Early Jewish Texts Research Articles

Divine Wisdom and Knowledge on Steroids: גבורה in Biblical Tradition and at Qumran

Abstract Scholars have long-noted the association of the Hebrew/Aramaic noun גבורה (power, strength, might, etc.) with divine wisdom and knowledge, but comments have been brief and intermittent. This study will elaborate upon previous investigations of the sapiential sense of גבורה and discuss texts that have hitherto been overlooked or received scant attention. After examining “biblical” and early Jewish texts of non-sectarian or proto-sectarian provenances, compositions penned by the Yaḥad movement will be addressed to shed light on the contribution גבורה made to sectarian identity. It will be demonstrated that גבורה aided the sect in asserting the conviction that, as the true Israel, the revelation of divine wisdom and knowledge was evidence that God was uniquely and powerfully at work among them.

Travel and Anxiety in Early Jewish Literature

Abstract While some early Jewish texts highlight opportunities enabled by travel, others reflect related concerns, suggesting that an encounter with the unknown moves people not only physically but also emotionally. This article addresses the latter phenomenon by investigating the blend of travel and anxiety in a selection of passages from Jubilees, Tobit, Aramaic Levi Document, and Philo of Alexandria. Drawing on affect theory, it argues that travel-related anxiety is best understood as an inclusive affect covering both explicit and more unspoken or fuzzy forms of anxiety, which can be either acute or chronic in nature. Seeking to map out a range of ancient responses to or strategies of managing apprehensions, I demonstrate that the selected sources reflect both emotional and ethical concerns. The authors of narrative texts invite their audiences to immerse themselves in “historical” events and to share the emotionally taxing aspect of relocations undertaken by ancestral figures in the past, while the authors of instructional texts address current experiences arising from their own communities: they mitigate possible worries related to encountering competing claims of wisdom on the move and instruct against trips driven by a greedy pursuit of luxurious goods.

How can the New Testament writings be within Judaism? Distinguishing ways of asking and answering the question

Abstract This article critically evaluates the meanings of “within Judaism” and related phrases when applied to the texts now collected in the New Testament. It uses social-scientific approaches to social categories and group boundaries to develop a theoretically informed approach for considering how the literature of the earliest Christ followers may or may not be considered Jewish texts, and how such claims can be evaluated. Examples from New Testament and Early Jewish texts illustrate the theoretical discussion throughout.

AIBL-CIS de Ricci no. 2

Abstract This article presents a previously unknown Jewish and Aramaic religious literary composition dating between the early second and early fourth centuries CE. The document focuses on a righteous man within the context of angels, demons, and spirits. The manuscript, which is housed in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Cabinet du Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, has a clear acquisition history and comes from Egypt. The text is edited, translated, and provided with a philological commentary. Discussion of the text’s content is briefly brought into dialogue with the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Jewish texts.

Textual Criticism and the Ontology of Literature in Early Judaism: An Analysis of the Serekh ha-yaḥad by James Nati

