Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism.Edited by Mladen Popović.

Abstract

T his thought-provoking collection of essays is the result of a conference in 2008 on the authoritativeness of Scriptures in ancient Judaism. The plural form ‘Scriptures’ should be noted: study of the Dead Sea Scrolls over the last few decades has led scholars to conclude that in the Second Temple period, religious writings carrying authority covered more than what we call the Hebrew Bible. Florentino García Martínez, in whose honour the original conference was held, argues that the plurality of text forms from Qumran is representative of the situation in Palestine at the time. He singles out two particular strategies for conferring authority on a text. The first is ‘revelatory exegesis’ for non-sectarian texts such as Pseudo-Daniel, in which older prophetic books are reinterpreted for the new context. Another strategy is ‘the voice of the Teacher’, whose status within the group as possessor of divine revelation conferred on him a prophetic role. George Brooke observes that although the Teacher of Righteousness is unlikely to have written any compositions himself, he acted as a catalyst for a group who rewrote and reinterpreted earlier scriptures. The resulting texts mirror the broadly apocalyptic interests of their leader.