I study the relationship between anonymous halakhic rulings and specific positions presented in the name of individual sages or argued with the force of personal commitment. Through analyzing the “I” language in Tannaitic literature, in comparison with the rhetoric of prerabbinic halakha, I wish to advance the ongoing search for the rabbinic Self.

Getting a Handle on 1QIsaiahb

This article examines Hartmut Stegemann’s preliminary proposal that the remains of the beginning handle sheet of 1QHa have survived and provide useful data for reconstructing the scroll. According to Stegemann, this handle sheet supplies critical material evidence that three columns existed before 1QHa 4, the first substantially extant column in the manuscript. The handle sheet was recovered from one of three scrolls, 1QM, 1QIsab, and 1QHa. Each of these possibilities is considered, and a new proposal that the handle sheet belongs to the end of 1QIsab is advanced. The article offers a tentative reconstruction of the handle sheet as part of 1QIsab to demonstrate its material continuity with col. 28 of 1QIsab.

Two Types of Four-Compartment Tefillin Cases from the Judean Desert Caves

Approximately thirty tefillin cases were discovered in the Judean Desert. The publishers of these finds distinguished between single-compartment cases, which they identified as “arm-tefillin,” and four-compartment cases, which they identified as “head-tefillin.” Here I present a further typological distinction between two subtypes among the four-compartment tefillin cases: (1) the “simple-type,” in which a single line of stitching separates the compartments from one another, and (2) the “split-type,” in which the compartments are separated by incisions in the leather and each compartment is stitched closed individually. It seems likely that some kind of ritual issue is at stake, and an allusion to these two types as competing halakhic practices may be found in the tannaitic literature—with the rabbis ultimately rejecting the “split-type.” The Judean Desert finds may represent a synchronic debate between competing groups, a diachronic development, or perhaps practices followed contemporaneously by members of one and the same group.