Reviewed by: Textual Criticism and the Ontology of Literature in Early Judaism: An Analysis of the Serekh ha-yaḥad by James Nati Elena Dugan james nati, Textual Criticism and the Ontology of Literature in Early Judaism: An Analysis of the Serekh ha-yaḥad (JSJSup 198; Leiden: Brill, 2022). Pp. xvi + 357. €119/$144. This thorough and careful book provides a welcome bridge between cutting-edge scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the developing new frontiers in textual criticism [End Page 344] of the Hebrew Bible. Concern over how to handle multiply attested texts among the Scrolls, and the focusing of this concern upon the Serekh ha-Yaḥad (or Community Rule, as it is sometimes called), has become more popular in recent years, especially in concert with the rise of New or Material Philology. Nati's contribution to students of the Scrolls is his provision of exquisite and comprehensive detail with which to parse these problems—the synoptic edition of the manuscripts he includes as an appendix will surely become an essential reference for students of the Serekh ha-Yaḥad (though the lack of an accompanying translation will make its use forbidding for some). But N. also explicitly tilts the discussion toward the study of the Hebrew Bible, the methodology undergirding the production of critical editions, and the practice of textual criticism writ large. Aptly, then, the book comprises five chapters advancing his case concerning the Serekh, with an epilogue drawing out the implications for recent discussions of the editing of the Hebrew Bible In chap. 1, N. provides a précis of the recent history of textual criticism and theories of the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish literature. He importantly establishes the relevance of his project for these broader fields by joining with scholarship insisting that "all biblical books in their canonical forms are Second Temple … literature" (p. 3). By this token, the window provided onto processes of composition gained by careful study of the development of Second Temple works like the Serekh ha-Yaḥad may (and perhaps must) also be used to consider the development of biblical books. The key problem for classically rendered historical criticism, as outlined by N., is the demonstrable "pluriformity" of our manuscript tradition for early Jewish texts like the Serekh (pp. 3, 11). Pluriformity is a key word for N., signaling that one entity exists in multiple forms. Our witnesses for works like the Serekh ha-Yaḥad (if, indeed, we should group all of its manuscripts under the heading of a single work or composition, a supposition that N. criticizes) demonstrate dynamic change at every stage of development. Few of the changes he details throughout the volume can be accounted for in terms of mechanical errors—pluriformity cannot be explained away as copying errors. Similarly, it does not make sense to situate variants as accretions, like unwanted barnacles on the bottom of a boat, given the overall trend toward growth and lengthening evidenced in this manuscript tradition. Scholars interested in establishing either an Urtext, or a final form, would be thwarted when confronted with the dynamic and developing Serekh tradition. In chap. 2, N. provides an exposition of some of the differences on the level of text, often noting discrepancies in single words. The most stunning conclusion of his work, more evident from perusing the synoptic edition than the chapter by itself, is the phenomenon of absence—as he concludes, "the operating assumption that any witness to one unit of the Serekh probably contained all the other units … is not only not supported by the preserved evidence, but is contradicted by it" (p. 102). Attention to the absence of literary units among manuscripts of the Scrolls can be difficult to signal in presentation and is even harder to prove with certainty given the demonstrably fragmentary nature of some of our manuscripts. Nevertheless, these patterns of presence and absence represent resounding larger-scale evidence of pluriformity, so long as scholars are interested in weighting their probability appropriately. Chapter 3 provides a new description of the development of the Serekh over time. Though N. does away with the idea of a "short" and "long" recension to which all manuscripts...

Ruben A. Bühner. Messianic High Christology: New Testament Variants of Second Temple Judaism

Ruben A. Bühner. <i>Messianic High Christology: New Testament Variants of Second Temple Judaism</i>

A Study of the Background of the Divine Title the “Lord of Spirits” in the Parables of Enoch

Abstract The aim of the present article is twofold. The first task is to provide a survey of the parallels to the title “Lord of spirits” in the Parables of Enoch (1 En. 37–71) to understand the background of the divine epithet. The studied parallels include titles in the Ancient Near Eastern literature, Biblical and Early Jewish texts, including Dead Sea Scrolls, magical compositions, and Christian texts (New Testament, Patristic and liturgical texts). The second task is to analyze the concept of “spirit” and its cognates in 1 Enoch to provide some clues to the function of the epithet within the composition. The survey aims to demonstrate that a generally accepted interpretation that associates the “spirits” with “angels” should not be overemphasized, since the basic meaning of the title “Lord of spirits” was to indicate God’s authority over human spirits.

The phallus in our stars: Sexual violence in the Animal Apocalypse

The Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 85–90) provides some of the most vivid imagery in Second Temple literature. In reference to the descent of the Watchers allegorized as stars, the narrative invokes the simile “they let out their phalluses like stallions” three times. Beyond the simile’s allusion to the oracle in Ezek 23:20, the stallion phallus remains largely unexplored. Our investigation demonstrates the associations of stallions with “aggressive virility” and foreignness based on the Hebrew Bible and contemporary Hellenistic and early Jewish literature. Moreover, we show the Animal Apocalypse’s innovative emphasis on the violent nature of the sexual acts, a feature absent in Gen 6 and the Book of Watchers, and argue for the episode’s contextualization with other early Jewish texts in which sexual violence is present. By spotlighting the stallion-phallused stars with their foreign genitalia, the Animal Apocalypse highlights anxieties surrounding communal boundary crossing and its violent repercussions.

