Pseudo-Philonic Parallels To the Inscriptions of Deir Alla

Abstract

In the spring of 1967 fragments of inscriptions written on plaster were discovered by a Dutch expedition in Deir CAlla, Jordan. According to experts, the writings seem to be in Aramaic or some ancient language even closer to Biblical Hebrew. The biblical prophet Balaam plays a prominent role in the text. The texts and all relevant documentation were published by J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij in 1976. Hoftijzer prepared the translation and the philological commentary on the text; all this was accompanied by an impressive array of biblical, post-biblical and other ancient eastern parallels. A 1979 study by A. Rofe provides further important observations and especially biblical parallels. The present study undertakes a comparison of the Deir CAlla texts to relevant parts of Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Book of Biblical Antiquities, hereafter referred to as LAB). Pseudo-Philo's book, which has been preserved only in medieval manuscripts of a Latin translation, was printed in 1949 by G. Kisch in a new scholarly edition.2 Hebrew fragments from the Middle Ages do not alter this situation, since they are re-translations from the Latin (Harrington). It is generally accepted, however, that Hebrew is the original language of the LAB. We shall not dwell on this and other problems of the LAB; most of the important items are sufficiently dealt with in L.H. Feldman's Prolegomenon to M. R. James's English translation of the LAB and in the literature cited there. Nevertheless it should be noted that a considerable