Chapter Ten. The Temple Scroll And The Halakhic Pseudepigrapha Of The Second Temple Period

Abstract

In Y. Yadin's view the Temple scroll has to be distanced from the apocryphal books to which Levine had compared it, such as Jubilees, Enoch and others. Jubilees and theTemple scroll make the claim that, with or without the mediation of Moses, the material they contain was revealed directly and that it is a divine Torah. The Temple scroll is not a Moses pseudepigraphon as it does not allow Moses his own voice anywhere in the scroll. If he appears at all, it is in the second person, as the oblique addressee. The Temple scroll stands alone in its literary character, at least in its present form. It is clearly a divine halakhic pseudepigraphon and only a true deus ex machina would ever allow us to know if it was delivered through the mediation of Moses or directly to the people of Israel.Keywords: halakhic pseudepigrapha; Israel; Jubilees; Levine; Moses; Temple scroll; Torah; Y. Yadin