When Monsters Walked the Earth

This article examines an Early Jewish text entitled the Book of the Watchers that is part of a larger work known as 1 Enoch. The Book of the Watchers offers a vivid and disturbing portrait of the excessive violence on earth that led to the flood, attributing the situation to destructive giants. Watchers expands and interprets the account of the crisis that precipitated the flood in Gen 6:1-4. Comparison of the two texts demonstrates that Watchers in particular expands the description in Genesis 6 of the giants (sons of the angels) and the violence they perpetrate. Exegesis, however, alone cannot explain this phenomenon. Appeal to monster studies can help us better understand the issue. This article argues that the retelling of the flood story in the Book of the Watchers was popular in ancient Judaism because it offers a compelling construction of the known world, and social customs that are normative within it—including a prohibition against murder and the delineation of norms regarding of food—by offering a shocking description of the antediluvian world, before divine regulations regarding such behavior were promulgated. The heinous and cannibalistic violence of the antediluvian era as presented in the Book of the Watchers helps justify the current (post-diluvian) order by presenting a coherent account of how it came into being in a way that legitimates God’s dominion over it. The essay also explores how attending to the theme of the monstrous can provide insight into the Book of the Watchers in relation to older mythic traditions embedded in Genesis 1 and the Babylonian creation poem, the Enuma Elish. The article also contends that Watchers’ reformulation of the flood story with its heightened monstrosity can be profitably explained against the backdrop of cultural anxieties that were pervasive during the Hellenistic era during which it was written.

A. Kulik – G. Boccaccini – L. Di Tommaso – D. Hamidovic – M. E. Stone, A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission

Descubriendo el parentesco entre diferentes personas, es posible elaborar suárbol genealógico. De esta manera, es posible establecer su origen y familiaridad.En esta situación se encuentran la multitud de textos judíos y cristianos cuya redacciónoriginal se conoce o presupone en torno al cambio de época. Y esto esprecisamente lo que los editores pretenden: “el propósito central del libro es trazarlas trayectorias de los primeros textos y tradiciones judías entre las diversas culturasposteriores y así proporcionar una amplia introducción a la disciplina” (3). Laobra es tan impresionante que ha sido el libro elegido para ser presentado en elúltimo Coloquio del Seminario de 4 Henoc en noviembre de 2020.

Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation

Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation

Drink and drinking in early Jewish texts: Describing a meal in the World to Come

Both the Hebrew Bible and extrabiblical literature consider food and drink to be gifts from the deity to be enjoyed by human beings, especially when they live according to the divine laws and in moderation. When it comes to extrabiblical early Jewish texts about the meal in the World to Come, one notices a curious detail: while the World to Come is portrayed as being one of utter abundance and joy, none of the texts actually describe the righteous as drinking. References to drinking natural water, fruit being turned into drink, or any other possibility for the human consumption of liquids are simply absent from these texts. How is this to be explained? This article investigates the possible reasons for the conscious or subconscious omission of a function of the human body that is most common to all human beings.

The Glory of the Invisible God: Two Powers in Heaven Traditions and Early Christology by Andrei Orlov

Reviewed by: The Glory of the Invisible God: Two Powers in Heaven Traditions and Early Christology by Andrei Orlov Adiel Schremer andrei orlov, The Glory of the Invisible God: Two Powers in Heaven Traditions and Early Christology (Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies 31; London: T&T Clark, 2019). Pp. xiii + 224. $120. This book explores various theophanies described in ancient Jewish and early Christian texts, in which God appears alongside a second, divine figure. It points at a process, common to these texts, whereby God’s visual attributes are transferred to the second figure, who is also bestowed with God’s Glory (Hebrew kābôd), while God withdraws into an aniconic aural mode and becomes invisible. This process, according to O., is one of the major characteristics of the NT accounts of the baptism and the transfiguration of Jesus. He suggests that Jesus’s divine identity was developed in the NT materials through the bestowal of God’s visual attributes on Jesus, and that the earliest christology emerges from the creative tension of the ocularcentric and aural theophanic molds, in which God abandons the divine corporeal profile so as to release it for the second figure, “who from then on becomes the image and the glory of the invisible God” (p. 190). Part 2, which is the book’s real focus, is devoted to “Two Powers in Heaven Traditions in Early Christian Accounts.” As frequently noted in previous scholarship, “Already within the earliest Christian testimonies preserved in the Pauline corpus, one can see clear tendencies toward the promulgation of the glory language” (p. 79), and a “predisposition to transfer the attributes and functions of the divine Glory to Jesus” (ibid.). O. adds that “the refashioning of the second power’s theophanic makeup goes hand-in-hand with the deity’s abandonment of its visual, corporeal dimension and its withdrawal into the aniconic aural mode” (p. 83). In his opinion, these two inverse conceptual dynamics “proved to be of paramount significance for the development of early Christology” (ibid.). To facilitate this analysis O. suggests looking at the NT material through the prism of Two Powers in Heaven traditions found in early Jewish texts, and part 1 is devoted to this task. O. begins with the well-known passage in Dan 7:9–14 and proceeds to other Second Temple Jewish texts, including the extrabiblical apocalypse known as the Book of the [End Page 345] Similitudes, and to some later Jewish texts, such as the Primary Adam Books, the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian, 2 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, and the Ladder of Jacob. Then he turns to a discussion of “Theophanic Molds in Rabbinic and Hekhalot Two Powers Debates,” where the well-known Pardes story is given much attention and is treated at some length. The relevance of these texts is not simple, however, and, as O. himself notes, they do not represent a single picture. In the ocularcentric theophanies (where both powers are fashioned in ocularcentric mode), as found in the first three texts (Primary Adam Books, Exagoge of Ezekiel, and 2 Enoch), God appears first. In contrast, in the theophanies attested in the other two texts—the Apocalypse of Abraham and the Ladder of Jacob—the second power is depicted first, “followed by the aural epiphany of the first power, which manifests itself as the hypostatic voice” (p. 88). This raises the question of how much of the Jewish material is really relevant to the understanding of the theophanic narratives in the NT. It seems, however, that the main problem with the book lies in its very application of Two Powers in Heaven terminology to the NT material. The key term, “Two Powers in Heaven,” is entirely absent from the above Jewish texts, and the early rabbinic sources in which it is found do not use it in relation to a theophany of whatever kind. Moreover, the rabbinic sources never refer to a specific figure who might be considered a “second power.” Rather, they use it as a general theological concept, according to which there is more than one God. Of the identity and characteristics of the “second power” they say virtually nothing...

Before the Bible: The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism by Judith H. Newman (review)

Reviewed by: Before the Bible: The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism by Judith H. Newman Jillian Stinchcomb Judith H. Newman. Before the Bible: The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiii + 178 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000203 Over the last decade, scholarly conversations about scripturality and canonization in the late Second Temple period have blossomed. Newman's volume offers a concise entry point into this ongoing research for specialists and nonspecialists alike. Through close readings of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, Daniel and 4 Baruch, 2 Corinthians, and the Hodayot Newman integrates a range of Jewish and early Christian literature into a broader argument that links the development of Scripture in Judaism and embodied practices of prayer and liturgy. Her concern, she writes, is [End Page 427] "with how bodies engage oral and written texts" through prayer, shaping individual selves and communities, and how these practices shape texts that are "invested, or come to be invested, with a revelatory status" (13). Newman's argument is successful in part because she carefully frames it against a teleological view of the Hebrew Bible, discussing instead the development of Scriptures (plural) in early Judaism. She offers an effective example of the integration of historical-critical methods with a focus on the material, embodied experiences of ancient readers, attending to the role of the liturgical body—which includes but is not limited to the scribal hand—in the formation of Scriptures. Newman utilizes a framework called "embodied cognition." This approach, based on anthropological and neurocognitive perspectives, argues for "an integral tie among brains, sense organs, motor systems, and emotions as humans interact with others and their environments" (11). She focuses on prayer because of its ubiquity in early Jewish texts and because of prayer's relationship to the evolving status of early Jewish Scripture. Newman argues that prayer has five major functions in the scripturalizing process, and offers a diachronic view of this process in social contexts. Newman's discussion of the "liturgical body" refers to both an individual participating in liturgy and a communal body brought together in prayer and collective engagement. She thus engages with the material realia of prayer and textual interpretation, describing the authorizing strategies of the textual sites she examines, which include a traditioning process by which authoritative figures like Paul and the Teacher of Righteousness mediate revelatory texts. In chapter 1, Newman argues that the daily practice of prayer described in the Wisdom of Ben Sira functions as a technology of selfhood, using the conceptual framework of neurocognition to explain the effects of prayer. She focuses on honor and shame, especially with regard to the (male) reader's conduct with women, as anchoring values for Ben Sira. The development of the book of Wisdom of Ben Sira mirrors the development of the self and acts as a reflection on Ben Sira's teaching and interpretation of Scripture. In chapter 2, Newman looks at the use of Jeremiah in Daniel and 4 Baruch. In her argument, the instability of Jeremiah in the Hellenistic-Roman period (at least as late as the second century BCE, according to evidence from Qumran) is not a bug but a feature, one which is reflected in the confessional prayers of Daniel and 4 Baruch. These texts exhibit differing views on prophecy and the relationship between Diaspora Jewish communities and Jerusalem. Daniel and 4 Baruch try to "end" the book of Jeremiah according to their own needs. Daniel presents angelic revelation and prophecy as "continuing means for discovering divine reality" (55). In contrast, for Baruch, the age of prophecy has closed, foreclosing the possibility of further prophetic utterance, but Baruch as the learned sage can act as authoritative interpreter and confessor of Torah for both Diaspora- and Jerusalembased Jewish communities. Moreover, his effectiveness in this role can end the exile. In chapter 3, Newman examines Paul's efforts "to shape a cohesive community from a fractious congregation" (75) in 2 Corinthians, a text that was continually reread and performed as a medium "crucial to the ongoing communication of the [End Page 428] gospel" (75). By connecting the collection of money...

Constructing Imperial and National Identities: Monstrous and Human Bodies in Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees

Monster theory illuminates the construction of imperial and national identities in the portrayals of monstrous and human bodies in three early Jewish texts; Book of Watchers, Daniel, and 2 Maccabees. Book of Watchers expresses anxiety about Judean/Jewish identity in the shadow of empire through its portrayal of a vulnerable humanity terrorized by voracious giants and their demonic spirits. Daniel dehumanizes empire and its agents, imaging empire as a colossal statue, an animalistic were-king, and a series of monstrous beasts, while one like a human being poses an alternative to imperial rule. Second Maccabees, by contrast, demythologizes, decapitates, dismembers, and disintegrates the imperial body in order to portray the integral Judean political body (and soul) as mature, pure, capable, and ordered.

Ethnicity, Race, Religion: Identities and Ideologies in Early Jewish and Christian Texts, and in Modern Biblical Interpretation ed. by Katherine M. Hockey, David G. Horrell

Ethnicity, Race, Religion: Identities and Ideologies in Early Jewish and Christian Texts, and in Modern Biblical Interpretation ed. by Katherine M. Hockey, David G. Horrell

The Study of Emotions in Early Jewish Texts: Review and Perspectives

AbstractThis article reviews recent research on emotions in the field of early Judaism, mostly in literature. The article starts with an example from the biblical story of Joseph, to illustrate the need for a culturally sensitive understanding of emotions. Various approaches to emotions are then examined: philology and the history of the self, the construction of identity, structures of power (including gender), experiences with the divine, and emotions as adaptive practices. Each section starts with a brief outline of the scholarship conducted in other fields and serving as a background for research on early Judaism. The conclusion considers several facets of emotions, as they are highlighted by various disciplines; cultural manipulations of emotions often harness the tensions that may result from these multiple facets. The article closes with a brief assessment of the contribution of emotion research to the broader study of early Judaism and with perspectives for further research.

Jesus’ Death in New Testament Thought, vol. 1: Background; vol. 2: Texts

<i>Jesus’ Death in New Testament Thought</i>, vol. 1: <i>Background</i>; vol. 2: <i>Texts</i>

Full Belly versus Starving Body. Ritual Reversal and the Human Body in Biblical and Early Jewish Texts

Aspects of imagined ritual reversal in regard to ancient ideas about eating are the topic of this paper. It will particularly focus on the opposition of satisfied and starving human bodies, both in early Jewish texts that deal with this world and in texts that discuss circumstances in the World to Come. The aim is to investigate both the ritual theories that might be applied to these texts and the human characteristics that, according to the texts discussed, would lead human bodies either to starvation or satisfaction.

Glaube: Das Verständnis des Glaubens im frühen Christentum und in seiner jüdischen und hellenistisch-römischen Umwelt

Glaube: Das Verständnis des Glaubens im frühen Christentum und in seiner jüdischen und hellenistisch-römischen Umwelt